Shortly after the article <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">&ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; by Krylov et al.</a> was published a fierce discussion of the post began&mdash;especially on Twitter.
Read the <a href="https://gdch.app/article/re-scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture">official statement of the GDCh board</a>.

Topic

Cancel culture

Several letters of support for the article <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">&ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; by Krylov </a><a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">et al.</a> reached the editors&mdash;among them one from Nobel laureate Arieh Warshel. A selection of these letters is published here.&nbsp;
&mdash;
<h2>Arieh Warshel</h2>
Nobel laureate, Member, National Academy of Sciences, HonFRSC Dana and David Dornsife Chair in Chemistry Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of Southern California, Los Angeles
&laquo;The viewpoint piece by Krylov et al., published in Nachrichten aus der Chemie, bravely confronts a grave threat to science: a modern, grass-roots ideology with authoritarian tendencies commonly known as &ldquo;Cancel Culture&rdquo;. The authors illustrate the detrimental effects on science that such an illiberal intrusion can have with examples from history, including the Soviet regime and National Socialism. Professor Krylov (the lead author) has informed me that you have received at least one allegation that using National Socialism as an example somehow anti-Semitic. The attitude of Nazi Germany towards science is relevant, as the Nazi definition of the relativistic theory as &ldquo;a Jewish science&rdquo; saved us from the disaster of Hitler having an atomic bomb. In fact, it is an excellent example of the risk of having nonscientific gudgments of science, rather than any anti-Semic argument. I am a Jew, and having read the article now twice over, can detect no hint of anti-Semitism in it whatsoever. Parenthetically, accusing Anna Krylov of anti-Semitism is absurd. I have known her for many years, and she has taken a lead roll in combating anti-Semitism here at the University of Southern California, where we are both professors. The issue of the intrusion of Cancel Culture into science is pressing and there is an urgent need to have it publicly aired and discussed. Cancel Culture, by its very nature, will attempt to silence its critics, so vigorous objections to the paper and attacks on its authors are not surprising. I applaud you as editor and Wiley as publisher for initiating an important discussion of this issue.&raquo;
&mdash;
<h2>Lee Jussim</h2>
Distinguished Professor Department of Psychology, Rutgers
&laquo;I am writing to express my strongest possible support for your decision to publish the recent paper by Krylov et al., &ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo;. Its analysis of the history was brief, but well-done. It clearly distinguished the present from the horrors of the past. It nonetheless justifiably rang bells of alarm about rising censoriousness in academia. Well done! I have heard that the authors have been accused of antisemitism. I am not only Jewish, antisemitism is one of my areas of scholarship (along with stereotypes &amp; prejudice; and political radicalization). If history teaches us anything about antisemitism, it is this: societies that condone authoritarian abridgement of basic human rights are the ones that are most perilous for Jews. Societies that resist pressures to abridge fundamental human rights (such as free speech, free expression, and academic freedom) typically have provided the safest socio-political contexts for Jews. Krylov et al.&rsquo;s purpose may not have been to defend Jews, but, indirectly yet powerfully, it did just that by advocating against censorship.&raquo;
&mdash;
<h2>Jerry Coyne</h2>
Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution The University of Chicago
&laquo;I understand that the Krylov et al. paper on Cancel Culture in science has been published, and your journal is getting a lot of pushback, including accusations that Krylov et al. were being anti-Semitic by comparing the ideological policing of science under totalitarian regimes, including the Soviets and the Nazis, with what is going on today. First of all, I don&rsquo;t think it trivializes the Holocaust to say that the Nazis based it, and a lot of their other odious actions, on false science. What else was their treatment of &ldquo;Jewish science&rdquo; and expulsion of Jewish professors but anti-Semitic, based on false ideas about science? Krylov et al. were certainly not saying that science ideologues today are like Nazis, or will produce a genocide, but only that there are dire consequences of politicizing science, and our best efforts must go towards keeping science free from politics. The Lysenko affair is another example, as certain subjects are now becoming taboo in the same way that &ldquo;Medelian-Michurist genetics&rdquo; were to Lysenko and Stalin. The accusations that the article and the authors are anti-Semitic is palpably ridiculous. I, for one thing, am Jewish, and I am very sensitive to anti-Semitism and write about it a lot on my blog, and have been vehemently opposing it and calling it out for years. But I see no anti-Semitism here. I also know Anna pretty well and am collaborating on a paper with her. I have never seen a trace of anti-Semitism in her. It is an ad hominem argument to say that this paper trivializes the Holocaust and is, in essence, anti-Semitic. You don&rsquo;t have to be a rocket scientist to see what Krylov et al. are trying to say with these comparisons. I hope your journal treats them fairly, for their thesis is sound and it is unworthy to tar them with the brush of anti-Semitism. I wouldn&rsquo;t want to think that your journal is participating in Cancel Culture itself by catering to the social media mobs that descend when an article like this appears. I applaud you for publishing it!&raquo;
&mdash;
<h2>Achim G&uuml;nther</h2>
Anna I. Krylov, Jay S. Tanzman, Gernot Frenking und Peter M. W. Gill fordern in ihrem Aufsatz &ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; [Nachr. Chem. 2022, 70, 12], da&szlig; die Wissenschaft allen Formen von Zensur widerstehen und den Grundsatz des freien Austauschs von Ideen verteidigen m&uuml;sse. Eigentlich scheint diese Forderung selbstverst&auml;ndlich. Aber an den Beispielen Thom&aacute;s Hudlick&yacute;, dessen Aufsatz &uuml;ber Organische Synthese von der Website der Angewandten Chemie 2020 nachtr&auml;glich entfernt wurde, und Dorian Abbot, der am MIT einen Vortrag &uuml;ber Leben auf anderen Planeten halten sollte und nach einer Kampagne politischer Gegner wieder ausgeladen wurde, zeigten die Autoren, wie aktuell ihre Forderung ist.&nbsp;
Der moralische Rigorismus der Anh&auml;nger der &bdquo;cancel culture&ldquo; speist sich aus ihrer &Uuml;berzeugung, auf der richtigen Seite zu stehen. Ich entsinne mich noch eines Liedes aus meiner FDJ-Zeit: &bdquo;Sag mir, wo Du stehst&ldquo;. Darauf kam es an! Selbstverst&auml;ndlich f&uuml;r Frieden und Sozialismus. Heute kommen diese Tendenzen aus den USA, weshalb sie meist englische Namen haben. Neben der schon erw&auml;hnten &bdquo;Cancel Culture&ldquo; sind das z.B. &bdquo;#MeToo&ldquo;, &bdquo;LGBT&ldquo;, &bdquo;Black Lives Matter&ldquo;, Fridays for Future&ldquo;, Extinction Rebellion&ldquo; und viele andere. Sie treten ein f&uuml;r eine lebenswerte Zukunft, gegen Sexismus, Rassismus, Diskriminierung und Ausgrenzung &ndash; au&szlig;er nat&uuml;rlich f&uuml;r politische Gegner, die m&uuml;ssen diskriminiert und ausgegrenzt werden. Deswegen werden eingeladene Referenten wieder ausgeladen, werden Stra&szlig;en umbenannt, Denkm&auml;ler abgerissen oder beschmiert und die Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universit&auml;t Greifswald hat ihren Namen abgelegt.&nbsp;
Sinnigerweise ist dem Artikel in den &bdquo;Nachrichten&ldquo; ein Foto vorangestellt. Es zeigt u.a. drei B&uuml;cher, darunter George Orwells &bdquo;1984&ldquo;. Daraus ein Zitat: &bdquo;Wer die Macht &uuml;ber die Geschichte hat, hat auch Macht &uuml;ber Gegenwart und Zukunft.&ldquo; Und darauf kommt es den Anh&auml;ngern der Cancel Culture an. Deswegen m&uuml;ssen wir ihnen um unserer Kinder und Enkel willen widerstehen. Sich dem Zeitgeist &ndash; neudeutsch Mainstream &ndash; zu widersetzen, verlangt jedoch Zivilcourage. Das ist eine rare Tugend. Spontan f&auml;llt mir nur ein einziges Beispiel ein, wo Naturwissenschaftler Zivilcourage gezeigt haben:
Entgegen einem Verbot der Reichsregierung wurde am 29. Januar 1935 von Max Planck, dem Pr&auml;sidenten der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, eine Trauerfeier f&uuml;r den ein Jahr zuvor verstorbenen Fritz Haber im Harnack-Haus in Berlin abgehalten. Plancks listige Begr&uuml;ndung war f&uuml;r Nationalsozialisten schwer zu widerlegen: Er hat uns die Treue gehalten. Wir halten sie ihm.
Kultusminister Bernhard Rust verbot allen staatlichen Bediensteten und damit den Professoren die Teilnahme. Auch der Verein Deutscher Chemiker, ein Vorg&auml;nger der GDCh, verbot seinen Mitgliedern die Teilnahme. Einige wie Richard Willst&auml;tter, Lise Meitner, Max Delbr&uuml;ck, Fritz Stra&szlig;mann und Hermann Franz Mark setzten sich jedoch &uuml;ber die Verbote hinweg. Carl Bosch erschien mit allen verf&uuml;gbaren Direktoren der I.G. Farben und Otto Hahn hielt die Festansprache. &nbsp;
&mdash;
<h2>Karl O. Christe</h2>
Research Professor, University of Southern California
&laquo;Two recent publications by Hudlicky (1), and Krylov, Tanzman, Frenking, and Gill, (2) and the public reactions to them prompt my letter. I have grown up in Germany under the Hitler regime and barely survived an Allied artillery attack in 1945. My father, a science teacher, was drafted into the German Army despite his age because of voicing his opposition to the Nazi regime and was killed in 1944 in Belgium. I immigrated to the US in 1962 to live in a free and more tolerant society. I have worked for the chemical industry (Stauffer Chemical) for 5 years, Rocketdyne for 27 years, the Rocket Research Laboratory at Edwards AFB for 10 years, and have been associated with the University of Southern California since 1994. Based on my life-long direct experience with industrial, governmental, and academic research, I feel well qualified to comment on some personal observations made during my long professional career. Tomas Hudlicky was ostracized for his views on hiring practices and training of scientists and the integrity of the literature, resulting in the removal of his paper from the literature as being politically incorrect (1) and the punishment of the editors and reviewers who had approved his publication. Having read the Hudlicky paper carefully, his conclusions agree with my own personal observations. I have witnessed many examples of reverse discrimination. Starting 50 years ago under the pretense of &ldquo;equal opportunity&rdquo;, the aerospace industry had to meet quotas of promoting minority employees to higher management positions to qualify for government contracts. Due to the scarcity of qualified candidates, these positions frequently had to be filled with lesser qualified applicants. These trends have persisted since then, although some of the acronyms have changed over the years. For example, I was denied funding of an NSF proposal despite two &ldquo;outstanding&rdquo; and one &ldquo;very good&rdquo; evaluation because the reviewer of the &ldquo;very good&rdquo; evaluation had downgraded my proposal from &ldquo;outstanding&rdquo; to &ldquo;very good&rdquo; because my small group of only four scientists, including one physically severely handicapped colleague, did not include a minority person. Other examples include several highly talented postdoctoral fellows who for years could not even get any interviews in response to their many applications for tenure track positions because they were white males. They finally succeeded to find positions in Sweden and Canada. The discrimination against white males is pervasive, and many posted advertisements for open positions state that the hiring is restricted to underprivileged minority members. The most used justification is DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) (3). While I full-heartedly support these principles to foster the development of underrepresented and disadvantaged minorities to enable them to successfully compete for advanced positions, the actual hiring decisions must be made based exclusively on the qualifications of the candidate and should not involve any kind of reverse discrimination. This discrimination against non-minority scientists has permeated not only hiring procedures but also promotions and awards. Professional societies tend to ensure that half of the awardees are women and members of minorities and frequently stipulate that the awards must be given preferentially to these groups to fulfill certain quotas based on demographics. Again, this constitutes real discrimination. I have served on many nomination and award committees and have witnessed this again and again. I also share Hudlicky&rsquo;s concern about the integrity of the literature, particularly with respect to Chinese papers. These concerns have also been documented in papers published in the Wall Street Journal (4) and Nature (5). Being a reviewer of countless Chinese manuscripts, I have encountered many cases of unethical publication practices. In the past, these practices were often caused by the payment of substantial personal monetary rewards for publications in top Western journals, but recently have been discouraged by China&rsquo;s science and education ministries (6). This brings me to the second point. Krylov, Tanzman, Frenking, and Gill advocate free speech and a free exchange of opinions and ideas in science. They deplore the suppression of opinions which some consider to be politically incorrect by using public media instead of civilized factual discussions. I fully support their stance against censorship and the cancel culture and their defense of Tomas Hudlicky. Our society has become increasingly intolerant, resorting to personal attacks and ostracizing others who do not share their opinion. This must stop. 1) T. Hudlicky, &ldquo; &lsquo;Organic synthesis&mdash;Where now?&rsquo; is thirty years old. A reflection on the current state of affair&rdquo;. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2020, DOI:10.1002/anie.202006717. The above article, published online on 4 June 2020 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been withdrawn by Angewandte Chemie by agreement between the journal&rsquo;s Editor in Chief and Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim with the following explanation. &ldquo;The withdrawal has been agreed as the opinions expressed in this essay do not reflect our values of fairness, trustworthiness, and social awareness. It is not only our responsibility to spread trusted knowledge, but to also stand against discrimination, injustices, and inequity. While diversity of opinion and thoughts can spur change and debate, this essay had no place in our journal.&rdquo; 2) A. I. Krylov, J. S. Tanzman, G. Frenking, P. M. W. Gill, Nachr. Chem. 2022, 70 (2), 12-14. 3) For a definition of DEI see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org">https://en.wikipedia.org</a>. 4) E. Xiao, The Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2020. 5) H. Else, R. Van Noorden, Nature 23 March 2021, 591, 516-519. 6) S. Mallapaty, Nature, 28 February 2020, 579, 18-21. &raquo;

Letters of support for Krylov et al.

Editor's note: This is a reply to <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">&ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; by Krylov, Tanzman, Frenking, and Gill</a>
&mdash;
To my personal surprise I learnt by reading the &ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; piece in the latest Nachrichten aus der Chemie (02/2022) that I, as well as many other scientists, members of GDCh and other sister societies, apparently belong to an &ldquo;outrage mob&rdquo; of &ldquo;Twitter vigilantes&rdquo;. While I can&rsquo;t begin to understand why the Nachrichten aus der Chemie would decide to print this ridiculous article, and I have no interest in trying to correct all of the authors&rsquo; claims, I certainly have some thoughts on them and what they mean to me as a member of the GDCh:
1. The authors have managed to complain about cancel culture in at least three similar, self-referencing pieces in prominent chemistry outlets. This seems to directly contradict their claim about non-mainstream voices being silenced and cancelled by social media activists.
2. Everyone has a right to voice their opinions. They do not, however, have a right to voice their opinions and put out statements with made up and/or grossly outdated and hurtful viewpoints and expect not to be challenged on them.&nbsp;
3. To describe Hudlick&yacute;, who experienced the retraction of an Angewandte paper and a Special Issue in his honour being stopped, as &ldquo;being cancelled&rdquo; is laughable. Someone, who was obviously in a very privileged position to have these opportunities in the first place, has lost some of their privileges, he is not cancelled and expelled from academia. The same applies for Abbot, the second example the authors cite.
4. Misrepresenting the RSC&rsquo;s guidelines with completely constructed examples suggesting &ldquo;normal pH&rdquo; might soon be banned because people could feel offended is bizarre. No one should have to engage with such obvious strawman arguments.&nbsp;
It remains a mystery to me why GDCh/the Nachrichten editorial team would provide another platform for these nonsensical viewpoints, particularly without giving space to contrasting opinions and rebuttals. Was this plain oversight, a case of false balance, or click baiting? And what do we have to expect next time?
My biggest worry is that the editorial team decided to publish this because they assumed it would mirror the viewpoints held by their members, which, if actually the case, would make me feel rather out of place in this society. This feeling would not be completely new for me, but reminds me of last year, when the introduction of gender-sensitive language in the Nachrichten led to a several months of angry letters from members complaining about this very positive decision. These repeated incidents have not helped the GDCh&rsquo;s reputation&mdash;nationally or internationally. As members we should really think about what we want this society to stand for, and if we want a progressive and inclusive community for all or one that is stuck in the memories and ways of the &ldquo;good old times&rdquo; for some only.
Part of our community wants to see positive change and has repeatedly voiced their unease about the publication of misogynistic, sexist and racist pieces in prominent chemistry journals. Giving unchallenged space to an article dismissing this not so small subset as an online mob of vigilantes certainly sends a message in this matter.
Simon Hammann, Erlangen
The author thanks Christof J&auml;ger (Nottingham) for feedback and fruitful discussions of this letter.

Reply

The Community Wants to See Positive Change

<blockquote>
Democratic freedom rests on the premise of an open and respectful debate. To say it with the (translated) words of Rosa Luxemburg: &ldquo;Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently!&rdquo; The German Chemical Society (GDCh) firmly believes in this freedom. This must not be misunderstood as an approval of everything that has been said, but rather as the respect for the right of free speech, in alignment with the constitutions of most modern democratic societies.
In that spirit, please feel encouraged to share your factually substantiated opinion on the article by <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">Krylov, Tanzman, Frenking, and Gill</a>. Our hope is that this collection will provide a much better view on the key issues and will ultimately allow a sober analysis and respectful discussion on the basis of a very broad opinion poll.
</blockquote>
Karsten Danielmeier, President of the GDCh Peter R. Schreiner, Deputy President of the GDCh Wolfram Koch, Executive Director of the GDCh
<h2>Course of the Discussion</h2>
The discussion page is continuously updated.
<a href="mailto:nachrichten@gdch.de?subject=re-scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture" class="button">Send Your Opinion</a>
Shortly after the article <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">&ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; by Krylov et al.</a> was published a fierce discussion of the post began&mdash;especially on Twitter.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true" data-theme="light">
The article in the latest issue of "Nachrichten" on cancel culture is being discussed controversially. We welcome the open discussion and all opinions are heard or read. Here is a short statement from our editorial team. <a href="https://t.co/ysB6oaSaGl">pic.twitter.com/ysB6oaSaGl</a>
&mdash; GDCh (@GDCh_aktuell) <a href="https://twitter.com/GDCh_aktuell/status/1489180863942250497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 3, 2022</a></blockquote>

<script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<h2>&ldquo;The Myth of Cancel Culture in Chemistry (and Science)&rdquo;</h2>
Mathias Micheel wrote a detailed rejection of the article&rsquo;s thesis (the original appeared on <a href="https://buerviper.github.io/blog/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his blog</a>).
<a href="https://gdch.app/article/the-myth-of-cancel-culture-in-chemistry-and-science" class="button">Mathias Micheel&rsquo;s reply</a>
<h2>&ldquo;Atmosphere of Constructive Debates&rdquo;</h2>
A critique in particular of the meta-level of the article was made by Michael J. Bojdys. His view: the tone of the article does not contribute to an &ldquo;Atmosphere of Constructive Debates&rdquo;.
<a href="https://gdch.app/article/atmosphere-of-constructive-debates" class="button">Michael J. Bojdys&rsquo; reply</a>
<h2>&ldquo;On Cancel Culture and Antisemitism in Academia&rdquo;</h2>
The authors&rsquo; thesis of the present rise of illiberalism in the West is supported by Ilya Reviakin.
<a href="https://gdch.app/article/on-cancel-culture-and-antisemitism-in-academia" class="button">Ilya Reviakin&rsquo;s reply</a>
<h2>&ldquo;The Community Wants to See Positive Change&rdquo;</h2>
Simon Hammann argues that the article sends a message that does not correspond to what the GDCh is supposed to stand for.
<a href="https://gdch.app/article/the-community-wants-to-see-positive-change" class="button">Simon Hammann&rsquo;s reply</a>
<h2>Letters of support for Krylov et al.</h2>
Several letters of support for the article &ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; by Krylov et al. reached the editors&mdash;among them one from Nobel laureate Arieh Warshel. A selection of these letters is published here.
<a href="https://gdch.app/article/letters-of-support-for-krylov-et-al" class="button">Read letters</a>
<h2>&ldquo;Cancel Culture in Science is Real&rdquo;</h2>
Wesley S. Farrell started writing this before Krylov&rsquo;s essay was published, so he did not directly support or oppose it, although he did use it in later revisions to frame the argument. His sole argument is that cancel culture does exist in science. He takes no position on Krylov et al. or the examples used.
<a href="https://hxstem.substack.com/p/cancel-culture-in-science-is-real" target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="button">Read article on Heterodox STEM</a>
[TWITTER_SCRIPT]

Reactions on the Nachrichten article published 02/22

Re: “Scientists must resist cancel culture”

Editor's note: This is a reply to <a href="https://gdch.app/article/the-myth-of-cancel-culture-in-chemistry-and-science">&ldquo;The Myth of Cancel Culture in Chemistry (and Science)&rdquo; by M. Micheel</a>
&mdash;
How do you derail an argument that you cannot debunk with facts and logic? Distort the argument and attack the distortion instead of the main thesis of your opponent. This tactic, ever popular on social media, has been deployed by critics of the recent paper by Krylov et al., &ldquo;<a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">Scientists Must Resist Cancel Culture</a>&rdquo; [1] and Krylov&rsquo;s earlier article, &ldquo;<a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Peril of Politicizing Science</a>&rdquo; [2]. These viewpoints document recent instances of cancel culture and scholarship suppression in STEM, placing the present rise of illiberalism in the West in the historical context of the illiberalism of past totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.&nbsp;
Published in Nachrichten aus der Chemie on February 1, &ldquo;Scientists Must Resist Cancel Culture&rdquo; has generated intense exchanges on Twitter, complaints to the journal by email, and, within one day of its publication, a rebuttal entitled &ldquo;<a href="https://gdch.app/article/the-myth-of-cancel-culture-in-chemistry-and-science">The Myth of Cancel Culture</a>&rdquo; by Mathias Micheel [3]. One complaint in the rebuttal as well as on Twitter is that the parallels Krylov et al. draw between today&rsquo;s cancel culture and totalitarian regimes of the past are hyperbolic. Like others who engaged in such comparisons before, Krylov and co-workers are accused of trivializing the atrocities committed by those regimes. The journal has even received a complaint that such comparisons are anti-Semitic.
Certainly, we are not living in the Third Reich or the Soviet Union. We are not being hunted, murdered, or slaughtered for our views, opinions, ethnicities, or religious beliefs. What is happening instead is that those of us who think differently than a certain self-appointed minority of activists are feeling the pressure and the threat to our professional, and sometimes, personal, lives by means of mobbings, cancellations, and censorship campaigns.&nbsp;
Most astonishingly, illiberalism is once again accompanied by a distinct antisemitic sentiment [4]. Woke ideology is obsessed with race and identity, and Jewish identity and immigration are increasingly being presented in a negative light: first-generation immigrants, whose families arrived in the West with nothing, are being called &ldquo;powerful&rdquo; and &ldquo;privileged&rdquo;; Ashkenazi Jews are referred to as &ldquo;oppressors&rdquo;; there is a rise in antisemitic incidents; the very right of Israel to exist and defend itself is questioned by academics; diversity, equity, and inclusion officials, who are often associated with cancellation campaigns, can be seen engaging in antisemitic rhetoric. All of this means that the need to address censorship and free speech issues, the need to stand against woke identity politics, is very much aligned with a stand that needs to be taken against antisemitism and other forms or racial hatred.
A distinguishing characteristic of the Nazi regime in Germany and the Communist regime in the USSR was their focus on censorship, suppression of dissent, and ideology. Their heart-wrenching histories serve as a dire warning of where that path leads. In this context, we should welcome articles such as those written by Krylov et al. [1,2], because only by shedding light on these issues and placing the current trends in historical context can we hope to ensure that the atrocities committed in the past are not repeated in the future. This is especially true when these articles are written by people who had the misfortune of experiencing and witnessing the workings of the totalitarian machinery firsthand&mdash;and then the fortune to escape to the West and tell the story.
In his rebuttal, Micheel writes: &ldquo;No, dear authors, Jews were not expelled from academia because of their political views. They were the victim of one of the largest genocides in the history of mankind.&rdquo; This is, of course, correct, but he misrepresents what Krylov et al. have written in their piece: &laquo;The ideologues of Nazi Germany were also obsessed with the political views and identity (understood as racial purity) of scientists. Liberals were jailed and murdered. Jews (or &ldquo;Aryans&rdquo; married to &ldquo;Jewesses&rdquo;) were expelled from academia.&raquo; (my highlighting). Mathias Micheel is engaging in a willful misrepresentation of how the Holocaust unfolded, ignoring the fact that the focus of the Nazi regime on identity, race, and racial purity led to &ldquo;one of the largest genocides in the history of mankind&rdquo;&mdash;as Krylov et al. correctly pointed out. (The regime was also obsessed with political views and persecuted liberals).&nbsp;
Micheel goes on to propose that the German Chemical Society should be purified from unsuitable members: &ldquo;... it would be in the best interest of the organization to tell these members: We do not care about you. If we cannot even agree on the very basics of how to do science, then we have no basis for future cooperation&rdquo; &ndash; except it&rsquo;s not their way of doing science that he is concerned with, but their views and their age: &ldquo;The Nachrichten tries to not alienate these old members&rdquo;; &ldquo;how often do active members have to ... make themselves targetable to attacks from the right&rdquo;. This is an ad hominem attack and a call for cancellation&mdash;quite the ironic thing to write in a piece whose thesis is &ldquo;Cancel Culture&nbsp;in science is just a myth&rdquo;.
The author wishes to thank Jay Tanzman and Anna Krylov for thoughtful feedback.
[1] A. I. Krylov, J. S. Tanzman, G. Frenking, P. M. W. Gill: Scientists must resist cancel culture. Nachrichten aus der Chemie 70, 2022. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nadc.20224120702" rel="noopener" target="_blank">DOI: 10.1002/nadc.20224120702</a>
[2] A. I. Krylov: The Peril of Politicizing Science. J. Phys. Chem Lett 2021 12 (22), 5371&ndash;5376, <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475" rel="noopener" target="_blank">DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475</a>
[3] <a href="https://gdch.app/article/the-myth-of-cancel-culture-in-chemistry-and-science">M. Micheel: The Myth of Cancel Culture in Chemistry (and Science)</a>
[4] <a href="https://fathomjournal.org/soviet-anti-zionism-and-contemporary-left-antisemitism/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Izabella Tabarovsky: Soviet Anti-Zionism and Contemporary Left Antisemitism </a>
&mdash;
The article was first published on <a href="https://hxstem.substack.com/p/on-cancel-culture-and-antisemitism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hxstem.substack.com/p/on-cancel-culture-and-antisemitism</a>.

On Cancel Culture and Antisemitism in Academia

Editor's note: This is a reply to <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">&ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; by Krylov, Tanzman, Frenking, and Gill</a>
&mdash;
Why it is not a good idea to make attitude the measure of action and indignation the means of intellectual debate.
In recent months, a handful of articles in private and professional media write of what appears to be an impending culture war in the ivory towers of academia. From these public performances, two opposing camps seem to be emerging on the peripheries of the progressive and conservative side.
These opposing camps often style themselves as champions of free speech and opponents of perceived censorship. Members of each camp often draw comparisons between their contemporary experiences and historic events or figures. In recent articles &ndash; one published in Nachrichten aus der Chemie, authors invoke comparisons to <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">historical injustices</a> such as perpetrated by the Nazis, by the Soviets, and by the Catholic church. These comparisons are often inadequate, trivialising and, in many cases, they constitute cognitive dissonance &ndash; no instance of perceived censorship or curtailing of free speech in the current debate on professional conduct in academia compares to the racist, nationalist, or ideologically-motivated injustices of the past. Today&rsquo;s academics in most part of the world experience nothing close to the legal and extra-legal, coercive powers that their perceived historical examples endured. Today, authors in most parts of the world have real-time access to the widest range of professional and personal media and publishing tools in human history. Comparisons to historical injustices serve as a rhetoric tool of identification, demarcation, and, ultimately, polarisation. Such rhetoric is never employed to foster an intellectual debate &ndash; on the contrary, it is employed to end it and to shore up camp-mentality.
To echo German author <a href="https://www.zeit.de/2020/36/streitkultur-rechts-links-aggression-beleidigt-sein-eskalation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Thea Dorn</a>, we &ndash; as the academic community &ndash; must not surrender our public spaces, our political spaces, and our cultural spaces to the battle between two aggressive and perpetually offended camps. Dialogue, reason, and effective policies are at home in the centre of society and are built on a broad consensus. Constructive dialogue requires the acknowledgement of oneself, one&rsquo;s position and that of the other. It also requires an environment that protects dialogue on eye-level. Constructive dialogue is not a contest of shouting and indignation.
At the heart of the mock debate exercised by these two camps seems to be a different issue entirely. An issue that was phrased by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Karl Popper</a> more succinctly than I could ever do in a couple of paragraphs: today, we have thousands of more diverse academics that are all trying to coexist, and conflicts of interest are bound to surface. Leadership and leading ideologies are going to be questioned. And when they are questioned, the most important question to Popper is how do we want that soul-searching to occur? How much unrest does our academic system require for us to move on from a mode of operation that is no longer serving the needs?
As a global community of scientists, we are &ndash; in most parts of the world &ndash; free and obliged to talk about how we want to live and work together with our colleagues and co-workers. To all of you who want to partake in this discussion, weigh the arguments, and implement real changes for the betterment of all: a hearty welcome.
With &ldquo;A diverse view of science to catalyse change&rdquo; a team of scientists from more than 30 institutions world-wide has created a DEI/EDI statement for STEM-scientists by STEM-scientists, and a broad, public platform for a discussion of what our home in science should look like, namely: colourful, exciting, and excellent.
The article &ldquo;A diverse view of science to catalyse change&rdquo; is co-published in the following journals: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-020-0529-x" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nature Chemistry</a>&nbsp;[DOI: 10.1038/s41557-020-0529-x],&nbsp;<a href="https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/sc/2020/d0sc90150d#!divAbstract" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chemical Science</a>&nbsp;[DOI: 10.1039/D0SC90150D],&nbsp;<a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c07877" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Journal of the American Chemical Society</a>&nbsp;[DOI: 10.1021/jacs.0c07877],&nbsp;<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202009834" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Angewandte Chemie International Edition</a>&nbsp;[DOI: 10.1002/anie.202009834],&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/full/10.1139/cjc-2020-0323#.XzqhUjUpBdh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Canadian Journal of Chemistry</a>&nbsp;[DOI: 10.1139/cjc-2020-0323], and&nbsp;<a href="https://hrcak.srce.hr/242446" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Croatica Chemica Acta</a>&nbsp;[DOI: 10.5562/diversity2020].&nbsp;
The publication is accompanied by a community blog <a href="https://chemistrycommunity.nature.com/channels/diverse-views-in-science" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Diverse Views in Science</a>.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) Agenda covered the co-publication in <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/science-stem-support-inclusion-diversity-equality" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Science is everybody's party: 6 ways to support diversity and inclusion in STEM</a>.

Atmosphere of Constructive Debates

Editor's note: This is a reply to <a href="https://gdch.app/article/scientists-must-resist-cancel-culture-4120702">&ldquo;Scientists must resist cancel culture&rdquo; by Krylov, Tanzman, Frenking, and Gill</a>
&mdash;
I actually hoped I&rsquo;d never have to criticize a Nachrichten aus der Chemie article again, but here we are again.
The <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Oxford Advanced Learner&rsquo;s Dictionary defines Cancel Culture</a> as
<blockquote>
​the practice of excluding somebody from social or professional life by refusing to communicate with them online or in real life, because they have said or done something that other people do not agree with
</blockquote>
which sounds like a really bad thing. Freedom of speech is one of our basic rights and one of the working principles of a democratic, pluralistic society. Cancel Culture essentially is censorship of the masses, aimed at people which express controversial opinions. At least this is the interpretation which I see quite a bit too often and which is in line with <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nadc.20224120702" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this recent Article</a> from the Nachrichten aus der Chemie, the membership magazine of the German Chemistry Society GDCh.(1) However, the entire essay is misleading, spreads fake facts, and advocates for an unjust, exclusive scientific community. And, to cut it short: Cancel Culture in science is just a myth.
<figure><img src="https://media.graphcms.com/EcA5qiZORIKgaSoaBHbH" />
<figcaption>Don&rsquo;t worry, Sir Newton won&rsquo;t be cancelled anytime soon.</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2 id="breaking-things-down">Breaking things down</h2>
I did not really want to go through the article paragraph by paragraph. It is a common method of the alt-right, climate change deniers, or conspiracy theorists to make up &ldquo;facts&rdquo;, which only takes a couple of minutes. However, it takes hours to actually dissect their arguments and show them as what they are: straight up lies and misinformation. But then again, it is worthwhile to dissect the entire thing and see how cleverly the authors try to manipulate the readers.
Misleading structure of argumentation. This already got me up on my feet. The article begins with a broad history of censorship, and how great thinkers like Socrates, Galilei, or Copernicus were (in today&rsquo;s words) cancelled by society. Taking some more recent examples, the Third Reich or the Soviet Union censored free speech to the point of executing people. Add to this a picture of George Orwell&rsquo;s 1984, one of the most iconic books about (fictitious) totalitarianism.
What does this introduction now do to the reader? It puts people who are cancelled (read below for some of their examples) on the same level as historical geniuses who helped in shaping our modern view of the world. On the other hand, everybody who tries to cancel them (in their view!) is no better than the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. So from the very beginning, the article does not even try to pretend that it aims for an open discussion, but categorizes the community in good and bad. I would even go as far as call it historical revisionism, nicely summed up in this quote:
<blockquote>
The ideologues of Nazi Germany were also obsessed with the political views and identity (understood as racial purity) of scientists. Liberals were jailed and murdered. Jews (or &bdquo;Aryans&ldquo; married to &bdquo;Jewesses&ldquo;) were expelled from academia.(1)
</blockquote>
No, dear authors, Jews were not expelled from academia because of their political views. They were the victim of one of the largest genocides in the history of mankind. If you cannot even get this basic fact right, how can you even try to argue further?
[Note: Several readers have intentionally misinterpreted this paragraph. I am well aware that exclusion of Jews from academic and general social life preceded the Holocaust. However, I needed to stress that the authors&rsquo; emphasis is misleading, as they explicitly state that liberals were &ldquo;murdered&rdquo;, whereas they summarized the fate of the Jewish community only by their removal from academic positions. I do not know why the authors laid emphasis in this way, as it adds nothing to their line of discussion, and it is unclear what point they were trying to make. Maybe they realized that comparing their perception of Cancel Culture to the Holocaust was crass after all, and these lines remained after editing. In any case, I do not think that it is possible to cherrypick a single way of discrimination against jews without talking about the Holocaust in the end (outside of specific academic discourse).
I understand that my phrasing here was ambiguous and I apologize. I will leave my original phrasing for transparency here. MM., 2022-02-07]
Selective self-citation. This is maybe more of a formality, but it is just bad style. The article cites 10 references in total to back up the discussion. However, out of these 10, two articles have been written by (some) of the authors.(2,3) Basically, the same ideas are now laid out across three nearly identical, heavily overlapping articles, and the whole article is close to self-plagiarism. Instead of citing articles by other authors - maybe even those which contradict their own findings! - the authors use arguments they themselves came up already to bolden their argument. For an opinion piece which claims that our freedom of speech and science is at stake, the authors try very little to at least pretend that this was not a one-sided argument.
And don&rsquo;t get me wrong, an opinion piece definitely does not need to be completely accurate. But it should also not try and cover as facts.
<h2 id="whos-being-cancelled-anyway">Who&rsquo;s being cancelled anyway?</h2>
While the previous statements were more formalities, we now can take a closer look at how Cancel *Culture might manifest in science (Spoiler: it doesn&rsquo;t).
There is no Cancel Culture in Chemistry. This is the biggest point actually: the examples the authors give fore Cancel Culture are heavily taken out of context and none of the people mentioned have been cancelled. To me, to cancel would mean complete loss of professional and maybe even personal future. But this is not what happened in any of the cases mentioned.
The case of Tom&aacute;&scaron; Hudlick&yacute; was heavily debated in 2020, when he wrote an article which you could call controversial (read more about it <a href="https://cen.acs.org/research-integrity/ethics/Essay-criticizing-efforts-increase-diversity-in-organic-synthesis-deleted-after-backlash-from-chemists/98/web/2020/06" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>). You could call it, however, similarly well misogynistic, or racist when he wrote things such as
<blockquote>
The rise and emphasis on 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. [Note: While Angewandte took the article down without further notice, you can still find it on Hudlick&yacute;&rsquo;s personal website. I won&rsquo;t link to the article directly.]
</blockquote>
Of course, by most meritorious candidates, he means white and male. I don&rsquo;t want to defend Angewandte&rsquo;s practice of taking the article down without further notice (which is, contrary to what the authors claim, not an unprecedented act, but happens unfortunately quite often - just read retractionwatch.com), because it actually killed a discussion before it could have taken place. However, the actual question in place is not about: Are Hudlick&yacute;&rsquo;s ideas correct?, but rather: How can we shape an inclusive scientific environment for everybody if articles like that are still published?
And despite the claim that Hudlick&yacute; got cancelled he is far from cancelled. While a planned Special issue in the journal Synthesis was apparently cancelled according to his own accord, he still managed to publish in that very same journal in 2021 (4) and at least one paper was dedicated to him (5). The official website of <a href="https://brocku.ca/tomas-hudlicky/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Brock university</a> still has his personal page up. According to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=I4kMwnUAAAAJ&amp;hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Google Scholar</a>, his papers were cited 600 times in 2021 - which is the same level as the years before. How does this equal being cancelled, when he doesn&rsquo;t face any consequences?
Dorian Abbot is an American geophysicist. According to the authors, Abbot has been an advocate of &ldquo; equal opportunity, fairness, merit-based evaluation, and academic freedom&rdquo;. In 2020, he was planning to give a lecture at MIT, which got cancelled after students protested against it. The protest followed an <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-opinion-1618419" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">article written by Abbot</a> which does not make Abbot seem like an advocate of above mentioned qualities. Instead, he claims that an increase of representation of some groups leads to discrimination against other groups. To paraphrase, increasing representation of women or PoC - both of which are underrepresented in science - is discrimination against white males. The article closes with
<blockquote>
Then an ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars outgutting the faculties and leading to sustained decay that German universities never fully recovered from.
</blockquote>
To make it completely clear: Abbot compares the practice of increasing representation of women and PoC to the Holocaust and the persecution of non-Aryans in the Nazi regime. How is this&nbsp;advocacy of academic freedom?
However, Abbot is also far from being cancelled. He actually gave the planned lecture on the very same day his MIT lecture got cancelled. (<a href="https://www.newsweek.com/geophysicist-canceled-mit-honored-award-while-thousands-register-his-lecture-1637820" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">link</a>) His <a href="https://geosci.uchicago.edu/people/dorian-abbot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Website at the University of Chicago</a> is still online. According to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UqDnxT0AAAAJ&amp;hl=de" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Google Scholar</a>, his citations are actually still growing, reaching 600+ in 2021.
These examples just show one thing: there is no such thing as Cancel Culture in science. Hudlick&yacute; enjoys the dusk of his career, while Abbot will probably have a long, successful run, and his cancelled lecture does not seem to have any further consequences. On the contrary, he seems to enjoy quite a fellowship now of advocates of free speech and free science. Compare this to the people both of them advocated against: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelyncorley/2020/06/27/where-are-the-women-of-color-in-academia" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">women and PoC still represent minorities in leading academic positions</a>. There are no equal opportunities, no fairness, no academic freedom. Ironically, Hudlick&yacute; says it best himself, not knowing what his words actually mean:
<blockquote>
Each candidate should have an equal opportunity to secure a position, regardless of personal identification/categorization.
</blockquote>
Chances are, though, if you identify as a white male, you will be preferred. Period.
Straw man argumentation. We already see that most of the stuff the authors brought up is either misleading or factually untrue. However, the end of the article beats it all with a completely random list of things the authors think are objected to for no reason at all. But let&rsquo;s think this through from the beginning: Isn&rsquo;t it a good thing that we constantly challenge ourselves and our perception of the world? Isn&rsquo;t this true science?
We should openly discuss whether we want to revere a racist like Shockley by repeating his name over and over; or whether we want to use exclusive, racist or ableist, language (master or dummy). By defending such terms to the very end, the authors actually achieve the opposite of what they claim: there is no freedom of science if we can&rsquo;t rethink the current status quo. Both science and&nbsp;society can only progress if we challenge the ideas of yesterday every day.
Oh, and they make some stuff up about normal pH (what&rsquo;s a normal pH even?). But nonsense like that is a given at this point of the article.
So what stays after reading the article once you take away all the bad arguments, all the made-up &ldquo;facts&rdquo;, all derailing&hellip;? Not so much, actually. It is just rambling against progressive ideas, against inclusion, and against equality on the pretense of freedom of science and speech. Blerch.
<h2 id="where-to-go-from-here">Where to go from here</h2>
I was really furious when I read the article. I could not believe that such a badly researched article would actually be published using my membership fees. The Nachrichten aus der Chemie have a weird tendency to publish &ldquo;controversial&rdquo; articles. Nobody forces them to print letters to the editor advocating against gender-neutral language, and <a href="https://buerviper.github.io/blog/2021/vorlage-gdch-mitgliederbefragung/">still they did</a>. Nobody forces them to print pieces that claim man-made climate change was a hoax (and chemically impossible), and still they did.(6)
There are so many problems here so I have no idea on how this can be fixed actually. It is a systemic problem. Articles like that do neither represent myself nor do they actually reflect the current state of the scientific discourse or community. Still, they reflect the opinions of many members of GDCh. I think it would be in the best interest of the organization to tell these members: We do not care about you. If we cannot even agree on the very basics of how to do science, then we have no basis for future cooperation. At least, an article which disguises as an opinion piece and then goes on to spread lies and misinformation should be subject of a fact check by the editorial team. If someone reads the article now without any further context, they might end up believing what was written ther.
I know that this is probably not gonna happen, but how often do active members have to come out, make themselves targetable to attacks from the right? In particular, this is an inter-generation conflict, with conservative views mostly shared by older, retired members, whereas young scientists at an early career stage share more progressive views. However, their professional future often relies on the goodwill of the old members, e.g., in grant review or appointment committees.
The Nachrichten tries to not alienate these old members, but I&rsquo;d wish it&rsquo;d be taking a stronger stance against them. Such insultingly regressive views cannot be arranged with the open community which chemistry so desperately needs. Currently, <a href="https://www.gdch.de/ausbildung-karriere/karriere-und-beruf/hochschulstatistiken/statistik-hochschullehrernachwuchs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">less than 20 % of Chemistry professors in Germany identify as female</a>. If we don&rsquo;t manage to create an inclusive, inviting community, this won&rsquo;t improve at all in the long run. But if even your professional society does not back you up, who&rsquo;s supposed to do it?
<h2 id="references">References</h2>
<ol>
<li>Krylov, A. I.; Tanzman, J. S.; Frenking, G.; Gill, P. M. W. Scientists must resist cancel culture. Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2022, 70 (2), 12&ndash;14. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/nadc.20224120702" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.1002/nadc.20224120702</a>.</li>
<li>Krylov, A.; Frenking, G.; Gill, P. Royal Society of Chemistry Provides Guidelines for Censorship to its Editors. Chemistry International 2022, 44 (1), 32&ndash;34. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2022-0119" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2022-0119</a>.</li>
<li>Krylov, A. I. The Peril of Politicizing Science. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2021, 12 (22), 5371&ndash;5376. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01475</a>.</li>
<li>Nardangeli, N.; Thomson, J.; Topolovčan, N.; Hudlick&yacute;, T. Total Synthesis of Methyl 1,5,8-Trimethoxy-1H-Isochromene-3-Carboxylate and Its Derivatives via Palladium-Catalyzed Annulation of 2-Alkynylbenzaldehydes. Synthesis 2021, 53 (21), 4110&ndash;4116. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1055/a-1532-8656" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.1055/a-1532-8656</a>.</li>
<li>L&ouml;sle, V.; Kataeva, O.; Kn&ouml;lker, H.-J. First Total Synthesis and Investigation of the X-Ray Crystal Structure of the Pyrano[3,2-a]Carbazole Alkaloid Clausenalansine A. Synthesis 2021, 53 (2), 359&ndash;364. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1706551" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1706551</a>.</li>
<li>Hug, H. &bdquo;Die Klimamodelle versagen&ldquo;. Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2013, 61 (2), 132&ndash;133. <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nachrchem.2013.61.2.132/html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nachrchem.2013.61.2.132/html</a>.</li>
</ol>
<a href="https://buerviper.github.io/blog/2022/myth-of-cancel-culture/">The Myth of Cancel Culture in Chemistry (and Science)</a> by <a rel="cc:attributionURL dct:creator" property="cc:attributionName" href="https://buerviper.github.io">Mathias Micheel</a> is licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/?ref=chooser-v1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="display: inline-block;">CC BY-SA 4.0</a> First published: <a href="https://buerviper.github.io/blog/2022/myth-of-cancel-culture/">https://buerviper.github.io/blog/2022/myth-of-cancel-culture/</a>