Gravity of Science: should it fall?
Iloathe anti-science ideologies. Anyone who knows me tends to avoid topics such as the anti-vaccination and the anti-genetic modification movements lest they be subjected to an hour-long rant on how wrong those ideologies are.
As a scientist myself, I see these movements as the height of privileged rejection of scientific logic because their proponents are largely protected from disease or true hunger by their middle-class lifestyle and wealth. In my experience, many of the voices in these movements belong to wealthy white people from wealthy nations. Imagine how I felt at hearing that science must be scrapped and we should start again.
This was suggested at a recent meeting I attended on decolonising the science faculty at UCT organised by a group of students in the faculty who wanted to foster understanding between the protesting students and the student body. At the time of writing, the viral four-minute video (an excerpt from a two-hour meeting) containing the now notorious opinion has close to half a million views on YouTube.
Between that moment and now, I have pondered her words and how I felt about them as a scientist. I did not loathe her words and upon some introspection I realised why: It was the tone in which the words were delivered. The tone, rather than the sentiment, was one of frustration and not privilege or entitlement. This tone was echoed by many of the other people of colour at that meeting (most of them scientists) and in subsequent discussion groups.
When one talks of science, one can be talking of a number of things. I will discuss the two aspects pertinent to the ongoing debate: Firstly, science as the concept of logical deduc- tion based on observation and testing and secondly, Science (capitalised) as the academic discipline. What has happened here, is the conflation of the two related but distinct definitions of the word.
As humans, we are naturally inquisitive and, for me, science is the manifestation of this desire to explore and understand. All human civilisations across the globe and throughout history used science in its purest form to develop agriculture (basic genetics, biotechnology and geology), tool manufacture and architecture (physics, mathematics and chemistry) and medicine (anatomy, botany and chemistry) among others. This is not what needs to fall (and most of the scientists present agreed). This is something that transcends demographics and political ideology. This is science as the self-correcting, everimproving body of knowledge that I love. This is the science employed by indigenous peoples in South Africa to know which crops to plant in which soil by sight, taste and touch or which plant will cure your headache and which will give you stomach cramps (these are stories I heard at meetings discussing decolonisation of the Sciences) as well as the science of Egypt, Greece, and England, and the US.
Science as an academic discipline may not need to fall but it needs to change to be more inclusive, and soon. A common theme in the discussions held throughout last week from people of colour was the feeling of not belonging in their departments, of being unable