SNU In the World Program 2023 Rapporteur Report

SNU In the World Program 2023 Rapporteur Report

Innovation, Science & Justice

University of California, Santa Cruz

January 29, 2023 – February 11, 2023

Over a two-week period in early 2023, the Science & Justice Research Center (SJRC) hosted 27 visiting scholars (including Professor Doogab Yi, 4 graduate students, and 22 undergraduates) from Seoul National University (SNU) as part of the SNU in the World Program to learn about the work being done at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) by SJRC affiliates. The SNU in the World Program, administered by the Office of International Affairs (OIA) at SNU, is a university-led and government-funded initiative to train South Korean undergraduate students to be globally engaged scholars and leaders. The SNU in the World Program at UCSC is one of five other programs selected for funding and focuses on Innovation, Science and Justice. Other SNU Programs included visits to Washington DC (public policy), Japan (sustainable development), and Australia (climate crisis).

The program was facilitated by Doogab Yi, Associate Professor of Science Studies at Seoul National University, who brought together a diverse group of students from fields including the biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, industrial design, philosophy, sociology, english, business administration, and fashion design. Over the two-week program students participated in an in-depth series of lectures, workshops, reading groups, and field trips focused on exploring some of today’s most pressing issues including biomedical innovation, environmental justice, climate change, health equity, and toxic ecologies. Students were also able to participate in the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” by attending Kaushik Sunder Rajar’s lecture “Ethnographic Trans-formations: Cases, Life Histories, and Other Entanglements of Emergent Research.”

With the SJRC, SNU visiting scholars learned about a few of the projects and initiatives SJRC co-directors Jenny Reardon and James Doucet-Battle are working on, including an initiative by the University of California with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (UC-HBCU) a partnership with North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University aimed at improving diversity in UC doctoral biology programs, as well as the Leadership in Ethical & Equitable Design (LEED) of STEM Research Project. Both projects are aimed at increasing diversity within STEM research and addressing issues of equity at the intellectual and institutional level in order to secure more just and equitable forms of science and engineering. The group also met with SJRC affiliates and student fellows in the UCSC Sustainability Office, the UCSC Genomics Institute, and joined for a session of the UCSC IBSC Stem Cell Journal Club. In these sessions, they explored issues ranging from bioethical questions raised by innovative biotechnologies like stem cells, to human rights issues raised by technologies of war.

The group participated in several field trips throughout the local Bay Area including visiting with Dongoh Park, Senior Policy Advisor for Google’s Global Trust and Safety Team on the Google campus in Silicon Valley. The group also visited the UC San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center at Mission Bay to learn about the cutting edge research and clinical treatment innovations there as well as the justice issues raised by the building of the Google campus. A highlight of the field trip was a lecture by Fred Turner, Professor of Communication at Stanford University who also serves on the SJRC Advisory Board. Professor Turner’s talk, “Cultures of Innovation,” drew on research from his award winning book From Counterculture to Cyberculture and explored how culture creates ideological models for the reimagination of technology. Turner showed how the 1960s counterculture movement influenced the emergence of cyberculture. Both are predicated on technology as a tool for personal transformation, and labor as a tool for personal growth.

While in San Francisco students participated in a walking tour of Third Street as part of the SJRC’s Just Biomedicine project. Just Biomedicine is a SJRC research collective that critically examines the meeting of biomedicine, biotechnology, and big data along the Third Street corridor in the Mission-Bay neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The walking tour was designed to allow participants to view how technoscientific transformations can build into cityscapes new inequalities and injustices (i.e., new challenges to democratic governance; new surveillance regimes; and new forms of social stratification). The walking tour allowed participants to experience the stratified health and wealth outcomes of the push towards biomedical innovation in San Francisco.

The SNU students worked in groups throughout the two-week program to explore various issues of interest and develop a group project. During the project development phase, groups discussed and debated a number of issues, including: broadening definitions of diversity and inclusion; reconceiving relationships between science and justice; and understanding the role of histories of injustices in current regimes of conducting and governing technoscience.

“Diversity is an open attitude that understands and respects various individuals and groups and does not exclude unjustly.”  

From the presentation, “Diversity: Aligning the Ideal with the Practical,” by Min Joo Lee, Hyeon Beom Choi, Su Hyun Hur, & Yi Ji Kim.

At the end of the two-week program, project teams presented their final group research projects. Final projects covered topics including: 

  • how historical cases of injustice and discrimination have led to mistrust of the contemporary healthcare system; (Link)
  • the need to address both ethical and practical aspects of diversity through the development of policies and incentives to enhance diversity; (Link)
  • how the theoretical concept of slow science can be applied through an Environmental Social Governance (ESG) model; (Link)
  • what environmental justice issues vulnerable populations in Korea are currently facing; and (Link)
  • how the drive towards innovation has historically resulted in exploitation, inequity, and discrimination highlighting the new for “Just Innovation.” (Link)

All of these projects attempted to apply and analyze practical approaches to addressing issues of equity and justice in the realms of science and technology.

If you are interested in presenting or meeting with SNU in late January 2024 or late January 2025, please contact Jenny Reardon (reardon1@ucsc.edu) and Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu).

Photos:

Students during a lecture.

Image 1: Group lecture in the Oakes College Mural Room with Tiffany Wise-West, Sustainability and Climate Action Manager, City of Santa Cruz. Photo by Jenny Reardon.

Professor Jenny Reardon (UCSC) and Professor Doogab Yi (SNU) smiling at camera.

Image 2: Professor Jenny Reardon (UCSC) and Professor Doogab Yi (SNU). Photo by Colleen Stone.

The Joan and Sanford Weill Neurosciences Building.

Image 3: Third Street Walking Tour, San Francisco. Photo by Dennis Browe or Jenny Reardon in front of the Joan and Sanford Weill Neurosciences Building.

Jun Kim, Jeongin Baek, Hyeonyeong Lee, and Geon Jeremiah Heo presenting.

Image 4: Presentation by Jun Kim, Jeongin Baek, Hyeonyeong Lee, and Geon Jeremiah Heo on February 9th, 2023. Image by Jenny Reardon.

Professor Jenny Reardon presenting a lecture on the ethics of biotechnology to the UCSC IBSC Stem Cell Journal Club and SNU visitors.

Image 5: Professor Jenny Reardon presenting a lecture on the ethics of biotechnology to the UCSC IBSC Stem Cell Journal Club and SNU visitors. Image by Chessa Adsit-Morris.

book

Normalizing Slow Science

The pace of scientific research increases by the year, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this trend. The global rate of published peer-reviewed science and engineering journal articles showed a 4% annual increase from 2008 to 2018 (White 2019). The National Science Board found that Science and Engineering publications grew from 1.8 million to 2.6 million articles in ten years (White 2019). In 2020, from February to May, the publishing company Elsevier observed a 98% increase in journal articles listed under health and medicine (Else 2020). In response to an extraordinary health crisis, COVID-19 has taken over research publishing in recent years. However, both in the quest to understand and manage the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic and in scientific research more broadly, the demand for swift scientific innovation has shown to be problematic and even dangerous.

The increasing speed of scientific research happens within a broader global context in which many different forms of production must accelerate in order to compete. The association between time and money is an essential feature of this acceleration. Barbara Adam, a Social Theory professor at Cardiff University, coined “speed fetishism” to describe the commodification of time to encourage production speed (2001). As she puts it, “speed becomes an absolute and unassailable imperative for business” (Adam 2001). Adam problematizes the sale, exchange, and control of time by explaining how global innovation competition has caused a degradation of fair wages and working conditions. The phrase “time is money” is more than an empty cliche; it is institutionalized in business models that value quantity over quality. Corporations respond to economic incentives to accelerate production.

Academic research is not exempt from pressures to accelerate in the face of global competition. Ruth Müller, an Assistant Professor of Science & Technology Policy at the Munich Center for Technology in Society, argues that researchers increasingly work under time-limited pressures, creating a “culture of speed” in academia (Müller 2015).  Her article “A Culture of Speed: Anticipation, Acceleration and Individualization in Academic Science” (2015), examines the implications of accelerated science. The forces driving the acceleration of research, such as global competition, money, and demand for information, often prevent well-thought-out science. Time for slow thought and reflection is neglected in rushed research, often resulting in a lack of transparency in the scientific development sector. Müller (2015) explains the two modes that the culture of speed in academia works in; anticipatory acceleration and latent individualization. She describes anticipatory acceleration as an effect of time-limited pressures and aims to make the future and competition more controllable. Researchers work in a mode of anticipatory acceleration when they seek to “optimize” their work, for example, by increasing research output. Müller states that this mode creates “emotional dependency on and investment in academic success.” Müller defines the second mode, latent individualization, as researchers’ interest in making decisions  to ensure their “future scholarly survival” (Müller 2015). Academia’s metric-oriented nature demands high research turnover, yet it is unclear whether the pace of science research is motivated in the interest of public well-being or individual academic goals.

Taking more time in research opposes the culture of speed and the inclination towards fast solutions, and decelerating research could enable beneficial developments in science. Müller identifies “slow science” as a “counterculture to the current fast-paced, metric-oriented research worlds” (Müller 2015: n.p.) we might call “fast science.” Müller states that the desire for academic success complicates genuine motivations when the metric-based acceleration culture integrates the research sector. For this reason, Müller questions who benefits from fast science. The drive for academic success benefits discrete careers and research publishers’ financial growth. Yet, the pursuit of swift innovation to address public well-being and thoughtful scientific advancement remains questionable. The rise of the Slow Science Movement has pushed for academic researchers to take more time for thinking and digesting before publishing studies (The Slow Science Academy 2010). As The Slow Science Academy states in their attention-grabbing “Slow Science Manifesto,” “science develops unsteadily, with jerky moves and unpredictable leaps forward—at the same time, however, it creeps about on a very slow time scale, for which there must be room and to which justice must be done.” The group advocates for patient research development, including “fostering more dialogue between the humanities and natural sciences” (The Slow Science Academy 2010).

As an intern under UCSC’s Science & Justice Research Center “Orphan Drugs” team, I got a first-hand look into obstacles to this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue and to challenge the pace and scope of considerations within scientific research. Collaboration of researchers in molecular biology, biochemistry, and social science revealed how time is assigned different values depending on perspective. It was an intriguing challenge to find a middle ground; in general, scientists were urgent to pursue the research they believed in. Others wanted to take more time to explore the potential ethical dimensions. In the discussion of “slow science” and “fast science,” it is important to establish “slow” and “fast” as relative terms. For instance, “slow” research can be interpreted as careful, well-thought-out, and mindful work, yet science researchers may feel as though ethical consideration slows research publication. Deliberation between “clashing” disciplines is an excellent step to challenge expectations of research pace. I learned that time is never just time; time is a resource that is spent according to one’s values. Researchers will inevitably have different interpretations of what “slow science” and “fast science” look like. In my perspective, “slow science” foregrounds the dissemination of scientific research in the interest of public well-being. Less likely to undermine public trust, social and ethical considerations are necessary to develop sound research. As sound scientific research should benefit the broader public, it is up to the researcher to determine the pace that will yield reputable work.

While different researchers and disciplines may have different expectations for the pace of scientific research, rushed projects are more likely to face criticism and undermine public trust. John Horgan is an American science journalist known for his critiques on scientific works. In Horgan’s Scientific American article titled “The ‘Slow Science’ movement must be crushed!” he provides a unique perspective on the emergence of slow science. While he applauds the push for scientists to take more time in their research, Horgan worries that careful consideration of scientific findings will leave him with no critiquing material. In a sarcastic tone, Horgan writes, “I fear that, if scientists really slow down, and start publishing only high-quality data and theories that have been double and triple-checked, I won’t have anything left to write about.” While Horgan’s statement is satirical, it allows us to consider outside factors that are indirectly tolerant of fast innovation. However, the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the severe effects of rushed science, calling medical journalists like Horgan (2011) to address extreme cases where “bad” science affects public well-being.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists must provide an understanding of the disease backed by extensive evidence to prevent public unrest. Having patience in research is especially difficult when faced with economic, health, and social pressures. However, everyone must do their part in the tolerance for well-thought-out science.  In extraordinary cases like a global pandemic, swift research practices become problematic and even life-threatening. The demand for information on the COVID-19 disease shows the negative impacts of fast science at the individual and social level. The research sectors’ response to COVID-19 revealed the weakness of the accelerated scientific enterprise (Yong 2021). Yong (2021) states, “Flawed research made the pandemic more confusing, influencing misguided policies.” Misinformed conclusions of COVID-19 detection, spread, and transmission created a political discourse that failed to provide a consensus, resulting in a prolonged fight against the disease. COVID-19 revealed the importance of corrective research and brought light to widespread self-interest in the world of science research at the cost of transparency (Yong 2021).

More careful, slow science could be valuable even in urgent, time-sensitive situations like the COVID-19 pandemic. As of July 2021, more than 6000,000 people have died from coronavirus in the US alone (CDC 2021), and it’s common to assume the high death toll has resulted from slow research. Herper (2020), a medical journalist with STAT, says, “more people will die from COVID-19 because we cannot study drugs more quickly.” However, Herper goes on to say, “This does not mean that it would be better to provide people with unproven therapies—or that COVID-19 studies should be accelerated so fast that we draw the wrong conclusions or put people at risk.” While COVID-19 research is much needed at this time, we also need consistent action on established basic public health and pandemic safety measures. Additionally, the pressure for information on COVID-19 may weaken or delay helpful information. The Los Angeles Times article “How coronavirus is revealing the problems with ‘fast science’” (2020) delves into the repercussions of premature coronavirus findings and explores the dangers of evolving advice from COVID-19 researchers. The demand for scientific progress to understand the transmission and treatment of COVID-19 has created the release of information that isn’t always backed by evidence. Premature statements are taken as facts of the disease, and citizens don’t know what to believe anymore. During these extraordinary times, researchers must develop carefully considered findings before bringing them to the public. It’s easier said than done to be patient during a deadly pandemic, but slower research has the potential to give us the information we need to keep ourselves and others safe.

While the Slow Science Movement has raised concerns about “fast science,” they assume the same need for more scientific research. The Slow Science movement is characterized by the time-process of research rather than how scientific research is conducted. However, a lot of what we needed to know to address and prevent pandemics was known before COVID-19; quarantine, physical distancing, mask wearing, and personal hygiene were all standard public health practices during the 1918 influenza pandemic (Tomes 2010). Alongside the slow science movement, we may need a “learn science” movement that affirms a  comprehensive understanding of the application and impacts of existing scientific research to transform the individual, social, and political consensus of COVID-19. The acceleration of scientific research spurred by COVID-19 raises concerns that people will act on hastily conducted and prematurely publicized research. For example, a 2020 study that circulated prior to peer review on the preprint depository MedRxiv fueled political narratives that coronavirus was overblown, causing people to not take public health practices seriously (Lee 2020). A whistleblower later revealed that JetBlue founder David Neelman had financed and supported the study, creating concerns over a conflict of interest. The Slow Science Movement and greater research transparency open the path for public trust in science, and allows individuals to integrate and advocate for health precautions backed by extensive scientific evidence alongside the transparency of political, social, and economic obstacles.

Aisha Lakshman, a Kresge affiliate, is a third year Sociology undergraduate. Aisha is also pursuing a minor in statistics. She plans on using these two disciplines to interpret datasets to demonstrate social problems and catalyze social change.

References

Adam, Barbara. 2001. “When Time is Money: Contested Rationalities of Time and Challenges to the Theory and Practice of Work.” Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences. Retrieved April 26, 2021 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.198.21&rep=rep1&type=pdf).

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 2021. “CDC COVID Data Tracker.” CDC.gov. Retrieved July 5, 2021 (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days).

Else, Holly. 2020. “How a torrent of COVID science changed research publishing- in seven charts”. Nature. Retrieved April 4, 2021 (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03564-y).

Herper, Matthew. 2020. “People are dying from coronavirus because we’re not fast enough at clinical research.” STAT. Retrieved March 16, 2021 (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/22/people-are-dying-from-coronavirus-because-were-not-fast-enough-at-clinical-research/).

Horgan, John. 2011. “The “Slow Science” Movement Must Be Crushed!” Scientific American. Retrieved March 9, 2021 (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-slow-science-movement-must-be-crushed/)

Lee, Stephanie M. 2020. “JetBlue’s Founder Helped Fund A Stanford Study That Said The Coronavirus Wasn’t That Deadly.” Buzzfeed News. Retrieved July 18, 2020.  https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/stanford-coronavirus-neeleman-ioannidis-whistleblower

Müller, Ruth. 2015. “A Culture of Speed: Anticipation, Acceleration and Individualization in Academic Science.” LSE Impact of Social Sciences. Retrieved March 1, 2021 (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/11/a-culture-of-speed-anticipation-acceleration-and-individualization-in-academic-science/).

The Slow Science Academy. 2010. “THE SLOW SCIENCE MANIFESTO.” The Slow Science Academy. Retrieved March 1, 2021 (http://slow-science.org/).

The Times Editorial Board. 2020. “How coronavirus is revealing the problems with ‘fast science.’” Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 9, 2021 (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-26/coronavirus-research-studies-confusion).

Tomes, Nancy. 2010. “‘Destroyer and Teacher’: Managing the Masses During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic.” Public Health Reports 125 (Suppl 3): 48-62.

White, Karen. 2019. “Publications Output: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons.” NSF- National Science Foundation. Retrieved April 4, 2021 (https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20206/).

Yong, Ed. 2021. “How Science Beat the Virus.” The Atlantic. Retrieved April 4, 2021 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/science-covid-19-manhattan-project/617262/).

Dispute over Lab Notebook Lands Researcher in Jail

I thought some of you might find this article interesting: basically a woman was jailed (with a $100,000 bail) for stealing ~20 of her old lab notebooks, flash drives and other materials from her former place of work. There’s also underpinnings of the subjectivity in science in the controversial nature of her earlier work. Its kind of a sad story all around, but relevant to some of what we’ve discussed this past quarter.

Dispute over Lab Notebook Lands Researcher in Jail

Science and Justice Moving Forward

akargl Says:
November 29th, 2011 at 2:40 pm edit

The quarter has gone by so fast! I’m looking forward to the interesting things we’ve brewed up for next year, and to conversations about what else to do. For my part in the blog part of these conversations, I’d like to offer a provocation:

A main thing I’d like to see in S & J’s future has to do with the kind of re-worlding going on in the occupation movement, including the hope its form may signal for the ongoing struggles with inequality within it. How might we re-world the space in which we find ourselves in such a way that we resistance-occupy it? Continue Reading Science and Justice Moving Forward

ideas, new spaces for s&j

egan Says:
November 29th, 2011 at 2:25 pm edit

Not sure if we’re supposed to be posting these, but here are my thoughts on expanded spaces for science and justice. Perhaps openings for future discussions:

1. Universe… and Pluriverses
I’m still holding out for multiplicities: other worlds and pluriverses that are historically constituted, precarious, and aleatory. How to speak about “justice” as shifting practices of inclusion and exclusion, without the promise of a Universe or the melancholy of relativisms? Continue Reading ideas, new spaces for s&j

Op-Ed Thread

icarbone Says:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:32 am edit

I think this may be a bit more of a rant than an Op-Ed at this point, but maybe you all can help me focus it a bit.

Frustrations over socioeconomic disparities and the influence of corporations on the US political system reached a critical point on September 17th. Protesters swarmed to Zuccotti Park for Occupy Wall Street, and since then demonstrations have been springing up in over 1000 US cities. The Occupy movements have empowered a growing community to push for Continue Reading Op-Ed Thread

Op-Ed Pitch Thread

icarbone Says:
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:35 am edit

The occupy movements have empowered a growing community to push for significant societal change. This change need not be confined to Wall Street. The OWS movement should inspire us all to reclaim science, technology, and the health of the natural world. The fearless abandon that protesters are exhibiting across the country can be our greatest asset in movement away from fossil fuels and towards renewable alternatives in the United States. This article will encourage the Bay area to continue building a community, and to extend the occupy movement to the greatest political and environmental threats that the global community faces.Continue Reading Op-Ed Pitch Thread

Reading Responses: Experiment

carbone Says:
November 7th, 2011 at 5:00 pm edit

This weeks reading reinforced in me a feeling that certain research methods are more narrow in their approach, and this characteristic can be both limiting and powerful. I come to this class as an applied physicist. My personal motivations are less focused on unlocking the secrets of the natural world and more focused on using physical models to produce objects that provoke societal change. I agree with concepts along the lines of “inertia of belief,” but I also sympathize with Pickering’s point of view. Every bit of understanding that we have is based on some model that may or may not be grounded in some experiment or academic Continue Reading Reading Responses: Experiment

Wordle Coding

The images below were recently passed along to me from another Sociology grad student. They were made at the Wordle website, where you can generate a word cloud out of any text. The more often a word appears in the text you enter, the larger it appears in the word cloud. I was introduced to this tool in a graduate qualitative methods class in the Anthropology department at Indiana University, Bloomington. Continue Reading Wordle Coding

Reading Responses: Coding

kricherson Says:
October 31st, 2011 at 2:44 pm edit

Coming from a science background, I had some difficulty with this section of Glaser and Strauss’ book. Again, perhaps because I know little about sociology or sociological theory, I was confused by some of their (seemingly foundational) assertions. They write that in comparative analysis, “[n]othing is disproved or debunked, despite that those who are overly concerned with evidence constantly believe” (22) and that the evidence theories are based on “…may not necessarily be accurate beyond a doubt…but the concept is undoubtedly a relevant theoretical abstraction about what is going on in the area studied” (23). Continue Reading Reading Responses: Coding