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Handwritten signs, such as these in New Jersey, appeared across the United States after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.Credit: Shutterstock
In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sent shock waves around the world. Video footage showed Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck while he was pinned down. The events triggered widespread protests in the United States, and spurred many people at universities, companies and other organizations — including Nature — to self-reflect and commit to addressing systemic racism in their respective fields.
Five years on, progress has been slim. Notably, in the United States, it is now going rapidly backwards. We must be able to discuss how science — and society — can become a better place for all, and to do so in a spirit of collegiality. There can be no argument about the necessity of making the world a more inclusive space. Everyone, regardless of their background, belief, gender, sexual orientation or skin colour, has a right to reap the benefits of scientific advancements; that much is enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Racism: Overcoming science’s toxic legacy
Diversity in research is also integral to progress in science, engineering, medicine and innovation more broadly. Laboratories without diverse teams could miss the best ideas. Research that includes people from under-represented communities is more likely to benefit all of society. If medical researchers have not tested their drug on a diverse group of people, they cannot be confident that the drug will be beneficial for everyone who needs it. If clinicians can’t study why a disease affects people from certain groups more than it does others, they will struggle to accurately diagnose conditions and tailor treatments. And if geneticists don’t study a diverse set of genomes, they cannot fully understand human history or health.
In the aftermath of Floyd’s killing, Nature, along with hundreds of scientific institutions, committed to making research more inclusive. We recognize that science, including that published in this journal, has too often been used to justify inequalities rather than reduce them. “Science must listen, learn and change,” we wrote in an Editorial in June 2020. In October 2022, we published a special issue on racism in science, guided by four guest editors. Our guest editors urged that we “seek solutions-based approaches that propose ways to restore truth, repair trust and seek justice” and, above all, to provide “hope that the future will be better than the past”.
Science must overcome its racist legacy: Nature’s guest editors speak
That hope has worn thin. In many parts of the world, candidates for office who explicitly reject efforts to reduce inequalities between societal groups are gaining traction. In the United States, the administration of President Donald Trump is dismantling initiatives intended to both study and confront racism and discrimination, in areas including research. Several funders, including the US National Institutes of Health and the US National Science Foundation (NSF), have cancelled hundreds of grants, many of which involve communities that have experienced discrimination or marginalization. Among these are grants for research into health disparities between people from various backgrounds and for initiatives to increase the involvement in research of participants from under-represented groups. Powerful private funders and companies have followed suit. In February, the US Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a biomedical-research funding behemoth, cancelled a US$60-million programme that helped people from under-represented communities to access science education.
US federal investment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, previously at record levels, is also under threat. These and other actions jeopardize some of the improvements made in research over the past five years, even if those gains have been incremental. The NSF’s annual survey (see go.nature.com/43hcept) of earned doctorates shows, for example, that the proportion of Black PhD recipients edged up from 5% in 2012 to 5.9% in 2022 (the latest year for which data are available).
Staying the course
The fragility of any progress makes it all the more important not to deviate from the course of equality. Nature does not intend to do so. Recognizing the lack of diversity among our editorial staff, in 2021 we launched an annual initiative consisting of a paid news internship for people from communities that have historically been under-represented in research and in science journalism. We are also tracking and improving the diversity of our journalistic sources, authors and peer reviewers, focusing on increasing both gender and geographical diversity. Nature and the other Nature Portfolio journals have issued more rigorous author guidance for reporting race or ethnicity in research. Other research institutions and publishers have done laudable work along similar lines.
Systemic racism: science must listen, learn and change
Much more is needed, from us and from others. There is a need to listen to, study and learn from the experiences of people worldwide. We must engage and work with researchers globally, respecting their opinions about the value of all aspects of diversity, in science and in society.
The guest editors’ advice in our 2022 special issue is as true today as it was when we first published it. “The journey to recognizing and removing racism will take time, because meaningful change does not happen quickly. It will be difficult, because it will require powerful institutions to accept that they need to be accountable to those with less power. It will be rewarding because it will enrich science. It is essential because it is about truth, justice and reconciliation — tenets on which all societies must be founded.”
