HEFFNER: I am Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Ashley Smart, who is associate director at the Knight Science Journalism Initiative at MIT and senior editor of Undark Magazine.

Welcome, Ashley.

SMART: Thanks, Alexander.

It's good to be here.

HEFFNER: For the past many months, you've been working diligently on a project that explores science's long, often troubled relationship with race.

It is called Long Division, the persistence of race science.

Ashley, can you tell me what motivated the launch of this project?

SMART: Yeah, so this project the origins date back to the spring of 2022.

And at that time the country America was really still kind of in the midst of a deep reckoning over race.

And Deborah Blum, who's the director of KSJ, the Knight Science Journalism program, and also the publisher of Undark, approached me and we began to talk about how amidst this kind nationwide reckoning over race.

There was really very little that was being said about the role that science has played both in perpetuating ideas of race and also how those ideas of race have influenced the way we do science.

There's a long history dating back several centuries, right, that kind of ties these two ideas together, and we felt that, at the time, no one had really kind of explored it as part of this reckoning.

So we set out to do that.

One of the things that we did was we reached out to Harvard Science historian Evelyn Hammonds, who was really instrumental in getting this project off the ground.

We brought together science historians and, and ethicists with journalists to think about which stories would be most important for us to try to tell.

And we set out an under at Undark magazine to put together a package of stories that would really grapple with these questions, difficult questions the science still continues to face the day.

HEFFNER: The opening prompt on Undark, if you go to race.undark.org, is science built up the idea of race.

Can it ever be torn down?

When you say, and you and your colleagues have say that, do you mean the idea that there were biological differences according to race and that that co-existed for a period with some of the Enlightenment thinking that has gradually been debunked?

Is that what the initial idea of when you say science built up the idea of race, what you mean by that?

SMART: I mean, I think that is more or less kind of the idea.

So, so one thing we have to be careful about when we talk about race is, is to define what we mean, right?

And race you know, has lots of different connotations.

It has legal connotations and social connotations and cultural connotations.

What we were especially interested in for this project was the idea of biological race.

And that is the idea that humanity can be divided into, you know, a handful of groups based on geographic ancestry, and that these groups, these categories have some biological meaning.

And, and that idea of biological race, as you pointed out, dates back to the Enlightenment era, to thinkers of the 17 hundreds, like Carl Linnaeus and an Immanuel Kant.

And you know, the list goes on Buffon, Friedrich Blumenbach, who are all kind of coming up with these ideas of, of parceling humanity into, you know, a handful of categories and kind of speculating that these, these categories had real biological meaning.

And it was actually in this era, and it was from these thinkers that we got the term race as, as we use it today.

And so the concept of race predated this era.

I want to be clear.

So even dating back to the 1600s, you had legal, you know you had legal constructs that had basically you know, defined people from Africa, as you know, being second class humans basically in, in the new world.

You had the, the Black Codes and you had codes in Virginia that basically codified chattel slavery.

But it was really in the 1700s that we saw this idea of, of race as kind of a natural order of things emerge, and that was largely due to the naturalists of the Enlightenment era.

HEFFNER: And how do you think the history has evolved parallel to sex and gender?

Because of the question of biological difference between men and women, and the question of how you might consider, you know, various medical issues for one gender versus another gender.

I mean, do you feel like the project at all has any implications for that question too of the original conception of, you know, the biology of men and women and how we think about that now versus how we thought about that three centuries ago?

SMART: Yeah, I mean, I think one important parallel that, that comes with most attempts to classify humanity and to kind of strict categories is that the boundaries are often fluid.

And we see that, especially in the case of biological race, that, that there's no there's no race gene.

There's, there's kind of, there's no geographical boundaries that, that this kind of, these kind of biological categories adhere to.

When I think about human difference in human genetic variation I think for one, that it's, it's small.

When, when you look at our genomes, we're more than 99% identical, all of us.

But it's also statistical, right?

So scientists can compare genomes and maybe find differences in group averages of the patterns that they see, but there, there are no clear and definitive bounds that separate these groups that scientists have constructed.

And in the case of, of, of race or the notions of biological race these, these differences, this human genetic variation is swamped often by environmental factors.

So the genetic factors that make us different are often much smaller and less influential than kind of the environmental factors that shape who we become.

HEFFNER: Do you think that the environmental factors that have made Black Americans more susceptible to malnutrition and illness as a result of underserved communities where there is not the same level of guarantee of life, liberty and happiness, contamination of lead and, and pipes.

Do you explain the difference in propensity for illness through environmental factors entirely, or when it comes to the disproportionate cases of certain kinds of cancer in the Black community, that there is also any kind of medical explanation beyond the environmental factors?

SMART: Yeah.

Kind of, is it one or the other or those two factors?

Maybe both?

HEFFNER: Yeah.

I wonder how that, how that complicates this, this undoing of the biological race narrative.

When you look at a number of diseases just from the American, from the US perspective, and see that, is this a result of circumstance or is there both nature and nurture that is contributing to disproportionate health outcomes in Black communities?

SMART: Right.

So I want to qualify what I'm going to say by clarifying that I'm a journalist ,and so I see my job is to ask the experts the questions and try to tell the story that I get from them.

So I'm sure that you could speak to sociologists and historians and ethicists who could give you a more kind of definite answer.

But from the experts that I've talked to one I think, I think they tend to see it as both nature and nurture, that heredity and genetics do often play a part in, you know the health conditions and kind of health risk and health traits that we see.

But that the environment, environmental factors, and even things like discrimination and societal factors also play a huge part.

And to give you an example, researchers now using what are known as genome wide association studies are starting to be able to quantify the effect of specific genes on specific traits and specific health outcomes that we see.

And when they look at things like cancers and risk for coronary artery disease or cardiovascular diseases, the genetics that they've been able to uncover thus far tend to explain in the range of 10 to 20% of the outcomes that they see.

And so that leaves open a vast majority, which is likely due to environmental factors and other kind of unknown factors.

When we look at a trait like BMI, Body Mass Index, I think there it's, it's closer to 5% that's explained by the genetics that we know of so far.

And so I think the current understanding is that yes, genetics plays a part, but that environment often plays a much larger part.

And then there's another question when we're talking about racial disparities in health outcomes.

And I think it's an important point to make that at this point, it's very difficult for scientists to kind of compare the impacts and influence of genetics across races.

And the reasons are somewhat technical.

We get, we get into them and our race project stories, but it's very difficult to kind of make those comparisons and say, one race is more genetically predisposed to a conditioner outcome than another just because of the limitations of the tools that they have to use.

HEFFNER: Let me ask you, Ashley, about eugenics.

There are institutions like standardized testing that prolong the attitudes of the eugenicists of that earlier age.

But are you concerned at all by a new wave of eugenics thinking around the society and in the public domain?

SMART: I think there are kind of elements of modern applications of genetics that do kind of raise the specter of eugenics.

So for instance there are companies now that will do screening of embryos pre pre-implantation embryos for IVF patients.

So if you think of prospective parents who are undergoing IVF, and they have they are trying to decide which embryos they would like to implant to begin a pregnancy.

There are companies that will genetically screen those embryos on a number of factors.

In fact, there was one company that briefly advertised that they were screening for based on educational attainment outcomes in order to determine, you know, to help parents decide which embryos they'd like to carry to pregnancy.

And there are voices that are calling for more of that or for kind of wider spread genetic screening, and also kind of genetic choice of when it comes to fertility or reproduction.

And I think that raises the specter of eugenics.

I'm not sure if it kind of crosses the line that most ethicists would draw and actually call it eugenics.

But it's inching toward that line, I think.

And, and you see hints of that, but I think you also see often forceful repudiation of that line of thinking as well.

And I'm encouraged by that.

I'm encouraged that you see a lot of ethicists and science historians getting involved in conversations with genetics researchers to talk about the ethical and legal and social implications of the work they're doing.

And, so that's encouraging to me.

HEFFNER: How would you evaluate the progress we've made since, I think, a rather transformational moment in American society, which was the murder of George Floyd and the reexamination of issues of race and the recognition of that the betterment of society had not been complete, that there had been, and that there are communities alien to progress and that had denied the realization of, of life, liberty, and happiness?

In your specific discipline of science journalism, how relevant was what transpired in 2022, the practice of journalism today, and specifically science journalism informing communities and hopefully advancing the quality of not just discourse, but life in those communities?

SMART: Yeah, I mean, I think that entire reckoning over race has been extremely important in the realm of science journalism, in part because it's made I think all of us more attuned to the social inequities.

We see the disparities, we see both on a public health front, right?

You can think of the entire George Floyd situation has kind of lapse in various layers of public health but also on other fronts, right?

When it comes to environmental justice, I think we've been more, it's, we've become more attuned to environmental injustices that plague certain communities.

Certainly the COVID pandemic helped to make us more attuned for that.

And so yeah and I think it all speaks to the idea, which I think is an important one, is that science, science does not exist in a bubble kind of separate from all of these other aspects of society, right?

It intersects with, with sociology, and it intersects with education, and it intersects with health and all of these other elements.

And I think, you know, that through this entire reckoning, I think we've come to see that much more clearly.

HEFFNER: And what do you think is the new frontier when you and your colleagues at MIT are thinking about undertaking new science journalism initiatives and projects?

What is unexplored in, in the pursuit of fact that that will help scientists navigate further into this next generation?

Is the focus mostly on ethics because of the issues that we've seen that our two-time guest Joy Buolamwini has exposed in the proclivity of those deploying technologies to do so in a biased way?

Or is there a function of science journalism that is trying to facilitate learnings among scientists so that ideas can crosspollinate?

Or is it a combination?

I do imagine that the issue of ethics in scientific practice and technological innovation must be, if not your top priority, one of your top priorities.

SMART: Yeah, definitely.

And first shout out to Joy Buolamwini.

She's my neighbor, actually here in Cambridge.

And she does terrific work.

But yeah, I think you know, we're, ethics is definitely an area where here at KSJ we're paying a lot of attention.

We're working right now, as a matter of fact, to put together a series on ethics and science journalism.

But really we're, we're thinking about a lot of different [inaudible], we're thinking about misinformation and how, you know, we can best respond to this kind of infodemic or epidemic of misinformation that we're facing with things like that are fact checking and different ways of storytelling.

We're thinking about how to make the field of science journalism more inclusive.

There was a recent Pew poll that came out a few months ago and looked at the demographics within, within journalism writ large.

And science journalism was one the least diverse and representative beats in journalism.

I think in the science reporting I think the poll found that fewer that only 3% of science journalists identify as Black, whereas Black people make up nearly 14% of the population.

I think only 2% of environmental and energy journalists identify as Black.

And so we're thinking about ways to address that.

And we're also, you know, at the same time kind of reinforcing, you know, the journalism 101 principles of doing good trustworthy reporting and telling good important stories.

HEFFNER: I did ask you about eugenics.

I hate to say it, but there does seem to be among the higher tech, if you want to call them innovators, there is some kind of cross-pollination between the anti-vax community and sort of some of the modern eugenicists.

I think that I see that as a real threat that the high tech entrepreneurs thinking in ways that are obsolete.

Do you have that fear too?

SMART: I think you know, just from my experience as a journalist, when I think about people, entities who are kind of bringing into the world and really pushing new technology, one of my big concerns that I see is that often there's a tendency to act now and think about the consequences later, right?

Let's push this out there, make it big, and we'll worry about the societal implications later.

And I think that's something that, you know, as personally as a reporter that I've kind of been attuned to and that has guided some of my reporting, you know, basically saying, no, let's think about this now.

Let's think about this first before we introduce it into the world and can no longer control it.

And that kind of harkens back, not just to like the eugenics thinking that you're, that you mentioned, I think you fairly mentioned, but also, you know, technologies like AI and a lot of the work that we're seeing in genetics.

And so I think it's a journalist's job in some respects to kind of you know, to be an accountability source in that way and kind of, and kind of call people's attention to these things and say, you know, let's think about the implications?

But yeah, as far as the kind of cross-pollination between anti-vax and eugenics thinking, that's one that I hadn't thought.

HEFFNER: Yeah, no, I hear you.

It's still bubbling, it's foaming.

SMART: Yeah, it may be the case.

HEFFNER: Yeah.

Let me ask you this in the few minutes we have left.

An emphasis of our discussion has been environmental degradation and injustices that are being exposed.

Do you find that there's enough emphasis on the correcting some of the problems and, and keeping track of those corrections, for example, in Flint, Michigan with the lead?

You know, we don't have, we're not attuned to the latest there.

I mean, for all we know, it's as egregious as it was, and it's causing cancer or there are carcinogens in the water.

And I struggle with the fact that there's the Solutions Journalism Project, and I commend them for what they do, but that idea has not been fully integrated, not even fully integrated, hasn't really been integrated into the day-to-day reporting.

You go to The New York Times website, you see just an amazing array of stories.

And I wonder if your initiative at MIT might help in tracking the reporting that exposes environmental crimes or where science goes wrong in effect, and then ensuring that the solution is one that's sustained and that the environmental threat to a community like Flint is not going pop up again in five years.

And that's just one example, but, you know, there's so many examples you could use.

SMART: Are we doing enough to kind of follow up on, on these stories and stick with them?

HEFFNER: Right, right.

Yeah.

SMART: Right.

HEFFNER: Yeah.

SMART: Probably not.

You know, I'm sure we could be doing more.

My wife is actually from Flint, and so we're often spending time there.

And I know just from talking with my in-laws, that's still to this day you know, there's still kind of the scars of the Flint water crisis and still, you know, very much a distrust from a lot of the residents in that city.

And there are probably stories that we should be continuing to tell to follow up on.

But, but yeah, it's a challenging question when the new cycle is moving so quickly and when, you know, as sad as it is to say it, when kind of new environmental injustices are popping up at every turn, you know, how do we keep our eyes on all of those balls at once?

HEFFNER: That's true.

And you are making sure that AI doesn't create new environmental hazards.

We know, you know, they're artificially created medicines now using chemicals that we don't know the effect that they'll have years from now.

Yeah, we're just about to close, but I would direct all of our listeners and viewers to check out Ashley Smart's work and his colleagues' work at Undark, at the MIT science initiative, the Knight Science Program there.

Ashley Smart, thank you for the compelling work on the project you've done at Undark, and we continue to follow it here.

SMART: Thank you, Alexander, for having me.

It was a pleasure.

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