“Moral Witnessing in the History of Science”

Alice Dreger

When I was leaving New York for Indiana University to pursue a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science, my mother—a Polish survivor of World War II—said to me that she hoped I would pursue Philosophy rather than History. With Philosophy, she said, you could be useful to others. Not so, she suggested, with History.

This talk is a response to my mother, twenty-seven years later. (Sometimes it takes a while to get your argument together.) It is an exploration of the work of historians of science who have opted sometimes to consciously use our discipline to try to help people in need, including those who have been harmed and those who disproportionately risk future harm.

My own work has been composed of two major topics: the biomedical and social (mis)treatment of people born with atypical anatomies, including people with intersex and dwarfism and those born conjoined; and activist attacks on scientists whose work has upset various identity-based groups. Experiences in these areas have led me to think a lot about the power of history as a form of witnessing but also about the significant dangers of mixing caring with scholarship.

In this lecture, I’ll draw on my own work as well as that of other historians of science who have labored in the history of research, biomedicine, and environmental and climate science, to raise some considerations about this kind of endeavor. It seems especially important for us to explore these issues as we enter a period of righteousness about science, and it seems especially important for us to think about how harmful are simplistic histories of good and evil, particularly in the History of Science. In other words, it feels like it’s a good time for some philosophy. (But we can call it historiography, and not tell my mother.)