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Producing Knowledge about Racial Differences: Tracing Scientists' Use of “Race” and “Ethnicity” from Grants to Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Asia Friedman  and
Catherine Lee
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Extract

The research and publication practices by which scientists produce biomedical knowledge about race and ethnicity remain largely unexamined despite increasing interest in biological explanations for health disparities by race, as well as prominent critiques by social scientists highlighting the implications of conceptualizing race as a biological category. Although a growing number of studies on lab and research practices are helping to map meanings of race and ethnicity on notions of difference and health, we still have very little understanding of the earlier funding application stage or of the resulting publications. We know that knowledge production can involve a range of different processes, including consensus building, strategic and instrumental decision making, as well as conscious and subconscious cognitive filtering, through which we direct analytic attention only to those aspects of a problem or topic that are defined as “relevant” and “important.” These processes also involve the “translation” of ideas such as race and ethnicity for different audiences (e.g., funders, other scientists, or the public), which occurs in broader contexts of cultural norms and institutional rules and practices.

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Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , Fall 2013 , pp. 720 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2013

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