Dan Falk | 21 December 2023 | The Wire Science

The word censorship might bring to mind authoritarian regimes, book-banning, and restrictions on a free press, but Cory Clark, a behavioural scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who has been studying censorship in science, is interested in another kind. In a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Clark and 38 co-authors argue that, in science, censorship often flows from within, as scientists choose to avoid certain areas of research, or to avoid publishing controversial results. As they write in the paper: “Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups.”

Disagreements between and among scientists are not new, nor is the struggle to maintain public trust in science. Still, Clark believes many disputes could be resolved if scientists with differing viewpoints worked together. To that end, she serves as director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project at Penn.

Click here to read the complete article