reckoning with the fact that past events are deeply intertwined with the present. Modern life is built on these painful foundations. This fact includes our science and technology.
At some point in their education, most engineers are forced to grapple with times when technology has caused harm. From Bhopal to Tuskegee, every field has its incidents. The way we discuss these events varies substantially depending on who is participating in the conversation, but they are almost always presented as single moments in history. Classes neatly summarize what happened, where past technologists went wrong, and the design lessons that can be learned from previous mistakes. This method of framing tragedies outside their full historical contexts prevents us from understanding the foundations on which our current work is based.
Universities often try to bridge this gap between technology and context by requiring engineering majors to take humanities courses. Many engineering students respond by doing the bare minimum to pass these classes with an acceptable GPA. Modern STEM jobs primarily reward technological prowess, so there is no incentive for scientists or engineers to learn about anything else. From the start, we have constructed this system to discourage the contextualization of science.
The intricacy of scientific thought and practice also contributes to this disconnect. Science is too complicated to consider every single detail at every single level. As we dive into the technical development process, a necessary reliance on numbers and abstract processes emerges. Teams focusing on hyper-specific subject areas solve problems with varying levels of inter-team communication. These mechanisms, which we must apply to make any progress, obscure our impact.
Proponents of this engineering model underscore the significant advances modern science has made. These improvements in our quality of life and access to food, medicine, and technology are undeniable. But valuing technological advancement above all else creates an environment in which scientists and engineers are incentivized to forget. Names like Wernher von Braun, J. Marion Sims, and James Watson continue to adorn buildings, and their respective fields build upon that influence. We celebrate scientific figures for their discoveries while simultaneously ignoring the circumstances in which those discoveries were made.
There are myriad issues associated with forgetting or simply never learning the history of science. We often neglect to attend to the impact of each mistake or disproven, bigoted idea within the overall march of progress. Seemingly innocuous design choices can then further encode decades of biased decisions without technologists realizing. Viewing tragic events or problematic research as isolated moments prevents us from exploring the foundations of our disciplines and questioning our assumptions about how science should be done and who can benefit from it. If we refuse to acknowledge this history and the damage science can cause, we will inevitably perpetuate further harm.
Two weeks after returning from the FASPE trip, I attended a synthetic biology conference. The first few sessions were simply chances to listen to exciting new research in my field. This spell was broken by a presenter from a government research laboratory who, when asked about a potential military application during her Q&A session, claimed that she was “just a lab rat” who left the “higher-level thinking” to her superiors. The memories I had let fall into the background came crashing back. I spent the rest of the conference compiling a list of concerning ethical behaviors we had discussed among the Design & Technology cohort, which I then turned into a bingo card (see below) to help others engage more critically with scientific presentations.
None of the researchers who presented their findings at this conference approached their work with the intent of doing harm. Every single talk highlighted specific ways that research could improve aspects of society. However, unless the STEM community can find a way to incentivize remembering and centering the tragedies effected by science and scientists’ decision-making, we are bound to repeat them.
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Meagan Olsen was a 2024 FASPE Design & Technology Fellow. She is a PhD candidate in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Northwestern University.