Hey everyone! 

I hope you enjoyed the first three sections of Science Under The Scope. Before we jump into the content of the text, I want to mention why I chose it. This course is a “writing composition” class so we get a chance to consider different forms of “writing”. Most of my students think that writing is the five paragraph argument essay they had to do in high school, but it’s so much more! I love this graphic text because it shows how something “non-traditional” can advance critical science discourse. Remember that there are always ways to communicate beyond the written word! I’ll talk more about this throughout the course, I just wanted to point it out for anyone who’s been into comics or coding and thought those genres weren’t writing.

I want to consider this statement at the top of the third section “the biggest danger of objectivity is that it allows us to pretend that science is entirely neutral” → this fixation on “objectivity” is a way to distract us from the reality that nothing is neutral because no science is created in a vacuum. But let’s sit with this for a second, because I feel like students frequently get uncomfortable pushing up against the myth of neutrality. What does it mean for you that science needs to be neutral? How does it challenge your understanding of the field if it turns out the science is biased? Does it make you uncomfortable? (spoiler, it’s okay if the answer is yes, it made me uncomfortable the first time I realized it).

Now let’s tie this into writing composition: the same hypothesis holds true – most research journal articles that contain this “objective” research are crafted in a genre (specific format) meant to elicit authority (voice). “The information contained here is important because we said so (that’s rhetoric!).” The way facts are displayed is deliberate and makes it difficult to refute (intentionally, again rhetoric). So what does it mean if a journal article looked more like this text that we’re reading and contained critique of the existing systems that are in place?
For this week, please continue to read Science Under the Scope. I’d like you to get through section four, five, six, and seven and then consider: who didn’t go into science because of one or more structural barriers and what impact does that have on how we currently perceive scientific accomplishments? Throw your ideas in the comments section please!