How we train the gaze of science to think in prejudiced terms.
"Whose voices are missing at the lab bench?" asks Ruha Benjamin, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies and author of People’s Science. This question, posed in her recent TEDx Talk, forms the point of departure for Benjamin's discussion on discriminatory design in the medical sciences, in which she examines how latent prejudices shape scientific research—and how, in consequence, emergent biotechnologies can perpetuate prejudgment and discrimination.
At the heart of this phenomenon, Benjamin notes, is the compulsion to locate problems within particular demographics, rather than thinking about issues more holistically. In her talk she shares three case studies of discriminatory design in the biotechnology field to reveal how prejudice perpetuates itself by shaping our assumptions and the research questions on which those assumptions are based. Without careful consideration, Benjamin cautions, we run the risk of unwittingly reproducing social inequalities across the gamut of race, gender, class, disability, and nationality.
Watch Ruha Benjamin's full TEDx Talk:
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