Looking ahead, looking back

The first editorial of the year is generally an invitation to look forward. Often, we announce new initiatives at the Science family of journals or changes to our policies. This year, I want to look forward in a different way—by looking back. Science has a history that includes shame in addition to accomplishment. In 2021, we began to explore and acknowledge some of that regretful past, and we’ll continue this examination in 2022.

In May of last year, Science recognized the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man with an outstanding review on the science and an editorial by Agustín Fuentes, who called attention to harmful views about race and gender that Darwin expressed. Some critics said we were trying to “cancel Darwin” or that we should have understood that he was a “man of his time.” We reject both criticisms. We were simply providing a more complete description of one of the most important figures in science and noting the harm that his views produced for so many women and people of color.

In September, Sudip Parikh [the chief executive office of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the publisher of Science], John Slattery (a theologian and historian at AAAS), and I wrote a blog post about the role that the journal and AAAS played in promoting eugenics. In the 1920s, Science published articles by well-known American eugenicists, including Charles Davenport, Henry Osborn, and Leonard Darwin (son of Charles Darwin). Osborn went on to become the president of the AAAS. It is distressful to read their repugnant ideas in our pages; the harm done by the practice of eugenics is incalculable.

A year ago, David Christianson, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to me about a horrific event chronicled in Science. In the 1960s, researchers at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University School of Medicine carried out experiments designed to demonstrate the physiological effects of nuclear fallout. The test subjects were developmentally disabled children at Wrentham State School (now called the Wrentham Developmental Center) in Massachusetts—a state-run medical facility for the treatment of psychiatric and developmental disorders. Disabled children were given sodium iodide to determine the amount needed to suppress the uptake of radioactive iodine-131. The study was published in Science in 1962, and the children were demeaningly described as “mentally defective.” Like Darwin’s views and those of the eugenicists, the study reflects a willfulness to consider some individuals as less than human.

The study hit close to home for Christianson. His twin sister, Karen, was a patient at Wrentham State School at that time. She died shortly after she was admitted and after the experiments were done. Christianson says he will never know whether his sister was in the experiment or died because of it, because the experiments were apparently conducted without parental consent. The uncertainty only adds to the harm inflicted by such studies on marginalized communities. I contacted the provost of Harvard University to see if the university had uncovered any new information about this incident, but he was unable to find anything.

I am asked frequently what Science plans to do about other studies it has published that were discriminatory and even violated human rights. Is the best approach to look over all papers published since 1880 through today’s lenses of systemic racism, sexism, and other prejudices, and then retract or put a notice on those that fall under this category? The practical aspects of such an effort and determining whether that is the best course forward will require more listening. But either way, it’s time for honest discussions about such studies and shining a spotlight on the shameful views and actions of the scientific community’s predecessors. Science is not afraid to point out its role in supporting malicious science—it is history that should not be forgotten and can guide us in working with the community to confront shortcomings, past and present, in our pages and across the scientific enterprise.

Despite the pain surrounding this topic, I believe there is reason to be hopeful. We owe it to the Christiansons and others to ensure a future that eliminates atrocities in the practice of science.