It May Not Be Possible to Achieve Racial Equity in American Scientific ResearchBy Robert J. Morris
11 Mar 2022
“NIH Stands Against Structural Racism in Biomedical Research.” This was the title of a statement released on March 1st, 2021, by Francis S. Collins, who was then the Director of the National Institutes of Health. The statement continued:
As a science agency, we know that bringing diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and skillsets to complex scientific problems enhances scientific productivity. NIH has long supported programs to improve the diversity of the scientific workforce with the goal of harnessing the complete intellectual capital of the nation. These efforts, however, have not been sufficient. To those individuals in the biomedical research enterprise who have endured disadvantages due to structural racism, I am truly sorry. NIH is committed to instituting new ways to support diversity, equity, and inclusion, and identifying and dismantling any policies and practices that may harm our workforce and our science.
This is just the beginning of an effort that has a concrete goal of achieving racial equity but has no scheduled end point.
* * *
These voices are not calling for equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome (commonly referred to as “equity”)—proportional representation for minorities in the fields of science and medicine. So, if blacks make up 13 percent of the US population, then advocates for equity expect blacks to make up 13 percent of the workforce in these fields. (Statements deploring the deficit of minority racial and ethnic groups in STEM fields do not typically include Asian Americans—hereafter referred to as Asians—since they are well-represented. Calls for diversity also demand greater representation for women, but I will not be discussing that issue here.)
There are facts available, however, that can help us to determine whether or not the stated goals of diversity advocates are actually attainable. For example, how many minority students in the STEM pipeline today could realistically become the medical practitioners and medical and scientific researchers of tomorrow? The claim that “systemic racism” is the main reason for minority under-representation in STEM fields cannot be proven unless there is first an assessment of how many academically qualified minority students are available to meet equity goals. Data are hard to come by, but there is a way of estimating the percentage of minority students with the academic potential to succeed in a STEM field.
* * *
Data are for 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020. Only Asians increased their average composite score over this period. The percentage of students in each group who were “STEM ready” is unknown for the years before 2020. But because STEM scores are positively correlated with composite scores, these data strongly suggest that the percentage of students who were “STEM ready” has increased only among Asian students since 2005.
This analysis of the percentage of minority (specifically black and Hispanic) students who are academically prepared for careers in STEM fields is sobering, and highlights the difficulty of achieving equity in STEM fields. It contains information, all in the public domain, of which advocates of equity in medicine and science seem to be unaware or which they refuse to acknowledge.
* * *
How, then, is it possible to achieve the goal of equity in medicine and science given the low percentage of minority students who have demonstrated the academic potential for successful STEM careers? There is no easy answer. It is not my intention to make policy recommendations here. Nothing in this article should be interpreted as suggesting that minority students in general are not academically capable of succeeding in STEM fields. Nor am I blaming minority groups for their academic underperformance or suggesting any specific cause. I am simply pointing out that academic underperformance by those minorities under-represented in STEM fields is well-documented, that it is not an artifact of biased testing, and that it has shown no sign of improvement over a 15-year time span.
It is therefore inappropriate and irresponsible to attribute the under-representation of minorities in STEM fields to “systemic racism” without first addressing the issue of minority academic underperformance. “Reality,” the science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick once remarked, “is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” The reality of minority academic underperformance is not about to go away but it is something that proponents of equity don’t want to face. It is time they did.
-- * --
Source:
https://quillette.com/2022/03/11/it-may-not-be-possible-to-achieve-racial-equity-in-american-scientific-research/
