It\u2019s common in public discourse to see worries about pseudoscience. This is understandable, for the stakes are high. Although science surely can\u2019t tell us about everything, it is our best way to learn about many important things \u2013 not least viruses, climate change, or the health risks of tobacco. Its standards need to be maintained.<\/p>\n
But which standards belong to science and which don\u2019t? More generally, which ideas, methods, theories, claims, or even entire disciplines belong and which don\u2019t? And who has the right to make these distinctions? These are questions of gatekeeping in science<\/em>: determining who and what belongs in or out of science.<\/p>\n Public discourse, including science communication, often comes across as if these questions have obvious answers and so don\u2019t even need to be asked. Words like \u201cscientific\u201d, \u201canti-scientific\u201d, or \u201cpseudoscientific\u201d are thrown around as if they have clear referents \u2013 as if matters of gatekeeping in science are settled.<\/p>\n But they aren\u2019t. Granted, there are general benchmark principles that clearly belong to science. One is that it\u2019s crucial to be open to whatever results your evidence delivers<\/em>. Another is that claims must be<\/em> substantiated by contentful arguments<\/em>, instead of manipulative or biased ones.<\/p>\n But translating these abstract principles into concrete practice is far from straightforward. Take medical research as an example<\/a>. Most people agree that evidence has an important role to play. But what counts as evidence to begin with \u2013 patient testimony? Clinician experience? Randomized controlled trials? Some or all of these? Another thing that\u2019s not clear is which kinds of evidence are stronger than others. When two pieces of evidence point in different directions, for example when quantitative studies conflict with patient testimony or clinician experience, how should we decide what the evidence as a whole says? On top of this, answers to these questions may vary between contexts. Asserting that medical research must be evidence-based is not the end of the conversation, but the beginning.<\/p>\n Answers to questions like these \u2013 about how to spell out scientific principles in concrete cases \u2013 have important consequences. Scientific credibility matters for government funding or endorsement, for public policy decisions (for example about vaccine mandates), and for many other things. So it\u2019s very important to have a sense of what really is scientific and what isn\u2019t, rather than make indiscriminate claims about misinformation or pseudoscience.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there is often pressure \u2013 from both inside and outside of science \u2013 to foreclose too quickly around answers about what is scientific. This is unfortunate because science itself<\/em> has a measure of unclarity built in. Scientists have to negotiate these questions carefully but open-mindedly on a daily basis. Simple and quick answers are a warning sign that science has gone wrong. So in answer to the question of which <\/em>standards, methods, and claims belong to science, we may say that part of science\u2019s job is to continue working this out \u2013 and never completely stop.<\/p>\n What about the question of who decides<\/em> what counts as science? On the one hand there are universities, governments, regulatory bodies, and other public or professional institutions. On the other hand, these are made of people, and people are prone to bias, groupthink, special interests, and just plain error. It\u2019s possible that some things may fall short of science\u2019s benchmark principles, yet decision-makers count them as scientific anyway. Or it may be that something respects <\/em>these principles, yet decision-makers exclude it anyway.<\/p>\n Take for example the committee that wrote a guideline for England,<\/a> that is taken seriously internationally, on how to treat chronic fatigue syndrome. This committee included many scientists, and its reasoning was supposed to rely on scientific principles. But as it happens, many other <\/em><\/a>scientists<\/a> \u2013 including world experts on chronic fatigue \u2013 strongly objected to the guideline<\/a> and questioned the legitimacy of the committee<\/a>. They said it let bias and sloppy thinking, while keeping out some treatments that deserved to be kept in. (I\u2019d weigh in firmly with the critics \u2013 but that is a conversation for another time.)<\/p>\n This example illustrates that the question of who has the right to decide what counts as scientific is not easy to answer. One thing we can say, at least, is that this too is something that scientists, and perhaps other informed stakeholders, must muddle through as conscientiously as possible.<\/p>\n One lodestar here would be an idea of what gatekeepers in science should be aiming for \u2013 what would make a case of gatekeeping good<\/em>. We would still need to talk about how this idea spells out in concrete cases. But it would at least provide a starting point for conversation.<\/p>\n Together with my co-author Bruce Grimley<\/a>, I suggest that there are at least three things we can consider in evaluating whether a case of gatekeeping in science is good or bad.<\/p>\n The first is whether the gatekeeping seeks to preserve something that is genuinely valuable, and to keep out things that are not valuable. After all, a good gate is designed to keep the sheep safe from predators. What about science \u2013 what valuable thing does good gatekeeping seek to preserve here, and what does it seek to exclude? What it seeks to exclude <\/em>are things like biased reasoning, fraud, or the interests of career promotion. What it seeks to preserve <\/em>are the benchmark principles of science. These include \u2013 at the very least \u2013 the two mentioned above: openness to whatever your evidence delivers, and contentful arguments to substantiate ideas. These make science valuable, and good gatekeeping seeks to preserve them.<\/p>\n But a gatekeeper can seek to preserve something valuable in a dodgy way<\/em>. For example, an ethics committee might try to keep out undesirables by beating them up. This is dodgy because beating people up is itself unethical. Similarly, gatekeeping in science cannot be particularly good unless it is done in a way that respects the benchmark principles of science. <\/em>That means that good gatekeeping itself<\/em>, at the very least, is open to whatever evidence delivers, and engages in contentful argumentation.<\/p>\n But even if gatekeepers seek to preserve scientific principles, and do so in a way that respects them, they might sadly fail. Good gatekeeping in science must therefore be successful<\/em>. What does successful gatekeeping look like? It preserves the values it sets out to preserve, and keeps out whatever it aims to keep out. The sheep are kept safe and the predators excluded. What does this amount to in science? Successful gatekeeping here preserves <\/em>the methods, ideas, or hypotheses that really have scientific merit, and it keeps out<\/em> the ones that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n But this is a narrow tightrope. On the one hand, gatekeeping in science can be too lenient<\/em>, letting in things that don\u2019t belong. For example, background beliefs from the surrounding culture might slip into what you count as scientific. This happened in the case of the sexist ideology that influenced the doctor Edward Clarke to argue, in respected scientific venues, that higher education would damage women\u2019s fertility<\/a>.<\/p>\n