Viewing science as a meritocracy allows prejudice to persist

I can’t help wondering if the furore surrounding the publication of Tomáš Hudlický’s incendiary comments on diversity in the journal Angewandte Chemie would have been quite as explosive had it not come just at this moment, with the United States racked by protests after the killing of George Floyd by policemen, and massive shows of support for the Black Lives Matter movement across the world. That’s not to paint Hudlický as some kind of unfortunate victim of circumstance. Quite the opposite; his comments may have enraged chemists and others committed to promoting equality and parity in science, but if you were surprised by them then you haven’t been paying attention. They are wearisomely familiar, and had it not been for the wide sense right now that enough is enough, they might have simply supplied another face-palm moment for those committed to opposing such retrograde views.

Hudlický, a synthetic organic chemist at Brock University in Canada, published his remarks in an essay commemorating the 30^th anniversary of an article by Dieter Seebach on the future of organic chemistry. It included a diagram depicting ‘diversity of work force’ as a negative influence on the field, and suggested that ‘hiring practices that suggest or even mandate equality in terms of absolute numbers of people in specific subgroups is counter-productive if it results in discrimination against the most meritorious candidates.’

It also implied that fraud and unethical practices are contributing to the increasing presence of Chinese publications in the field, drawing a response from the Chinese Chemical Society that ‘The words have severely hurt the feelings of, and caused widespread attention and strong indignation from the Chinese chemists who are committed to advancing the chemical sciences.’

While Angewandte Chemie has difficult questions to answer about how such remarks passed editorial oversight, it is less than astonishing that they were not challenged in peer review.