Science’s peer review and acceptance of research papers under scrutiny

Food for thought! Surely, the process of peer review and acceptance of research papers for publication in a prestigious science journal is not perfect, but how much does it deviate from accepted standards?

I guess, it should be acknowledged and applauded that Science opened it's books to allow for this kind of research into their practices!

E.g. it appears papers from single authors (possibly also small teams of researchers) may have a harder time to get published compared to papers authored by larger teams or by researchers from prestigious institutions. Could this be a serious and damaging bias? Quite possibly!

"Getting published in Science and other prominent journals can make careers and shape future research. Now an unusual study has shed light on potential biases in acceptance rates at Science and where they may arise in the journal’s complex process of choosing papers for publication.

Science and its sister journal, Science Advances, provided a research team a rare glimpse of their confidential data on more than 110,000 manuscripts submitted from 2015 to 2020. 

U.S. authors and large teams appear to have had an edge in acceptance rate. 

Authors in China, on the other hand, had a particularly low rate of 2.3%.

The overall average rate for all submissions was 6.1%. Study co-author Aaron Clauset presented the findings this month at the International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication. ..."

"... The study shines a light on potential biases in acceptance and where they may arise in the complex process of choosing papers for publication. ..."

From the abstract:

"Objective

To make publicly available a deidentified dataset of manuscript submissions and associated editorial metadata at Science and Science Advances (2 elite multidisciplinary journals) and quantify the manuscript and author characteristics associated with outcomes over the 2 stages of evaluation at these highly selective journals:

(1) editorial review, when journal editors screen and select a smaller set of submissions for detailed consideration, and

(2) peer review, when editors recruit outside experts to evaluate manuscripts.

Peer review at elite scientific journals is a high-stakes process whose outcomes have a broad influence in science and society.

However, the need to maintain peer review’s confidentiality has limited the range of data available for scientific study. This lack of peer review data makes it difficult to assess how well elite journals achieve the scientific community’s ideals or to improve and test theories to improve their evaluation processes.

Design

We introduced and described a manuscript-level dataset of 110,303 deidentified evaluations of manuscripts submitted to Science and Science Advances over a 5-year period (2015-2019), each with a standard set of author and manuscript characteristics, and we conducted a series of logistic regression analyses to quantify the correlates of success in the initial editorial review stage (desk rejections) and the subsequent peer review stage at both journals.

Results

Each manuscript record includes author, editor, and manuscript characteristics, including topic, team size, institutional prestige, gender, geographic region, evaluation scores, and editor decisions;

personally identifiable and reidentifiable information, including the text of the reviews, is excluded.

Our statistical analyses revealed strong associations with institutional prestige, team size, manuscript topic, and country, which are primarily attributable (via a mediation analysis) to the influence of the editor, even as the tenor of advice from outside experts correlates strongly with the final editorial decision ... Corresponding authors who are men appear to have a small but significant advantage with editors and reviewers at Science, while authors based in China have a significant disadvantage."

ScienceAdviser

Whose papers have an edge at Science? In unusual study, journal looks in the mirror "Confidential data show being in the U.S., at a prestigious institution, and in a large team all may help"

Manuscript Characteristics Associated With Editorial Review and Peer Review Outcomes at Science and Science Advances (It appears, this research has  not yet been published, only presented at a conference so far)

Science journals article abstract annoyances

Some authors insert up to dozens of references in their abstract. Very annoying! And what is the point of doing it?

The abstract is supposed to present the motivation, relevance, method, and results of the research in a clear and concise manner without any distractions!

Nature journal: More People Die From Venomous Snakebites Each Year Than Have Ever Died from Ebola or any other neglected tropical disease

What a nonsensical headline about a serious subject! 

Nature journal even goes so far to call venomous snakebites a tropical disease. How curious/ridiculous is that!

Do you know how many people died from Ebola last year? 😊

The real problem is not so much dying from a venomous snake bite, but surviving with very serious disabilities.

"... Venomous snakes bite about 5,000 people a year in Colombia; between 20 and 40 of those bitten die from their injuries. And although Colombia has the ability to produce and distribute antivenom—the antidote for venomous snakebites—about 20 percent of the victims who need antivenom don’t receive it. Globally as many as 2.7 million people are envenomed by snakes every year. Of these, up to 400,000 are permanently disabled, and estimates suggest that 81,000 to 138,000 die. Venomous snakebites may receive less attention from health organizations than contagious viruses and bacterial infections, but their toxic effects make them one of the deadliest neglected tropical diseases. ..."

More People Die From Venomous Snakebites Each Year Than Have Ever Died from Ebola In low- and middle-income nations, snakebite envenoming is more deadly than almost any other neglected tropical disease.

Eponyms have no place in 21st-century biological nomenclature. Really!

When ideology enters science! Who are these morons and crusaders! To erase history is dangerous and naiv! Again it is the once prestigious Nature journal that disseminates this propaganda and demagoguery!

"End the era of eponyms

It’s time to axe the practice of naming species after individuals, say 11 ecologists and biologists. They admit that “any call for exceptional changes in how we name nature requires an exceptional rationale”. But they argue that ‘eponyms’ burden the foundation of taxonomy with political baggage — especially the residue of colonialism. For example, more than 60% of the eponyms given to the flora of New Caledonia are named for French citizens (and 94% of them honour men)."

"The problematic nature of many eponyms reflects a much wider public discourse, with passionate debates about whether and how we should honour historical figures whose values, actions and/or beliefs are now incompatible with contemporary culture. ..."

nature briefing

Eponyms have no place in 21st-century biological nomenclature | Nature Ecology & Evolution We argue that naming species in honour of a specific person is unjustifiable and out of step with equality and representation. Reforming taxonomy to remove eponyms will not be easy but could bring multiple benefits for both conservation and society.

AI ‘fairness’ research held back by lack of diversity. Really!

It is so annoying and tiresome this skin color propaganda and demagoguery! Again it is disseminated by the once prestigious Nature journal!

I don't even want to comment anymore on this rubbish and pseudoscience!

AI ‘fairness’ research held back by lack of diversity Authors of papers on the potential biases of artificial intelligence tools in health care are predominantly white, male and from high-income countries.

The Future of Supercells with damaging hail and deadly tornadoes in the United States. Really!

This is more like the superspread of Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion propaganda and demagoguery! The ideology of anthropogenic climate change has permeated and guided this research!

This is alarmism and hysteria dressed up as science! This pretense of knowledge reeks!

This is pseudoscience research published by the American Meteorological Society!

Climate models are essentially junk especially if they are used  to simulate for up to 100 year into the future! Too many things about climate are still unknown or little understood! Any serious and sincere scientist knows that! We can not even forecast weather accurately for more than 48 hours! The complexity of weather and climate is similar when it comes to forecasting!

One consolation: The senior author of this study, i.e. Vittorio A. Gensini, has only a very low citation count of 1302 according to Google Scholar. Hopefully, it will stay low thanks to studies like that!!!

Who helps spreading such demagoguery? Bloomberg School of Public Health via its daily newsletter! Mr. Bloomberg do you know what you are paying for?

From the abstract:

"A supercell is a distinct type of intense, long-lived thunderstorm that is defined by its quasi-steady, rotating updraft. Supercells are responsible for most damaging hail and deadly tornadoes, causing billions of dollars in losses and hundreds of casualties annually. This research uses high-resolution, convection-permitting climate simulations across 15-yr epochs that span the twenty-first century to assess how supercells may change across the United States. Specifically, the study explores how late-twentieth-century supercell populations compare with their late-twenty-first-century counterparts for two—intermediate and pessimistic—anthropogenic climate change trajectories. An algorithm identifies, segments, and tracks supercells in the simulation output using updraft helicity, which measures the magnitude of corkscrew flow through a storm’s updraft and is a common proxy for supercells. Results reveal that supercells will be more frequent and intense in future climates, with robust spatiotemporal shifts in their populations. Supercells are projected to become more numerous in regions of the eastern United States, while decreasing in frequency in portions of the Great Plains. Supercell risk is expected to escalate outside of the traditional severe storm season, with supercells and their perils likely to increase in late winter and early spring months under both emissions scenarios. Conversely, the latter part of the severe storm season may be curtailed, with supercells expected to decrease midsummer through early fall. These results suggest the potential for more significant tornadoes, hail, and extreme rainfall that, when combined with an increasingly vulnerable society, may produce disastrous consequences."

The Future of Supercells in the United States in: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Volume 104 Issue 1 (2023) (open access)

We are doomed! (Caution: Satire)

Fig. 3. Mean annual supercell track counts on an 80 km grid for the three simulation epochs: (a) HIST, (b) FUTR4.5, and (d) FUTR8.5. (c),(e) The mean annual supercell count track differences, or deltas, between FUTR4.5 and HIST and between FUTR8.5 and HIST, respectively

Nature journal: White men still hold majority of US science and engineering jobs. Really!

This demagoguery spewed by a once prestigious scientific journal is so absurd! Skin color ideology to be damned!

This supposedly news article is trash pure and simple! Why does the representation in sciences & technology have to match the overall proportions in the U.S. population as suggested by the National Science Foundation? This is not science, but a terrible ideology!

What is also again extremely perfidious is the deliberate attempt to mix skin color ideology plus feminism with justifiable and generally accepted concerns for individuals with disabilities!

Hitler is long dead, but not in academia! This neo racism against white people is so disgusting!

E.g. how many white individuals occupy science and engineering positions in African countries (perhaps except South Africa)?

Men watch out in the battle of the sexes:

E.g. are women not also typically underrepresented in the mining and construction industries? Who cares! Let men do the dirty and sweaty work!

"Women, members of minority ethnic groups and those with disabilities continue to be under-represented in positions across the US science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce ...

White men [not Jews anymore] dominate science and engineering positions in the nation ..."

From the National Science Foundation news release:

"... However, those groups — as well as people with disabilities — broadly remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics when compared to their overall distribution in the U.S. population, reflecting the larger equity challenges our nation faces. ..."

White men still hold majority of US science and engineering jobs Despite gains by women and people of colour, men continue to occupy almost three-quarters of all science and engineering positions in the nation, and close to two-thirds are occupied by those who identify as white.

NSF's NCSES releases report on diversity trends in STEM workforce and education Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities 2023 is most comprehensive federal data source on this topic

Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities published by German Springer. Really!

Can you believe it!!! This is pure racism dressed up as science! I thought in the 20th we learnt a lesson about this!

It appears this journal did not exist before 2014 (or it was possibly renamed).

"Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities reports on the scholarly progress of work to understand, address, and ultimately eliminate health disparities based on race and ethnicity. ..."

Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities | Home

Can floating marine solar islands meet the world's future energy needs? Really!

Human folly knows no bounds! How many hundreds or thousands of square kilometers of water/ocean surface need to be covered?

How environmentally friendly is that? This nonsense was even published in the prestigious PNAS!

The strange ideas born out of the medieval superstition behind the Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion!

Recently, I blogged here (in German) about the CEO of one of the leading reinsurance companies of the world (Munich Re) having a megalomaniac dream of covering the desert Sahara with solar panels!

"Trygve Kristiansen does research on floating solar power, which are photovoltaics supported on the water. He believes that floating solar panels could play an important global role in the transition to greener technologies. He is a professor of marine technology at NTNU. ..."

From the abstract:

"Significance

Humankind must cease CO2 emissions [???] from fossil fuel burning if dangerous climate change is to be avoided. However, liquid carbon-based energy carriers are often without practical alternatives for vital mobility applications. The recycling of atmospheric CO2 into synthetic fuels, using renewable energy, offers an energy concept with no net CO2 emission. We propose to implement, on a large scale, marine-based artificial islands, on which solar or wind energy powers the production of hydrogen and the extraction of CO2 from seawater and where these gases are catalytically reacted to yield liquid methanol fuel. The present work proposes specifications for such facilities and highlights essential challenges in physics, chemistry, and engineering which must be met to realize this ambitious proposal.

Abstract

A massive reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning is required to limit the extent of global warming. [???] However, carbon-based liquid fuels will in the foreseeable future continue to be important energy storage media. We propose a combination of largely existing technologies to use solar energy to recycle atmospheric CO2 into a liquid fuel. Our concept is clusters of marine-based floating islands, on which photovoltaic cells convert sunlight into electrical energy to produce H2 and to extract CO2 from seawater, where it is in equilibrium with the atmosphere. These gases are then reacted to form the energy carrier methanol, which is conveniently shipped to the end consumer. The present work initiates the development of this concept and highlights relevant questions in physics, chemistry, and mechanics."

Can floating solar islands meet the world's future energy needs?

Renewable CO2 recycling and synthetic fuel production in a marine environment

Nature Journal Annoyances: Low resolution images for articles with no public access

I find this outright nasty! Then please do not show any images like some other academic journals! Usually, public access articles also come with an option to view a larger image etc. Not the ones without public access!

P.S. I believe, this is not the first non public access article, where I noticed this issue!

Here is an example (Source fig. 3):

Nature journal: Elon Musk's Twitter changed science — what happens now it’s in turmoil? Really!

So Nature journal, what was Twitter before Elon Musk? Perhaps an unfiltered disseminator of propaganda and demagoguery by scientists?

"... Many [scientists] are concerned that new owner Elon Musk’s erratic and confrontational management could see abuse and misinformation rise on the site. ..." (Nature Briefing)

"Musk’s erratic and confrontational management of Twitter has worried many users, including researchers ... For hundreds of thousands of scientists, Twitter is a sounding board, megaphone and common room: a place to broadcast research findings, debate issues in academia and interact with people who they wouldn’t normally meet up with. ..."

Twitter changed science — what happens now it’s in turmoil? The microblogging platform has transformed research communication, but its future is in doubt.

Nature journal: How sports science is neglecting female athletes. Really!

This is again junk journalism and junk science coming from a prestigious academic journal!

Female (professional) athletes is a rather new phenomenon! And female professional athletes are still a small minority! No wonder!

"Researchers reviewed 669 studies published between 2017 and 2021 in 6 leading sports-science journals. They wanted to put some numbers to their observations that there were many more studies on male sports compared with female sports. ..."

How sports science is neglecting female athletes Imbalance impedes progress in prevention and treatment of injuries among female players.

Nature journal: Nationwide geospatial analysis of county racial and ethnic composition and public drinking water arsenic and uranium. Caution: Pseudoscience

Smells awfully like pseudo or even junk science!

The study does not mention how white people are affected by this! And, oh by the way, it happens in "regions where concentrations of these contaminants are high".

This is pure propaganda and demagoguery published in a prestigious academic journal like Nature! Disturbing!!!

This study was of course readily picked up by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:

"US communities with greater proportions of Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Black residents have higher concentrations of uranium and arsenic in their drinking water, a study in Nature found; the findings were consistent regardless of socioeconomic status. The Hill"

From the abstract:

"There is no safe level of exposure to inorganic arsenic or uranium, yet recent studies identified sociodemographic and regional inequalities in concentrations of these frequently detected contaminants in public water systems across the US. We analyze the county-level association between racial/ethnic composition and public water arsenic and uranium concentrations from 2000–2011 using geospatial models. We find that higher proportions of Hispanic/Latino and American Indian/Alaskan Native residents are associated with significantly higher arsenic and uranium concentrations. These associations differ in magnitude and direction across regions; higher proportions of non-Hispanic Black residents are associated with higher arsenic and uranium in regions where concentrations of these contaminants are high. The findings from this nationwide geospatial analysis identifying racial/ethnic inequalities in arsenic and uranium concentrations in public drinking water across the US can advance environmental justice initiatives by informing regulatory action and financial and technical support to protect communities of color."

Nationwide geospatial analysis of county racial and ethnic composition and public drinking water arsenic and uranium | Nature Communications (open access)

Confronting racism in Black maternal health care in the United States. Really!

Again, the prestigious Nature journal engages in propaganda and demagoguery!
Just incredible!

Skin color and racism ideology trumps science! This is truly sickening!

"Decolonizing science

Science is steeped in injustice and exploitation. Scientific insights from marginalized people have been erased, natural-history specimens have been taken without consent and genetics data have been manipulated to back eugenics movements. Without acknowledgement and redress of this legacy, many people from minority ethnic groups have little trust in science and certainly don’t feel welcome in academia — an ongoing barrier to the levels of diversity that many universities claim to pursue. ..."

Confronting racism in Black maternal health care in the United States Maternal-health researcher and obstetrician Kecia Gaither outlines the research needed to save more Black mothers’ lives.

Nature journal: What’s the carbon footprint of the next large subatomic particle collider? Really!

Some young fanatics pour soup over famous museum paintings other fanatics are among scientists with PhDs! No difference except that latter are supposed to know better instead of being highly irrational!

Lunatics and fanatics keep your hands off large scale scientific research facilities! What idiocy!

Too decarbonize large scientific research facilities will only add much more unnecessary costs for little gain! The so called carbon footprint should be one of the least important considerations for building the next large subatomic collider! Ignore these fringe scientists!

Yesterday, I blogged here about the ludicrous demand for decarbonization of the military!

Let’s remember: The renewable energy/climate change is the greatest scam perpetrated on humanity in the last 50 years or so. It’s big business and big government!

From the abstract:

"The energy consumption of any of the e+e− Higgs factory projects that can credibly operate immediately after the end of LHC, namely three linear colliders (CLIC, operating at s√=380 GeV; and ILC and C3, operating at s√=250 GeV) and two circular colliders (CEPC and FCC-ee, operating at s√=240 GeV), will be everything but negligible. Future Higgs boson studies may therefore have a significant environmental impact.[??? Laughable!!!] This note proposes to include the carbon footprint for a given physics performance as a top-level gauge for the design optimisation and, eventually, the choice of the future facility. The projected footprints per Higgs boson produced, evaluated using the 2021 carbon emission of available electricity, are found to vary by a factor 100 depending on the considered Higgs factory project."

What’s the carbon footprint of a Higgs boson? It varies — a lot Physicists say environmental concerns need to be considered when choosing the world’s next collider.

The carbon footprint of proposed e+e− Higgs factories (open access)

Nature journal: Decarbonize the military. Really!

Lunatics and fanatics keep your hands off the military! What idiocy!

Who is behind it? China, Russia?

A well known family owned German media giant, i.e. "Holtzbrinck Publishing Group", owns Nature journal!

Again, the once prestigious Nature journal spreads propaganda and demagoguery!

The renewable energy/climate change scam is the greatest one of at least the last 50 years! The citizens of Western countries were fooled big time!

Decarbonize the military — mandate emissions reporting Armed forces have a massive carbon footprint that is absent from global accounting.

Nature journal: Retrospectively modeling the effects of increased global vaccine sharing on the COVID-19 pandemic could have prevented 1.3 Million deaths

I have blogged here several times that the once prestigious Nature journal has become a purveyor of propaganda and demagoguery. Here is another example!

These computer model simulations like the climate model projections are baloney and bogus! Pseudoscience, plain and simple! Take the reported deaths numbers, they are quite dubious to begin with! The authors of this study are extremely naive if not deluded!

Without the unprecedented efforts of the so called high income countries to develop in record time effective vaccines, the death toll could have been a lot higher.

About one third of all countries achieved herd immunity with their vaccination campaigns. This is a historical miracle!

Even without vaccines individual states and inhabitants could have done a lot to largely prevent or reduce the spread of Covid-19. 

"... In total, we estimate that a full vaccine sharing scenario would have prevented 295.8 million infections and 1.3 million deaths worldwide (as a direct result of COVID-19) by the end of 2021 without any associated changes in behavior ..."

From the abstract:

"The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has caused considerable morbidity and mortality worldwide. The protection provided by vaccines and booster doses offered a method of mitigating severe clinical outcomes and mortality. However, by the end of 2021, the global distribution of vaccines was highly heterogeneous, with some countries gaining over 90% coverage in adults, whereas others reached less than 2%. In this study, we used an age-structured model of SARS-CoV-2 dynamics, matched to national data from 152 countries in 2021, to investigate the global impact of different potential vaccine sharing protocols that attempted to address this inequity. We quantified the effects of implemented vaccine rollout strategies on the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the subsequent global burden of disease and the emergence of novel variants. We found that greater vaccine sharing would have lowered the total global burden of disease, and any associated increases in infections in previously vaccine-rich countries could have been mitigated by reduced relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Our results reinforce the health message, pertinent to future pandemics, that vaccine distribution proportional to wealth, rather than to need, may be detrimental to all."

Retrospectively modeling the effects of increased global vaccine sharing on the COVID-19 pandemic | Nature Medicine (open access)

Nature journal: There’s only one choice in Brazil’s election — for the country and the world. Really!

When a once prestigious scientific journal openly disseminates propaganda and demagoguery (as reported here several times) and takes sides in other countries' political elections!

Nature journal is family-owned by a German media conglomerate, i.e. the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. I have tried several times to contact them about this issue by email. They refused to respond! 

"When Brazil elected Jair Bolsonaro as its president four years ago, this journal was among those that feared the worst. “The election of Jair Bolsonaro is bad for research and the environment,” we wrote (Nature 563, 5–6; 2018). ...
A populist and a former army captain, Bolsonaro charged into office denying science, threatening Indigenous peoples’ rights, promoting guns as a solution to security concerns and pushing a development-at-all-costs approach to the economy. Bolsonaro has been true to his word. His term in office has been disastrous for science, the environment, the people of Brazil — and the world. ..."

There’s only one choice in Brazil’s election — for the country and the world A second term for Jair Bolsonaro would represent a threat to science, democracy and the environment.

Nature journal: The unseen Black faces of AI facial recognition algorithms. Really!

The once prestigious Nature journal continues to spread propaganda and demagoguery! Apparently, it is good business to do so!

Anyone with common sense knows that new technologies have kinks that need to be fixed. No need to suggest racism here!

This is a very long Nature views & news article and only at the very end you fully realize it is predicated on the skin color ideology! 

Now developers of facial recognition technology are forced to give more importance to darker skinned faces? This is one form of racism. So what about e.g. Asian faces?

Timmit Gebru is a controversial AI researcher. She was fired by Google!

"Data sets are essential for training and validating machine-learning algorithms. But these data are typically sourced from the Internet, so they encode all the stereotypes, inequalities and power asymmetries that exist in society.  ...
Although this has long been the case, the first major steps towards overcoming the issue were taken only four years ago, when Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru published a report that kick-started sweeping changes in the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). As a graduate student in computer science, Buolamwini was frustrated that commercial facial-recognition systems failed to identify her face in photographs and video footage. ...
Amid what can feel like overwhelming public enthusiasm for new AI technologies, Buolamwini and Gebru instigated a body of critical work that has exposed the bias, discrimination and oppressive nature of facial-analysis algorithms. ..."

The unseen Black faces of AI algorithms An audit of commercial facial-analysis tools found that dark-skinned faces are misclassified at a much higher rate than are faces from any other group. Four years on, the study is shaping research, regulation and commercial practices.

Joy Buolamwini founder of the Algorithmic Justice League. A purveyor of skin color ideology?

Overcoming racism in science: A Nature special issue. Really!

When a once prestigious scientific journal spreads propaganda and demagoguery!

Shocking and disgusting! Pseudoscience!

A well known family owned German media giant, i.e. "Holtzbrinck Publishing Group", owns Nature journal!

As if only Western Europeans committed racism and colonization! Absolutely absurd and a gross distortion of history! Take the transatlantic slave trade: Who actually enslaved Africans and sold them to Europeans? Other Africans!

As if only white people are capable of and have been committing racism! Racism can has been found to exist among humans of all skin colors!

The lifetime career criminal and drug addict George Floyd is mentioned numerous times as if he was a saint and martyr! Absolutely absurd!

A heavy regurgitation of ideological platitudes!

"... Among those worst excesses is racism. For centuries, science has built a legacy of excluding people of colour [???] and those from other historically marginalized groups from the scientific enterprise. ...
Nature has played a part in creating this racist legacy. After the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020, Nature committed to becoming an agent of change, and helping to end discriminatory practices and systemic racism. ...

Systemic racism

“I didn’t see another Black person in computer science until more than a decade after high school,” says Juan Gilbert, now at the University of Florida in Gainesville. ...

Building a fairer future

Proposals to rename buildings, remove statues and rewrite curricula have become a central theme in discussions about combating racism in academia. ...
taking concrete steps to counter technology’s discriminatory biases, tackling the reality of racism today [???] is essential in building a more inclusive future for science and the society it serves."

"... Take Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, who drafted the Declaration of Independence of 1776. Jefferson is widely considered to be among the founders of liberalism and the idea of meritocracy. The declaration includes some of the most well-rehearsed words in the English language: that “all men are created equal”. And yet Jefferson, who was both a scientist and a slave owner, also thought that people of African descent were inferior to white people [???]. ...
A wave of anti-racism statements followed Floyd’s murder in 2020. Research funders and universities, publishers and individual journals such as Nature all published statements in support of eliminating racism from science. ...
Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement into science, Nature was among those institutions that pledged to listen, learn and change. ..."

"... captain, James Cook, had been given secret instructions to continue onwards in what became Britain’s colonial takeover of Australia and New Zealand.

This is not an isolated example of a scientific effort that owes its existence to the racist exploitation of humanity. ...
Science’s history is enmeshed with racism and colonization. It should not have needed the murder of George Floyd, yet one more Black man killed at the hands of police, for such truths to be restated, as Nature and other scientific journals did in June 2020. ...

Each of the guest editors has a connection to Africa. For two of us, C.W. and M.N., the continent is a place where our ancestral connection was violently separated. Because of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people, aided by Europe’s empires, it is practically impossible for us to know which village or town in east, west, central or southern Africa our ancestors were taken from. ..."

Overcoming racism in science: A Nature special issue

Science must overcome its racist legacy: Nature’s guest editors speak We are leading Nature on a journey to help decolonize [???] research and forge a path towards restorative justice and reconciliation.

Ending racism is key to better science: a message from Nature’s guest editors This special issue is our ‘message in a bottle’ from the troubled ship of science. We urge readers to find it. Open it. Act on its contents.

Protestors attend a march for Black Lives Matter in Austin, Texas, in June 2020.