Hold Science to Higher Standards on Racism

2022
STAT News, June 20.

In the weeks following the mid-May shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, journalists and scientists discussed what to make of the terrorist’s references to science in his online diatribe. Overwhelmingly, these discussions described the racist screed as relying on pseudoscience or discredited science and co-opting or misreading mainstream science. This framing, however, doesn’t do enough to hold scientists and the institutions of science accountable for the societal consequences of racist science and scientific racism.