The norm of universalism in sciences. Social origin and gender of researchers in Denmark

Implied by the norm of universalism in modern science, known from Merton's CUDOS-norm set, is the demand that scientific careers should be open to tal ents, independent of personal attributes such as race, religion, class, and gender. In spite of a large amount of studies related to CUDOS-norms very few deals with class origin of researchers. Based on a survey among a sampl e of 788 Danish researchers this article investigates class bias, compared to I:ender bias in researcher recruitment and careers, and researcher asses sments of impartiality and objectivity of evaluations and reward system. Th e data demonstrate very strong class bias, and also confirm the well-known gender bias in recruitment, class bias being the strongest. This is shown t o be mainly because of bias in the educational system, however. Concerning later career attainment bias is also found, but much weaker, and most prono unced concerning social origin. Regarding researcher assessments of imparti ality there are no indications of strong mistrust among researchers in gene ral; nor are there significant differences in degree of trust in reward sys tem, conditioned by class origin or gender. In conclusion, the analysis doe s not lend strong support to an assumption of deviance from norms of univer salism.