Wikipedia is a powerful tool for democratising access to science – but with the spread of editors and articles still heavily skewed towards men, the online encyclopedia has a huge diversity problem.
Jess Wade is fixing that. “Diversity is a prerequisite for doing good science,” says the Imperial College London physicist. By day she works on new materials for light emitting diodes but she’s best known for spending the rest of her time championing equality and diversity in science and tackling bias on Wikipedia.
Her extraordinary impact has been recognised by the Queen’s Birthday Honours and by the journal Nature, which last year recognised her as one of its ten people who mattered in science for her work boosting the profiles of scientists from under-represented groups by creating hundreds of Wikipedia pages.
As part of our Scientists Meets the Media series, Wade spoke to WIRED about why science’s lack of diversity is bad news for everyone, how the debate over AI ethics is far from theoretical and the most productive collaborations aren’t necessarily face-to-face.
Jess Wade on climate change
I echo and agree with the Guardian – it is no longer climate change, but a climate crisis. We will need individuals, institutions and governments around the world to commit to cutting emissions.
We all need to change the way we live, travel and collaborate: scientific conferences in 2020 may be very different to how they have been previously. The most productive collaboration I have had during the past year has existed entirely on e-mails and web meetings – I’m all for wasting less time on aeroplanes.
On ethics in science
Whether it is in universities or corporations, there is no doubt that we need honest, open discussion about how we build technologies responsibly. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning have already changed our lives, learning from data sets that are beyond human analytical capacity, and using algorithms to make decisions without being explicitly programmed.
How do we ensure that decisions made using AI are fair? How do we train a diverse workforce whose jobs will be dramatically different with AI ? How do we make AI accessible and understandable to all members of society? I am worried that the discussion about ethics has become separated from the science – and that whilst we debate what’s right and what’s wrong, AI is already being used to decide who should get loans, who should be hired, and which criminals are likely to reoffend.
Until efforts all levels of AI R&D confront the impacts their technologies on society, with particular attention paid to the global dimensions of AI, the current piecemeal approach will fail.
On the need for more diversity in science
The lack of diversity in science is not only an issue of equality, but impacts the science that we study, the real-world applications we create as well and the environments that researchers exist in. The questions scientists ask, the problems science seeks to solve, and the assumptions scientists bring to their research are all informed by researchers’ lived experiences.
Ensuring a diversity of experiences and backgrounds are included in the research endeavour is essential for correcting biases and pursuing a diverse set of questions. Representation of currently underrepresented groups is therefore not a mere matter of justice, but a requisite for doing good science.
Since the beginning of 2018 I’ve been working to make sure women and people of colour get the recognition that they deserve for their research, primarily through writing their biographies on Wikipedia and nominating them for prizes and fellowships. Wikipedia is an incredible demonstration of a community effort to democratise access to information; but the majority of editors are men (around 90 per cent) and they don’t document the stories of women scientists very often – women make up only 17.8 per cent of the biographies on English Wikipedia. I’ve written 650 so far.
The Institute of Physics have done some incredible work with schools; breaking down the stereotypes that stop girls choosing physics and boys choosing drama – and found one of the most effective ways to do that is to engage students in discussions about bias and inequality. To start these discussions, I launched a crowdfunding campaign to get a copy of Angela Saini’s award-winning book Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story in every girls’ state school in the UK - the campaign took less than two weeks, and the books were delivered into schools at the beginning of 2019.
On the future of healthcare
I’m optimistic that the use of big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain – all the buzzwords – in the right hands to detect and diagnose diseases will improve patient outcomes and save doctors time. My parents and brother are all medical doctors, and during the course of my lifetime it’s been particularly inspiring to see the innovations in medical imaging and our understanding of neurological conditions.
I’m also really excited about the integration of organic electronic materials for biosensing and drug delivery – offering biocompatible, flexible, lightweight and low-cost devices to detect and treat disease. As well as the potential to print disposable wearable non-invasive glucose sensors and breathable electronic skin tattoos that monitor vital signs.
On the best and worst of today’s science
The best; interdisciplinary collaborations for real-world social good. I love the idea of using organic electronic materials to make functional fabrics that can detect and monitor medical conditions in clothing.
The use of AI and machine learning to design these materials is absolutely brilliant. I’m very excited by the work of Roisin Owens at the University of Cambridge – designing electronic devices to detect and treat epilepsy using organic electrochemical transistors and organic ion pumps. It’s a beautiful application of material science, bioengineering and chemistry that has the potential to transform lives.
I’m also super inspired by the worldwide movement to improve research culture; reducing our reliance on out-of-date metrics to evaluate the impact of scientists, pushing for more equality, diversity and inclusion and more increased discussion between scientists and policy-makers. And of course, the contributions of scientists to Wikipedia – the crowdsourced encyclopaedia that democratises access to information for people all over the world.
The worst; not crediting local people in the medical and scientific research performed in developing countries, the fact that all publicly funded scientific research is not open access and the persistent bias against women and non-westerners in peer-review and grant allocation. Whether it is improving access to clean water, mitigating the impact of climate change or fighting antimicrobial resistance, science needs all of the best minds we’ve got.
The Scientists Meet the Media event at the Science Museum in London was organised with the Royal Society, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson Innovation and supported by the Association of British Science Writers and WIRED.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
