#positionality statement

Woke academia strikes again.

Today's entry comes from the University of Victoria, where someone earned a PhD in the School of Indigenous Governance, which I had never heard of but appears to be where ordinary academic standards go to be ceremonially sacrificed.

The dissertation is titled, "Mnidoo-mkwendamwin: Beading and Restitching with Ancestral Threads of Memory." And before the dissertation even begins, we of course get a mandatory land acknowledgment.

The abstract opens with a typo. It says, quote, "This work was created to go beyond the study cultural mnemonic devices." It appears to be missing the word 'of' there, but maybe proofreading is an oppressive colonial construct as well.

But it gets better, or worse, however you look at it. The author says the dissertation documents how to make, quote, "ancestral knowledge encodements" through "indigenous beadwork, textile, other fiber arts." It seems to be missing the word 'and' there as well. So that's two typos, and we haven't even moved beyond the first sentence yet

It then explains that beading is, quote, "indigenous resurgence" explored through the author's intersecting lenses of being a, quote, "chronically ill neurodivergent two-spirit Mississauga Nishabi Lucanan artist and scholar."

The abstract also says that, quote, "the body, mind, spirit, land, and material expressions of culture" are only viewed as separate entities "due to colonization."

This dissertation is based on so-called "indigenous knowledges." But while cultural traditions, stories, and art can be personally meaningful, when universities start treating them as co-equal with scientific knowledge and dismiss skepticism as a form of colonial oppression, we've left the realm of serious scholarship entirely and dove headfirst into mystical woo-woo.

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Abstract

This work was created to go beyond the study cultural mnemonic devices and into the realm of documenting how to make ancestral knowledge encodements that synthesize research through Indigenous beadwork, textile, other fibre arts. Beading is Indigenous resurgence that connects me to my ancestors, and this research delves into what that means in a grounded wholistic way through my intersecting lenses of being a chronically ill neurodivergent Two-Spirit Mississauga Nishnaabe Lucbanin artist and scholar. Conceptualizations around the body, mind, spirit, land, and material expressions of culture are often thought of as separate entities due to colonization, so a foundational part of this work examines approaches to Indigenous ideas of wholeness in community and identifies what forms of decolonization and resurgence can facilitate reconnection with the spiritual. Beads come together and interplay with one another in similar ways that gained wisdoms do within the research process. While the overall design that is created through knowledge is powerful and important, so is every stitch that makes that design come into being. Each relative who collaborated on this dissertation brought a prismatic array of experiences and played a powerful role in shaping the trajectory of the ancestral knowledge encodement of this work in the Ngwaagan Regalia (2025). Throughout the dissertation are ancestral knowledge encodements—created through historical inspiration, depictions of relatives, tea-visits with kin, and narratives shared by family and community members. The encodements created and embedded into this written dissertation take the forms of photographs, historical images, digitally stitched collages, digital mixed media illustrations, paintings, and diagrams. I have chosen to honour this tradition of weaving in the threads of previous generations and connecting it to those in the future through integrating ancestral mkwendamwinan (memories) in the same way that I am including contemporary conversational dbaajmownan (stories).

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Art is not science. Any form of "knowledge" which is inaccessible to all but an anointed, special few is not "knowledge."

“Fact” is not anybody’s experience; it states the experience of no one in particular. … By definition, then, if we take the empirical rule (no personal authority) seriously, revelation cannot be the basis for fact, because it is not publicly available. Similarly, attempts to claim a special kind of experience or checking for any particular person or kind of person—male or female, black or white, tall or short—are strictly illicit. … if you make different rules for black and white checkers, you are not doing science. … if the way you are checking works only for people with a sympathetic attitude, or if your results are not replicable by others in a reasonably regular fashion, you are not doing science. … If the way you are seeing and explaining works only for the religious, you are breaking the rules. – Jonathan Rauch, "Kindly Inquisitors"

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Literally a manifestation of the Genetic Fallacy.

"Positionality Statements," like pronouns-in-bio, are not completely useless. They're red flags offered up willingly that tell you someone is not to be trusted or should be ignored.

By: Colin Wright

Published: Mar 28, 2025

Some readers may know that I often post ridiculous, ideology-driven academic papers and dissertations on X (formerly Twitter). It’s become a bit of a hobby—calling out how certain fields have drifted into performative activism disguised as serious scholarship. Some of the worst examples turn into full-blown posts here on Reality’s Last Stand, where I break down not just what’s wrong with them, but why everyone should care. However, there’s one academic trend that I repeatedly encounter but rarely highlight, perhaps because it’s become so common it fades into the background: the “reflexivity” or “positionality” statement.

I recently posted an especially absurd example on X, where the authors felt the need to let readers and potential reviewers know that they were all “cis-gender menstruating individuals who identify as intersectional feminists,” among other things.

Although these statements are most commonly found in the usual “woke” or “grievance studies” disciplines—fields that openly reject traditional scientific norms and standards—they are now creeping into mainstream, even top-tier, science journals. What started as a practice mostly limited to qualitative research in the social sciences has now spread much more widely. Take this example from a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution:

We should all certainly hope that the authors have been “educated in a predominantly Euro–American cultural context and scientific tradition,” given that the paper is published in a Europe-based science journal!

So what’s going on here? What exactly is a positionality statement, and why are researchers including them?

In short, a positionality (or reflexivity) statement is a formal acknowledgment by researchers of their own social identities—such as race, gender, class, sexuality, or other “lived experiences”—that may have shaped their perspective on the research topic. Think of it like a conflict-of-interest (COI) disclosure, except instead of revealing financial ties that might compromise a researcher’s objectivity, the author is confessing their social location and ideological commitments.

Supporters of this practice claim it promotes transparency. They say it’s just being honest: all people have biases, so why not acknowledge them up front? But the reasoning gets much more ideological than that. Their view isn’t just that people are shaped by their environment—which is obviously true—but that all knowledge is socially situated. This belief comes from a branch of feminist and postmodern philosophy known as “standpoint epistemology.” According to this view, people from marginalized groups enjoy a kind of “epistemic privilege”: because of their lived experiences, they are thought to have special access to certain truths, especially about oppression and injustice. However, this epistemic privilege has been extended to scientific truths as well. The fatal flaws in this philosophy will be made clear later on.

On the surface, positionality statements seem noble—who could be against reflection and transparency? But when you start looking at it more closely, many serious issues begin to surface.

The most thorough critique of positionality statements I’ve seen comes from a paper titled “Positionality and Its Problems: Questioning the Value of Reflexivity Statements in Research” by Jukka Savolainen, Patrick J. Casey, Justin P. McBrayer, and Patricia Nayna Schwerdtle, published in Perspectives on Psychological Science. In it, the authors lay out three major objections to the practice, each of which should give serious pause to anyone who believes science should be guided by evidence and logic instead of ideology.

Positionality Statements Are Fundamentally Flawed

The first objection is philosophical: positionality statements are inherently self-defeating. They attempt to disclose how a researcher’s identity may shape their perspective on a topic, but the very epistemology that justifies positionality statements—standpoint theory—also undermines the credibility of any such self-disclosure.

As Savolainen et al. point out, reflexivity statements are “constrained by the very positionality they seek to express.” The idea here is almost paradoxical: if your identity shapes and distorts your view of the world—including your ability to reflect on yourself—then your positionality statement is just as distorted as your research. “Like a scale that tries to weigh itself,” they write, “constructing a credible positionality statement is ultimately an impossible task.” If you genuinely believe that your social location biases everything you do, then the positionality statement you construct to describe that bias is already infected by the same problem.

Advocates of positionality statements might respond: Sure, nobody is perfectly objective, but researchers can still identify some facts about themselves—like race, sex, class, or gender identity—that provide readers with useful context. The authors acknowledge this objection. Yes, it is “quite easy for scholars to accurately report their biological sex, their gender identity, nationality, race/ethnicity, and many other personal characteristics.” These are, to some extent, knowable and reportable.

But as the authors rightfully highlight, those things are often the least relevant to the scientific content of a study: “We take issue with the assumption that these kinds of attributes—the listing of which dominates positionality statements—are particularly salient for any given study.” Just because a researcher is white or black, rich or poor, or “cis” or “trans,” doesn’t automatically mean those characteristics shaped the research process or interpretation in any meaningful way. And if they did, simply reporting them does not magically make that bias evaporate.

To drive the point home, the authors analyze a published positionality statement (below) by Elliott and Reid (2019), where two white women reflect on the “dangers” of writing about low-income black Americans.

The authors of this statement claim to be guided by “anti-racist, intersectional, and feminist principles” as a way of signaling their political virtue and awareness. But as Savolainen and his colleagues point out, why focus only on those traits? Why not mention other potentially relevant parts of their identity, like their religion, education, or personality? As the authors ask, “Why did the authors reflect on the ‘dangers’ of racial and class dynamics but seemed unbothered by their strongly expressed political commitments?”

Their point is that these statements often highlight only the identity traits that are currently popular or politically favored, while ignoring others that might matter just as much. This selective framing undermines the supposedly honest and reflective nature of the exercise, turning it into a performance, perhaps often crafted to align with disciplinary norms or to curry favor with reviewers and editors.

This leads to a tough but fair question: “Should the research community trust the authors themselves to decide which aspects of their lives need to be disclosed to people who read their research contributions? We think the answer is ‘no.’”

And this isn’t just a problem with one paper—it’s a problem with the entire practice. Positionality statements claim to reduce bias, but in reality they often just amplify the author’s subjectivity under the illusion of self-awareness.

The authors sum it up:

Our point is to illustrate the challenges involved in crafting a positionality statement of any kind. These kinds of statements are unpersuasive because academic scholars cannot have it both ways. They cannot, on the one hand, claim to be burdened by their biography when conducting the research, yet, on the other hand, be emancipated from it while constructing a positionality statement. Fortunately, as we demonstrate next, this inescapable dilemma is not something that needs to be solved.

Positionality Statements Misdiagnose the Source of Scientific Bias

The second problem is that positionality statements focus on the wrong kind of bias. Bias in science does not primarily originate from individual characteristics—your race, gender, politics, or upbringing—but from a failure of the process by which knowledge is created, tested, and refined. Scientific bias is not reduced or eliminated by announcing your identity; it is reduced by rigorous methodology, peer review, replication, and being open to criticism.

As Savolainen and colleagues put it, “Positionality statements are beside the point: By focusing on the characteristics of participating scholars, these kinds of declarations miss the true sources of research bias—the field’s collective failure to adhere to the scientific ethos.” Science doesn’t work because scientists are unbiased—they aren’t. It works because the system is designed to push everyone’s ideas through a rigorous, competitive process that filters out error over time.

Ironically, by putting the spotlight on personal identity instead of scientific methods, positionality statements may actually increase bias. Instead of focusing on methods, data quality, and replicability, we are asked to judge research in part based on the author’s race, gender, or ideological alignment. That’s not objectivity—it’s just replacing one kind of bias with another.

Positionality Statements Undermine the Norms That Protect Science

Finally, and perhaps most dangerously, positionality statements erode the very norms that make science trustworthy in the first place—especially the principle of universalism. This is the idea that scientific claims should be judged by the strength of the evidence, not by who is making the claim. What matters is the quality of your data and reasoning, not your identity.

But when journals start asking (or requiring) researchers to include positionality statements, they flip that principle on its head. Instead of suppressing identity cues through double-blind peer review, we now ask authors to foreground them. That opens the door to identity-based favoritism, virtue signaling, and even manipulation. Authors may exaggerate or fabricate aspects of their biography if they believe it will help them get published. And let’s be honest: positionality statements are only encouraged in one direction. Progressive researchers are encouraged to share their “marginalized” identities or activist goals. No one is asking conservative, religious, or apolitical scholars to declare their “lived experiences” or ideological frameworks—unless to apologize for them.

As Savolainen and co-authors put it, positionality statements have become “a way for authors to signal their adherence to the ideological mainstream of a discipline.” It’s less about being transparent and more about proving you’re on the “right side.” Often, these statements read like a shield: “We are good and right-thinking researchers—please don’t peer-review us too hard.”

This gets to a deeper and more cynical interpretation of the trend. As I’ve often pointed out, there’s a growing body of academic work that looks more like propaganda in the language of scholarship. Positionality statements are part of that performance. Yes, it's true that personal identity and politics can influence research. But the idea that simply declaring your bias somehow cancels it out is ridiculous. In practice, it often does the opposite—it gives researchers permission to lean even harder into their bias while pretending to have neutralized it.

We all have biases—that's just part of being human. But science wasn’t created to embrace our personal views; it was built to help us control for them. The purpose of peer review, replication, and methodological rigor is not to validate personal perspectives but to test them against reality.

If we want a more inclusive, robust, and representative science, we should be pushing for better methods, open data, and viewpoint diversity—not more identity-based posturing. As Savolainen and colleagues argue, “the most productive path to increasing representation and reducing positional bias in research is to protect the freedom of scholarly inputs while insisting on methodological transparency and rigor.”

Science doesn’t need more confessionals. It needs more rigor.

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This is the endorsement of the Genetic Fallacy as a moral imperative.

Xians tell me that I'm disqualified from criticizing Xianity because I'm not a Xian. Muslims tell me that what I have to say about the quran is irrelevant.

Except, neither of those things are true.