Essay denounces ‘pervasive’ racism and sexism in science – University World News
GLOBAL-AFRICA
Sexist and racist discriminatory practices are widespread and entrenched in scientific processes, including in the indicators of success and impact, and have to change to tackle challenges such as COVID-19 and climate change, which necessitate diverse experiences and perspectives to come up with creative solutions.
African academics, in particular, are not only disadvantaged by discriminatory practices in scientific processes, such as language deficiencies in English, in which they may be required to publish rather than native languages, but also by ‘parachute science’.
Parachute science, also called ‘colonial science’ or ‘parasitic science’, sidelines local researchers when field studies are conducted in their own countries as the visiting researchers tend to take away the data, which local researchers helped to collect, and benefit from the findings in their scientific careers.
Sarah Davies, an assistant professor of biology at the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences, has told University World News in an e-mail exchange following an essay she co-authored that, “scientists in Africa are likely to suffer from a lot of the discriminatory practices we discussed in the paper (racism, sexism) and also experience challenges associated with publishing in their non-native language”.
The paper she referred to is the essay she co-authored with a group of other women, which was published in the open access PLOS Biology, titled, ‘Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science’.
Outdated value system?
In the essay, the women argued that “success and impact metrics in science are based on a system that perpetuates sexist and racist ‘rewards’ by prioritising citations and impact factors.
“These metrics are flawed and biased against already marginalised groups and fail to accurately capture the breadth of individuals’ meaningful scientific impacts.”
Accordingly, the authors advocated for a shift in what they called an “outdated value system” to advance science through the “principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion”.
Davies said they were motivated by the “time crunch and workload created by the coronavirus pandemic which was a tipping point for many marginalised researchers”.
“I’ve never been busier, so it was an interesting choice to take on a ‘perspectives’ piece outside my field of [marine biology] research,” she said, adding that, “the pandemic created the perfect storm” to write about the subject.
In addition, the period also necessitated navigating a changing work and research environment while juggling childcare and, for this reason, there was time to look at how researchers’ work had been affected in several ways.
Davies admitted that the discriminatory practice had been “pervasive throughout science”.
“In discussions with people in other fields, it seems these same issues are widespread and likely are a reflection of a society built on colonialism and patriarchy more broadly,” she said.
Denouncing sexist and racist structures
Grouped as an interdisciplinary, international team of women scientists, the essayists have publicly acknowledged and denounced “the pervasive sexist and racist structures persisting within the value systems, which typify science”.
They advocated for “accelerating the pace of positive change in science by building on the advancements made through systemically marginalised groups, including the prior and ongoing efforts of women, black people — (which they used to explicitly acknowledge that systemic racism disproportionately affects the lives of black people, particularly within the United States) — indigenous people, people of colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and others, and their allies”.
They also highlighted the long-standing problems associated with narrow definitions of success and impact in science and recommended that it be expanded so that the measures of success go beyond citations to value the multifaceted nature of scientific impact.
They proposed a model that values the recruitment and retention of scientists from diverse backgrounds through building safe and healthy work environments.
They mentioned as detrimental, the ‘publish or perish’ model that celebrates the quantity of publications, citation rates and impact factor scores as the primary, and often sole, indicators of success and impact.
“Citation metrics, which have been widely used across most research areas due to their quantitative nature and easy estimation, influence career advancement at all levels, including graduate opportunities, funding success, career positions, awards, distinctions, and tenure and promotion,” the group said.
But they pointed out that the “lack of diversity among the most cited scientific authors is driven by historical demographics of faculty and those in academic leadership positions”.
The authors said a recent finding showed that the citation gap between genders was found to be as large as 30% across science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine as disciplines and this gap has been documented across a breadth of journals globally.
“These patterns are partially explained by men exhibiting higher rates of self-citation and women having shorter career lengths than men,” they noted, adding that, “decisions on whom to cite may also reflect exclusionary scientific networks that coalesce at scholarly meetings and conferences that, despite recent efforts in improving diversity among participants, primarily cater to established white men from privileged universities.”
They said that, compared to men, females receive more manuscript rejections and are less likely to be published in prestigious journals (which, typically, have high citation rates), and are less likely to be invited to write commentaries.
Citational segregation
“Pervasive racism in science also drives substantial and systemic biases in publication rates, citation rates, and editorial positions,” they argued, saying that “publication-related metrics show distinct patterns of bias against racially and-or ethnically diverse scientific teams, which experience more than 5% lower acceptance rates and fewer citations than less diverse author teams.”
The authors also mentioned that, ‘citational segregation’, whereby authors preferred citing authors from the same racial or ethnic group(s), has been demonstrated with white authors citing other white authors more frequently.
“This particular bias further reduces the circulation and intellectual acknowledgement of non-white scholars’ work and the diversity of viewpoints they bring,” the authors added.
They said that experiencing challenges related to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in science is universal across disciplines, pointing out that, “strong evidence highlights the breadth of biases, yet action-based solutions have not been broadly adopted, and systemic change remains elusive”.
Davies said that academia should be interested in doing away with these biases if they have invested in addressing today’s issues such as climate change and COVID-19.
“Then we need people with diverse experiences and perspectives involved in the process to come up with creative ways to deal with these challenges. [The] status quo is not working.”
She said the authors have made suggestions to governments and policymakers to use granting agencies to value mentorship as one aspect of their funding decisions and, in that way, investing resources into investigators who are dedicated to mentorship and increasing equity in science.
Gladys Ansah, a senior lecturer at the University of Ghana, says the essay discussed a sensitive and important topic, not only in science but in academia in general, which many academics are either careful to broach or pretend does not exist.
“Academics from marginalised backgrounds, for example, females and academics of colour, should be bothered about the current system of reward that measures success and impact by citation from selected outlets only,” she added.
She said many academics from marginalised backgrounds are the most frustrated and most negatively affected by this system.
On the one hand, the leadership of their institutions rely on these metrics for internal reward systems, such as promotions, whether or not citations translate into actual or real impact in their communities.
Ansah agreed with the authors’ conclusion and said that work from many academics is not accepted for publication in the high-impact journals that produce the high rates of citations because they are not known.
For this reason, she said, “there is the need to create a more inclusive reward system that aims at a holistic assessment”.
“The current system of assessment of ‘publish or perish’ potentially dwarfs other equally important areas of impact. For example, mentoring and even sustained research and publication,” she said, adding that “among African [Ghanaian] academics, there is either no or significantly dwindled motivation to research and publish once they are tenured.”
For her part, Abigail Ogwezzy-Ndisika of the department of mass communication at the University of Lagos in Nigeria said there is the need for “gender mainstreaming” because women, as late entrants into the publishing sphere where men have already built their networks, should be given more opportunities.
Ogwezzy-Ndisika said that, “for women to succeed as academics, they must be mentored, and donor bodies must also demand more gender accountability because women suffer disadvantages in getting their works published”.
Commenting on the essay, Stella Ahunanya, an educational, public relations and human resource management consultant in Nigeria, told University World News that she agreed with the conclusion of the authors, especially the strategies suggested to be put in place to counter the biases, racism and destructive mentorship, among other issues.
“As a female academic who has not experienced colour discrimination, only gender and tribal discrimination, the issues raised are real and measurable in our clime,” Ahunanya said, adding that she had researched the ‘glass ceiling’ of female administrators in higher learning and felt that female academics of colour should also be concerned about the issues raised.