OPINION: Democrats Discuss — How STEM has become a white man’s game and how to fix it

Cody Phillips is a senior majoring in biological sciences. He is a member of the Ohio University College Democrats. The following article reflects the opinions and views of the author and does not represent the thoughts of the Ohio University College Democrats.

This is a submitted column. Please note that these views and opinions do not reflect those of The New Political.

To say STEM and people of color have a troubled history together is a gross understatement. 

There are countless examples of science taking advantage of, and actively misleading people of color, in the pursuit of knowledge that disproportionately helps white people. Because of recent activism, the science community has taken a more active role in addressing systemic racism and inequality in science, technology, engineering and math. 

One of the most grotesque examples of science taking advantage of people of color is the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Researchers aimed to observe the natural lifespan of syphilis in Black men for six months to see how the disease progressed and presented in patients. These experiments, however, lasted for about 40 years and violated many of the promises researchers made, including free medical examinations, covering the cost of funerals and free meals. 

After the initial six-month period planned for the observations, the researchers did not offer to treat the Black men with penicillin, even after it became the standard for treatment in 1947. 

What makes this experiment particularly damning is that scientists neglected to disclose safety information preventing the participants from participating in informed consent. In human research, informed consent is the idea that a person who is volunteering to become a research participant must be aware of all of the risks and dangers posed, as well as informed about all the important aspects of the experiment and how it will be conducted. 

Informed consent serves to protect participants from gross mistreatment and harmful conditions. By neglecting to fully inform the Tuskegee experiment participants and intentionally lying about what the scientists were doing, researchers took advantage of the participants’ ignorance to subject them to dangerous health risks, including neglecting to treat or lying about treating the syphilis cases.

The justifications for these experiments are based on racist notions of Black men and the wildly inaccurate idea of social Darwinism. The actions of the doctors leading these studies stemmed from doctors of the same era publishing “research” on the effects of emancipation on the health of Black men. 

These doctors concluded that emancipation had largely gone on to be worse for the health of Black people than slavery ever was, all while intentionally disregarding the social and environmental factors that were leading to health outcomes after emancipation, including segregation, racism, mass poverty and lack of education. The doctors also believed that the rate of venereal diseases in rural Black communities was high, sharing the racist idea that Black people were more immoral. 

Even in the face of the Oslo experiments on syphilis — which concluded that all cases of syphilis should be treated — and with the authors of those studies being used as references, the leaders of the Tuskegee study did not think that they applied to Black men and did not think that Black men would respond to treatment because of their perceived evolutionary inferiority. 

Their justifications stemmed from the outdated and inaccurate ideas of social Darwinism, which stated that organisms with characteristics that allow them to survive to reproduce will then pass on their traits to their offspring. Over time, the environment and other conditions can change, allowing only the individual organisms with survivable traits to reproduce so they can pass on those traits. 

Although this work purely applies to organisms and their interactions with the environment regarding the population, many scientists in the late 19th and early 20th century used the “survival of the fittest” aspect to justify racism. 

In the United States, many scientists and white supremacists argued that the reason Black people were often poor, uneducated and unhealthy was a result of their inferiority to white Americans, not because of slavery, racism or Jim Crow.

These ideas about Black people being genetically and racially inferior set the groundwork for studies like the Tuskegee syphilis study and others. Science’s power, especially through fueling racist and misleading research, created an environment where Black people were not treated as human and issues facing Black people were not researched on a similar scale compared to issues facing white people.

Unfortunately, racism in STEM did not stop with experiments like the Tuskegee syphilis study. Instead of focusing on trying to justify racial inferiority, science is now facing the problem that Black people are not being included as test participants or as researchers. This is causing serious issues. 

Take the genetic makeup of DNA databases that are used for research and for medicine. Two of the top genomic databases are mostly made up of DNA from European ancestry and largely overlook African ancestry. This creates issues in the clinical atmosphere because these databases aid in determining genetic susceptibility to certain diseases and resistances to certain drugs. 

Unfortunately, by having Eurocentric genetic databases, we decrease the range of health presentations that these databases can apply to, diminishing their impact and their reliability. The lack of African ancestry in DNA databases makes it more difficult, and more expensive, to conduct comprehensive studies on traits in Black populations compared to white ones. 

This disparity is inverted in the case of forensic databases though, where people of color make up a greater number of entries than their white counterparts. This demonstrates how genetic databases work against people of color — they are less useful in a clinical setting since they have incomplete and understudied genotypes, and more dangerous in forensic settings since they increase the rate of wrongful convictions and profiling.

The lack of African ancestry in DNA databases should not come as a surprise to anyone who has studied or been involved in STEM, an environment where people of color are underrepresented and support for them is scarcer.

In nearly every way, people of color, especially Black and Indigenous people, are severely underrepresented in STEM. In college admissions at undergraduate and graduate levels, people of color are admitted into STEM programs at lower rates than their white counterparts. This trend translates to the workforce, where there is a lower representation of people of color, and in nearly every case, decreased average salaries.

This lack of representation is a bigger problem than just visibility. If there aren’t doctors and scientists of color, there will not be the same attention to detail given to issues experienced by people of color. 

For example, Black women in the United States experience higher rates of infant and maternal mortality, partially credited to the biases of the doctors treating them. Doctors are less likely to act on complaints about pain or other complications when a Black woman is expressing her concerns. These implicit biases from medical professionals are not helped by the fact that they are predominantly taught by white people in medical schools. 

This further emphasizes the importance of representation in STEM, as changing the makeup of the educators could help mitigate some biases taught in medical schools.

Medical schools aren’t the only place where inequality impacts STEM representation. 

Urban schools, which are populated by more people of color, have lower funding and produce fewer STEM majors as well as fewer college admissions on average. The lack of science funding in these urban schools leads to a lack of science accessible to students. Without adequate funding for science supplies and proper support for teachers, a formula is created for weaker STEM foundations, which leads to an increase in the inaccessibility of STEM.

Without large-scale changes in education and STEM, we will continue to increase disparities in medicine, technology and representation. We must start building stronger foundations by increasing the accessibility of STEM through tapping into funds from programs that traditionally harm people of color — such as over-militarized police forces in urban areas — and funnel it into education and social programs that allow for support and opportunity. 

We must increase admission rates and increase the support for students of color in higher education. It is not enough to just admit students of color; we need to create an uplifting and supportive environment to allow these students to thrive. We also need to include more people of color as test participants, researchers and professors in science to properly understand and teach the science that impacts all of us. 

Lastly, we need to pay people of color an equal and comparable salary to their white peers so their work is recognized, and it creates an environment where they are valued and they can thrive. People in STEM should work for everyone regardless of race or background, and it is time for it to take steps to finally reflect those values.