I hope you’re all thriving this week! Thank you for your patience, as I mentioned on Slack, last week the kids were out of daycare, I was sick, and it was just too much! I hope that if you too are experiencing a bottleneck of overwhelm that you’re able to take some time for yourself and relax.
I was planning on finishing up Science Under the Scope, but I think we can break it up between this week and next week just to really take our time and round it out. A lot of these considerations around the neutrality and impact of science are probably new to you… and there’s no rush! we have nowhere to get to! Urgency is a trait of ableist white supremacy culture, it perpetuates the myth that we need to be productive to be valuable, that we need to be doing labor to have value. Fuck that noise.
We will take our time, let’s let this all marinate.
Segments eight, nine and ten of Science Under The Scope dive deeper into the real world impacts of uneven resource distribution and how that siphoning of resources by the overly resourced (usually white people) will intentionally minoritize other people and keep hold of power. Wang shows us this through breaking down “who benefits” from science industry funding. This is not the science we think about when we’re dissecting frogs (do the youth even still do that? I’m old and I still remember those little frog organs omg).
The example Wang gives is the difference between scientific research funding for cystic fibrosis (which predominantly affects white people) and sickle cell anemia (predominantly affects Black people).
How does this under representation happen? “The reason the answer to all of these questions is kind of the same – (middle class folks, white folks, folks with access to science ed, folks who see themselves represented in science, by science, as scientists) – is not by chance or some inherent factor of culture or biology. The reason is because our world’s histories of injustice, oppression, marginalization, and white supremacy have created this segmentation, this privilege.”
And so when we start to think about the intentional and systemic oppression of non-white people by white people and people who uphold white supremacist ideals, it becomes clearer how scientific research and data skews to favor a specific group.
For this week, please read eight, nine, and ten, and share two or three areas of research or technological development that might have bias towards people in power. Extra points if you can find something like this in your field (we’ll be doing writing project later this semester, you might want to use the content you find now).
Thanks everyone! Next module we’ll finish up Science Under the Scope. Have a great week!
Science has altered our way of life and our beliefs. Science has provided man the opportunity to pursue societal concerns such as ethics, aesthetics, education, and justice, as well as to establish cultures and enhance human conditions, by making life simpler. But once science research falls under one’s hand that has power might use it to benefit themselves. An example of this could be the United States government using scientists and engineers to build weapons of mass destruction to gain authority or power on a global stage. Another example of this could be companies such as Tesla using data science to function their cars and other accessories.
1) From the field of bioremediation (removal of contaminants via microbial degradation), a development of bias can be seen in corporations and government agencies liable to cleanup contaminated soils. During the groundbreaking discoveries of environmental cleanup technologies in the 1980s, it was found that bioremediation had several serious limitations, such as a stringent cleanup criteria and its costliness, which could lead to ineffective and unsafe remediation tactics. However, the companies in charge of such cleanup painted the limitations in a way to make it seem less harmful, which potentially help them reduce future remediation costs. The way the process of bioremediation was portrayed in the public eye at the time thus came from a place of bias from these companies, leaving ramifications for wastewater and contaminated soil treatment.
2) In a more general example, the environmental movement has been largely whitewashed for some time now in that the faces at the media forefront of climate activism don’t reflect the people most affected by climate change. Van Jones, founder of Green for All and an environmental and civil rights advocate, brought up in a speech that mainstream environmental organizations have been historically mostly white, and most of the smaller scale environmental justice groups usually are neglected in terms of funding. In such justice groups, local research and findings are put to use to push for solutions for the immediate community. Similar to what Section 8 of the reading this week highlights, seeing as which organizations are portrayed to be “trailblazers” creates bias in the solutions that are created and administered by politicians.
Oftentimes funding is allocated towards resources that primarily serve more privileged demographics. Two instances of this phenomena include agriculture and the military. Both of these industries receive extensive funding while being extremely profitable. In the military sector, most funding is also used for private defense contractors. Additionally, within the field that I am studying, electrical engineering, the chip industry is subsidized for research and manufacturing, while having profits that amount to billions of dollars. Since none of these industries provide the produced goods solely as a public service, the benefits that are reaped from additional developments and manufacturing are primarily allocated to the wealthier groups who are treated with a sense of exclusivity and can afford or profit from such services.
According to the research done in 2013, the science had only benefited the group with the power(white patients) were being found more in comparison to black people. The drugs for the treatment were provided to one that got the most funding whereas the black patients left with nothing. Another field where science has failed is where big companies like agricultural, medical/pharmaceutical are getting the most benefits from consumers. Moreover, the distribution of the food supplies worldwide as public service which led to allergies and the company that produces epipen ends up supplying epipen and ends up fund raisins for their own profits. The science is used by these powerful companies to benefit them. It’s not really the consumer who gets benefits but it’s the organization that is distributing the goods.
-In the article by VCU health mentioned that “Whether race is referenced in the first line of someone’s chart is something that can be easily studied and something that we believed may be biased,”. Science is affected by the background of the people that means when people could recognize a person through their appearance or their general information background. This might determine someone’s death or life. Due to dominant people prioritizing the privileged group, the treatment could be done to them whereas discriminated groups are ignored and left unheard. Another example is when well-known companies produce the services which are generally targeted to the majority of the needy people. They use methods and results to find the solution to the problem of poor people lacking basic needs. Their export of supply is lesser than the import of the amount they receive from the public. This is where science fails, where powerful people become more powerful by the use of science.
Scientists , policy makers and business evokes that the more we know about science the better life we can life and understand the world but there’s always an issue with science lacking to serve low status people such as people of color .
The more proven research , the more attention scientists gets and the government’s or the policy-makers uses it to the advantages meaning for example if scientists have proven that COVID 19 is 100 % effective to and has no harm in the human body , the government would make sure to spread the news through advertisement or any possible way to get the population to take the vaccine . The problem is that science is supposed to benefit everyone but where’s people of color benefiting from it as science failed to explain why black or people suffered throughout the last decades through any sort of racism or poverty