Recognizing and rewarding scientists: Gathering new ideas and perspectives through veil-of-ignorance reasoning

Thomas Hoogeboom

RadboudUMC

In 1971, philosopher John Rawls wrote the book 'A theory of justice'. In this book Rawls describes a thought experiment, named 'The veil of Ignorance'. This thought experiment aimed to identify fair governing principles by imagining people choosing their principles from behind a “veil of ignorance,” without knowing their places in the social order. In this workshop, participants will think about better and fairer ways to recognize and reward the efforts of scientist, by mitigating their own biases due to their own (subconscious) privileges.