# data[].attributes.headline
Bringing Justice to the Science Classroom Workshop Slides

# data[].attributes.subject
Bringing Justice to the Science Classroom Workshop Slides

# data[].attributes.body
Slides from the workshop presentation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
SXSWedu23_Bringing Justice to the Science Classroom

# data[].attributes.headline
STEM Teaching Tools: Equity Practice Briefs

# data[].attributes.subject
STEM Teaching Tools: Equity Practice Briefs

# data[].attributes.body
A collection of short articles (~5-minute reads) from expert teachers and education researchers describing equity-related teaching practices

# data[].attributes.headline
Bringing Justice to the Science Classroom Workbook

# data[].attributes.subject
Bringing Justice to the Science Classroom Workbook

# data[].attributes.body
Participant workbook for the workshop session

# data[].attributes.headline
Social Justice Standards (Learning for Justice)

# data[].attributes.subject
Social Justice Standards (Learning for Justice)

# data[].attributes.body
A set of K–12 standards for anti-bias education in any content area; useful as a way to support justice-oriented practices

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to main content

A Framework for Anti-Bias Education

The Social Justice Standards are a road map for anti-bias education at every stage of K-12 instruction. Comprised of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes, the standards provide a common language and organizational structure educators can use to guide curriculum development and make schools more just and equitable.

Divided into four domains-identity, diversity, justice and action (IDJA)-the standards recognize that, in today's diverse classrooms, students need knowledge and skills related to both prejudice-reduction and collective action. Together, these domains represent a continuum of engagement in anti-bias, multicultural and social justice education. The IDJA domains are based on Louise Derman-Sparks' four goals for anti-bias education in early childhood.

Each of the IDJA domains has learning outcomes and school-based scenarios organized by grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.

Download the Standards

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Social Justice Standards are a road map for anti-bias education at every stage of K-12 instruction, providing a common language and organizational structure educators can use to guide curriculum development and make schools more just and equitable.

# data[].attributes.body
A guide to engaging in difficult conversations about inequity with students

# data[].attributes.headline
Starting the Conversation: 4 Equity On-ramps for the Science Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Starting the Conversation: 4 Equity On-ramps for the Science Classroom

# data[].attributes.body
Blog post describing 4 types of inequities found in science and how to engage with these in the science classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Science is a beacon of pure knowledge in uncertain times, right? Nope. Science is not neutral.

I spent years as both a research scientist and a science teacher. In both roles, I expounded on the virtues of science and its ability to be impartial and unbiased. Only in the last few years have I rethought that notion and how we talk about science with our students. As the Next Generation Science Standards say, "Science is a human endeavor." It is conducted, interpreted, and applied by people and is, therefore, subject to the same biases and blind spots that all people have.

Treating science as neutral in our classrooms invalidates the experiences of students who have felt excluded or harmed by science, and it leaves all students inadequately prepared to critically evaluate scientific processes and outcomes. To truly equip students as consumers and creators of science, we must guide them as they consider how we build scientific knowledge in an equitable way and how we rectify inequities caused or exacerbated by science.
What is an equity onramp?
In this post, I suggest four equity onramps to conversations about science with students and provide examples to illustrate the importance of considering equity as scientists, citizens, and humans.

Equity conversations can be tough. It's hard to know where to start and where you will end up.

Equity onramps use approachable questions about scientific process as a gateway. Just as cars use onramps to transition from a quiet street to a busy freeway, teachers can use equity onramps to move more easily into challenging conversations with students. Each onramp allows you to approach a conversation from a different direction, and each facilitates movement into a larger equity conversation. Equity onramps represent categories of equity issues that often exist within science so we can identify, discuss, and ultimately address these inequities.

Treating science as neutral in our classrooms invalidates the experiences of students who have felt excluded or harmed by science, and it leaves all students inadequately prepared to critically evaluate scientific processes and outcomes.

The onramps I suggest here are rooted in the mechanics of science, not in classroom culture. Classroom culture is a critical consideration when establishing equitable science classrooms but is not the focus of these onramps. For more information about promoting equity through classroom culture, see "How to build an equitable learning community in your science classroom").

Equity onramp #1: Assumptions

Assumptions are the decisions we make to simplify into testable ideas the complex relationships in the natural world. Assumptions are necessary but must be explicit and purposeful to conduct science in an equitable way.

Here's a good example of assumptions in science: Women were historically excluded from clinical trials for medications because scientists assumed that metabolic processes functioned in the same way for both men and women. We later learned that women metabolize medications differently from men, even accounting for differences in average body size. As a result, dosages are often less accurate, and women suffer from more side effects from medications than men.

Probing questions to challenge assumptions in your classroom

When examining a scientific artifact (a plan for an investigation, a data set, a model), discuss these questions with your students to help you all uncover and challenge assumptions:

How are the conditions in the investigation or model different from the conditions of the real-world phenomenon being studied?

What assumptions did scientists make intentionally? What assumptions did scientists make unintentionally?

What are the potential impacts of those assumptions? Who feels those impacts, and how are the potential impacts distributed across people, places, and time?

What changes could be made to make the scientific process more equitable? What changes would make the impacts more equitable and/or mitigate the impacts?

Equity onramp #2: Objectives and outcomes

Objectives are the goals or the intended outcomes for a scientific effort, while outcomes are the actual results. Sometimes a scientific effort has explicitly inequitable objectives, but perhaps more often we find scientific pursuits with noble goals, but unintended inequitable results.

The Eugenics movement's goal of improving humanity by limiting reproduction for those the movement deemed unfit is an obviously and explicitly inequitable objective. Compare this to modern day, at-home DNA tests. These have stated objectives like learning about your ancestry or your genetic predisposition for certain health issues. While these goals are not in themselves inequitable, at-home DNA tests sometimes perpetuate misconceptions about the genetic basis of race and reinforce racist beliefs. They have even been used as proof of whiteness for membership in some white supremacist groups. This was not a stated objective but is an outcome that continues to perpetuate inequity.

Probing questions to explore objectives and outcomes in your classroom

When examining scientific research and processes, discuss these questions with your students:

What are the intended objectives for the research or process?

What stakeholders exist for this research or process (that is, who cares about this research or process)? What objectives might they have that differ from the intended objectives?

How do the outcomes of this research or process affect people? Who do the outcomes affect most? Who do the outcomes affect least?

How can we use science and/or engineering to mitigate, redistribute, or remove inequitable impacts?

Equity onramp #3: Interpretations

Interpretations are the patterns we notice, questions we ask, and explanations we propose in response to data, observations, and results. Data does not "speak for itself." The patterns a scientist notices and the questions they ask next are reflections of the scientist's experience in the world. As a result, the causal links that get tested reflect the cumulative experiences of the scientific community. More diversity within the scientific community means more diversity in the explanations and interpretations we examine.

Data from high-stakes educational assessments shows lower test scores in general for several populations of students, including students of color and neurodiverse students, than for white, neurotypical students. The meaning of the data and, therefore, the follow-up studies and proposed solutions, depend on whether you interpret that discrepancy as a reflection of student ability, evidence of biased assessments, or the result of an inequitable education system. It's bigger than choosing between labels like "opportunity gap" or "achievement gap"(though that's important, of course). It's an interpretation with real consequences for students.

Probing questions to explore interpretations in your classroom

When examining a relationship between factors, discuss these questions with your students:

Is the relationship causal or correlational? How do we know?

What other factors might influence or relate to the given relationship?

Are additional factors studied in the research? If not, what information would be needed to determine the effect of these factors?

Are there parts of the results that do not fit with the given explanation? If so, what might explain those parts?

What perspectives are missing from the interpretation? How can we ensure that we consider diverse perspectives when interpreting these results?

Equity onramp #4: Interactions

Interactions are the impacts of a scientific concept or process on a human-designed system, like an economic system. The impacts of interactions become inequitable when they combine with existing inequities of human systems. Science and engineering are critical tools through which we can mitigate inequitable impacts.

To illustrate this point, consider redlining. Redlining is the practice in which banks and other financial institutions delineated areas that were deemed high risk for lending. These areas were typically determined based on the racial demographics of a region. Neighborhoods with a higher proportion of people of color tended to be labeled as too high of a risk to receive loans, limiting economic investment in these areas. This political and economic policy interacts with scientific concepts to produce tangible impacts.

Today, areas that were redlined in the past are more heavily affected than neighboring areas by a host of environmental impacts. These impacts include reduced air quality and higher average temperatures, both of which come with an array of health and safety risks that now disproportionally impact the populations living in previously redlined areas.

Probing questions to explore interactions in your classroom

When examining a scientific concept within a human-designed system, discuss these questions with your students:

How does this science concept affect different people? How are the impacts distributed across people, place, and time?

What social, cultural, and political factors influence the distribution of these impacts?

How can we use science and/or engineering to mitigate, redistribute, or remove the negative impacts?

Not sure where to start?

If you're not sure about the best way to try out equity onramps for conversations with students, start small. Find a science-based news story with equity implications and read it with your class. Use the equity onramps to start a conversation and be open to where it takes you and your students.

Below are a few science stories involving equity and written specifically for students that may work well in hour classroom:

Want to learn more?

Check out these resources about incorporating equity conversations and cultivating more inclusive and equitable classrooms, when you're ready to dig deeper:

I love science. I want to share that love of science with every student. To do that, we need to be critical of times when science has fallen short or downright failed. Only then can we push the field to do and be better.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Starting the conversation: 4 equity onramps for the science classroom - Teach. Learn. Grow.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Science is a beacon of pure knowledge in uncertain times, right? Nope. Science is not neutral. I spent years as both a research scientist and a science teacher. In both roles, I expounded on the virtues of science and its ability to be impartial and unbiased.

# data[].attributes.headline
Redlining and Exposure to Urban Heat Islands Map (Science Museum of Virginia)

# data[].attributes.subject
Redlining and Exposure to Urban Heat Islands Map (Science Museum of Virginia)

# data[].attributes.body
A map that explores the relationship between environmental factors (eg., average temperature and percentage of impervious surfaces) and sociopolitical factors (eg., historical redlining grade)

# data[].attributes.body
An article (~10-minute read) that describes a general framework for addressing justice in science classrooms along with a specific lesson plan around climate change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Access to quality science and math instruction remains a civil rights and social justice issue as the scientific and technological divide widens ( Tate 2001; Moses and Cobb 2001). Students without access to rigorous science instruction have been and will continue to be left behind. This inequality is salient for students in marginalized communities and schools where stereotypes fuel low expectations for academic achievement and success.

Despite these gaps in science instruction, rigorous science instruction is a topic often discussed by all science educators. We argue for more rigorous and socially just science instruction for all children. Our aim in this article is twofold. First, we offer a framework for teaching science in socially just and rigorous ways: (W)holisitic Science Pedagogy (WSP). Second, we provide a lesson example to highlight one way to incorporate the tenets of WSP. This lesson is not intended to be implemented exactly as written; it's meant to illustrate how to design a justice-oriented science lesson.

The aim of social justice education is to help learners develop "the awareness, knowledge, and processes to examine issues of justice/injustice in their personal lives, communities, institutions, and the broader society while empowering them to connect action to their critical awareness" ( Bell 2016, p. 4). WSP is both a teacher- and student-centered instructional approach that encourages a commitment to (a) developing scientific knowledge and (b) doing a critical analysis that moves science away from static facts to a transformative lens necessary to make sense of and make change to the world.

A compelling and current issue today is climate change, so we use it as a context to provide a relevant example. We designed a climate change lesson that aligns with WSP and provided an analysis of how each component aligns with this instructional approach. The lesson addresses Next Generation Science Standard under Earth's Systems (HS-ESS3-1) and incorporates two of the science and engineering practices: analyzing and interpreting data and constructing explanations. The lesson is rich in content and its focus on social justice. This lesson was designed based on a similar classroom lesson taught by one of the authors and described in another publication ( Patterson and Gray 2019). Because this article's goal is to provide an example of how to teach content while addressing issues of social justice, we explain how each component of the lesson aligns with WSP to show how to design other social justice-oriented science lessons.

(W)holistic Science Pedagogy

As an instructional approach, (W)holistic Science Pedagogy asks teachers to make five commitments:

a commitment to an ever-developing self-awareness,

a commitment to science and its practices,

a commitment to science as a transformative agent,

a commitment to their students' social emotional wellness, and

a commitment to restorative practices.

The result of an interaction between the (W)holistic science teacher and their students is the creation of a learning space and a set of experiences where students' whole selves and interests are engaged and reflected within classroom science. We briefly outline the commitments in Figure 1. We see this framework as meeting the goals of social justice education within science education. Below, we share a lesson that reflects the five commitments of WSP and aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Lesson context

This lesson would typically take place during an Earth science unit exploring the interaction between climate change, natural hazards, and human activity. Prior to the lesson, students would have learned about climate change and should be able to define it and its effects. The activities presented in this lesson give students the opportunity to consider contemporary issues related to climate change and its disparate impacts in the United States and globally. Within this lesson, students examine and synthesize information from various sources to create coherent explanations. The objective of the lesson is that students will use evidence to explain the uneven effects of climate change. Our guiding question for the unit is: "In what ways are the patterns and trends associated with climate change impacting diverse communities around the world?"

Description of the climate change lesson

The following is a lesson outline for teaching science in socially just and rigorous ways.

Warm-Up. To introduce this lesson and activate prior knowledge, the teacher has students answer the following question: "What is climate change? Be sure to include the cause of climate change in your response." After students write a response, the teacher allows for whole-group discussion. This is not an evaluative task but an activity that allows teachers to check for understanding about baseline knowledge necessary to make sense of information presented throughout the lesson.

Stations.Students work in small groups and examine data from various sources. Each data source will be at one of four stations in the form of a graphic representation (see example graphics in Figure 2; all links to graphics are included in Online Connections). At each station, groups answer related questions (see Figure 3). The graphics at each station document the varied consequences of climate change nationally and globally, including economic and environmental outcomes.

Claim, evidence, reasoning (C-E-R) activity.After discussing the data collected during the stations activity, students transition to a C-E-R activity that allows them time to synthesize the information gathered. Students are prompted to use three to five pieces of evidence to make a reasoned argument in support of the claim provided ("Climate change has a universal impact on different communities.") or to use the evidence to make a counterclaim. On the handout provided, students should provide reasoning for how each piece of evidence supports their claim. Figure 4 provides an example of the C-E-R handout.

Once the handout is complete, students return to their groups and share their responses with a goal of noticing what evidence their peers used and resolving any discrepancies. Next, a whole-class discussion would be facilitated to discuss the guiding question and hear students' claims and evidence.

Critical reflection. For the final part of the lesson, students reflect on the following question set individually and then discuss in small groups:

Given the data presented about climate change,

Who was harmed? And, who will be harmed?

What was the cause of the harm?

Who's responsible for the harm? How? Why?

What ideas do you have about what can be done to repair and/or prevent harm?

What might justice look like for those who were harmed?

Can there be justice? Why? Why not?

After these conversations, students receive sheets with additional information about climate change and the climate gap (for a list of possible resources see Online Connections).

Extension activities. A recommended next step after this lesson is to provide students opportunities to take action and share about the disparate effects of climate change. For this, students form groups and choose one way to disseminate information about the climate gap. Possible presentations could include a video, speech, letter to local organizations and/or government officials, a blog post, op-ed, or an informational handout. These informational resources would include data and graphics that explain the disparate outcomes of climate change and recommendations of ways to reduce the harm to impacted communities.

Alignment with social justice and WSP

The climate change lesson demonstrates key components of (W)holistic Science Pedagogy. This type of social justice approach to science engages students across multiple domains, requiring a variety of skills and strategies. Here we identify WSP commitments best aligned with the lesson. Our aim is threefold: to make explicit the justice-oriented nature of this lesson, to provide teachers opportunities to see where they may already have instructional practices that are just, and to find places where they can provide more justice-oriented teaching.

Warm-Up. The warm-up represents the teacher's commitment to science and its practices. For this part of the lesson, students draw on their pre-existing knowledge about climate change and its impact. While this is not an experiment, this investigative inquiry demands that students reflect and respond to a query about the nature of climate change and its causes. This activity can surface students' misconceptions and misunderstandings. This introductory activity mirrors the practices of scientists when conducting investigations, beginning with inquiry and drawing on their base knowledge, while continuously making meaning and sense as they acquire new information.

The warm-up also demonstrates a commitment to the students' social emotional wellness. Students become knowledge bringers and are asked to share their expertise of science content. Asking students to share what they know can help create an environment where student voice contributes to the learning.

Stations and C-E-R activity. The stations activity reflects the commitment to science and its practices. Much like a community of scientists, students work collaboratively with others as an exercise of collective meaning making. In science, texts include charts, diagrams, graphs, and even pictures. In both the stations and C-E-R activities, students have to closely examine the visual representations of data to make an argument about the patterns and trends associated with climate change and the disparate effects on different communities. Additionally, students look at various pieces of data while engaging in discussion, debate, and eventually drawing their own conclusions. As a part of the C-E-R activity, students created an argument to support their claims and then modified and revised based on new data and information. The process of incorporating new information and findings to enhance understanding of phenomena is at the heart of the practice of scientific inquiry and discovery.

Taken together, both activities reflect the commitment to science as a transformative agent. Students explored climate change as a science-related occurrence that has justice implications. At this point in the lesson, students learn that human-related behavior has led to a crisis that has disparate results.

Critical Reflection. The critical reflection component of the lesson exemplifies the commitments to restorative practices as well as science as a transformative agent. This section asks students to reflect on and discuss some of the critical questions surrounding the climate gap. More specifically, students are put in the position of being problem solvers: working through issues of justice, equity, and fairness, and considering if it is possible to undo harm. Additionally, they consider what role science played in creating this crisis and how science might play a role in the solution.

This point in the lesson provides a forum for students to discuss the societal inequities and injustices, contemplating how the constructs of race and socioeconomic status show up in the crisis, and at which points. Students engage in rigorous discourse around the idea of "repairing harm," thinking about the individual, community, and greater societal impact. The enduring questions students wrestle with are "What might justice look like for those most vulnerable to climate change?" and "What can be done moving forward to restore the community members and those who created the harm?" These questions require students to develop a restorative impulse within the context of how science can be used to better understand the injustices in the world around them.

Extension Activity. The extension activity captures the commitment to science as a transformative agent. It shows that both the problem of and solution to climate change are tied to science, specifically Earth science. Students were able to build their awareness of how science can make injustice within our world visible. Moreover, students have the opportunity to draw on additional research and their own experience to develop ways to address the climate gap and climate change. This would be a perfect opportunity to incorporate local data and examples of the climate gap. This activity illustrates the importance of science as a tool for transformation and social justice in the lives of everyday people, not just scientists.

Conclusion: Why a social justice approach?

Students are whole beings, socialized by way of multiple experiences, interactions, and levels of awareness. As such, educators can no longer rely on socially and culturally irrelevant curriculum if they are to create meaningful, real-world learning. The approach should be holistic, responding to the mental, physical, and emotional needs of the students.

Several research studies have highlighted the experiences and impact of science teachers who have taken on a more social justice and holistic approach to teaching. These science teachers have demonstrated various components in alignment with the five commitments of the WSP. For example, Mr. Carson, an environmental science teacher, centered local environmental problems in his curriculum. Mr. Carson's students reported feeling more empowered when the instruction took on a more social justice approach ( Dimick 2012). Mr. Carson integrated justice and locally relevant content into his lesson. Another example is Mr. Hall, a science teacher in an urban context, paid attention to students' social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral state in his class with the aim to build relationships with his students ( Milner 2020). According to this science teacher, monitoring and ensuring students' social emotional well-being showed care for his students, which in turn created opportunities for transformative teaching and learning. Mr. Hall went beyond lesson design but demonstrated his commitment to students' social and emotional wellbeing through the ways he noticed and addressed his students' instructional and personal needs.

These teachers demonstrate a commitment to social justice but specifically to their students' social emotional wellbeing and to science as a transformative agent-two key tenets of WSP. Our aim with (W)holistic Science Pedagogy is to provide a framework that centers teachers on science and scientific thinking as a tool of liberation, healing, and social justice. ■

Online Connections

Graphics for the stations can be found at the following websites:

Additional data for stations:

Resources on the climate gap:

Alexis Patterson Williams, PhD, ( adpatterson@ucdavis.edu) is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis in Davis, CA. Salina Gray, PhD, is a middle school science teacher in Moreno Valley Unified School District in Moreno Valley, CA.

References

Bell, L.A. 2016. Theoretical Foundations for Social Justice Education. In Teaching for diversity and social justice, eds. M. Adams and L.A. Bell, 3-26. New York, NY: Routledge.

Dimick, A.S. 2012. Student empowerment in an environmental science classroom: Toward a framework for social justice science education. Science Education 96 (6): 990-1012.

Milner, H.R. 2020. Start where you are, but don't stay there: Understanding diversity, opportunity gaps, and teaching in today's classrooms (2nd edition). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Moses, R.P., and C.E. Cobb. 2001. Radical equations: Math literacy and civil rights. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Patterson, A., and S. Gray. 2019. Teaching to transform: The (W)holistic science pedagogy. Theory into Practice 58 (4): 328-337.

Tate, W. 2001. Science education as a civil right: Urban schools and opportunity-to-learn considerations. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 38 (9): 1015-1028.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Access to quality science and math instruction remains a civil rights and social justice issue as the scientific and technological divide widens ( Tate 2001; Moses and Cobb 2001). Students without access to rigorous science instruction have been and will continue to be left behind.

# data[].attributes.body
An interactive environmental justice database from the Environmental Protection Agency

# data[].attributes.headline
CODAP: A Free Web-Based Student-Centered Tool for Analyzing Data Sets (Concord)

# data[].attributes.subject
CODAP: A Free Web-Based Student-Centered Tool for Analyzing Data Sets (Concord)

# data[].attributes.body
A program (with a learning curve) that could be used throughout the year as a way for students to investigate trends in any data set

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP) - CODAP

# data[].attributes.body
A website that includes videos, teaching strategies, lesson plans, and other resources; note that this site will be updated in the future to focus more specifically on justice-oriented teaching

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Tools for

Ambitious
Science
Teaching

Companion Book available now on Harvard Ed Press

Pressing for evidence- based explanations

Planning for engagement with important science ideas

Supporting on-going changes in thinking

Eliciting students' ideas

What is Ambitious Science Teaching?

Great teaching can be learned. This web site provides a vision of ambitious science instruction for elementary, middle school and high school classrooms. Ambitious teaching deliberately aims to support students of all backgrounds to deeply understand science ideas, participate in the activities of the discipline, and solve authentic problems.

We feature 4 core sets of teaching practices that support these goals. These core sets make up the Ambitious Science Teaching Framework. The framework has been based on classroom research from the past 30 years-research that has asked, "What kinds of talk, tasks, and tools do students need in order to fully engage in meaningful forms of science learning?"

If you are a member of a group of science educators committed to the improvement of teaching, the vision, practices, and tools here will furnish a common language for you about teaching. You will be able to identify "what we will get better at" and how to get started.

Become Part of a Community That Shares a Common Vision of Excellence in Teaching.

Because ambitious science teaching focuses on doing four things really well in the classroom (the core practices), members of our community can speak a common language about how to continually improve instruction and support student learning. We can frame problems together and work towards solutions with help from each other. The expertise of our community comes from our members (teachers, instructional coaches, teacher educators) as well as from extensive empirical classroom research. On this site you can explore how other professionals are using core practices and the tools that go with them.

Explore New Tools That Support Student Learning

This site provides a constantly evolving set of tools to help improve student participation and learning. Some of these tools will help you plan for student engagement with "big" science ideas. Some will help students reason publicly with each other about science ideas. Others will help students engage in scientific modeling, explanation and argument with evidence. Still others will scaffold science-specific writing and talk. We have unique sets of tools for teachers, instructional coaches, and teacher educators.

But here's what is really important about our tools-they belong to the community, meaning that they need to be continually tested under different classroom conditions in order to be improved and diversified.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pressing for evidence- based explanations Planning for engagement with important science ideas Supporting on-going changes in thinking Eliciting students' ideas Great teaching can be learned.

# data[].attributes.headline
Science in the City Website (Bryan A. Brown)

# data[].attributes.subject
Science in the City Website (Bryan A. Brown)

# data[].attributes.body
Collection of resources curated by Dr. Bryan Brown and Stanford University, includes emerging research around justice-oriented practices, lesson plans, and community chats

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The basic concept of the water cycle can be one that is hard for students to connect to larger sociocultural issues. In helping students set a sense of how the water cycle matters to their lives, this lesson uses the issues of The Flint Water Cycle to help students understand how the water cycle is a vital component in providing clean water for everyone. This lesson includes slides, lesson plans, and handouts to be used for instruction. All of the lessons are available in downloadable and accessible in MS Word and Powerpoint formats that you can adjust.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This website is designed to provide a community for teachers and educators to explore resources, exchange ideas and hear about our new research findings.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Joy Report (Intersectional Environmentalist)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Joy Report (Intersectional Environmentalist)

# data[].attributes.body
Podcast and series of stories about positive, equitable actions toward climate solutions and environmental justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Joy Report - Intersectional Environmentalist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On this episode of The Joy Report, we're discussing how environmental justice + liberation can be advanced through cannabis decriminalization, legalization, + intentional investments. We navigate this conversion through storytelling of NYC restorative justice efforts for the cannabis industry and a Black-owned hemp farm creating a blueprint for a more equitable industry.

# data[].attributes.headline
It's Hot Out Here: Teachers Guide (NWEA®)

# data[].attributes.subject
It's Hot Out Here: Teachers Guide (NWEA®)

# data[].attributes.body
Teachers guide for "It's Hot Out Here: Exploring Heat in Our World," a grades 6–8 science unit examining the relationship between heat impacts of climate change and the historical practice of redlining

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teacher Guide: It's Hot Out Here: Exploring Heat in Our World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this unit, students will explore how the historical practice of redlining interacts with the patterns of heat distribution within communities.

# data[].attributes.headline
It's Hot Out Here: Student Guide (NWEA®)

# data[].attributes.subject
It's Hot Out Here: Student Guide (NWEA®)

# data[].attributes.body
Student guide for "It's Hot Out Here: Exploring Heat in Our World," a grades 6–8 science unit examining the relationship between heat impacts of climate change and the historical practice of redlining

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Student Guide: It’s Hot Out Here: Exploring Heat in Our World

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this unit, students will explore how the historical practice of redlining interacts with the patterns of heat distribution within communities.

# data[].attributes.headline
Redlining and Exposure to Urban Heat Islands (Science Museum of Virginia)

# data[].attributes.subject
Redlining and Exposure to Urban Heat Islands (Science Museum of Virginia)

# data[].attributes.body
A map that explores the relationship between environmental factors (eg., average temperature and percentage of impervious surfaces) and sociopolitical factors (eg., historical redlining grade)

# data[].attributes.body
A collection of social justice science phenomenon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
NGSS Through the Macroscope: Social Justice in the Science Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NGSS Through the Macroscope: SocialJustice centered phenomena for the Science classroom. How to incorporate discussions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and more in a Next Generation Science curriculum.

# data[].attributes.headline
Health barriers for girls and women in sport (UK Women and Equalities Committee Report)

# data[].attributes.subject
Health barriers for girls and women in sport (UK Women and Equalities Committee Report)

# data[].attributes.body
A report from a committee of the UK House of Commons documenting inequities in women's athletics, including a specific section on how inequity in soccer cleat design results in increased ACL injuries for women compared to men.

# data[].attributes.body
Short, 14-minute podcast describing how pulse oximeters (a tool used to determine the level of care needed by COVID patients) are not as effective for people of color and what is being done about it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
subscribe to Short Wave podcast

subscribe to Short Wave podcast

During the COVID-19 pandemic, one measurement became more important than almost any other - blood oxygen saturation. It was the one concrete number that doctors could use to judge how severe a case of COVID-19 was and know whether to admit people into the hospital and provide them with supplemental oxygen.

But pulse oximeters, the device most commonly used to measure blood oxygen levels, don't work as well for patients of color.

"There's no doubt in my mind that this has led to people not getting care, not getting timely care, or even being sent home or staying home to die from COVID-19," says Noha Aboelata, a family practice physician at the Roots Community Health Center. Aboelata is a co-author on one of several studies that have shown inaccuracies in the device have led to patients of color not getting timely care.

One group trying to make a better, more equitable device a reality is led by Kimani Toussaint, a physicist at Brown University.

"I was surprised that, you know, in this day and time it was a persistent problem, especially since the pulse oximeter is such a ubiquitous tool for physicians," Toussaint says. "I assumed someone would have addressed this problem."

Inequity kept in the dark

The inaccuracy of pulse oximeters is not a new problem. As early as 1976, scientists at Hewlett-Packard recognized that pulse oximeters needed to be calibrated to different skin tones. "Because skin pigmentation and other absorbers affect the measurement, the method is not capable of making absolute measurements," two scientists wrote in the company's journal at the time.

Despite this, the devices eventually made it to pharmacies, hospitals, and people's medicine cabinets.

"It basically was born out of being tested on a white population," says Usha Lee McFarling, a national science correspondent for STAT, who has covered pulse oximeters extensively. "They were tested in the eighties in a time when there was so little diversity in our clinical trials and testing."

Other scientists began picking up on the discrepancy as early as the 1990s, but it didn't break into the medical mainstream. The few papers on racial bias in pulse oximeters were not reaching medical textbooks or top tier journals.

Doctors were largely unaware that the device that was instrumental in their work was faulty. "This is just ubiquitous in my world. I wouldn't think of taking a pulse or a blood pressure without taking a pulse oximetry in my daily practice," says Dr. E. Jane Carter, a pulmonologist at Brown University.

Carter almost always has an oximeter in her pocket, but after hearing about Toussaint's work and the inequities that lead to it, she wanted to be part of the solution.

"It was just sort of appalling to me that I'd spent 30 years as a pulmonologist using oximetry both in the United States and in sub-Saharan Africa to make decisions and possibly not been making the right decisions for all of my patients," she says.

Despite retiring from most of her work recently, she's committed to one more project: Helping Toussaint design a new oximeter.

Powered - and hindered - by light

The pulse oximeter that most people use is a small device that clips onto a person's finger. The device shines two wavelengths of light into the finger. One wavelength is absorbed by oxygenated blood, and the other is absorbed by deoxygenated blood.

"Then we look at their relative absorption to take the ratio metric measure of how much one gets more absorbed than the other, and use that to estimate the amount of oxygen that is saturated in our blood," Toussaint says.

The oximeter then calculates what percentage of a person's blood has oxygen. But light is also absorbed by melanin, the protein that pigments skin. Because the devices were designed and calibrated using lighter skin tones, the melanin in people with darker skin causes the oximeter to overestimate how much oxygenated blood they have - and to underestimate how severe a case of COVID-19 is.

"Separating out the contribution of melanin, which would overlap with the contributions of oxygen deoxy hemoglobin, that is the challenge," Toussaint says.

But, he's trying a new approach. Instead of calibrating the same infrared technology on a diverse population, Toussaint is focusing on an entirely different property of light.

"We are trying to exploit the polarization or electric field properties of light," Toussaint says. "What we've been exploring is whether or not we can use this to differentiate the deoxy- from oxyhemoglobin - preferably at the same wavelength of light to minimize some of the other challenges of going across the spectrum and having different responses to melanin."

Toussaint is testing his shoebox-sized prototype in a hospital. This is where Carter, the pulmonologist, is lending her clinical knowhow. In practice, pulse oximeters are generally finicky - also thrown off by motion, nail polish, jewelry and placement.

Shedding light on solutions

Even if Toussaint's device works, it will take time to be approved and reach patients' fingers. In the meantime, doctors like Aboelata and Carter are using workarounds.

Aboelata has patients use an oximeter when they are healthy, creating a baseline to compare against when they are sick. But in situations where precise blood oxygen levels are high stakes - like admission to the hospital for treatment or approval for home oxygen to treat emphysema, Carter and Aboelata are turning back to the more difficult arterial blood gas test.

The test requires both a more difficult type of blood draw than most clinicians are used to and for the blood sample to be put into ice and immediately taken to a lab. This means that many clinics like Aboelata's can't even run the test. So if her patients need it she has to send them elsewhere. But, doctors also have to change the way they think of oximeters, she says.

"We'll have to either have a device that we know can be accurate for all skin tones or we'll have to go to another type of a test," she says.

Toussaint is hoping his polarization-based oximeter can be that test, so he can begin testing smaller models and companies can adopt his technology.

He feels the wide importance of his work and says strangers ask him for updates on his work. "That has really hit me - just how much impact that this work could have if it's successful," he says. "That, to me, is exciting. But I do also appreciate that significant responsibility is associated with that."
The audio version of this story was produced by Thomas Lu and edited by Gabriel Spitzer. Neil Tevault was the audio engineer. Rebecca Ramirez edited the digital story. Anil Oza checked the facts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
COVID-19 made pulse oximeters ubiquitous. Engineers are fixing their racial bias : Short Wave

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the COVID-19 pandemic, one measurement became more important than almost any other: blood oxygen saturation. It was the one concrete number that doctors could use to judge how severe a case of COVID-19 was and know whether to admit people into the hospital and provide them with supplemental oxygen.

# data[].attributes.headline
What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race (Freakonomics MD)

# data[].attributes.subject
What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race (Freakonomics MD)

# data[].attributes.body
A 33-minute podcast describing some diagnostics tests (like pulse oximeters) that are less accurate for Black patients, therefore impacting their recommended treatments

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race - Freakonomics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race - Freakonomics

# data[].attributes.body
Series of data interactions and activties exploring the phenomenon of urban heat islands

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story map requires JavaScript, but running JavaScript is not currently allowed by your web browser. If you wish to view this story, please enable JavaScript in this browser or try a different browser.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This story map requires JavaScript, but running JavaScript is not currently allowed by your web browser. If you wish to view this story, please enable JavaScript in this browser or try a different browser.

# data[].attributes.headline
Screening Bias: Breaking Down Barriers for Women in STEM on TV (SXSW Edu 2025)

# data[].attributes.subject
Screening Bias: Breaking Down Barriers for Women in STEM on TV (SXSW Edu 2025)

# data[].attributes.body
60-minute keynote presentation by Emily Calandrelli (Emily's Wonder Lab) from SXSW Edu 2025 on bias in STEM media

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Keynote: Screening Bias: Breaking Down Barriers for Women in STEM on TV | SXSW EDU 2025

# data[].attributes.body
Part of a series of lessons evaluating how COVID-19 affects different groups of people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Daily Do

How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain and Design Solutions to the Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups?

How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain and Design Solutions to the Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups?

Lesson Overview

Middle school students, as scientists, use computational modeling to investigate the spread of COVID-19. Students use a computational model, in combination with other data sources, to argue about the conditions that contributed to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minority groups. Then students use a computational model to design solutions to the problem of disproportionate impact. This lesson requires students to use data collected in the lesson How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain How Different Groups of People Are Affected When COVID-19 Spreads Through a Community? to construct their arguments and make informed design choices.

This lesson is written for student use (e.g., "You will program the model..."). To provide support for students, the lesson includes response spaces and embedded scaffolds. Teachers and families are encouraged to adapt the lesson for their contexts (e.g., using provided guiding questions to facilitate discussions in the classroom or at home).

Daily Do Playlist: Understanding COVID-19 Disparities Using Computational Modeling

How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain and Design Solutions to the Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups? is the third of three lessons in the Understanding COVID-19 Disparities Using Computational Modeling playlist. In this instructional sequence (playlist), students build toward using a computational model to design solutions to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minority groups. While the first two lessons in the playlist can be taught as stand-alone tasks, this third lesson requires students to use data collected in the second playlist lesson, How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain How Different Groups of People Are Affected When COVID-19 Spreads Through a Community?
View Playlist

Materials

*If students are new to the StarLogo Nova programming environment, they are encouraged to complete the from the StarLogo Nova Orientation Task ( Computational Thinking and Modeling NSTA Playlist) prior to engaging in the lessons.

How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain and Design Solutions to the Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups? is the third of three lessons on the Understanding COVID-19 Disparities Using Computational Modeling playlist.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain and Design Solutions to the Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Daily Do How Can Computational Modeling Help Explain and Design Solutions to the Disproportionate Impact of COVID-19 on Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups? Lesson Overview Middle school students, as scientists, use computational modeling to investigate the spread of COVID-19.

# data[].attributes.headline
Evaluating Science-Based Claims (News Literacy Project)

# data[].attributes.subject
Evaluating Science-Based Claims (News Literacy Project)

# data[].attributes.body
60-minute lesson on how to evaluate the credibility of science-based claims in the media

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Evaluating Science-Based Claims | Checkology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn how to recognize science-based claims and evaluate their credibility using the FLOATER method. Consider why people deny science and explore science journalism.

# data[].attributes.headline
Making Sense of Data (News Literacy Project)

# data[].attributes.subject
Making Sense of Data (News Literacy Project)

# data[].attributes.body
60-minute lesson on how to evaluate charts, graphs, and other forms of data present in the media

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Data about the real world is generated and collected in the real world. And when real-world things are measured and calculated by human beings, that data is subject to human imperfections - including flaws in the systems and structures that people use to generate and collect those numbers.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assigning a Dollar Value to Lives Lost Due to Climate Change Impacts (NPR)

# data[].attributes.subject
Assigning a Dollar Value to Lives Lost Due to Climate Change Impacts (NPR)

# data[].attributes.body
Article describing how the EPA calculates the cost of lives lost due to climate change differently depending on the income of the country in which the people lived

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The most powerful climate policy tool available to the federal government is a single number. It's called the social cost of carbon, and it represents the cost to humanity of emitting greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere.

The social cost of carbon adds up all the damage from carbon emissions - the lost crops, flooded homes and lost wages when people can't safely work outside, plus the cost of climate-related deaths. The answer is expressed in dollars.

The current social cost of carbon is $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted.

Most climate experts agree that number is too low. That's a problem because it can make it seem like the costs of climate solutions - such as the immediate price tag for building more public transit or expanding wind energy - outweigh the benefits, when in fact many of the benefits to humanity are simply being underestimated.

The Environmental Protection Agency agrees that $51 is too low, and proposes more than tripling it to $190.

"That is an absolutely enormous improvement," says Tamma Carleton, a climate economist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who is an expert on the social cost of carbon. "We don't have other avenues for large-scale climate policy at the federal level. This is our main tool."

But the new number is also controversial, because of the way that the EPA assesses the value of human lives lost due to climate change.

If you make more money, your life is worth more

A major reason the EPA's new social cost of carbon is higher is because this is the first time the federal government has added to its calculations the cost of climate-related deaths outside America, including in developing and low-lying countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

But the EPA didn't assign the same dollar value to every life. Instead, a life lost in a lower-income country due to climate change is worth less than a life lost in a higher-income country.

The upshot is that the value of a climate-related death in the United States is equal to about 9 deaths in India, or 5 deaths in Ukraine or 55 deaths in Somalia. It also suggests that the life of a person in Qatar is worth almost twice as much as the life of an American.

"It's inherently inequitable to use this kind of approach," says Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water in New Delhi, India and a leading expert on global climate economics. "All lives are equally valuable."

Chaturvedi argues that the EPA's approach is both philosophically and logically wrong, because America's greenhouse gas emissions endanger people everywhere. In fact, the people who live in low-lying and low-income countries are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising seas and extreme weather.

That's true in India, he says, where climate-driven disasters killed an estimated 2,200 people last year, according to the Indian Meteorological Department. "What makes India very vulnerable [to climate change] is that it's still a very low-income economy," says Chaturvedi. For the EPA to assign less value to the lives of the people most affected by greenhouse gas emissions doesn't make sense, he argues.

The EPA does not apply the same method to lives within the U.S. - the agency applies one value to all American lives, regardless of income.

The EPA declined to answer NPR's questions about its method because the proposed social cost of carbon is currently accepting comments from the public. But an FAQ on the EPA's website explains how the EPA conducts what it calls "mortality risk valuation."

"The EPA does not place a dollar value on individual lives," the FAQ explains. "Rather, when conducting a benefit-cost analysis of new environmental policies, the Agency uses estimates of how much people are willing to pay for small reductions in their risks of dying from adverse health conditions that may be caused by environmental pollution."

Daniel Hemel, a law professor who studies how policymakers assign value to lives saved for the purpose of regulations, says the EPA's social cost of carbon does put a dollar amount on human lives. "You'll hear agencies say 'We're not valuing lives.' I don't know, they kind of are. They're deciding how much it's worth it to spend to save a life," he says.

Getting this number right is important for the future of global warming

If you assigned the same value to lives around the world, the social cost of carbon would be much higher - almost double the number the EPA is currently proposing, says Tamma Carleton, who examined this question for a study published last year.

An even higher social cost of carbon would theoretically push the U.S. government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more quickly and dramatically. "We'd end up being more concerned about climate change," explains Hemel.

It's unclear why EPA economists didn't choose this route. Hemel speculates that some policymakers might be concerned about proposing a social cost of carbon that is so high, it appears to require the U.S. to take drastic, and politically unpopular, steps to slash greenhouse gas emissions. For example, banning gas-powered vehicles or eliminating domestic fossil fuel extraction.

Chaturvedi argues that the U.S. is missing an opportunity by not embracing the full value of the lives saved around the world if emissions fall. He says an even higher social cost of carbon could spur the development of new renewable energy technology or even methods to remove carbon from the air, which the U.S. could then export to the rest of the world.

Getting this number right is ethically important

The moral implications of the EPA's approach loom at least as large as the practical and political ones.

"To systematically discount the value of deaths outside the United States is a grave moral mistake," says bioethicist Paul Kelleher of the University of Wisconsin. "It's important to get it right because these are life and death decisions."

An estimated 74 million lives could be saved this century if greenhouse gas emissions are eliminated by 2050, a study published last year suggested.

"Every molecule of carbon dioxide matters." The social cost of carbon, Kelleher says, "will make a difference to who lives, who dies, how good their lives are [and] how bad their deaths are," for decades to come.

Hemel worries about the message that the EPA's approach sends at home.

"I think we send a problematic message to Americans when we use a method for assigning values to lives outside the United States that ends up valuing light-skinned people from the global North more than dark skinned people from the global South," he says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why the EPA puts a higher value on rich lives lost to climate change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The most powerful climate policy tool available to the federal government is a single number. It's called the social cost of carbon, and it represents the cost to humanity of emitting greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere.

# data[].attributes.headline
Urban Pollution Impacts Immunity (Science News Explores)

# data[].attributes.subject
Urban Pollution Impacts Immunity (Science News Explores)

# data[].attributes.body
Article written for students that explains research about how urban pollution causes epigenetic change in people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
allergy: The inappropriate reaction by the body's immune system to a normally harmless substance. Untreated, a particularly severe reaction can lead to death.

annual: Adjective for something that happens every year. (in botany) A plant that lives only one year, so it usually has a showy flower and produces many seeds.

asthma: A disease affecting the body's airways, which are the tubes through which animals breathe. Asthma obstructs these airways through swelling, the production of too much mucus or a tightening of the tubes. As a result, the body can expand to breathe in air, but loses the ability to exhale appropriately. The most common cause of asthma is an allergy. Asthma is a leading cause of hospitalization and the top chronic disease responsible for kids missing school.

atom: The basic unit of a chemical element. Atoms are made up of a dense nucleus that contains positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons. The nucleus is orbited by a cloud of negatively charged electrons.

blood pressure: The force exerted against vessel walls by blood moving through the body. Usually this pressure refers to blood moving specifically through the body's arteries. That pressure allows blood to circulate to our heads and keeps the fluid moving so that it can deliver oxygen to all tissues. Blood pressure can vary based on physical activity and the body's position. High blood pressure can put someone at risk for heart attacks or stroke. Low blood pressure may leave people dizzy, or faint, as the pressure becomes too low to supply enough blood to the brain.

carbon monoxide: A toxic gas whose molecules include one carbon atom and one oxygen atom. (The "mono" in "monoxide" is a prefix from Greek that means "one".) One common source: fossil-fuel burning.

cell: The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of a watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Depending on their size, animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells.

chemical: A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (bond) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H ₂ O. Chemical also can be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds.

cotinine: A breakdown product of the nicotine produced in tobacco leaves. Nicotine doesn't last in the body as long as cotinine. That's why many studies use cotinine as a marker of someone's previous exposure to tobacco smoke or other sources of nicotine.

DNA: (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

e-cigarette: (short for electronic cigarette) Battery-powered device that disperses nicotine and other chemicals as tiny airborne particles that users can inhale. They were originally developed as a safer alternative to cigarettes that users could use as they tried to slowly break their addiction to the nicotine in tobacco products. These devices heat up a flavored liquid until it evaporates, producing vapors. People use these devices are known as vapers.

epigenetic: An adjective that relates to the molecular switches that can turn a gene on or off. Methyl groups - chemical clusters each made of one carbon and three hydrogen atoms - latch onto DNA near a gene. It's these methyl groups that can alter the programmed activity of a gene. Individuals can acquire an epigenetic change at any time during their lives.

gene: (adj. genetic) A segment of DNA that codes, or holds instructions, for a cell's production of a protein. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genes influence how an organism looks and behaves.

genetic: Having to do with chromosomes, DNA and the genes contained within DNA. The field of science dealing with these biological instructions is known as genetics. People who work in this field are geneticists.

gut: An informal term for the gastrointestinal tract, especially the intestines.

high blood pressure: The common term for a medical condition known as hypertension. It puts a strain on blood vessels and the heart.

hydrogen: The lightest element in the universe. As a gas, it is colorless, odorless and highly flammable. It's an integral part of many fuels, fats and chemicals that make up living tissues. It's made of a single proton (which serves as its nucleus) orbited by a single electron.

immune system: The collection of cells and their responses that help the body fight off infections and deal with foreign substances that may provoke allergies.

immunity: The ability of an organism to resist a particular infection or poison by providing cells to remove, kill or disarm the dangerous substance or infectious germ. Or, when used colloquially, it means the ability to avoid some other type of adverse impact (such as firing from a job or being bullied).

immunology: The field of biomedicine that deals with the immune system. A doctor or scientist who works in that field is known as an immunologist.

infection: A disease that can spread from one organism to another. It's usually caused by some type of germ.

inflammation: (adj. inflammatory) The body's response to cellular injury and obesity; it often involves swelling, redness, heat and pain. It also is an underlying feature responsible for the development and aggravation of many diseases, especially heart disease and diabetes.

kidney: Each in a pair of organs in mammals that filters blood and produces urine.

marrow: (in physiology and medicine) Spongy tissue that develops inside of bones. Most red blood cells, infection-fighting white blood cells and blood platelets form within the marrow.

molecule: An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types. For example, the oxygen in the air is made of two oxygen atoms (O ₂), but water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H ₂ O).

monitor: To test, sample or watch something, especially on a regular or ongoing basis.

network: A group of interconnected people or things. (v.) The act of connecting with other people who work in a given area or do similar thing (such as artists, business leaders or medical-support groups), often by going to gatherings where such people would be expected, and then chatting them up. (n. networking)

nicotine: A colorless, oily chemical produced in tobacco and certain other plants. It creates the "buzz" associated with smoking. Highly addictive, nicotine is the substance that makes it hard for smokers to give up their use of cigarettes. The chemical is also a poison, sometimes used as a pesticide to kill insects and even some invasive snakes or frogs.

ozone: A colorless gas made of molecules that contain three oxygen atoms. It can form high in the atmosphere or at ground level. When it forms at Earth's surface, ozone is a pollutant that irritates eyes and lungs. It is also a major ingredient of smog.

pollutant: A substance that taints something - such as the air, water, our bodies or products. Some pollutants are chemicals, such as pesticides. Others may be radiation, including excess heat or light. Even weeds and other invasive species can be considered a type of biological pollution.

regulate: (n. regulation) To control with actions. Governments write rules and regulations - laws - that are enforced by police and the courts.

residue: A remnant or material that is left behind after something has been removed. For instance, residues of paint may remain behind after someone attempts to sand a piece of wood; or sticky residues of adhesive tape may remain on the skin after a bandage is removed; or residues of chemicals may remain in the blood after exposure to a pollutant.

risk: The chance or mathematical likelihood that some bad thing might happen. For instance, exposure to radiation poses a risk of cancer. Or the hazard - or peril - itself. (For instance: Among cancer risks that the people faced were radiation and drinking water tainted with arsenic.)

secondhand smoke: The gas and smoke particles emitted out of the burning end of a cigarette in addition to the particles exhaled by smokers. This pollution can be toxic and hand into the air (where it is available to be breathed in) for hours. Government scientists report that this secondhand smoke may contain up to 7,000 different chemicals, including hundreds that may be toxic (70 of which can cause cancer). According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 1964, some 2.5 million nonsmokers have died from exposure to secondhand smoke.

smoke: Plumes of microscopic particles that float in the air. They can be comprised of anything very small. But the best known types are pollutants created by the incomplete burning of oil, wood and other carbon-based materials.

smoking: A term for the deliberate inhalation of tobacco smoke from burning cigarettes.

stroke: (in biology and medicine) A condition where blood stops flowing to part of the brain or leaks in the brain.

survey: To view, examine, measure or evaluate something, often land or broad aspects of a landscape. (with people) To ask questions that glean data on the opinions, practices (such as dining or sleeping habits), knowledge or skills of a broad range of people. Researchers select the number and types of people questioned in hopes that the answers these individuals give will be representative of others who are their age, belong to the same ethnic group or live in the same region. (n.) The list of questions that will be offered to glean those data.

tobacco: A plant cultivated for its leaves, which many people burn in cigars, cigarettes, and pipes. Tobacco leaves also are sometimes chewed. The main active drug in tobacco leaves is nicotine, a powerful stimulant (and poison).

vaping: (v. to vape) A slang term for the use of e-cigarettes because these devices emit vapor, not smoke. People who do this are referred to as vapers.

white blood cells: Blood cells that help the body fight off infection.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Urban pollution can pose unseen risks to kids' immunity and more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
allergy: The inappropriate reaction by the body's immune system to a normally harmless substance. Untreated, a particularly severe reaction can lead to death. annual: Adjective for something that happens every year. (in botany) A plant that lives only one year, so it usually has a showy flower and produces many seeds.

# data[].attributes.body
An article (~10-minute read) from Daniel Morales-Doyle that describes a justice-oriented science unit and how students responded in an advanced chemistry class in an urban neighborhood

# data[].attributes.headline
More Welcoming Science Classroom (Continuing Educator)

# data[].attributes.subject
More Welcoming Science Classroom (Continuing Educator)

# data[].attributes.body
41-minute podcast discussing how to make science classrooms more equitable and inclusive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Podcast

Description

Kailey & Jacob are joined by two educators and NWEA content specialists who have thought a lot about how to improves student experiences in science. Kim Baker has been at NWEA for 13 years, and Megan Kuehl has been here for eight. We discuss challenging assumptions about the science classroom and unpack the notion that science is inherently impartial.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A more welcoming science classroom, with Megan Kuehl and Kim Baker

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kailey & Jacob are joined by two educators and NWEA content specialists who have thought a lot about how to improves student experiences in science. Kim Baker has been at NWEA for 13 years, and Megan Kuehl has been here for eight.

# data[].attributes.headline
Stick to the Science: When Science gets Political (Nature)

# data[].attributes.subject
Stick to the Science: When Science gets Political (Nature)

# data[].attributes.body
Series of three 30-minute podcasts from Nature describing how science and politics interact

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NATURE PODCAST

A three-part podcast series explores the intimate relationship between politics and science.

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Why does a journal of science need to cover politics? It is a question that Nature often gets asked when we publish articles covering political matters. According to some members of our audience, Nature has no place in political discussions.

But is that true? Well, our new podcast miniseries "Stick to the science" aims to find out. In three parts, we will explore the history, philosophy and reality of science's complicated relationship with politics.

Episode 1: A brief history of politics and science

We look back at the history of the knotty relationship between science, politics and power, and ask how Nature fits in. We speak to historians, political scientists, editorial staff, even philosophers to unpick centuries of connections.
Listen in your podcast player
Episode 2: Politics of the life scientific

Politics is deeply ingrained in scientists' working life. Be it through funding agendas, cultural lobbies or personal bias, politics can shape the game in myriad ways, influencing the direction and quality of research. But what does this mean for the objective ideals of science?
Listen in your podcast player
Episode 3: Talking politics, talking science

What role do journalists, science communicators and policymakers have in influencing how science is perceived? We discuss the danger of politicization in an increasingly divisive political landscape, and ask whether science can ever be part of the political narrative without compromising its values.
Listen in your podcast player
If you have thoughts on this series, we'd love to hear them. There's a quick survey that you can fill out here.

Thanks for listening.

Transcript - Episode 1: A brief history of politics and science

Social media quote
Your devisive political ponderings are irrelevant. Stick to the science.

[Music]
Host: Nick Howe
Nature received this comment on Facebook after we published a story about the damage Donald Trump has done to science. Why am I sharing it with you? Well, I want to know if they're right.
Quotes
Science and politics benefit from the perception that science is objective and separate.

Psychologists, and sociologists and historians will argue over how possible it is to completely remove yourself from that.

Saying that the two spheres should be separate I think misses the point.

Science is pure right? But, the more you get into the complex, value-laden problems of politics, the less it's true.
Host: Nick Howe
I'm Nick Howe, and welcome to "Stick to the science" a miniseries in which I'm going to explore the relationship between science and politics. And ask where does Nature fit in?

Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper

Nature as a whole has an important role to play in that interface.[Music]
Host: Nick Howe
Now you might still be wondering why I'm talking to you about this. It seems that many of our readers think that this is a done deal - science and politics should be kept separate, and vice versa. So why talk about it? Well, the thing is, is that Nature does discuss politics, and that isn't an accident - it is a very considered choice which we believe is the right one. And yet, when we cover things people deem 'politics' we tend to get quite a strong response - and we can't just ignore that.

After-all, science and politics are not exactly easy bed-fellows.

Interviewee: Anna Jay

I'm Anna Jay, and I'm a chief editor for digital engagement for Nature magazine.
Host: Nick Howe
As the holder of the keys to Nature's social feed, Anna is a bit like Nature 's front line when our readers have opinions - and she is well versed in the politics problem.

Interviewee: Anna Jay

So a lot of the responses that we see take place on social media and social media is its own special kind of ecosystem, where you get all kinds of people saying all kinds of things. So whenever we cover anything that touches on politics in some way, we're primed to expect a special kind of response. They kind of fall into various categories.

They're people who disagree with the politics of a particular individual or party or something along those lines, if it's an overtly political piece of content.
Social media quote
Stay out of politics, Trump 2020.

Interviewee: Anna Jay

And the other side that we often get is something in the lines of ' Nature is a science publication, why you straying into this territory? And science is not political, science is fact.
Social media quote
Keep opinions out of a science page. This page should be about studies with empirical data!

Interviewee: Anna Jay

One of the things I think is particularly important, is being able to have empathy for your readers. And that's definitely been helpful way to think about things, when we're about to publish something to just step back and read it from someone else's position. But we can't test everything with everyone. That doesn't happen until we hit publish, and it goes out into the world. And we get the response. We've had missteps in the past but we try and learn from them and we try to make sure that whenever we are covering things, we're covering them for the most important angle that's the most appropriate for the scientific community that we're serving.

Host: Nick Howe

In this episode I am going to focus in on one of these assertions. The idea that politics isn't Nature 's territory - that as a science publication political matters are simply not in scope.
Social media quotes
Stick with your nature thing, politics not your forte.

That moment, when Academia and scientific publishers become political.

Politics should not feature in Nature's aims and scope.

Host: Nick Howe

Nature is often accused of changing its approach on politics - of bowing to some new political pressure - of striving to be 'woke'.

But dig into Nature's archive, and the fact of the matter is that from it's very beginning Nature has had a close relationship with politics.
Voice of Nature: Jen Musgreave
Nature, volume 1, Thursday November 4 th 1869

Science Teaching in Schools

The claims of Physical Science, on à priori grounds, to a fair place in the course of school work, have been abundantly vindicated, and are, I suppose, established...
Voice of Nature: Jen Musgreave
Host: Nick Howe

This is an article from the very first edition of Nature, promoting, in typical Victorian vernacular, the idea that science should be taught at schools. With 150 years of hindsight that perhaps doesn't sound very contentious, but this was before there was any large scale-state education in the UK and existing schools were stratified by social class. In the following year, in an Editorial, Nature went further, promoting scientific education for women.

Nature, volume 2, Thursday June 16 th 1870

The Scientific Education of Women

The feature which will probably most clearly mark the year 1869 in the view of the future historian of education, will be the definite recognition of the rights of woman to all the advantages of education accorded to men...

Host: Nick Howe

Over the first 10 years Nature 's editor, Norman Lockyer, wrote around 65 editorials campaigning on political topics from: research endowments, scientific reform, the rise of German science, and education.

This type of political content was enthusiastically followed up by Nature's second editor Sir Richard Gregory. Politics was absolutely Nature 's arena. That is until, perhaps surprisingly, World War II.

Interviewee: Melinda Baldwin

The Second World War, interestingly, has a pretty unexpected impact on the way that Nature talks about politics

Host: Nick Howe

This is Melinda Baldwin, a historian of scientific publications, who very literally wrote the book on Nature.

Interviewee: Melinda Baldwin

So in 1939, right before the start of the Second World War, Nature gets two new editors, Sir Richard Gregory retires, and his former assistants, AJV Gale, and Jack Brimble, become co-editors of Nature. And so almost immediately, Brimble and Gale are thrown into the crucible of having to publish Nature during the war. So London is being bombed, there are paper shortages. And so they're just kind of constantly running Nature in crisis mode.

Host: Nick Howe

This would be the start of Nature 's one and only, apolitical phase.

Interviewee: Melinda Baldwin

They start supporting an editorial regime that tends not to take political stances. And I think it's because they learned to run Nature in this crisis mode, that they just don't have the time to court and manage the kind of controversy that Lockyer and Gregory had sought out and supported.

Host: Nick Howe

Whether out of resource strapped necessity or editorial providence, Gale and Brimble's apolitical stance continued for almost thirty years. Until 1966.

Interviewee: Melinda Baldwin

When John Maddox comes into the into the editor's chair. Maddox is a physicist, he comes from a journalist's background. And Maddox really sees an opportunity to shake things up at Nature, and make it exciting to read again, and he wants to do that in a couple of ways. First off, he wants to recruit the most exciting scientific papers to Nature, that are going to create a stir, that are going to attract interest that are going to attract subscribers. And he also really wants to enliven the news sections and get them taking stances again. So Maddox actively courts the kind interest in controversy that Brimble and Gale avoided.

Host: Nick Howe

Now this appetite for controversy certainly wasn't shared by all of Maddox's successors. But Nature never resumed the apolitical stance of the mid-20 th Century. Right up, to today. Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper

When science is threatened by politics we will stand up for science and scientists.

Host: Nick Howe

This is Magdalena Skipper, Nature 's current editor-in-chief.

Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper

Nature is a journal of science of research, first and foremost. As such, it doesn't have a specific a specific political allegiance or a political agenda. But we do talk politics, we do cover politics, when politics affects research only in the context of research. If politics and politicians, curb scientific autonomy, let's say, unduly influence its direction, and remove their support of experts or expertise, or maybe thwart global collaborations. Science itself suffers. And, and it's at times like this, that Nature needs to stand up for science, for the experts.

Host: Nick Howe

This stance goes all the way back to Nature 's mission statement, which has broadly remained the same for the past 151 years.
Voice of Nature: Jen Musgreave
Voice of Nature: Jen Musgreave

First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life.

Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper

There's a bit in the mission statement where it speaks to us offering a forum for a discussion of issues that are pertaining to science. And so that's exactly what policy is, and of course, arguably now more than ever, we talk about why science and research and discoveries including medical research are so relevant for policymaking. And why policymaking has to be evidence based. And of course, that evidence is provided by science. So absolutely, we don't just talk about research itself and the outcome of research as an an activity. We talk about the implications. So these are all issues which are immediately adjacent to science as an activity. But nevertheless, in my view, inseparable.
Quotes
Nature, volume 586, Tuesday 6 th October 2020.

Why Nature needs to cover politics now more than ever.

Science and politics are inseparable - and Nature will be publishing more politics news, comment and primary research in the coming weeks and months...

Host: Nick Howe

With a few exceptions, Nature has always been involved in the political debate and has reported on politics. From Nature's perspective, it is nothing new, and it remains as much a part of our editorial goals as ever. But, of course, that is only one part of this puzzle. For many of you, whether Nature or not covers politics really isn't the question - instead, the real question is, should it? When does politics become relevant to science?That's coming up next.

[Music]

Historians of science tend to reject the argument that science is apolitical.

So was there a connection between science and politics? There was an intimate connection.

Politics shapes science in a whole bunch of ways, right?I don't believe that science exists in a vacuum.

The assumption that they are separate is not I think a helpful one.
Social media quotes
[Music]

Host: Nick Howe

For the rest of this episode I am going to focus on one idea. Separation. The idea that science and scientific institutions are fundamentally separate from politics and political institutions. And furthermore, that there should be a divide - the proverbial church and state.To the heart of this, again, I am going to start by looking back. Here's Steven Shapin, a historian of science from Harvard University in the US.

Interviewee: Steven Shapin

I think the ideal in terms of deep historical past probably comes from the idea of religious separation from the world as a way of producing authentic and valuable knowledge. And here, it's very important to bear in mind that the first universities, are religious institutions, the cloisters of Oxford, and Cambridge are cloisters. So they're a visible reminder of that separation from the world. So it's an ideal.

Host: Nick Howe This separation ideal comes up a lot when Nature covers politics.

My bad, I was always under the impression science was about the discovery of truth. Didn't understand it was about politically corrected truth. Sad.

Science is objective and evidence-based. The scientist doesn't matter as much as the evidence they present.

Host: Nick Howe

But according to Steven, the idea that science and politics were separate throughout history is murky at best - for him - even the concept of what a government or a state is, is inseparable from science.

Interviewee: Steven Shapin

You think of things like maps, think of things like statistics, how many people, what kinds of people, what diseases and they suffer from? What do they die from? This is what it is to be a state. And it's also what it is to do science.

Host: Nick Howe

And Steven is not alone in his position. Here is David Edgerton, a historian from King's College London.

Interviewee: David Edgerton

The assumption that they are separate is not I think a helpful one. Now, of course, I'm not saying science and policy, academic research and policy are the same thing, clearly they are not. But the assumption that there is this thing called science which is independent from but sometimes interacts with politics or policy is more wrong. We need to recognize that I mean, going back to the very beginnings of modern science, as it comes to be called, the connections between this particular kind of knowledge and the state are intimate.

Interviewee: Steven Shapin

You know the expression that scientists are on tap, but not one top? They're on tap for centuries. One of the major sources of both problems and support for scientific inquiry in the early modern period in Britain is the Admiralty. And this absorbs enormous amounts of science. And it's Samuel Pepys, the diarist who is also Clerk of the Admiralty in the seventeenth-century, and he is at the time president of the Royal Society. His name is on the title page of the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Isaac Newton. So that relationship was intimate.

Host: Nick Howe This continues across the world right up to the twentieth-century.
Quotes
Interviewee: Steven Shapin

So the Manhattan Project, which is probably the greatest technoscientific project of the twentieth-century, happens within government. It's not a question of relationship between politics and science. Science is happening within the state, within the political structure of the state.

Host: Nick Howe

And yet, despite centuries of documented intimacy between science and state, the ideal of clean separation persists. Why?

Well, perhaps the answers lies in the word 'should'. It isn't about what actually happens, it is about what should happen. But who decides what science's relationship with politics should be? Many of the comments we receive talk about the 'fact' that science is objective and so science 'shouldn't' talk politics because politics is not objective. But what 'science is' well that's a slippery thing when you try and pin it down. How do you define science? That's coming up.
Quotes
[Music]

Oh, my God, all our certainties have completely crumbled.

To cut a long story short, the term 'science' has got a kind of a robust but problematic meaning at present.

You have to kind of agree by particular rules of behaviour. You might sign up to particular philosophies, for example pursuit of truth.

Host: Nick Howe

While reporting this series - I've spoken to a lot of people - researchers, journalists, political scientists, historians, policy experts - and I've asked them what science is. And across the board, well you get answers like this:

Well.. that's.. that's kind of a big question.

I ermm.. well... what is science?

So answering the question of what is science is particularly challenging.

Maybe you're saying science is what scientists do, but that then invites the question of 'what is a scientist?'

Host: Nick Howe When people can't even agree on what something even is - I thought it best to turn to a specialist, someone who's thought a lot about this sort of question. A philosopher.

Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio

So I do pose this question at the beginning of my courses to my first year students, and of course, they all have a very clear cut opinionated view of what is science. And by the end of the course, they are all like, 'Oh, my God, all our certainties have completely crumbled.'

Host: Nick Howe

This is Chiara Ambrosio, a philosopher and historian of science. This problem of 'what is science' is known in philosophy as the demarcation problem - how do you find the edge of where science begins and ends? There isn't a really clearly agreed upon answer, but many think that in practice 'you'll know science when you see it'. This is based on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio

So Wittgenstein would say, think about the word 'game', it's really hard to define what counts as a game, you've got very different kinds of games, you know, card games, bowl games, table games, and we know when we're playing a game whilst we're playing it. And we sort of work out the rules of the game. And of course, we can establish family resemblances between different kinds of games without reducing the one to the other. And this kind of idea has been sort of adopted into current attempts at defining science.

Host: Nick Howe

Regardless of science's fluid definition, there are some core concepts. Namely, objectivity and empiricism.

Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio

They are absolutely crucial they are, I would never dare to deny that.

Host: Nick Howe

The problem is that both objectivity and empiricism become somewhat unobtainable when we consider humans are performing science. It's impossible for humans to be completely objective, we are fallible creatures. And as for empiricism, - well that is another word with a tricky definition. It's got a long history and has meant different things to different people at different times.

Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio

So then you need to go one step down, and you need to think about why is it that scientists are actually investing so much in objectivity, and I think it's more about a matter of accountability. It's a matter of transparency, it is a matter of, again, like responding to a social context that requires accountable explanations, and accountable modeling practices, for example. And I think that's where negotiating what is the best way to decide which values we pursue as a scientific community becomes very, very important

Host: Nick Howe

In science there is a process that aspires to objectivity and empiricism - often referred as the scientific method. This allows scientists to be transparent and say 'this is what our best understanding of this is, and this is why we think that'. It's then there for other scientists to probe and challenge.

The process though, is inseparable from the institutions and people who are a part of it.

Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio

Even just how even just the architecture of a building somehow affects the kind of science that is carried out in that building.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy
Host: Nick Howe

It's difficult to characterise science without including the people and places where it is done. But those people and places exist in society, which is shaped by politics and so, by extension, is science.

Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio

Scientists are not just these neutral characters that kind of levitate like ghosts in the corridor of scientific institutions, they're actually like human beings with their own political convictions with their own political ideas. And however objective you will try to be, of course, you will not even start the research program, if you don't sort of believe in what that means to you from a political as well as from a scientific point of view.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy
Host: Nick Howe

We aren't going to get to the bottom of what science is in this podcast. But let's just say that when I say science I mean all of it - the whole system - from the objective ideals of empiricism right the way through to the fallible squishy scientists talking about their experiments down the pub.But asking what we mean when we say science is only half the picture here - we also have to ask what is politics? And again that is a slippery thing to define, but after talking to some political scientists there does seem to be a very broad definition that they agree on. Here's Shobita Parthasarathy, a researcher of science and policy at the University of Michigan - you're going to hear a lot from Shobita throughout this series.

So politics, generally speaking, is really about power. And it's about power dynamics, relationships of power. And when we think about it in the context of decision making, then we're really talking about people who are maneuvering in order to gain power or maintain it, sometimes also exert it, reinforce it. And often, they're doing that on the basis of their particular interests. We talked about interest, whether their economic interests or political interests, and sometimes they're just really about the differences in values.

Host: Nick Howe

Now, it would be impossible to argue that there aren't power-dynamics within the world of science - just check out any lab meeting that's going on. But there is still something about empiricism and objectivity which sticks to science, which gives it a separate identity.

And that identity has been used to argue that science should have some, at least perceived, objective independence from everything else - by which I mean 'politics'. Here's Shobita again.

Science and politics benefit from the perception that science is objective, and separate. Because that means that politicians can say, science agrees with me, this objective evidence, this objective knowledge is on my side, right. And that's distance. And so therefore, I am more authoritative in my decision for that reason. And you see that early on in the COVID crisis, for example, Boris Johnson was often using that kind of language, right, so performs that sort of function. And by the same token, science also benefits from appearing objective, because it appears authoritative.

Host: Nick Howe
Host: Nick Howe
And in recent history the value of this perception has been demonstrated by the way scientists wanted state funding to work. Here's science historian and science communication researcher, Bruce Lewenstein.

Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein

So coming out of World War II scientists were making a rhetorical argument that science should be independent of politics. And they were doing that partly because they believe there to be an overlap in the ideals of science and what was seen as the winning side of the war, the western democracies that won the war. But partly because, as with any group, they wanted to protect their funding, they wanted to have control of their funding. There was a lot of pushback from legislators, but it took five years to produce what's now called the National Science Foundation. And much of that time was the dispute over who would control the funding.
Interviewee: Steven Shapin
Host: Nick Howe

In the end, there was a compromise, the NSF became sort of quasi-independent. Independent scientists decide what is funded, but the President still appoints the board. Around the world, similar compromises of varying degrees were made and organisations like that of the National Science Foundation in the US sprung up, think about the research councils in the UK or the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in India. These agencies act as intermediaries - helping to direct state funding. But the compromises they were founded upon and the fact the government is giving them the money is a big stumbling block for independent science.

[Music]

As much as researcher's may want independence from political systems - as much as they may seek separation - they are people. People that need to get on in the world, and people that need to make a living - and when money is involved, well, that's a whole other episode. Next time.

Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein

Science would like to be independent. Scientists like the argument that they are independent of politics. And yet, insofar as their funding comes through political processes, they are fundamentally... I mean, it's just it's inescapable that science and politics are intertwined. If your funding comes through the political system.

As they say, in Scotland, 'Who pays the Piper calls the tune."

[Music]

Host: Nick Howe This episode was produced by me Nick Howe, with editing from Noah Baker and Benjamin Thompson. It featured contributions from many people including Shobita Parthasarathy, Alice Bell, Dan Sarewitz, Anna Jay, Melinda Baldwin, Magdalena Skipper, Steven Shapin, David Edgerton, Deborah Blum, Bruce Lewenstein and Chiara Ambrosio. Quotes from social media were read by: Shamini Bundell, Flora Graham, Dan Fox, Edie Edmundson and Bredan Maher. And excerpts from Nature were read by Jen Musgreave. Thanks for listening.

Transcript - Episode 2: Politics of the life scientific

Interviewee: Mayana Zatz

The funding for research is going down every year.
Host: Nick Howe
This is Mayana Zatz, a geneticist based in São Paulo, Brazil.

Interviewee: Mayana Zatz

São Paulo state, is responsible for 40% of the publications in Brazil. And very recently, there is a proposal, a bill, that want to reduce the funding.
Host: Nick Howe
And what do you think will be the effects if this bill did pass?

Interviewee: Mayana Zatz

Certainly, it won't have any approval of new projects during probably the next two more years. I am afraid that many scholarships could be interrupted. We have young scientists that are brilliant, and they are going away, because they are trying to have better conditions to research.

[Music]
Host: Nick Howe
I'm Nick Howe and welcome to "Stick to the science". This is the second in a three-part series Nature is making about science and politics. Last time, we looked to the past, exploring the intertwined history of science and politics. But in this episode, we're focusing on today. If you are a scientist working right now, what role does politics play in your work, your research, and your life?

After all, scientists are human.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy
They're equally part of society and politics.

Host: Nick Howe

This is Shobita Parthasarathywho you might remember from the last episode, she's a researcher of science and policy.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy
Politics shapes science in a whole bunch of ways, right? It really affects everything in the lab, and we don't necessarily think about it. So, for example, governments have funding priorities. And so, whether it's the government doing the funding, or research councils, charities, universities, companies, there's some sort of interests and so influence and power dynamic. And so you're going to have politics.
Host: Nick Howe
To put it bluntly, money makes things messy. But it is important. In fact, funding is so important to the every-day life of a scientists that I am going to dedicate the best part of this episode to it. The fact is that if you want to get on in the world of science today in almost all cases you need funding but with funding comes a lot of well, politics.

Let's get back to Mayana Zatz - the Brazilian geneticist we heard from at the start of this episode. Back on the 13th of August - a bill was introduced by the Brazilian government which is seeking to reallocate research funds from São Paulo state, to fill a shortfall in the government's budget that has been caused by the COVID response. According to Mayana, this bill stands to decimate Brazilian research.

Interviewee: Mayana Zatz

If we don't have the money, we have to restrict our questions. We won't be able to address all the questions we want. And certainly, then the quality of the research won't be the same.

Mayana isn't just worried about her paychecks, she is worried about how this bill could impact every aspect of her and her colleagues' research - from the quality of their analyses down to the core questions they are even able to ask.

Interviewee: Mayana Zatz

And so if this bill is approved, it would be a big problem, a big loss for our research in São Paulo. So that's something that we are really worried about because when I was talking about this concern that we have now, people said well, but if you don't have money for São Paulo, are you going to have more federal funds? I said, Well, just the other way around. San Paolo was the place where I could continue to research despite the big cutting inference from federal funds.
Host: Nick Howe
Political decisions about funding can make or break scientist's careers. Mayana is worried about the security of Brazilian science full stop, but the impact of funding isn't always that extreme, sometimes it is more a case of influence. Take governments, for example.

Interviewee: Shobita Parasarathy

They'll say, 'we wanna fund the Human Genome Project or the Brain Initiative', right. So there's that level of kind of priority setting. Or you just have the structure of, for example, in the United States, the National Institutes of Health has separate institutes. And so they're gonna fund in a particular sort of way, projects that each of those institute's care about
Host: Nick Howe
And sometimes these priorities aren't just about the scientific or academic interests of an institution - sometimes funding goals are explicitly political. Here's Michael Erard a funding strategist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Interviewee: Michael Erard

You know, right now, in the European Union, we're waiting for the relaunch of EU's big set of funding priorities, which will be called Horizon Europe, and will provide something like 94 billion Euro of funding over seven years. And I was actually at a presentation last week, where someone was previewing all of these new themes and missions and quite a lot of them are, like highly political in nature. So making Europe competitive in, in technology, say, but there's also areas of Europe that are that are underdeveloped. And there's a correlation between the development status of these areas, and the resurgence of certain populist and nationalist political sentiments. And so there's some attention that's paid to how funding from the EU might stimulate some innovation, and some business in those areas to try to counter or neutralize some of those political sentiments.
Host: Nick Howe
The situation is broadly similar in the United States too, here's Peg AtKisson, she runs a consulting firm that helps scientists and institutions write grants for funding in the US.
Interviewee: Peg AtKisson
Every federal agency in the United States were created by political entities, because these are taxpayer dollars that go into funding this research at that level. So it's had an impact from the earliest days and even in the 70s, after the National Science Foundation was fairly well established there started to be rumbles from Congress about 'What are we doing here?', 'Where are we spending this money?,' 'What is the national interest?'
Host: Nick Howe
So what happens if your research interests don't align with the specific priorities of the funders - after all they hold the keys to the bank. What power does a researcher have to ask independent questions?

[Music]

Host: Nick Howe

Like it or not many scientists seem to follow the old adage: if you can't beat them, join them. If you want the money, you have to play the game - in other words, you gave to get political. And you can see that in their grants.
Interviewee: Peg AtKisson
For quite a while, people did not use the words 'climate change'. The phrase that was often substituted was 'geochemical cycling' or 'biogeochemical cycling'. That, you know, basically speaks to all the things that happen related to climate change without that trigger word, getting anyone's attention. And they started doing that, because one of our congress members started digging into any grant that said climate change. So framing can sometimes be a way around studying politically hot issues without showing that that's what you're doing. On the other hand, I've had some people I worked with, discuss their potential idea with a program officer and literally get told, that's a great idea. I cannot fund it in the current political climate.
Host: Nick Howe
The way you word your grants matters, because politics matters - and it doesn't take much for an errant phrase to be amplified into a political headline.
Interviewee: Susannah Gal
I remember when I was at the NSF, there was a big uproar about a particular study, that the big terminology was 'shrimps on a treadmill'.
Host: Nick Howe
This is Susannah Gal, a former program officer for the National Science Foundation.
Interviewee: Susannah Gal
And people were very upset, because they couldn't see the value of the science that was given - why would you want to put shrimp on a treadmill? There was a lot of concern about what the politics or the framing body was seeing as a value for that research based on this assessment of why would you want to study that.
Host: Nick Howe
To be clear the study wasn't just about shrimps on a treadmill, it was about their responses to water quality, which can be important for things like aquaculture - farming fish. But nonetheless it was used by Republican senator Tom Coburn to point to wasteful government spending.

This sort of thing can have a real impact on research, scientists can become worried about how their research is perceived. This is in no small part why consultants like Peg exist.
Interviewee: Peg AtKisson
I will ask people to shift language in the abstract so that they do not become targets later or so that the program officers don't have to ask them later. Like I try to help my clients become a little bit more savvy about what is the political landscape in which they're asking for grant funding.
Host: Nick Howe
Scientists and funders have been playing this game for a long time, and to some extent it makes sense. Often taxpayers are the ones funding research, and so the argument is made that their elected representatives should stand up for the priorities of the electorate when divvying up those funds.

And sometimes funding politics has nothing of do with biased institutions it is just a competition between scientists, and scientists can play dirty too. It would be naïve to think that the best funded labs are always the ones which do the "best research". Sometimes the most well-funded labs are simply the ones that know how to write the best grants - the ones who know how to play politics.

But there are times where no amount of creative grant writing and savvy competitiveness can help - situations in which avenues of research are just plain shut down - closed off by politics, and power, beyond the reach of even the most wily of scientists. More on that, coming up.

[Music]
Quotes
So it had the classic sort of chilling effect, where they were reluctant to fund any sort of research.

They decided that they would shut the science down.

[Music]
Host: Nick Howe
Back in 1996 a piece of legislation was added to the US spending bill as it went through congress. It became known as the Dickey Amendment.

Interviewee: Allen Rostron

And the amendment said that the money that was allocated to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, it said that they can't use that money to advocate for gun control.
Host: Nick Howe
This is legal scholar Allen Rostron, who used to work for a gun control advocacy.

Interviewee: Allen Rostron

You could interpret that narrowly as meaning you can't fund research to write articles that are basically political propaganda or political advocacy. You can't have funded articles that are specifically saying we should enact this piece of legislation. Almost like lobbying on behalf of a particular piece of legislation, that would be the narrow interpretation of it. But it is somewhat ambiguous about where exactly it would cross the line into advocating for gun control.
Host: Nick Howe
From the perspective of the CDC though, it was quite clear what this meant.

Interviewee: Mark Rosenberg

This was a shot across the bow.
Host: Nick Howe
This is Mark Rosenberg. He was director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which oversaw gun violence research, when the Dickey Amendment was introduced.

Interviewee: Mark Rosenberg

They also took away all the money that we were using to do the gun violence prevention research. And this sent a clear message to the community, that this is not a good area to do research in, it's not a good area to base your scientific career in, because there won't be any government funding for it.

Host: Nick Howe

This is a bit different from saying: we don't think your area of study is a priority. The implication, as far as researchers were concerned, is that the research is only a priority if it concludes what we want it to. In fact, according to Mark, the National Rifle Association, the NRA, who had lobbied for the amendment, were quite explicit about this.

Interviewee: Mark Rosenberg

It was a very direct threat, because they said, if you do gun violence prevention research, whether you do it at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, or whether you give grants to academic researchers to do it, we can make your life miserable. We will write a congressional letter of inquiry. And we will say in the letter that you were promoting and advocating gun control, basically, that you're lobbying for gun control. Well the CDC, we never lobbied, that was against the law. And so they knew that the letter would be baseless, but it could take weeks or months to respond. And if you're an academic it could take weeks or months to answer those charges.
Host: Nick Howe
The NRA kept a sustained pressure on congress meaning that, as of 1996, research into gun violence funded by the CDC was... just gone. This was later extended to the National Institutes of Health, too. And whilst the amendment didn't technically ban research, the agencies steered clear over worries about backlash. Even when the Obama administration effectively told the CDC to not regard the Dickey Amendment as a ban on research in 2012.

Interviewee: Allen Rostron

You know, you're somebody who works for the CDC or the NIH, and you're in charge of allocating this money, you might err on the side of caution of not wanting to get in trouble with really powerful forces, like people in Congress, or interest groups like the NRA, you don't want to offend them, and then have there be a backlash. And then suddenly, they're you know, they're cutting funding and that sort of thing.
Host: Nick Howe
This uneasy standoff continued until 2018 when several horrific shooting incidents compelled Congress to finally clarify the Dickey Amendment. Although they didn't get rid of it, they did say that the CDC has the authority to carry out research on the causes of gun violence.

Interviewee: Allen Rostron

So a year after they made that change, Congress did allocate $25 million for the CDC and the NIH. And it was the first time in, you know, more than 20 years that there had been any funding through these institutions for research on gun violence. So it remains to be seen if that will become a regular thing, if Congress will continue to give money or increase it in the future, but at least for that year, they did allocate $25 million. So that was seen as a pretty significant step forward on this.
Host: Nick Howe
Power and politics permeate the professional life of a scientist. Even before you get into the lab - politics is shaping the game - and it has been for decades. But as influential as all of that is, let's put it aside for a moment. Imagine yourself in the lab - you have an idea, you want to ask a question and you have the funds to do so - it is just you and the science - pure and simple - objective and empirical. Finally, the politics stops. Right?[Music]
Quotes
Scientists aren't often that great at looking at political problems, because they like to see themselves as above such things.

In fact, science is actually of society, it reflects our perspectives, our identities, our values, our biases, our assumptions.

[Music]
Host: Nick Howe
I've talked a lot about politics and power at a large scale. Active interference by institutions, deliberate attempts to influence and tailor science to meet a particular agenda, and how science can come second to political motivations. But it isn't just institutions that can have agendas. Scientists can too and they are often much less visible - in fact sometimes people don't even know they have them. Here's Alice Bell, a researcher of science policy.

Interviewee: Alice Bell

Scientists like to construct an identity of themselves, which I think is often very positive, and helps them do scientific work as standing outside of what they might dub a political realm. I think it's a useful ideal. I think it can get damaging when people kid themselves into thinking that they've done it when they haven't. And one thing you see a lot of, a lot of controversies coming up when people say things like, 'we're scientists, we don't see race'. And people go, no, you're being massively racist, because you're not seeing racism, or you're not seeing sexism that is already embedded in your working culture.
Host: Nick Howe
The ways in which political issues in society are translated into science has become a really hot button topic, especially in recent years. And as the extent of structural inequity in society becomes more visible, it is inevitable that people start to turn that lens to science. Here's Shobita again.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy
Why is it that we tend to answer questions, for example, using genetics and molecular biology techniques, for example? Right? Well, that has to do with the trends in particular fields. And it has to do with the kinds of questions that get asked by people who are leaders in that field and the leaders in the field are sort of setting the terrain for, for what are the important questions and what are the important issues.
Host: Nick Howe
The direction of research is influenced by powerful people, but not all people have access to power. Many studies demonstrate that on many levels societies exhibits systemic inequity. And in science, the result of this is that the people leading the way are by and large a pretty homogenous group - old white dudes. And that can influence the output of research. Take technology for example.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy
There's this assumption that technology is morally neutral. Or often people go beyond that and say that technology by and large, is good, it's beneficial. And the problem with that is that because society, because power, because politics shapes the technology, then the technology actually reflects that the society and the power and the politics and because we know societies are structurally unequal, they have biases embedded in them, then it's not surprising that we see lots of technologies that reflect those biases and reflect those inequalities. An example that I often give is the spirometer. So, the spirometer is used to measure lung function, and when it was built, it was built with the assumption that black people were weaker. And so they're actually embedded in the technology is race correction software. So you flip a switch, and it sort of corrects for, you know, if you're non-white. And the assumption is that, you know, as I said, non-white people have weaker lungs. And not only is that incorrect, it's still in use today.
Host: Nick Howe
Inequity like this is born out all over science. For example, a 2011 a study showed that Black researchers were 10% less likely to receive funding from the US National Institutes of Health than their white counterparts - even after controlling for educational background, publication record, country of origin etc. A later study suggested this might in part be due to the topics that Black researchers choose to research, in essence the type of questions that Black researchers wanted to ask were not as valued by the predominantly white decision makers. And similar trends can be seen for other researchers of colour.

The same can be said for attainment - according to the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency, while 3.3% of the UK population is Black, only around 1.9% of academic staff are Black, and when you look at more senior roles many more white people fill those roles, while no Black people do.

Whatever the reason, this variation exists across the world, and it has been widely documented that this impacts research. Most clinical trial participants are white, most study animals tend to be male. These may not be deliberate discrimination - often they are pragmatic decisions made out of convenience, but they serve as a reflection of those carrying out the research. And a biased sample biases the experiment.

[Music]

Host: Nick Howe There may be a tendency for scientists to see themselves in a professional capacity as separate from mainstream society. To see their reasoning immune to systemic problems - to regard their analyses as apolitical. After all science is about objective empiricism - and society, and the inequity, politics and power that comes with it, is anything but. But what if by separating science from society, researchers are excluding key variables. What if they are not, in fact, protecting themselves, or science after all?
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy
And if we can think about that more carefully, and also, as scientists be a little bit more reflective about it, then we can actually start to think about the systems that shape this kind of these kinds of decisions, and then do a better job, I think, of actually addressing the things that most of us do want to address these kinds of biases and structural inequalities. But if we assume that they're not there, then we tend to locate the politics in the individual or the bias in the individual, but by and large, the folks that might be producing technologies that we find problematic or saying things that we see as problematic. They're actually part of systems. And we don't understand that enough.

[Music]
Host: Nick Howe
This episode was produced by me Nick Howe, with editing from Noah Baker and Benjamin Thompson. it featured contributions from many people, including: Mayana Zatz, Shobita Parthasarathy, Michael Erard, Peg AtKisson, Susannah Gal, Allen Rostron, Mark Rosenberg, and Alice Bell. Thank you for listening and see you next time. [Music]

Transcript - Episode 3: Talking politics, talking science

Host: Nick Howe
In the past two episodes I've explored a myriad of links between science and politics, and the fact of the matter is that from individual scientists up to entire governments - politics shapes and moves research. But it would be disingenuous to suggest that this doesn't cause problems, especially when you throw the media, specialist interest groups, heresay and gossip. After all, anything can get twisted in the rumour mill. So how should we talk about science?

[Music]
Quotes
Science likes to claim it's value free, but it's not.

Actually, good politics is more important than good science.

We've screwed this up, right? We've hung the readers out to dry.

[Music]

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

My name is Deborah Blum, and I'm the director of the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT.
Host: Nick Howe
Science journalists act as one of the most direct links between researchers and the rest of society. And after reporting on science for over 30 years, Deborah is under no illusions that science and politics are separate.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

So I don't believe that science exists in a vacuum, separate from the rest of humanity or human endeavours, which include political issues, right, or politics and I don't think that's ever been true.
Host: Nick Howe
Science journalists think about the fuzzy line between scientific reporting and political reporting all the time - I've lost count of how many times my editor has asked me 'what is the research angle on this story?' And yet despite all that thought - many readers think that we get it wrong. Here's Bruce Lewenstein, current academic and ex-journalist.

Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein

So part of that part of the reason for arguing that science and politics are distinct is so that you can define things you don't like as being politics, and define things that you do like as science. So when someone makes a claim that a particular study has chosen the wrong standards of what should be counted as pollution, you can argue, 'Oh those are only those were just political decisions'. The decisions that I've made are pure science. Or when you see a study you like, you can say, 'Yes, those are good standards. Yes, I know, they're not the same ones that are used in the legislative system. But I think they're better standards'. Instead of acknowledging the political context that might have gone into setting those standards.
Host: Nick Howe
The tricky thing is that sometimes when a line is blurry, there is no hard and fast rule to point to.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

It's always situational ethics, right? It's never just, this is always right, or this is always wrong. And that's not fair. But it is true that a lot of times, we're going to make a decision in a case-by-case basis.
Host: Nick Howe
And that can confuse matters. The difficult thing is that, from the perspective of those outside the scientific community, and sometimes within, it can be easy to dismiss certain evidence as political when it conflicts with our core values.

Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein

When people like what they're seeing, then they support it, and when they don't like what they're seeing, they don't support it, if it conflicts with other values, then science is only one set of values. Science likes to claim its value free, but it's not. It. It values knowledge over loyalty, over personal commitment, it values knowledge over faith. And for many people, emotion and faith are key drivers. It is as human for us to be emotional as it is for us to be rational.
Host: Nick Howe
Value systems are not constant. And so, a scientific result presented by someone with one system can be interpreted very differently by someone with a different set of values. The same data, the same words, can be warped based on how they are perceived.

Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein

And so when something like climate change, which means that in order to control it, there is going to have to be more government control and more limitations on what you can do in business or with your land, or something like that people say you're attacking my independence. So that's just politics.
Host: Nick Howe
And, herein lies a danger. If people pick and choosing what they support, what they believe based on value systems and not a reasoned analysis of the evidence that opens the door for a bit of a buzzword. Politicization. More on that, coming up.

[Music]
Quotes
In the literature exist different definitions of politicization.

Politicization is really, really interesting because when you tend to hear it, you tend to think about it as a sort of epithet.

[Music]

Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz

The idea of politicization depends on a misunderstanding about what science is.
Host: Nick Howe
This is science and society researcher Dan Sarewitz. Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz

When I say you're politicizing the science, what I'm really saying is, you're taking those sacrosanct pure facts, and you're distorting them, or you're misstating them to achieve your rhetorical goals, or your political goals or your policy goals. The problem with that is that anytime science is involved in politics, it is politicized, inherently politicized, because you are drawing statements of facts into arguments about values and preferences about how the world should be.
Host: Nick Howe
Deliberately distorting scientific evidence to support an agenda - politicisation at its worst by those nasty politicians. But it can work both ways, and scientists do it too.

Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz

We sometimes take political issues that are about values and make them seem as if they're issues of facts and who is asserting facts most correctly. So, I'll use simple example that right now is flaring up in the pages of the magazine I edit, having to do with the issue of fish pain, and animal welfare - can fish feel pain? And it turns out that there are scientists who are very skeptical of the idea that fish can feel pain, because of their understanding of what pain means as a neurological phenomenon. And there's scientists who feel that fish can clearly feel pain because of a different understanding of neurological phenomenon. And those scientists accuse one another of politicizing the science because of their concerns for different issues. Some of the scientists are more concerned with the importance of preserving freedom to for anglers, which they see as not only an important social activity, but one that's environmentally important too. Others who are concerned with animal welfare feel like that animals shouldn't be subjected to any suffering. And yet, if you ask scientists about this all say, well, ultimately, it's subjective. We can never know, because we can never be in the brain of a fish.
Host: Nick Howe
So in case you missed that, and the rest of this series, it's messy, right? Science and politics, science and society, it's a mess. And that mess, depending on your values of course, can get an awful lot more damaging than a spats over sprats.

[Protest clip]
Host: Nick Howe
What you're hearing here are people at the Indiana State House, in the US, protesting against the wearing of masks. There have been similar protests across the world. In the UK...

[Protest clip]

Host: Nick Howe

France...

[Protest clip]

Host: Nick Howe

...the list goes on

Now, there's a lot of things going on here - questions of personal freedoms, medical exemption, even accessibility - but right at the centre of anti-masker movement - amongst the throng of contentiousness is politicization of science and evidence.And, let's be clear at this point, scientists have a strong consensus on this - masks do help prevent the spread of coronavirus. They can save lives. So why the backlash?

Well partly it's how politicians, and other influential people, portray this evidence.

Interviewee: Hannah Schmid-Petri

Trump and his supporters are Corona deniers, and are especially against masks, for example, or other preventive measures.
Host: Nick Howe
This is Hannah Schmid-Petri, a researcher of politicization.

Interviewee: Hannah Schmid-Petri

And he regularly attacked science and scientific advisors who try to convince him of the necessity and importance of preventive measures. So I think the most current example is his use of a quote of Mr. Fauci in an election commercial to create impression that Mr. Fauci praises the efforts of Trump and the fight against corona. And he took the quote out of the context. And Mr. Fauci stated that he never said this that way. So I think this is a very typical example of politicization because a politician picked a quote of a scientist to support his standpoints and just merits in the fight against the pandemic.
Host: Nick Howe
And you don't have to outright misquote someone to politicize research. Sometime simply the context in which evidence is viewed can cause radically different outcomes.

Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz

Just look at the difference between Norway and Sweden, for example, right? They pursued radically different approaches, based on consultation with their experts in the context of their political and social cultures. And those have led to different sets of actions and different outcomes. So yeah, if you really want to get a sense of why a kind of simplistic view of why the experts must inform politics and policy is sort of not very helpful. COVID is a fabulous example of how politics, uncertainty and science interact, and claims of expertise can be made on behalf of all sorts of different and contrary actions.
Host: Nick Howe
In the practice of law, there's something known as Gibson's law that states For every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD. According to Gibson's law if I want to make a a point in court, or a political point for that matter, I can probably find some evidence to back up my position. And when science is politicized that is what happens. But the thing is, it's not quite true, is it? Sure there is a lot of disagreement in science, and if you go looking you can likely find experts to disagree with others, but equal and opposite...? More, coming up.

[Music]

Host: Nick Howe Deborah Blum - MIT professor of journalism - got her graduate degree in science journalism back in 1982. And throughout her career she has witnessed first-hand how scientific issues were talked about in the media. Take climate change for example.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

At that time, science journalism really followed what I think of is, you know, it was the political model of reporting, right? There's always two sides. Doctor A says this, Doctor B says this, and you didn't really, clue the reader into which side was the consensus side so much, it was just there's always two sides to a story, as in the US politics, there's the Democrats and there's the Republicans, and unfortunately, never the twain seems to meet.
Host: Nick Howe
This so-called political model of reporting exists to help counteract a journalists' bias to present the argument and let the reader make up their mind. But for a story about climate change - that can cause problems.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

So a lot of science writers in order to get, I'm air quoting this, the other side, you would interview scientists that were funded by the coal industry or the gas industry, but were there to assure you that climate change, you know, was an uncertainty. And, you know, there was not all scientists didn't believe in it. And there was much debate and a lot of stuff that turned out to be mostly not reliable information. Host: Nick Howe

And it got to the point where Deborah realised that the whole industry of scientific journalism was making a mistake.
Interviewee: Deborah Blum
At some point, we started having discussion in the National Association of Science Writers, and I was president of that group, right in the early aughts of the 21st century. And we sort of say, well, we screwed this up, right? We're giving people the inaccurate impression, that there's this huge debate when in fact there's this growing consensus, and we've just hung the readers out to dry. And we've done that, in part because we're covering this like politics, right?
Host: Nick Howe
Something had to change - and it did, dramatically.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

You start to see science writers just write about climate change as if it's a fact. The same way that in the annals of public health, you started seeing seatbelts mentioned in auto accident stories 'were they wearing in a seatbelt?' Right. And that, to me, represents a profound shift.
Host: Nick Howe
For Deborah, this shift wasn't a political one - it was just good journalism.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

If we're good as journalists, we try to cover reality, and we owe our readers or listeners or viewers, we owe them reality, right? We owe them an accurate reflection of what's going on. Not that science gets everything right, every step of the way. And so you have to acknowledge that too. But the consensus is squarely that this is real. And we try to reflect accurately where the weight of the evidence is.
Host: Nick Howe
To Deborah, communicating not just the facts but also the certainty - the level of consensus - that is vital if you want to about science objectively and accurately.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

Smart journalists do their homework, they figure out where the weight of the evidence is. And they report from that position of scientific strength, and that is actually contrary to what any Republican would tell you in the United States of America. That's actually apolitical reporting.
Host: Nick Howe
But in a world where science is intertwined with politics, where everybody has an agenda and where values frame every story - even attempts to be apolitical can be interpreted as something quite different.

Interviewee: Deborah Blum

It's muddied by the swirls of politics that you know continually spiral through society. And so it interferes, I think, quite often politics interferes far too often with people's ability to actually see the reality.
Host: Nick Howe
It seems that at every stage, the authority of science, evidence and expertise is only one step away from being tarnished - being used and abused to push agendas. And any attempt to solve this by crudely separate science and politics - well that is not much more helpful than it is realistic.

So what do we do? Can there be such a thing as an evidence-based society? And to be clear when I say that, I don't mean a society based on science, just that when evidence could prevent real harm - like in the pandemic, for instance - how do we use that evidence to help? That's coming up next.[Music]
Interviewee: Beth Simone Noveck
So it's through more democratization and greater openness that we're going to have more accountability for decision making.
Host: Nick Howe
This is Beth Simone Noveck, a researcher who focuses on how to tackle societal problems, who has advised government herself. Politicians should of course make political decisions, but they should be upfront about what their basing this on.
Interviewee: Beth Simone Noveck
I think that's what it comes down to. It's perfectly fine to say I am making this decision based on values. But we need transparency and how we do that we need to actually have institutions that are set up in a way that allow us to tap into an evidence base, and then to have transparency in how the decision is made, whether it's with regard to or by ignoring the evidence base, that should be clear and accessible to people.
Host: Nick Howe
Now it's easy to dismiss this idea. Why would politicians show what their basing their decisions on if it could be used against them? But in fact, in many places this is happening.
Interviewee: Beth Simone Noveck
Take Taiwan, for example, where they've started a program called 'vTaiwan'. And they have made now over two dozen pieces of national legislation with engagement of hundreds of thousands of citizens through a transparent process that works online.
Host: Nick Howe
But to achieve this, there needs to a shift in how we define expertise.
Interviewee: Beth Simone Noveck
That term expertise often gets very distorted to mean a specific kind of credentialed knowhow of people with certain kinds of degrees, when expertise is really something that we have to understand very broadly, to include people's experience, to include experiential wisdom to include their situational awareness, we've typically thought about expertise and therefore about the role of science in political decision making much too narrowly, and conflated that with the with a set of professions or a set of professional degrees.
Host: Nick Howe
To put it bluntly - science - its not all about you. Here is Dan Sarewitz again.

Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz

At a certain point, you just have to realize that science is part of the mix. It's not this magic thing.
Host: Nick Howe
Opening up political decision making to more kinds of expertise can have a surprising impact.
Interviewee: Beth Simone Noveck
In governing, we're seeing lots of examples of when governments are doing it right, opening up how they work, listening and working with people who have expertise, not in the credential sense, but in the sense of lived experience. So you take the federal government, which back in 2010, started in the United States started a platform called challenge.gov, to ask people to help solve problems with and for the government. And you've had over 1,000 of these prized-backed challenges that have been run in the United States. And they're popular now all over the world to get unusual suspects, again, not the people who are typically called upon on the Sunday talk shows or who are 'the insiders' to actually help with solving problems.
Host: Nick Howe
By valuing a broader range of expertise, you allow others to pick up the elements of a problem that science and scientists just aren't properly equipped to tackle. Here's Dan again.

Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz

In these complex situations, scientists are often asked to do a political job. And so the thing we need to do is be clear about that. And to recognise that, that actually good politics is more important than good science. So there's an irony here that I think needs to be kind of unraveled. And that unraveling is going to require more humility around what science can and can't do in the political realm, and more, putting politicians feet to the fire. So they actually have to say what it is that they're after, rather than saying, well, I'll just bring in my expert to say why my side is right.
Host: Nick Howe
More putting politician's feet to the fire. Huh.

[Music]
Host: Nick Howe
If you had to chose one place in which Nature has a clear political position - it is that we believe policy is stronger when it is supported by evidence. But if we care about achieving that goal, the evidence suggests that we have to think holistically. To look beyond just the pure output of research. We have to look at how research is funded, who is carrying it out, the values they hold, the systems they operate within, the balance of the evidence, and prevalence of power. To put it bluntly - the politics. Here's Bruce Lewenstein again.

Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein

I think the world would be a better place if more people had access to the kind of reliable knowledge that science produces. In order for that to happen, people have to have a much better understanding of what science is. And I do not mean a specific content of science, I do not mean an idealised hypothetico-deductive method of science. I mean, the complex social reality of how science has produced. The fact that politics is deeply ingrained in how science gets funded. The fact that competition between research groups, is not particularly different than competition between football clubs. That human emotion drives many scientists, that scientists choose problems based on particular concerns. If you talk to cancer researchers find out how many of them got into the field because someone in their family had cancer. Right? They didn't choose this at random. They chose it because this is a field that matters to them.

Host: Nick Howe

Science, society and politics - they are inseparable. Now this could be a good or it could be a bad thing - but either way it is a true thing - and it is something which has real consequences. So, at Nature we're going to carry on talking about it. I hope you'll join us.

[Music up]

Host: Nick Howe

"Stick to the science" was produced by me Nick Howe, with editing from Noah Baker and Benjamin Thompson. It featured: Deborah Blum, Bruce Lewenstein, Dan Sarewitz, Hannah Schmid-Petri, Shobita Parthasarathy, and Beth Simone Noveck. If you enjoyed this series, tell us about it, there's a link to a survey in the shownotes. Also if these kinds of topics have caught your interest, then I suggest checking out 'the Received Wisdom' podcast. It's hosted by Shobita, who you heard from throughout this series. Thanks for listening.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03067-w

This series was produced by Nick Howe, with editing from Noah Baker and Benjamin Thompson. It featured many contributors, including: Deborah Blum, Bruce Lewenstein, Daniel Sarewitz, Hannah Schmid-Petri, Shobita Parthasarathy, Beth Simone Noveck, Alice Bell, Anna Jay, Melinda Baldwin, Magdalena Skipper, Steven Shapin, David Edgerton, Chiara Ambrosio, Mayana Zatz, Michael Erard, Peg AtKisson, Susannah Gal, Allen Rostron and Mark Rosenberg.

Related Articles

Subjects

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Related Articles

Subjects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Stick to the science': when science gets political

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NATURE PODCAST A three-part podcast series explores the intimate relationship between politics and science. You have full access to this article via your institution. Why does a journal of science need to cover politics? It is a question that Nature often gets asked when we publish articles covering political matters.

# data[].attributes.body
An article (~10-minute read) with a few high-impact teaching strategies to better connect science and engineering to student lives

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CONTENT AREA Engineering across science content areas

GRADE LEVEL 6-8

BIG IDEA/UNIT Crosscutting

ESSENTIAL PRE-EXISTING KNOWLEDGE Some data analysis skills will help, but community ethnography can support students in analyzing quantitative and evaluating qualitative data.

TIME REQUIRED Ongoing throughout units

COST N/A

SAFETY Students should ask for permission first if they are taking participant observation photos that will include people. If students are conducting surveys outside of the school setting for homework, they should have adult supervision and use a buddy system.

Community ethnography uses research methods such as observations, interviews, and surveys to learn more about one's community members, their wants, and their needs ( Adler and Adler 1998). Students can use community ethnography to deeply engage in the engineering practices of asking questions and defining problems outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards, and constructing explanations and designing solutions, thus optimizing their solutions when responding to community wants and needs. Just as important, students can use community ethnography to leverage the various forms of expertise held by people in their community as they draw on engineering practices to help make their communities a more just place to be.

Integrating community ethnography supports more equity- oriented science teaching by supporting students in learning with and for their community. To effectively engage in these practices, students ask questions, gather and analyze information to determine specific challenges to address and define the dimensions of a problem. An example of this is when students made observations of a local corner store; interviewed family members about their favorite dishes; and designed nutritionally-sound, appetizing, and economical meals in their sixth-grade classroom. Throughout this process, students were able to develop and use new expertise about nutrition, metabolic processes and their community's cooking histories ( Calabrese Barton and Tan 2009).

Community Ethnography as Pedagogy involves:

1. A stance that community knowledge is a valuable part of disciplinary knowing and necessary for effectively engaging in the practices of defining problems and designing solutions. This is the starting motivation for supporting students using community ethnography.

2. Pedagogical moves that support multiple forms of, and purposes for, interactions and interactional spaces for students, teachers, and community members and that help teachers notice, value, and respond to students' cultural knowledge/practice as important forms of epistemic authority.

3. Tools that position students and teachers as co-learners of community concerns and their intersections with disciplinary knowing and classroom activity. The main tools we have used in our classroom have been making participant observations, administering surveys, and conducting interviews. These tools support students in defining problems by soliciting information from their community and designing and optimizing their designs by gathering more community feedback. Teachers and students can collaboratively decide which aspects of their communities are most salient to their investigation and focus on using their ethnographic tools with those community members who are experts about those areas (see Table 1).

Examples of community ethnography stances, pedagogical moves and tools

Community knowledge matters in defining problems and designing solutions

Multiple community members' input supports defining problems and designing solutions

Students are experts about their communities and should shape how they engage in community ethnography

Asking students to share the evidence they used in defining problems and designing solutions

Emphasizing the importance of understanding/addressing both the technical and social dimensions of community problems and solutions

Supporting students in analyzing their generated data

Encouraging students to seek more community feedback as needed

Participant observations

Surveys

Interviews

How to get started

Teachers can plan to use community ethnography in multiple forms throughout a unit. Students can use community ethnography tools in formal ways by designing/administering surveys or interviewing others during a formal feedback cycle. Students can also engage in community ethnography in more informal ways by using ethnographic tools as needed throughout the engineering design cycle. We recommend that teachers plan for both informal and formal community ethnography opportunities. These approaches help students make decisions in a systematic way throughout the engineering design cycle. The 5E lesson example highlights how community ethnography was incorporated to support creating a solution to a problem.

When introducing community ethnography, ask students to explore why including other people's perspectives matters in engineering. Teachers can do this by talking about engineering projects in their community and why community voices have mattered to the projects. Additionally, ask students to brainstorm which community stakeholders should be included in the engineering process. Incorporating multiple community stakeholders supports students in balancing trade-offs and designing engineering solutions that are not detrimental to the broader community ( Gunckel and Tolbert 2018). It is also important because it teaches students that engineering design should center the needs of the people for whom designs are intended.

A first step to plan for community ethnography in a unit is for teachers to ask, "How does this unit connect to my students and their community's lives?" and "In what ways might students use their new science knowledge and practices with other forms of expertise, with their community during this unit?" Generate a list of answers to these ideas. Then, teachers can look across the lessons in the unit and incorporate formal opportunities for community ethnography. We also recommend asking students for ideas because they are experts about their own lives.

Additionally, plan and develop procedures in the class community to support students in engaging in informal community ethnography when they decide they need to leverage it as a tool. For example, consistently ask students to share participant observations when they brainstorm ideas, or if students request feedback on their design solutions, ask: "Who else could you talk to for more ideas?" Teachers can display anchor charts with these and other prompting questions to support themselves and their students when engaging in community ethnography to better define problems and design solutions.

In the following sections, we outline how to use the three community ethnography tools. These tools have been used in in-school and out-of-school contexts across multiple units ( Calabrese Barton and Tan 2010). These tools can be flexibly adapted in both engineering and science-based units. We share examples of how we used these tools in middle grades science classes during an energy engineering unit focused on making classrooms more sustainable.

Ms. B. taught a unit focused on designing ways to investigate and eradicate invasive plant species, focused on the driving question, "How can we help our community stop the spread of invasive plant species, and why should we care?" Throughout the unit, students cycled through three iterations of the 5E model. Below we focus on the second 5E cycle where students designed and conducted an investigation into the biodiversity of their local neighborhood ecosystem and garlic mustard's-the invasive plant under study-impact on it.

Prior to the multiday lesson described below, students were introduced to the unit goal of helping their community stop the spread of invasive garlic mustard. Additionally, they observed the structure and function of garlic mustard to build explanations for how plants reproduce and spread.

The challenge in this lesson was to develop an approach to safely harvesting garlic mustard, which meant reviewing how to identify garlic mustard based on structures, setting criteria for successful harvesting (e.g., get all of the roots, not dropping seeds), developing an approach for harvesting (by practicing harvesting dandelions in their schoolyard without leaving roots and seeds), and creating identification and harvesting guides to use around the school neighborhood using a "biocube" approach ( Smithsonian National Museum of History, n.d.). Having students explore the biodiversity of their schoolyard is a powerful way for them to design ways to learn about ecosystems ( Harris et al. 2013). Students were supported in developing explanations of the impact of garlic mustard on biodiversity and approaches to supporting biodiversity. Throughout this lesson, the students used the community ethnography tools of participant observations and interviews with members of their classroom and local communities to meet the lesson goal.

The teacher engaged her students in three related activities. First, her students tested their systems using fair tests based on their criteria, and then developed explanations for how their systems worked, including ideas for improvements. For example, students in Ms. B's class came up with a three criteria: Able to harvest all of the plants Did not spread seeds Will not let a plant grow out of the roots

Second, students developed and agreed upon additional criteria for analyzing the impact of garlic mustard on their school neighborhood ecosystem using the biocube approach. These criteria include documenting: Harvest location Number of garlic mustard plants present Number of different organisms present

Third, the teacher supported students in developing initial explanations for how and why garlic mustard may impact their school neighborhood biodiversity.

The teacher engaged her whole class in devising a plan to use their garlic mustard harvesting guide in their schoolyard. First, they developed a plan for safely harvesting garlic mustard. Second, in teams, they harvested the garlic mustard and generated data on biodiversity in the process.

A whole-class discussion was held to develop an explanation for school leadership about the impact of garlic mustard on the school neighborhood. Additionally, the class devised a take-home garlic mustard kit (a garlic mustard harvesting guide and a trash bag for safe disposal). The teacher prompted students to explain their choices based on evidence from their participant observations, interviews, and garlic mustard harvesting data.

MS-LS2-5 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics

Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Participant observations

Students should be supported in thinking about who should be surveyed. Teachers can ask students: What communities are we most interested in and why? Which community members' ideas matter most to our investigation? Who is most affected by the problems and solutions being designed? Students should first practice administering the surveys to each other before reaching beyond their classroom community. Teachers can support students in making sure they understand and can explain the questions to younger responders when they administer the surveys. Teachers should invite students to explain the survey questions in their own words. This facilitates smoother survey analysis as well as supports the students in better understanding the problems they are defining. Teachers can organize survey sessions or have students make plans to administer the surveys outside of class time. Students should only administer the survey to people they know or under supervision by an adult. Additionally, teachers can share the survey through social media or email to gather additional responses.

After administering the surveys, students analyze their data. This is an important aspect of obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information practice. It is helpful to separate the responses from different community members (e.g., students, adults) to support students in understanding patterns in different groups' views. Students can use graphic organizers to analyze how many people chose each response and patterns in who selected/shared what. The organizers can support students in predicting the reasons for the responses and how to apply insights from the responses to their engineering work (see Online Supplemental Materials for a survey analysis graphic organizer).

For example, in the energy engineering unit, Mrs. B's class reviewed a survey they planned to administer to better understand the sustainability issues that mattered most to their community. They made participant observations before administering the survey and after analyzing it. Mrs. B purposefully had students contribute to the survey design because their expertise as community members mattered. The students added and deleted questions. Then as a class, they decided systematically who they should survey based on who would be affected most by their eventual design solutions and who had expertise that would support their efforts. After the sixth graders took the survey themselves, they chose to survey a fifth-grade class because they were impacted by similar classroom sustainability issues as the sixth graders. Sixth graders also administered the survey to other community members, including Mrs. B, the school custodian, the administrative assistant, and the student services officer. Mrs. B actively encouraged students to find more survey participants because she valued the students' expertise on whose input mattered.

Next, students analyzed what problems mattered most to different community member categories (students, teachers, staff). The students also analyzed the qualitative data by looking for patterns in proposed solutions to sustainability challenges impacting their school community. The students then decided on the problems they wanted to address with their energy engineering designs such as low morale, school bullying, lack of fun, and energy wasting.

Conclusion

References

Adler P. A., and Adler P.. 1998. Observational techniques. In Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials, ed. Denzin N.K. and Lincoln Y.S., 377-392. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Community ethnography uses research methods such as observations, interviews, and surveys to learn more about one's community members, their wants, and their needs ( Adler and Adler 1998). Students can use community ethnography to deeply engage in the engineering practices of asking questions and defining problems outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards, and constructing explanations and designing solutions, thus optimizing their solutions when responding to community wants and needs.

# data[].attributes.headline
Race-Based Norms for Concussion Settlements (NPR)

# data[].attributes.subject
Race-Based Norms for Concussion Settlements (NPR)

# data[].attributes.body
Article about the settlement for the NFL's prior policy that used a lower baseline for intelligence for Black players, making it more difficult for them to show cogntive decline from head injuries

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
PHILADELPHIA - The NFL agreed to end race-based adjustments in dementia testing that critics said made it difficult for Black retirees to qualify for awards in the $1 billion settlement of concussion claims, according to a proposed deal filed Wednesday in federal court.

The revised testing plan follows public outrage over the use of "race-norming," a practice that came to light only after two former NFL players filed a civil rights lawsuit over it in 2019. The adjustments, critics say, may have prevented hundreds of Black players suffering from dementia to win awards that average $500,000 or more.

The Black retirees will now have the chance to have their tests rescored or, in some cases, seek a new round of cognitive testing, according to the settlement, details of which were first reported in The New York Times on Wednesday.

"We look forward to the court's prompt approval of the agreement, which provides for a race-neutral evaluation process that will ensure diagnostic accuracy and fairness in the concussion settlement," the NFL said in a statement.

The proposal, which must still be approved by a judge, follows months of closed-door negotiations between the NFL, class counsel for thousands of retired players, and lawyers for the Black players who filed suit, Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry.

The vast majority of the league's players - 70% of active players and more than 60% of living retirees - are Black. So the changes are expected to be significant, and potentially costly for the NFL.

"No race norms or race demographic estimates - whether Black or white - shall be used in the settlement program going forward," the proposal said.

To date, the concussion fund has paid out $821 million for five types of brain injuries, including early and advanced dementia, Parkinson's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as ALS.

Lawyers for the Black players suspect that white men were qualifying for awards at two or three times the rate of Blacks since the payouts began in 2017. It's unclear whether a racial breakdown of payouts will ever be done or made public.

Black NFL retiree Ken Jenkins and others have asked the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to investigate.

The binary scoring system used in dementia testing - one for Black people, one for everyone else - was developed by neurologists in the 1990s as a crude way to factor in a patient's socioeconomic background. Experts say it was never meant to be used to determine payouts in a court settlement.

The league had agreed in June, amid the uproar, to halt the use of race-norming, which assumes Black players start with lower cognitive function. That makes it harder to show they suffer from a mental deficit linked to their playing days.

The NFL would admit no wrongdoing under terms of the agreement. The league said it hoped the new testing formula, developed with input from a panel of experts, would be widely adopted in medicine.

To date, about 2,000 men have applied for dementia awards, but only 30% have been approved. In some cases, the NFL appealed payouts awarded to Black men if doctors did not apply the racial adjustment. The new plan would forbid any challenges based on race.

The awards average $715,000 for those with advanced dementia and $523,000 for those with early dementia. The fund, now uncapped, is intended to last for 65 years, to cover anyone retired at the time it was first approved.

"The NFL should be really enraged about the race norming. .... That should be unacceptable to them and all of their sponsors," Roxanne "Roxy" Gordon of San Diego, the wife of an impaired former player, said earlier this week.

Amon Gordon, a Stanford University graduate, finds himself at 40 unable to work. He has twice qualified for an advanced dementia award only to have the decision overturned for reasons that aren't yet clear to them. His case remains on review before the federal appeals court in Philadelphia.

Nearly 20,000 NFL retirees have registered for the settlement program, which offers monitoring, testing and, for some, compensation.

"If the new process eliminates race-norming and more people qualify, that's great," said Jenkins, who does not have an impairment but advocates for those who do.

"(But) we're not going to get everything we wanted," Jenkins, an insurance executive, said Tuesday. "We want full transparency of all the demographic information from the NFL - who's applied, who's been paid."

Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody, who has overseen the settlement for a decade, dismissed the suit filed by Davenport and Henry this year on procedural grounds. But she later ordered the lawyers who negotiated the 2013 settlement - New York plaintiffs lawyer Christopher Seeger for the players and Brad Karp for the NFL - to work with a mediator to address it.

In the meantime, the Gordons and other NFL families wait.

"His life is ruined," Roxy Gordon said of her husband, who spent nearly a decade in the league as a defensive tackle or defensive end. "He's a 40-year-old educated male who can't even use his skills. It's been horrible."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NFL agrees to race-based brain testing in $1B settlement on concussions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
PHILADELPHIA - The NFL agreed to end race-based adjustments in dementia testing that critics said made it difficult for Black retirees to qualify for awards in the $1 billion settlement of concussion claims, according to a proposed deal filed Wednesday in federal court.

# data[].attributes.headline
Tackling Inequities in Emerging Technologies (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine)

# data[].attributes.subject
Tackling Inequities in Emerging Technologies (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine)

# data[].attributes.body
An article describing key points of a recent webinar from the National Academies discussing inequities in fileds like biotechnology

# data[].attributes.headline
Tech Increases Equity in Diabetes Care for Kids (Stanford News)

# data[].attributes.subject
Tech Increases Equity in Diabetes Care for Kids (Stanford News)

# data[].attributes.body
An article describing the impact of how access to tech like continuous glucose monitoring affects health for youth with Diabetes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tech Increases Equity in Diabetes Care for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to a new study, providing continuous glucose monitoring with AI-enabled remote support yields better outcomes for youth across the socioeconomic spectrum.

# data[].attributes.headline
Comparison of specimens and field observations reveals biases in biodiversity data (Stanford News)

# data[].attributes.subject
Comparison of specimens and field observations reveals biases in biodiversity data (Stanford News)

# data[].attributes.body
An article describing the impact of sampling bias on the validity of biodiversity data and a good introduction to sampling bias in data about non-humans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the race to document the species on Earth before they go extinct, researchers and citizen scientists have assembled billions of records. Most records either come from physical specimens in a museum or digital field observations, but both are useful for detecting shifts in the number and abundance of species in an area. However, a new Stanford study has found that both record types are flawed, and the degree to which they are riddled with coverage gaps and biases depends on the kind of dataset.

Back in Charles Darwin's day, and up until relatively recently, naturalists recorded the species present in an area by collecting and preserving samples of the plants, insects, fish, birds, and other animals in a region for museums and educational collections. Today, most records of biodiversity are often in the form of photos, videos, GPS coordinates, and other digital records with no corresponding physical sample of the organism they represent in a museum or herbarium.

"With the rise of technology it is easy for people to make observations of different species with the aid of a mobile application," said Barnabas Daru, assistant professor of biology in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences.

For example, if someone spots an attractive butterfly or plant, they can easily document it by taking a photo and uploading it to a biodiversity app with details such as the species' name, location, date, and time. This information becomes a valuable field observation.

"These observations now outnumber the primary data that comes from physical specimens," said Daru, who is lead author of the study, published May 1 in Nature Ecology & Evolution. "And since we are increasingly using observational data to investigate how species are responding to global change, I wanted to know: Are these data usable?"

While other studies have explored global coverage and biases in biodiversity data, this is the first known global assessment of coverage gaps and biases in specimen versus observational records across multiple dimensions.

A digital museum

Using a global dataset of 1.9 billion records of terrestrial plants, butterflies, amphibians, birds, reptiles, and mammals, Daru and co-author Jordan Rodriguez, tested how well each type of data captures actual global biodiversity patterns across taxonomic, geographic, temporal, and functional trait axes.

People trample on ants all the time, but if an elephant were to stroll down the street, everyone would want to know what was going on.

-Barnabas Daru

Assistant Professor of Biology

"We were particularly interested in exploring the aspects of sampling that tend to bias data, like the greater likelihood of a citizen scientist to capture a flowering plant instead of the grass right next to it," said Rodriguez, a University of Oregon graduate student who started collaborating with Daru at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi as an undergraduate.

For instance, to test coverage of actual biodiversity patterns in taxonomic space, they overlayed grids of different sizes (50, 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 km) across a digital map of the world. Within each grid cell, and for each family (e.g., ducks, geese, and waterfowl are one bird "family"), they assessed the number of documented species compared to the expected number of species for that region or family based on expert opinion.

Biases in data collection were assessed by comparing the number of specimens and observations from a grid cell to the expected amount if each datapoint was collected randomly.

Their study revealed that the superabundance of observation-only records did not lead to better global coverage. Moreover, these data are biased and favor certain regions (North America and Europe), time periods, and organisms.

This makes sense because the people who capture observational biodiversity data on mobile devices are often citizen scientists recording serendipitous encounters with species in areas nearby, such as roadsides, hiking trails, community parks, and neighborhoods.

Observational data are also biased toward certain organisms with attractive or eye-catching features.

"People trample on ants all the time, but if an elephant were to stroll down the street, everyone would want to know what was going on," said Daru.

In contrast, collectors of preserved specimens are often trained professionals who gather samples of plants, animals, and other organisms in remote and wilderness areas as part of their jobs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study examines biases and coverage gaps in biodiversity data | Stanford News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Natural history collections of plants, animals, and other organisms are becoming a thing of the past with the rise of biodiversity apps and digital tools. A Stanford study identifies benefits and biases in these two datasets, which are crucial for assessing climate change.

# data[].attributes.headline
Wildfire Risk and Income (Stanford News)

# data[].attributes.subject
Wildfire Risk and Income (Stanford News)

# data[].attributes.body
An article describing a study of the relationship between average income in a community and its wildfire risk as a result of the personal cost of making power lines safer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A tree killed in a climate-driven drought snaps and severs a power line. A transformer sparks. A downed live wire ignites a pile of dry leaves. Many of the country's most damaging wildfires, including California's deadly 2018 Camp and Woolsey Fires, Oregon's 2020 Santiam Fire, and Colorado's 2021 Marshall Fire, can be traced back to failure in the electric grid.

Experts say one of the most permanent and effective approaches to hardening the electrical system to prevent wildfires is burying power lines underground. But costs are steep and the solution is most often implemented in wealthier communities. A new Stanford University study finds lower-income communities in California today have a disproportionate share of fire-prone overhead lines and flammable wooden utility poles, and proposes a way to equitably allocate the cost of moving more lines underground.

The results, published Aug. 7 in Nature Energy, come amid increasing threats from climate-fueled wildfires, rapid population growth and development in some of the most fire-prone regions of the American West, and a push from California lawmakers to expedite plans to underground electrical lines.

One key challenge is improving safety without making energy unaffordable for low-income Californians. "There is no way we can underground everything. This new research can inform where efforts and funding are focused," said study co-author Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program and a senior research scholar at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

The study provides a first-of-its-kind map showing the wildfire vulnerability of power lines across California. The researchers developed an AI model to identify overhead power lines in Google Street View images and fill in gaps where images were unavailable. They then overlaid the results with maps of tree canopies and census data including household income and education levels.

"Overall, we found distribution grids in low-income communities are in a wildfire safety deficit," said lead study author Zhecheng Wang, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford who co-authored the study.

In addition to the direct threats posed by wildfires, exposed power lines in fire-prone areas can threaten energy security by triggering preemptive power shut-offs during severe weather. Wang and colleagues found these power shut-offs have a bigger impact in low-income neighborhoods, where residents are less likely to have solar panels or generators to keep the lights on and phones charged to receive evacuation orders.

"Our current electric infrastructure leaves low-income communities doubly vulnerable," Rajagopal said. "They're more likely to have power lines at risk during wildfires, and they're less likely to have backup power."

Disproportionate costs

Since the 1960s, California's Public Utilities Commission has allowed local communities, developers, and property owners to identify areas for undergrounding and have a small portion of the costs covered by their utility.

Historically, wildfire threat and income level have not factored into the regulator's criteria for which projects should go ahead or who should pay for them. Instead, these decisions have mostly centered on whether above-ground power lines are an eyesore and whether the local community can afford the project costs, which can run as high as $5 million per mile. As a result, most undergrounding has occurred in affluent communities.

Under the conventional approach, the new analysis reveals the per-household cost of undergrounding existing fire-prone overhead lines in the coming years would be dramatically higher in lower-income census blocks. For blocks in areas where wildfires are most likely to cross paths with power lines, the authors estimate the cost would be $37,000 per household at the $200,000 income level, and more than three times that amount at the $50,000 income level.

Policy solution with widespread benefits

"We need to reshape policies to explicitly take the wildfire risk and income levels as eligibility criteria to socialize the cost," said Wang, who worked on the study as a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering, a department of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Stanford Engineering.

Together with Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Dean Arun Majumdar, one of the study's senior authors, Wang and colleagues propose a scheme to allocate costs based on neighborhoods' median household income. They suggest the California Public Utilities Commission grant communities with income levels below a certain threshold the option to split the cost of burying power lines among all utility customers. Above the income threshold, communities would choose between paying for burying power lines locally or adopting other wildfire protection methods such as replacing wooden powerline poles with steel and regularly trimming trees near wires.

According to the researchers, implementing this scheme could help to make electricity infrastructure "affordable, equitable, and reliable amidst climate change," with benefits extending far beyond local areas most at risk of fire. Public safety shut-offs affect electricity customers throughout the grid, they note, and smoke from grid-caused wildfires can waft hazardous air pollution across thousands of miles. As a result, they write, "Improved grid resilience to wildfires in low-income communities and high-fire-threat areas can benefit all communities."

Wara is also interim policy director of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability's Sustainability Accelerator. Rajagopal is an associate professor of electrical engineering, a member of the Maternal & Child Health Research Institute, and an affiliate of the Precourt Institute for Energy. Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor and a professor of mechanical engineering, of energy science and engineering, of photon science, and, by courtesy, of materials science and engineering. He is also a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and by courtesy, at the Hoover Institution. Wang is now a postdoctoral scholar in electrical engineering.

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and by a Precourt Pioneering Projects grant from Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Stanford research finds low-income communities in California face a "wildfire safety deficit" as a result of longstanding policies about who should pay to move power lines underground.

# data[].attributes.body
Article describing how heart problems (and their treatments) have mostly been studied in men. Women are more often misdiagnosed and carry greater risks from treatment because of this lack of representation in research.

Article on the misdiagnosis: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/well/live/heart-disease-symptoms-women.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Heart Surgery That Isn’t as Safe for Older Women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Coronary artery bypass grafting, the most common cardiac procedure in the United States, was studied mostly in men. Women are paying the price.

# data[].attributes.headline
Whose Bodies Get Studied (Culture Study)

# data[].attributes.subject
Whose Bodies Get Studied (Culture Study)

# data[].attributes.body
Blog post about how and why women have been excluded from sports science research, along with some ways to identify how inclusive a study is. Also an opportunity to discuss how to responsibly use blogs as a source of information. Note that this article focuses on women and includes specific examples related to female physiology and anatomy- may not be appropriate for direct use in a classroom but provides many relevant examples.

# data[].attributes.headline
Bias in AI-based models for medical applications: challenges and mitigation strategies (Nature)

# data[].attributes.subject
Bias in AI-based models for medical applications: challenges and mitigation strategies (Nature)

# data[].attributes.body
An open access journal article about how AI in medical applications like surgery systems can disproportionately cause less favorable impacts on marginalized communities by using biased data sets

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is increasingly applied to healthcare, from AI-augmented clinical research to algorithms for image analysis or disease prediction. Specifically, within the field of surgery, AI applications hold promise as tools to predict surgical outcomes1, aid surgeons via computer vision for intraoperative surgical navigation2, and even as algorithms to assess technical skills and surgical performance1,3,4,5.

Kiyasseh et al.4 highlight this potential application in their work deploying surgical AI systems (SAIS) on videos of robotic surgeries from three hospitals. They used SAIS to assess the skill level of surgeons completing multiple different surgical activities, including needle handling and needle driving. In applying this AI model, Kiyasseh et al.4 found that it could reliably assess surgical performance but exhibited bias. The SAIS model showed an underskilling or overskilling bias at different rates across surgeon sub-cohort. Underskilling was the AI model downgrading surgical performance erroneously, predicting a particular skill to be lower quality than it actually was. Overskilling was the reverse-the AI model upgraded surgical performance erroneously, predicting a specific skill to be of higher quality than it was. Underskilling and overskilling were measured based on the AI-based predictions' negative and positive predictive values negative, respectively.

The issue of bias being exhibited, perpetuated, or even amplified by AI algorithms is an increasing concern within healthcare. Bias is usually defined as a difference in performance between subgroups for a predictive task6,7. For example, an AI algorithm used for predicting future risk of breast cancer may suffer from a performance gap wherein black patients are more likely to be assigned as "low risk" incorrectly. Further, an algorithm trained on hospital data from German patients might not perform well in the USA, as patient population, treatment strategies or medications might differ. Similar cases have already been seen in healthcare systems8. There could be many different reasons for this performance gap. Bias can be generated across AI model development steps, including data collection/preparation, model development, model evaluation, and deployment in clinical settings9. With this particular example, the algorithm may have been trained on data predominantly from white patients, or health records from Black patients may be less accessible. Additionally, there are likely underlying social inequalities in healthcare access and expenditures that impact how a model might be trained to predict risk6,10. Regardless of the cause, the impact of an algorithm disproportionately assigning false negatives would include fewer follow-up scans, and potentially more undiagnosed/untreated cancer cases, worsening health inequity for an already disadvantaged population. Thus, strategies to detect and mitigate bias will be pivotal to improving healthcare outcomes. Bias mitigation strategies may involve interventions such as pre-processing data through sampling before a model is built, in-processing by implementing mathematical approaches to incentivize a model to learn balanced predictions, and post-processing11. Further, as experts can be aware of biases specific to datasets, "keeping the human in the loop" can be another important strategy to mitigate bias.

With their SAIS model, Kiyasseh et al.4 developed a strategy called TWIX to mitigate bias. TWIX is an add-on application that taught the SAIS model to add a prediction of the importance of video clips that was used to assess surgical skill. They hypothesized that the SAIS model's bias might be due to the system latching onto unreliable video frames for assessment. TWIX requiring model predictions of video clip importance served a similar role to human assessors explaining the rationale for assessments. Kiyasseh et al.4 found that TWIX mitigated SAIS model bias, improving model performance both for the disadvantaged surgeon sub-cohorts and for surgical skill assessments overall. This accomplishment is beneficial not only for this particular use case but also implies that this type of bias mitigation strategy could be used to continue to improve AI applications in the future.

Bias within AI algorithms must continue to be studied and mitigated as AI technology develops. Looking into the future, one question that will most definitely arise is what level of bias is acceptable for an AI algorithm4. This is analogous to the question of what accuracy threshold is acceptable for a particular AI system4. Previous groups suggested that any performance discrepancy is indicative of algorithmic bias, but expecting completely bias-free systems before implementation is unrealistic12. Performance discrepancy may also differ based on the data and population an AI algorithm is trained on and then subsequently applied to. Currently, there is significant heterogeneity in terms of the datasets AI algorithms are trained with within algorithm types themselves13,14. The question of whether AI algorithms may need to be more generalizable, trained on larger and more diverse datasets to be applied to broader populations, or more localized and applied narrowly remains to be addressed. In any case, AI models will have to be explainable15 with transparent methodologies so that these questions can be studied and debated in the coming years.

Another issue for the future is whether AI algorithms will be able to be changed/edited, just as Kiyasseh et al.4 added TWIX to their existing SAIS algorithm. An AI algorithm can either be locked-once the algorithm is trained, the model provides the same result when the same input is applied-or adaptive16. In this case, the AI model could be updated continuously as it learns from new data over time rather than becoming outdated within a few years. However, continuous learning also possesses the risk of increasing or adding new bias if the new data are biased17. Thus, methodologies for regular bias detection and continual bias mitigation will be key to AI implementation.

From a regulatory standpoint, new initiatives also aim to tackle the issue of biased data in AI systems. The STANDING Together initiative (standards for data diversity, inclusivity, and generalizability), launched in September 2022, aims to develop recommendations for the composition (who is represented) and reporting (how they are represented) of datasets underpinning medical AI systems18. Further, the FDA has recognized challenges due to bias in AI and ML algorithms and released an action plan ("Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML)-Based Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) Action Plan") in January 20219,19, emphasizing the importance of identifying and mitigating bias in AI systems9. As part of the FDA Action Plan, the FDA intends to support the piloting of real-world performance monitoring19, allowing for the detection of bias after deployment. Further, to meet regulatory challenges that come with continuously adopting AI models, the FDA recently released a draft guidance to develop a less burdensome regulatory approach supporting the iterative improvement of, e.g., AI models while continuing to assure their safety and effectiveness20. These types of regulatory steps should be encouraged, as they will become increasingly necessary to ensure the minimization of bias without the blockade of AI innovation.

The integration of AI into medical technology and healthcare systems is only going to increase in the coming years. Key to AI model integration and usability will be bias mitigation. Kiyasseh et al. describe an innovative approach to bias mitigation with their TWIX system. As technology continues to develop, the push toward bias mitigation occurs at all levels-from model development and over training to deployment and implementation. This effort will require checks and balances from innovators, healthcare institutions, and regulatory entities.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

M.M. is a fellow of the BIH-Charité Digital Clinician Scientist Program funded by the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Authors and Affiliations

1. Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Infectious Diseases, Respiratory Medicine and Critical Care, Berlin, Germany

Mirja Mittermaier

2. Berlin Institute of Health at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Charitéplatz 1, 10117, Berlin, Germany

Mirja Mittermaier

3. Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Marium M. Raza & Joseph C. Kvedar

Contributions

M.M. wrote the first draft. M.M.R. contributed to the first draft and provided critical revisions. J.C.K. provided critical revisions. All authors critically reviewed and revised the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mirja Mittermaier.

Competing interests

J.C.K. is the Editor-in-Chief of npj Digital Medicine. M.M. and M.M.R. declare no competing interests.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bias in AI-based models for medical applications: challenges and mitigation strategies - npj Digital Medicine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being applied to healthcare. In surgery, AI applications hold promise as tools to predict surgical outcomes, assess technical skills, or guide surgeons intraoperatively via computer vision. On the other hand, AI systems can also suffer from bias, compounding existing inequities in socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation.

# data[].attributes.headline
Misuse of Children's Genetic Data for Race Science

# data[].attributes.subject
Misuse of Children's Genetic Data for Race Science

# data[].attributes.body
Article behind a paywall

Article that discusses the misuse of a large database of brain scans from children in studies that seek to claim intellectual superiority of white people. From the article, "The researchers have used it to produce at least 16 papers purporting to find biological evidence for differences in intelligence between races, ranking ethnicities by I.Q. scores and suggesting Black people earn less because they are not very smart...Mainstream geneticists have rejected their work as biased and unscientific. Yet by relying on genetic and other personal data from the prominent project, known as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the researchers gave their theories an air of analytical rigor."