American Scientist

In the early 1900s, in neighborhoods across the United States, real estate covenants to prevent nonwhite buyers from purchasing homes in certain neighborhoods were both legal and common. Although this overtly racist practice was outlawed in 1968, its effects are still with us today. As Asia Murphy describes in this issue’s Perspective column, “The Racist Legacy of Urban Green Spaces," neighborhoods that once had racist covenants today have a higher percentage of green spaces. Murphy explains that the lack of these environmental resources in a neighborhood has been found to have effects on resident health and wildlife species diversity. Measures such as simply planting more trees in underserved neighborhoods will not fix these disparities, especially if such improvements increase rents in the area and force low-income residents out. A lot of structural changes would need to be implemented to ensure that this and many other environmental inequities are corrected.

In this issue’s First Person column, Elizabeth Rasekoala recounts that when she went to graduate school in the United Kingdom, it was easier for someone from Africa to attend these programs than it was for a British resident of African descent, because of inequitable school resourcing in the U.K. Rasekoala, a Nigerian chemical engineer, took inspiration from that realization to get involved in science communication, first in underserved schools near her U.K. university, and later across the African continent. Rasekoala realized that another form of inequality was the lack of access to scientific research in Indigenous African languages. This barrier also hindered the ability of science communicators to work directly with African communities to address the societal challenges that face each specific community. Rasekoala and her colleagues set up a science communications training program and competition, with some of the awards specifically earmarked for women. One competition winner is working on systems that will translate information on the internet into many of the Indigenous African languages.

In this issue’s Ethics column, Anita Guerrini considers our most intrinsic possession—our bodies—in “The Rights of the Dead.” Guerrini gives the example of Charles Byrne, a man who lived in the late 1760s and who was 2.31 meters tall. During his life, Byrne earned money as an attraction, but he specifically forbade his body from being displayed after death. Nonetheless, his body ended up in a scientific collection. Guerrini examines the inequities of studying or displaying human remains without explicit permission.

Another aspect of equality is covered in this issue’s Science and Engineering Values column. In “AI and Responsible Authorship," Robert T. Pennock broaches the ethical question of when an artificial intelligence should receive credit as a coauthor of a scientific paper. If an AI bot is given access to raw data, analyzes it, and makes a new discovery, is that sufficient for it to rise above the role of a tool to the level of a collaborator? Pennock argues that scientific authorship is not mainly about writing a paper, but rests mostly on a researcher being able to provide authorization of their results, certifying that they are checked and valid, and being willing to stand up and take blame, if there are any mistakes. Pennock argues that artificial intelligence, at least at this point, is not a moral agent, and cannot authorize any results, which makes it an inequitable practice to try to assign AI coauthorship.

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