Chapters
1 Justice-Centered Science: Understanding How Science Can and Has Impacted Communities
1.1. Learning Outcomes
Learning Outcomes
This chapter focuses on understanding different perspectives on science and the role science has played in society. The major learning outcomes include the following:
Students will be able to
- Identify the key components of Western science practices
- Explain how science practices have resulted in harm historically and contemporaneously
- Define justice-centered science
- Articulate a code of research ethics that incorporates an understanding of justice-centered science
1.2. What Is Science?
At its broadest, we understand science as an approach to understanding and interpreting natural phenomena through processes such as empirical observations, and it is an endeavor pursued in all human cultures. It is important to ground this discussion of justice-centered science in an awareness that there are other ways of pursuing and transmitting knowledge and understanding of the natural world. However, for the purposes of this text, we are specifically discussing, and distinguishing, Western science as a construct because it is the dominant influence on how science is practiced, implemented, funded, and discussed in cultures that are European or were previously colonized or controlled by European countries. Further, by framing this conversation within the Western tradition of science, it provides a better foundation for understanding justice- centered science as an approach to addressing inclusion and equity issues within Western science. Western science emphasizes concrete frameworks and a search for objective truth built on Eurocentric knowledge traditions [Mazzocchi, 2006]. According to Mazzocchi [2006, p.464] “Western science is objective and quantitative…and is based on academic and literate transmission.” Therefore, when we use the term “science” in this text, we are specifically referring to the Western tradition of science.
Although different approaches and methodologies can be used to practice science, it is a process of discovery, constantly evolving in the face of new evidence toward a better or richer understanding of the world derived from those scientific processes. Scientists are taught not to take things at face value but instead to question assumptions while seeking evidence in general before accepting claims made by others or confidently asserting any results produced themselves. The scientific method—making observations, forming hypotheses, running experiments, and analyzing data—historically has been used as a way of explaining natural phenomena. This is critical in that the scientific method is intended to recognize and minimize bias. A foundational principle of Western science is critical thinking and skepticism. Despite the scientific method seeking to make science objective, as a human endeavor, science is still framed through a particular sociocultural lens. This comes into play with the selecti