Inclusive Innovation in Global Science

• In Event: 50867 - Liberating, decolonizing, and queering science, knowledge, and technology

Abstract

The idea of global science is aspirational. Talk to any scientist, and they will be the first to tell you that global science is characterized by inequalities along the lines of nationality and other social categories. Yet this ideal still has meaning. The belief that science can uplift society and the desire to become a leader in global science is held with great conviction by Chinese scientists, universities, and the state. Using precision medicine as a strategic research site, I trace the travel of this concept from the United States to China through transnational scientific networks and how Chinese scientists have engaged with precision medicine as a scientific movement in attempts to increase their standing in global science. In spite of these aspirations, I argue that Chinese scientists face exclusion and barriers in publishing and disseminating results from their research, relegating them to peripheral positions in the scientific field. I find that depending on where a scientist is structurally located, their interpretation of what precision medicine is and the norms that it should conform to differs. As a result, the lack of inclusivity in global science has the potential to jeopardize shared understanding of the permissible uses of genetic technologies. This paper draws on two main sources of data: (1) a social network analysis of bibliometrics of precision medicine publications (n=4,413) with attention paid to publications from Chinese scientists in lower-impact journals, and (2) interviews with precision medicine researchers in China (n=80) between 2016 and 2020 and observations of scientific conferences.

Author

• Larry Au, The City College of New York, CUNY