Q&A: Melissa Nobles on guest-editing Nature to examine racism in science

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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

The venerable British journal Nature is publishing four special issues in 2022 that delve into matters of racism and science, including the way racist thinking has imbued the content of biological thinking, the downplaying of knowledge accumulated by non-Western societies, and the exclusion of people of color from the scientific establishment.

MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles is one of four guest editors of these issues, along with Elizabeth Wathuti, an environmental and climate activist from Kenya and founder of the Green Generation Initiative; Chad Womack, senior director of national STEM programs and initiatives at the United Negro College Fund; and Ambroise Wonkam, professor of genetic medicine and director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute and the Department of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. These are the first signed guest editorials in Nature’s 153-year history; the first special issue is being published today.

MIT News discussed the series with Nobles — who, before becoming chancellor, served as head of the Department of Political Science and dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

Q: What is it that Nature has asked you to do here, as a scholar, along with the team it assembled?

A: Nature wanted to think critically, examine the past, and also think about the future. Their editorial board invited the four of us to be guest editors and help them think through the question, how should Nature discuss racism in science? They gave us a lot of leeway. As organizers we thought broadly, providing different views about how important history has been in shaping our current moment, and then thinking about how we can get past this. For instance, we commissioned one article that discusses efforts at U.K. universities to make changes in the scientific curriculum. There are two guest editorials, one published in June and one out today, and four special issues, the first of which appears today.

Q: What are the main topics that you examine in these editorials and special issues — and, by extension, that we should examine when we think about the presence of racism in science?

A: A large part of what concerned us has two components: One is the way in which racist ideas have helped to form scientific knowledge itself. So, for example, in the first editorial, we point to the eugenics movement and efforts to create a “scientific” rationale for racial hierarchies, looking back at figures such as the statistician and eugencist Francis Galton, and examining the roots of such thinking.

Another aspect is calling attention to all of the history that has been denied, the ways in which science was so circumscribed in its meaning that the contributions of all non-Western civilizations were either ignored or minimized — even if Western scientists were building on local knowledge and borrowing from indigenous people. They were simultaneously colonizing and ignoring other contributions, not only from Africans, but Latin Americans, Asians, and indigenous peoples throughout the world. Our message is that science is a human endeavor, and that requires taking in all human knowledge.

Our second editorial, today, is about diversity as a scientific imperative. Not out of charity, but because science is better when it takes into account the diversity of human knowledge and abilities. Relatedly, we’re also exploring the experiences of people of color in scientific professions, as well as presenting straight numbers about how many people of color are in scientific professions. The situation is substantively dismal in the U.S., but we have some of the best data in the world. In the U.K., South Africa, India, and other parts of the world, for example, the situation appears to be worse, and we have worse data. Data collection is so bad in some places and nonexistent in others that we really don’t even know the scope of the problem.

Q: Given that many people practice science with at least the intention of performing value-neutral inquiry, are there difficulties in starting a dialogue about the biases within science?

A: We think about science being neutral, but so often, people have an idea of what a scientist looks like, or who’s qualified to be a scientist, and that often comes with preconceptions about color. We’re trying to explode those myths. If science belongs to everyone, with a spirit of inquiry and methods that can be learned to explain the natural world and human life, there can be many different people involved.

An additional question, and this can be a contentious debate, is how much you consider or weigh the larger context in which science is created, or do you offer an account of science that seemingly rides above history — that is, scientists talking to each other across the centuries, unencumbered by experiences. Our approach doesn’t endorse the latter, and by my lights, I think most people believe we must take into account the ways scientific endeavors are socially, politically, and historically rooted.

Meanwhile, science is also evolving — in terms of the type of data we have, how we process and interpret data, the means of discovery through new instruments, and the appreciation of different ways of knowing. And that’s what we’re calling for, a widening of the aperture of the scientific imagination. Our approach is accompanied by the acknowledgement that, for all we have accomplished as humans, we also have done a lot of damage, and there is a lot of work still to do. We’re calling for a wide lens in viewing these topics, and a generosity of spirit.

Q: One of the aims of the series, as stated in the first guest editorial, is to “provide readers with hope and optimism.” What are examples of this?

A: As we detail in one issue, some schools in the U.K. are rethinking how they’re teaching science, including incorporating new figures into the history of science, because there were many people whose work and intellectual contributions were not recognized. There is more than one woman in the history of science, beyond Madame Curie. Indeed, there were many women working in laboratories or as calculators, and part of this reexamination is just repopulating our imagination as to who was involved, not based on fantasy, but by giving due recognition. That’s something we think is hopeful because it begins to complicate the history of science in a useful way.

In terms of who is doing science today, we can work to understand who is being excluded and what obstacles they face. We can examine computer science and emerging technologies like AI and say, “If we’re not being careful, we’re going to make the same mistakes,” if we don’t deal with the nondiversification of this field. It’s hopeful, though it’s also a warning about the future.

Q. As chancellor of MIT, you focus on student life and learning at the Institute. How do the subjects and themes of the special Nature issues relate to today’s MIT students?

A. I would want the MIT community to be interested in, among other things, the topline of our second editorial, the one appearing today, which holds that diversity is a scientific imperative. Looking forward, being diverse goes with greater collaboration across disciplines to help address our complex societal problems. We’re also suggesting that the composition of people participating in these endeavors matters, and we ought to be concerned about having a scientific population who can bring diverse experiences and points of view to bear on problem-solving. We think it makes for better science.

In some ways our students are demanding that. I think many students in this generation come in with a disposition that’s more inclined toward collaboration and diversity, and we ought to celebrate that. Each one of those students sees themselves as part of a larger story. We have a campus of students from everywhere in the United States and all over the world, and we want to make clear that MIT can work for everybody.

Read the full story here.
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Ministers ‘ignored’ own adviser over weak targets for restoring English nature

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Government accused of hypocrisy for pushing global target but not following Natural England’s advice at homeThe UK government ignored scientific warnings from Natural England that its nature restoration target was inadequate and would not meet its commitments, new documents show, undermining efforts to protect threatened species.In December the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, unveiled targets at the biodiversity Cop15 in Canada to reverse the decline of nature in England. They included plans to improve the quality of marine protected areas, reduce pollution and nitrogen runoff in the river system, and restore more than half a million hectares of wildlife-rich habitat outside protected areas by 2042. Continue reading...

Killing dingoes is the only way to protect livestock, right? Nope

For more than 200 years, European farmers have killed dingoes to protect livestock. But living alongside dingoes benefits nature - and actually helps graziers

Supplied, Author providedSince European colonisation, farmers have often viewed dingoes as the enemy, waging war against them to protect their livestock. Farmers felt they had no option but to eradicate dingoes using traps, shooting, poisoned baits (such as 1080) and building a 5,600km long dingo fence, the world’s longest. Killing dingoes costs millions of dollars each year. But it hasn’t resolved the conflict. In many cases it has made the threat to livestock worse by breaking up dingo families and removing experienced adults which hunt larger, more mobile prey. The alternative? As some farmers are discovering, there are unexpected benefits of learning to coexist with dingoes instead. As Western Australian cattle grazier David Pollock told us: I reckon my dingoes are worth $20,000 each, probably more. So, killing them would be the last thing that I did. Can dingoes really help graziers? Yes. In many cases, they can be allies for graziers by reducing the competition for pasture from wild herbivores such as kangaroos and goats, as well as killing or scaring off foxes and feral cats. As our understanding of the importance of predators has grown, a new approach has taken root: human-wildlife coexistence. Recently recognised by the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity, this field offers a path to stem the global loss of biodiversity by balancing the costs and benefits of living alongside wildlife. Our new research lays out seven pathways to shift from the routine killing of dingoes towards coexistence. What does coexistence look like? One path to coexistence is supporting graziers to adopt effective tools and strategies to reduce the loss of livestock while capitalising on the benefits of large predators. This is known as predator-smart farming Our research on this area has led to a new Australian guide. This approach relies on a variety of effective non-lethal tools and practices to protect livestock three main ways: humans or guardian animals such as dogs and donkeys watch over and defend livestock from dingoes, as well as using fencing to create a physical barrier using knowledge about dingo biology and behaviour to find better deterrents, such as the use of lights, sounds or smells stronger land management and livestock husbandry to increase the productive capacity of pastures and livestock resilience. This approach helps ensure the livelihoods of farmers remain resilient and makes the most of the benefits of dingoes for productive agricultural landscapes and ecosystem health. This artist’s impression of a predator smart farm shows many different deterrent methods. Amelia Baxter As one New South Wales cattle producer found, these approaches work. He told us: Three years ago, we were losing 53% of our calves to dingoes. We started looking into alternatives that were cost and time effective and decided to try guardian donkeys. We purchased two jacks (male donkeys) and now we have 94% calving rate. Donkeys saved our business. Guardian donkeys are effective dingo deterrents. Author provided So what’s stopping us? We now know it’s entirely possible to live and farm alongside dingoes. So why do we still resort to lethal control? Inertia is one barrier to change. The default option is to kill dingoes. Laws, policies and funding by government and industry have institutionalised lethal control. But there are other barriers, such as a lack of funding for different approaches from government and a lack of support from the community and graziers. Despite this resistance the number of graziers adopting predator smart farming is growing. To overcome these barriers, we believe it’s important to undertake research alongside graziers to field-test and demonstrate how these methods actually work, and which combinations work best. Changes like this take time. We also have to build connections and rapport through agricultural networks, as well as tackle the institutional infrastructure built up around dingo control. It’s natural for farmers, graziers and state government representatives to be sceptical of such a big change. But the status quo isn’t working. Living alongside dingoes could help us make some of the fundamental changes needed to stop the loss of biodiversity. To that end, public awareness and talking about this openly can help bring something which has long gone unquestioned into the spotlight. Our research emerged from in-depth interviews with Australian livestock producers, ecologists, conservation and animal welfare groups, industry representatives and policy makers as well as field observations and analysis of Australia’s wild dog action plan. Coexisting with dingoes could be a win-win for livestock farmers. Shutterstock If we do make progress towards coexisting with dingoes, we could embed predator-smart techniques in the way we farm to boost biodiversity, landscape resilience, food security and livelihoods. We would bring back dingoes as apex predators and regulators of healthy ecosystems. Politics would take a step back, in favour of scientific, evidence-based approaches and First Nations input into environmental policies. This is not hypothetical. Graziers and landholders already using predator-smart tools and strategies report many benefits. They include: fewer animals injured or killed by dingoes less time spent stalking and killing dingoes lower total grazing pressure from feral grazers such as goats boosting pasture growth and livestock profitability. Landholders for Dingoes promotes the work of landholders who are coexisting with dingoes. It’s time to modernise Australia’s approach to dingoes. This approach offers a potential win-win for farmers and dingoes, as well as significant gains for nature. But to make this happen, we will have to shift our attitude towards dingoes, gain support from graziers and other stakeholders, and make non-lethal coexistence tools and approaches the new standard practice. Read more: From the dingo to the Tasmanian devil - why we should be rewilding carnivores Louise Boronyak was funded by the University of Technology Sydney under the UTS Research Excellence Scholarship. She is is a research affiliate of the University of Technology Sydney and Humane Society International AustraliaBradley Smith is an unpaid director of the Australian Dingo Foundation, a non-profit environmental charity that advocates for dingo conservation. He also serves as a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) dingo working group, which is part of their Species Survival Commission (Canids Specialist Group).

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