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DON’T WAIT OUT FOUR HARD YEARS: SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER  
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Arthur Caplan
March 17, 2025
Nature [[link removed]]

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_ These are dangerous times. Scientists globally must stand together
for sound science and resist bigotry, bias and hate. To honor one of
its core values — a commitment to the truth wherever it might lead
— scientists must stand up when DEI matters. _

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“_Eppur si muove_”; “and yet it moves”. These words,
supposedly whispered by Galileo Galilei at the end of his 1633 trial
— held because he supported the Copernican ‘heresy’ that Earth
moves around the Sun — have long been a byword for how scientists
should behave in the face of ignorance, intolerance and ideological
inerrancy. They come to mind now, during the all-out war on diversity,
equity and inclusion (DEI) happening in the United States.

At the end of his trial, Galileo was made to swear that he did not
believe in Earth’s motion. He was confined to house arrest and
forbidden to write any more about the movement of the planet. If he
had had grant funding and a website, I am sure that the Roman Catholic
Church would have suspended the former and scrubbed the latter.

Yet, far from acting in courageous defiance, many scientists and
administrators now seem to think that the best response to the war on
DEI is to keep their heads low and wait out four hard years.

The American Society of Microbiology, NASA, the US Department of
Defense, the US Department of Transportation and many prominent
universities are among those that have been removing references to DEI
from their websites, grants, papers, biographies and even histories.

More scholars must push back. The idea that scientists can keep doing
what they know must be done to incorporate DEI into their work while
adjusting terms to fit the demands of bigoted autocrats bent on
hobbling science is to whistle loudly past a graveyard of avoidable
error, continued financial cuts and censorship. That diversity matters
to science is a truth — albeit one that has only recently begun to
be accepted and applied.

First, clinical and social-science research requires diversity to be
valid. Genomics has established that different groups of people
respond differently to drugs and vaccines. The individuals recruited
to and participating in clinical trials must be representative of
those who will use those treatments in real life. Attention to DEI
allows researchers to identify differences in safety and efficacy
between groups early on in the testing process.

Likewise, social scientists are well aware that understanding
behaviour and implementing desired change requires studying
populations besides white, Western, university psychology students —
the group from which psychologists have mainly sourced participants
for decades. This is the case whether researchers seek to overcome
vaccine hesitancy, prevent self-harm, improve reading skills, change
recycling habits or prevent obesity.

Second, research has shown again and again that DEI matters when it
comes to providing health care. A diverse and representative
health-care workforce improves people’s satisfaction with the care
that they receive and health outcomes, especially for individuals of
colour. When Black people are treated by Black doctors, they
are more likely to receive the preventive care that they need and
more likely to agree to recommended interventions, such as blood
tests and flu shots.

A DEI-oriented workforce improves learning and outcomes for all. Many
veterans seeking mental-health care or rehabilitation after trauma
specifically request a psychologist who is a veteran. Attention to DEI
helps to ensure that health-care providers’ opportunities to learn
are not missed, and that problems facing rural communities, minority
ethnic groups and those with rare diseases are not neglected.

Third, diversity in the scientific workforce brings a multitude of
ideas, approaches, perspectives and values to the table. Thinking
outside the box matters in tackling all manner of problems in
artificial intelligence, engineering, mathematics, economics and
astrophysics. Diverse minds can find connections and patterns, provide
perspectives and draw conclusions that might not occur to a group of
less-inclusive researchers.

Have some of the efforts around DEI been fruitless or wrong-headed?
Anyone who has had to sit through hours of under-tested DEI
sensitivity ‘training’ created quickly by for-profit companies
with little exposure to scientific environments knows that they have
been. And DEI has often ended up being a vague term wafted around by
overly zealous progressive people with a grudge. But that does not
mean that DEI cannot be defined relative to a specific scientific
question. Nor does it mean that the importance of DEI can be ignored.

Scientists, their funders and their professional societies must follow
in Galileo’s perhaps apocryphal footsteps and speak up about DEI’s
crucial role in science. They must urge patient-advocacy
organizations, environmentalists and other citizen groups to declare
that they don’t want their or their children’s health and
well-being jeopardized by the bad science that a lack of attention to
DEI will produce. They must emphasize DEI in their publications
whenever the denial of its relevance to a scientific issue is demanded
by political inquisitors.

These are dangerous times. Scientists globally must stand together for
sound science and resist bigotry, bias and hate. If science is to
honour one of its core values — a commitment to the truth wherever
it might lead — scientists must stand up when DEI matters.
Galileo’s story should remind us all: the only way forward is
speaking truth to power.

_Nature_ 639, 548 (2025)

_doi: [link removed]

_Arthur Caplan is the Mitty Professor and the head of the Division of
Medical Ethics, New York University Grossman School of Medicine in New
York City._

_Nature [[link removed]] is a
weekly international journal publishing the finest peer-reviewed
research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its
originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness,
accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature also
provides rapid, authoritative, insightful and arresting news and
interpretation of topical and coming trends affecting science,
scientists and the wider public. Nature's mission statement: First, to
serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in
any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and
discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure
that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public
throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for
knowledge, culture and daily life._

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