Physics is a culture of denial
Originally published on Toward Decolonizing Physics
“I wasn’t drinking!” We all know denial when we see it. And no, I don’t mean the middle schooler who claims he didn’t sneak out at night in face of all evidence (I would know, I used to be a summer camp counselor!). By denial, I mean the systematic and often subconscious distortion of one’s own perception to disclaim the manifest consequences of one’s actions or character traits. In other words, a pathological and unjustified restructuring of reality. Denial, as such, is the hallmark of addiction, codependency, and many other compulsive diseases.
While hopefully we all agree physics has a diversity problem, there is very little discussion among physicists of why this is the case. I have written previously about lack of respect for wisdom and about “genius culture.” Here I make a bolder and more unsettling claim: physics culture is a culture of denial.
To some extent, many of us – especially those in privileged positions in society – have a somewhat inflated self-image. We see our actions as predominantly good and charitable, while downplaying or ignoring our faults, wrongs, and complicity in colonization. We like to maintain an overall positive self-image, and may lash out or feel ashamed if this self-image is shattered. (Of course, this also goes in both directions; those of us who are made to feel inferior in society, mainly colonized and minoritized people, can feel deep internalized shame that leads to phenomena like impostor syndrome.) The problem is when this self-image is based on closing one’s self off from external checks of reality.
The Roots of Denial
So what does denial have to do with physics culture? I don’t mean to imply that physics are all addicts (although I have seen my fair share of workaholism and alcohol abuse around the lab). Rather, physics culture is structured in a way as to position the physicist in opposition to character traits of basic humanity. By positioning the physicist as occupying an impossible social position, we create a culture of denial wherein privileged physicists are collectively encouraged to deny their own behavior and biases in order to maintain their self-image as physicists.
How does this work? In most STEM fields, the researcher is explicitly or implicitly reminded of their own humanity and positionality. Engineers designing a bridge must be aware of their possibility for error, lest an uncaught mistake lead to a catastrophic accident. Biologists and psychologists, coming from a history of failed, destructive ideas such as eugenics, are becoming increasingly aware of the human aspect of their work. We physicists, on the other hand, typically work far removed from the domain of human values. We seek objective truth irrespective of human and cultural values, and see ourselves as vanguards of natural truth apart from the “culturally-influenced” domains of religion, philosophy, and the arts (and increasingly, other “softer” STEM fields).
As such, the image of an ideal physicist is different than in many other areas of science. Increasingly (though not enough), an ideal biologist or psychologist is seen as someone who recognizes and compensates for their inevitable personal and cultural biases in the quest for truth. An ideal physicist, on the other hand, is seen as someone who can observe and study the universe from a truly objective and bias-free lens. A good physicist doesn’t admit bias, since she simply doesn’t have bias.
And therein lies the problem: No human is unbiased. All of us come from societal backgrounds that affect our values, behaviors, and indeed research questions; none of us is free of such influences. No human pursuit of knowledge can escape this reality, which leads to the sometimes unsettling idea that all human knowledge is, to some degree or another, subjective. We as physicists don’t decide what the underlying laws of physics are (experiment exerts veto power on theory!), but we do to large extent define the language and cultural idioms with which we describe these laws, as well as what their philosophical and cultural meaning should be. Processes like peer review do root out the peculiar biases of individual physicists, but their homogenizing effect only makes invisible the biases carried by physics culture as a whole.
Even if we choose to consciously decouple our work in the laboratory from the “real world,” the reality is that physics research interacts constantly with issues of political and technological importance (think high-energy physics and the atomic bomb, or connections between AMO physics and warfare). As such, no one can do physics research without subjectively ascribing cultural meaning to scientific truth. And importantly, if we do not ascribe meaning to our research, society will (a strong argument for physicists to be involved in science policy).
TLDR: It is impossible (not to mention undesirable) to decouple physics research from human subjectivity and cultural values.
Denial and Its Effects on Physics Culture
What does an objectivity-seeking discipline do when confronted with the uncomfortable reality that research cannot be fully objective? There are two distinct approaches. The first is to embrace – and even celebrate! – the inherent subjectivity of research, in particular the ability of researchers of different backgrounds to ask different research questions and ascribe cultural meaning in ways that lead to the development of even more knowledge (and even wisdom). The second path – which physics follows – is to engage in collective denial. Like the alcoholic who insists he wasn’t drinking, the physicist is encouraged by physics culture to construct a denialist fiction of perfect objectivity in the face of contrary evidence. And as the alcoholic blames his spouse for finding his beer cans in the trash rather than himself for drinking, maintaining physics culture’s objectiveness fiction requires destroying or discrediting influences that challenge the perceived objectivity of the (white male) physicist.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein writes about how physics epistemology is structured to favor white people’s preferred worldview to objective truth. By the analysis here, white empiricism is just one example of a broader pattern induced by denial: privileged (read: white) physicists maintain their precious sense of objectivity by defining their worldviews as objective truth. When someone (often a woman of color) does bring into question the objectivity of white physicists, it is her perspective – not the privileged perspective – that is attacked as subjective. Even the concept of diversity is uncomfortable to physics culture because minoritized people’s existence – by the virtue of their perceived or actual background and perspective – serves to remind the physicist that his self-image of objectivity is based not on truth-seeking introspection and accountability, but on denialist smoke and mirrors.
Just as the alcoholic is resistant to change even in the face of evidence that drinking is harming her health or relationships, physics will never be capable of the sort of transformative change called for by decolonization without first shattering the myth of objectivity. To decolonize physics, we must begin by accepting the uncomfortable (and to many physicists, heretical): physics, as part of the colonial project, is constructed to uphold the epistemologies of the colonizer. Physics is “objective” not in the sense of being culturally invariant, but in the sense of producing knowledge that, though rarely self-evident, ultimately affirms the implied worldview of the colonizer. (And note that in the cases that settled science does challenge the colonizer’s worldview – think climate change or evolution – society is quick to question the objectivity of the scientist!)
As physicists, we have a choice to make. We can embrace our imperfect objectivity and human values, examining how marginalized and Indigenous perspectives can make our science stronger, not weaker. Or we can stick our heads in the sand and claim perfect objectivity, prioritizing white people’s comfort over scientific truth. If we wish to decolonize physics – or even just make a serious dent in our discipline’s diversity problem – we must begin by replacing our image of white empiricism with one that recognizes the humanity, identity, and positionality of the researcher.
After all, the best science is done not by those who think they lack bias, but by those introspective enough to recognize and work around the limitations of their own perspective.
