BREAKING SCIENCE OUT OF ITS IVORY TOWER | venitism

lterrat's bookmarks 2017-04-27

Summary:

"Without hardware, there is no science. From Hooke’s microscope to the Hubble telescope, instruments are modern science’s platforms for producing knowledge. But limited access to scientific tools impedes the progress and reach of science by restricting the type of people who can participate in research, favouring those who have access to well-resourced laboratories in industrial or academic institutions.

Scientists in developing countries, grassroots community organisations, and citizen scientists can struggle to obtain and maintain the equipment they require to answer their own research questions.

The result of this exclusion from participation is that scientific research becomes ever more elitist as a small number of people decide what the worthwhile and valid projects are. For example, the relative neglect of many tropical diseases and agricultural research on African subsistence crops demonstrates that local concerns in areas with limited scientific resources are often not sufficiently addressed by global science.

Likewise, public concerns and desire for transparency around technology can also be ignored. Research on fracking has received $137 million from the United States Department of Energy. But despite vocal concerns about water pollution, no affordable technologies have been developed for communities to use to monitor their own air or water, even though access to the relevant data from industry is difficult. Locking science inside ivory and industry towers restricts what it can look like."

Link:

https://venitism.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/breaking-science-out-of-its-ivory-tower/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » lterrat's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.stem

Date tagged:

04/27/2017, 19:48

Date published:

04/27/2017, 15:48