How our perceptions of who does science are wrong
Since we were children, science was presented to us in a specific way: white lab coats, pipettes, and a man working at the laboratory bench. We grow up with preconceived notions of what science is and who does it. The current and historical systemic exclusion of marginalised individuals from the scientific community, and the use of science in oppression and discrimination, has led to a notion of science centred on white men. However, this view of ours is narrow. Science finds its home in a number of people and places.
The scientific community and higher education have long been rife with sexism. I find this ironic considering UNESCO recognises the oldest university, by current standards, to be the University of Al-Karaouine, in Morocco. The school was founded by Fatima al-Fihri and her sisters in 859 and is still open today. Despite the fact that the oldest, continuously open university was founded by women, the story of sexism in scientific and academic research is a long one. We can think of women like Rosalind Franklin, who took the first image of DNA’s structure, or Alice Ball, who developed one of the first treatments of leprosy, neither of whom received credit for their discoveries. The erasure of these women is not an exception in the history of the scientific community, but rather commonplace. Indeed, this pattern has not stopped. Our perceptions of science also ignore researchers such as Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, who helped develop the COVID-19 Moderna vaccine and Dr. Pilar “Bibi” Santidrián Tomillo, a researcher focusing on how climate change is affecting leatherback turtles. A paper published in 2022 in Nature details how women are less likely to be credited with authorship on scientific articles than men. So, while we claim progressiveness and that science works for all, it is still rife with issues and men continue to take the credit for the work done by others. Hence, we think of the classic or stereotypical scientist as being exclusively a man.
Women are not the only figures who have been excluded from science, nor the only ones actively harmed by individuals harnessing science for their own bigoted agendas. Biological anthropology has long been used to push the ideas of ‘biological race’ and eugenics, sometimes even through biased knowledge production or falsification of scientific results. Practices such as craniology, the study of the skull, were used to justify the classification of humans into races and to reinforce white supremacy. The use of craniology continued well into the 1900s, until anthropologist Franz Boas showed that cephalic index—percentage of width to length of the skull—was not a heritable trait. Unfortunately, Boas’ work did not end the perpetuation of racism in the scientific and social spheres of the world. In medicine and healthcare, Black Americans still go undertreated for pain due to bigoted historical perceptions of biological differences, such as pain tolerance, between races. We see the effects of bigotry and racism even outside of the medical field. Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. coined the term environmental racism, in which communities primarily occupied by African Americans, Latinos, Indigenous People, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, migrant workers, and low-income workers are intentionally polluted. Communities are also excluded from environmental research itself, with Carbon Brief showing that Global South researchers and women were consistently underrepresented in climate science research publications.
This systemic exclusion of individuals from scientific spheres has led to a stereotype of scientists and those who are ‘scientific’ as being white men. As a research paper published in Physical Review Physics Education Research illustrated, when tasked with drawing a scientist, over 60 percent of children will draw a man. When college students were tasked to draw statisticians, an overwhelming number of the drawings illustrated a white statistician. As these studies demonstrate, our public perception of who a scientist or a researcher is continues to be centred around white men. They continue to be idealised as the ones who science is found within or done through. This portrayal, of course, is not representative of the actual population of scientists today.
As this article has highlighted, the scientific community systemically excludes those who are not white and male. It is our duty and responsibility as those who engage with the scientific world to combat this. I myself learn from those who are fighting now against these preconceived notions of what ‘science’ is and who gets to do it. Nadine Caron, the first Indigenous woman to be a general surgeon in Canada, works to advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples in healthcare and research. Her work has been integral in researching cancer and health services in rural or remote settings, and she was recently inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. There are also many new initiatives being started to encourage diversity in science. Projects such as the Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE) initiative are working towards collaborative climate solutions with the communities most affected by climate disasters, ensuring an inclusive approach. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada has incorporated initiatives for Black and Indigenous student researchers to get NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Awards beyond the allocation of that of the university, working to ensure that financial constraints are eliminated for marginalised people participating in research. Today, there are many more people and organisations working towards eliminating our limited social perceptions of who a scientist is. Our work is not over and there is much more to be done. Science lives within us all and every one of us has a seat at the lab bench.
