On the Intellectual Freedom and Responsibility of Scientists in the Time of “Consequences Culture”
1 Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA;
2 William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA;
3 Department of Biology, Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA;
4 Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA;
5 Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA;
6 Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA;
7 Department of Chemistry, Philipps-Universität Marburg, 35032 Marburg, Germany;
8 Bioengineering Research Group, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff CF5 2YB, UK
9 Department of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
(this article belongs to the Special Issue Special Issue Censorship in the Sciences)
Received: 28 Mar 2025 / Accepted: 19 Jul 2025 / Published: 27 Oct 2025
Abstract
The 20th century witnessed unimaginable atrocities perpetrated in the name of ideologies that stifled dissent in favour of political narratives, with numerous examples of resulting long-term societal harm. Despite clear historical precedents, calls to deal with dissent through censorship have risen dramatically. Most alarmingly, politically motivated censorship has risen in the academic community, where pluralism is most needed to seek truth and generate knowledge. Recent calls for censorship have come under the name of “consequences culture”, a culture structured around the inclusion of those sharing a particular narrative while imposing adverse consequences on those who dissent. Here, we place “consequences culture” in the historical context of totalitarian societies, focusing on the fate suffered by academics in those societies. We support our arguments with extensive references, many of which are not widely known in the West. We invite the broader scientific community to consider yet again what are timeless subjects: the importance of freely exchanging views and ideas; the freedom to do so without fear of intimidation; the folly of undermining such exchanges with distortions; and the peril of attempting to eliminate exchanges by purging published documents from the official record. We conclude with suggestions on where to go from here.
Keywords: academic freedom; scientific ethics; censorship; consequences culture; scientific integrity; retractions
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
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CITE
Jussim, L.; Shifman, M.; Maroja, L.; Coyne, J.; Bertioli, D.; Warshel, A.; Frenking, G.; Bentley, B.L. On the Intellectual Freedom and Responsibility of Scientists in the Time of “Consequences Culture”. Controversial_Ideas 2025, 5, 7.
Jussim L, Shifman M, Maroja L, Coyne J, Bertioli D, Warshel A, Frenking G, Bentley BL. On the Intellectual Freedom and Responsibility of Scientists in the Time of “Consequences Culture”. Journal of Controversial Ideas. 2025; 5(2):7.
Jussim, Lee; Shifman, Mikhail; Maroja, Luana; Coyne, Jerry; Bertioli, David; Warshel, Arieh; Frenking, Gernot; Bentley, Barry L. 2025. "On the Intellectual Freedom and Responsibility of Scientists in the Time of “Consequences Culture”." Controversial_Ideas 5, no. 2: 7.
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