Projit Bihari Mukharji’s “Collecting Bodies, Bodily Collectives” was very interesting and unique from our other presentations, being that he approached the topic of “presence of the past” differently. As opposed to our other presenters, Projit decided to start with the presence and work his way backwards to the past, which was an interesting approach compared to our other presentations who have started in the past and worked their way to the present.
This lecture provided a very interesting to view of racism, looking at it in a biological way that I am not familiar with. As an Education major and a Sociology minor, I constantly read about societies’ view of races and racism and how it is socially constructed. However, this view was different in the fact that science was involved. Isabella Scribano’s post was interesting, particularly in her example about the anthropology class she took and how intelligence was measured with head size. Since different races had different measurements, it was perceived that some races were overall smarter than other races. It is interesting in this example, and others, that genetics can be used in a society to marginalize a race, even though it could be completely unrelated.
One of Projit’s examples was that there was an advertisement for “BiDil”, a drug that targeted African American hearts and no other hearts…this was very interesting and absurd, since all hearts are the same. Also, what’s concerning about this is that it is very recent. This drug was created and advertised in 2005, making people believe that there are big differences between white hearts and black hearts, which are clearly not true. I thought “gohwil21’s” questions of “whose responsibility is it to stop (or at least inform the public about) questionable science like this- especially when it’s deeply entrenched in cultural norms? Do we have to perform racial experiments to disprove science like this?” was particularly interesting, since I also found myself asking those questions when I learned this information. Is racism just reinforced when drugs and ads like these are made because they have “scientific evidence” to back them up?
Projit’s discussions of the importance of ethics in data collection was very interesting, especially since my current classes are talking about ethics in research. Of course my research is sociology, a very different approach to research, but still ethics apply. The story of the scientist who used lies and coercion to get bones from the graveyard was wild, because in my mind that was clearly unethical, but that information helped the future of genetics. Ethics is tricky because there is no correct answer, it really depends on who is looking at the situation. Since genetics is often studied after a person has passed, it is very hard to figure out what is ethical and what is not, when you can’t directly talk to the person being studied.
It is interesting that some of these data pools that Projit touched on were very small but lead to giant conclusions to be made. For all we know the information provided actually provides no applicable information for future generations and communities, however is still the current science we educate ourselves with. We have to look at science with a critical eye and not believe everything we read/we are told, just because it is “science”. There are clearly errors in the past, through poor research studies and techniques, which are currently affecting the present.