Examples of why science is not immune to systems of oppression
Dear Academics: A Lot (All) of This Is TerribleChanda Prescod-WeinsteinFollow Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: fighting scientists with science my thoughts: Science folk worried about the new impending doom on academia and scientific inquiry -- Welcome👏🏾To👏🏾the👏🏾show. People of color been dealing with this and been surviving so why not listen up and support us folks who tryin to shake it up. I ain't see non of y'all ever sharing my posts. Follow my 4Love+Science page to why don't ya! It's about to get next level. UNNATURAL SELECTION HOW RACISM WARPS SCIENTIFIC TRUTHS by Abaki Beck "When we talk of science today, we often discuss peer-reviewed research conducted by university professors or scientists at huge national agencies. There is an assumption that scientific truths are not only strongly supported by evidence, but also largely unbiased, nonpartisan, and universal. As with all aspects of Western society, however, science is deeply tainted with the legacies of colonialism and racism. Despite its contributions, Western science has viciously exploited marginalized communities through forced experimentation and worked to discredit non-Western scientific thought. Its truth comes with an asterisk." To Decolonise Maths, Stand up to Its False History and Bad Philosophy BY CHANDRA KANT RAJU ON 26/10/2016 "A false history of science was used to initiate colonial education, in support of colonialism. This false history persists. In a recent article about decolonising mathematics, for instance, Professor Karen Brodie asserts that “Much, though certainly not all, of mathematics was created by dead white men”.This is not true." Diversity in Science: Why It Is Essential for Excellence Science and technology are society's main engines of prosperity. Who gets to drive them? By Fred Guterl on October 1, 2014 "For diversity to be effective, the working environment must be right. For an individual, it takes conscious effort to be on the watch for unconscious biases and to overcome them. For an organization, it takes processes, procedures and an ethos of acceptance. Victoria Plaut points out, beginning on page 52, that groups who abandon color-blind policies and embrace the differences among their members in ways that do not stereotype or pigeonhole tend to be successful in taking advantage of what diversity has to offer. ... Scientists pride themselves on their objectivity, but personal experience and point of view have a lot to do with what questions get asked in the first place and how researchers go about answering them. The people in science and engineering are driving the world's most vital engine of prosperity and new ideas. Who are they?" From the March for Science to an Abolitionist Science Britt Rusert is Assistant Professor in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst. She is the author of Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (NYU Press, 2017). "Just as prison abolitionists demand a world without prisons while valuing the forms of thought, writing, and activism produced by prisoners themselves, an abolitionist science might attend to how science, medicine and technology contribute to structures of inequality and systemic violence while using the tools of science to inspire new forms of political imagination and transformation." Science Must Clean Up Its Act Our community still struggles with diversity, equity and inclusion issues, including systemic bias, harassment, discrimination and more By Heather Metcalf on May 22, 2017 "If there’s one thing the scientific community values most, it’s objectivity. Objectivity amounts to a scientist’s ability to conduct work that is not skewed by personal, political, financial, emotional, social, and/or other biases or opinions. Often, scientists try so hard to become objective that they come to believe that they have no biases. However, all people, even scientists, have biases. Disregarding our biases or believing that we have none, only means that we are more likely to act on them. " Women miss out on authorship opportunities early onBy Maggie Kuo "The looming question is why there’s a publication gap that goes opposite to what one might expect based on the hours worked. Lack of confidence among female students, which is commonly cited as a factor contributing to the underrepresentation of women in science, did not appear to play a role for the female students at the 53 institutions involved in the study. The source may lie in the lab dynamics, Feldon suggests: The interactions in the labs among graduate students and between faculty members and graduate students may favor men to get better yields for their time spent." Women ask fewer questions than men at conference talks, new studies suggest By Maggie KuoOct. 23, 2017 , 12:15 PM “We have this assumption that, ‘Oh, if we can just get the number of men and women in a room to be the same, then magically all behavioral differences will disappear,’” says study author Emily Glassberg, a biology graduate student at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. “But this just speaks to the fact that there's something more complex going on.” Scientists Think They're More Rational Than Other People Researchers may have an overconfident view of their profession's objectivity By Simon Makin on May 1, 2017 "Veldkamp hopes that awareness of the findings may help scientists acknowledge their biases and fallibility. Scientists' overconfidence in their profession's intellectual rigor could, for instance, make them more resistant to efforts to improve the reproducibility of research. " The Age of the Algorithm"Computer algorithms now shape our world in profound and mostly invisible ways. They predict if we’ll be valuable customers and whether we’re likely to repay a loan. They filter what we see on social media, sort through resumes, and evaluate job performance. They inform prison sentences and monitor our health. Most of these algorithms have been created with good intentions. The goal is to replace subjective judgments with objective measurements. But it doesn’t always work out like that." "Narratives" in science communication [revised] [revised again] [three times]
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AuthorKendra is the founder of 4Love+Science and works as a Science and Community Consultant Archives
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