The Importance of Fairness in Science

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I don't think we're getting the most disruptive or exciting scientific ideas from just funding the few big people who've always had science funding. So I would say the pursuit of fairness is because we want science that is exciting and impactful. And at the moment, we're not saying that. We're just seeing the same people get huge, multi-million-pound grants. What did you learn writing a children's book about nanoscience? That children's publishers don't want you to write a whole book for a six-year-old about vibrational spectroscopy. It made me very proud to do what I do.

Jessica Wade is a physicist at Imperial College London who, while spending her day working on special carbon-based materials that can be used as semiconductors, has spent her nights writing nearly 2,000 Wikipedia entries about underrepresented figures in science. That, along with numerous other forms of public engagement—including writing a children’s book about nanotechnology—is all in an effort to actually do something productive to correct gender and racial biases in STEM.

She joined Tyler to discuss if there are any useful gender stereotypes in science, distinguishing between productive and unproductive ways to encourage women in science, whether science Twitter is biased toward men, how AI will affect gender participation gaps, how Wikipedia should be improved, how she judges the effectiveness of her Wikipedia articles, how she’d improve science funding, her work on chiral materials and its near-term applications, whether writing a kid’s science book should be rewarded in academia, what she learned spending a year studying art in Florence, what she’ll do next, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded February 21st, 2023

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