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The practice of using the authority and language of science to make moral judgments—to declare what is right and wrong, good and bad, virtuous and sinful—as if empirical findings could settle ethical questions. Scientific moralism mistakes "is" for "ought," treating descriptive claims about how the world works as prescriptive claims about how it should work. It's the evolutionary psychologist who declares that traditional gender roles are "natural" and therefore good; the neuroscientist who claims that because certain brain states correlate with happiness, we now know how to live; the public health researcher who treats statistical correlations as moral imperatives. Scientific moralism borrows science's prestige to launder moral claims, presenting value judgments as if they were empirical findings.
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