From park bench to lab bench - What kind of future are we designing? | Ruha Benjamin | TEDxBaltimore
Summary
TLDRThe speaker explores the concept of 'discriminatory design' in public spaces and scientific research, highlighting how design choices can exclude certain individuals. Examples include benches with armrests to deter loitering and the use of brain scans to predict criminal behavior. The talk emphasizes the need for inclusive design and the importance of considering diverse perspectives in scientific research to avoid perpetuating social inequalities.
Takeaways
- 🌞 The speaker contrasts their experience of seeking sunlight in the Northeast with their time in warmer climates, highlighting the importance of public spaces for relaxation.
- 🛋️ The concept of 'discriminatory design' is introduced through the example of benches with armrests, which are designed to prevent loitering and reflect broader social values.
- 🌍 Discriminatory design is a global phenomenon, with examples ranging from single-occupancy benches in Helsinki to caged benches in France and metered benches that require payment to sit.
- 💺 The metered bench, created by a German artist, is used by cities worldwide to deter 'bench hogging,' illustrating how public spaces are increasingly privatized.
- 🏛️ The speaker critiques the ethos of prioritizing 'customers' over 'people' in public life, arguing that this approach can lead to the exclusion of certain groups.
- 🔬 Discriminatory design in biotechnology and medical research is a concern, as it can perpetuate social inequalities if not carefully considered.
- 🧬 The story of Siobhan, an African-American egg donor, illustrates how discriminatory design in medical research can have serious health consequences for individuals.
- 🧠 Neuroscience's focus on studying impulsivity in incarcerated individuals is questioned, as it may reinforce existing prejudices and societal issues rather than addressing root causes.
- 🔍 The pursuit of genetic markers for violence, as seen after the Newtown school shooting, is criticized for potentially stigmatizing the mentally ill and avoiding broader social issues like gun control.
- 🌟 The legacy of Henrietta Lacks and the use of her cells (HeLa cells) in medical research raises ethical questions about consent, privacy, and the inclusion of marginalized voices in scientific advancement.
- 🔄 The speaker advocates for a more inclusive approach to design, suggesting that we need to consult a diverse range of voices to create a future that is equitable and considers the social and environmental impacts on all.
Q & A
What is the main issue the speaker is addressing regarding public benches?
-The speaker is addressing the issue of discriminatory design in public benches, which are designed to deter certain behaviors or groups of people, such as loiterers or homeless individuals, from using them.
What are the examples of discriminatory design mentioned in the script?
-Examples include single occupancy benches in Helsinki, caged benches in France, and metered benches where one has to pay to sit and avoid spikes.
Why does the speaker believe that the interests of the most affluent should not govern decisions affecting everyone?
-The speaker argues that the interests of the most affluent should not govern decisions because it can lead to the reproduction of existing social inequalities and neglect of the needs and concerns of potentially harmed groups.
What is the significance of the term 'discriminatory design' in the context of the script?
-In the context of the script, 'discriminatory design' refers to the intentional design of public spaces or technologies to exclude or disadvantage certain groups of people, often based on their social or economic status.
How does the speaker relate the concept of discriminatory design to biotechnology and medical research?
-The speaker relates discriminatory design to biotechnology and medical research by suggesting that the questions researchers ask, the places they look for answers, and the people they consult can all perpetuate social inequalities if not carefully considered.
What is the story of Siobhan mentioned in the script, and what does it illustrate?
-Siobhan is a young woman who responded to an ad for African-American egg donors, underwent a procedure that led to health complications, and was later asked to donate her eggs to stem cell research. Her story illustrates how discriminatory design in medical research can lead to negative outcomes for individuals who are not adequately consulted or considered in the research process.
What is the speaker's critique of using brain scans to study impulsivity among incarcerated individuals?
-The speaker critiques the use of brain scans to study impulsivity among incarcerated individuals as it targets an already subordinate population and risks reinforcing existing prejudices and profiling policies, rather than addressing the root causes of criminal behavior.
How does the speaker connect the study of genetics and violence to discriminatory design?
-The speaker connects the study of genetics and violence to discriminatory design by pointing out that focusing on the genetic predispositions of mass killers distracts from broader social and environmental factors contributing to violence, such as gun control and mental health support.
What is the significance of Henrietta Lacks' story in the context of the speaker's discussion on discriminatory design?
-Henrietta Lacks' story is significant because it highlights the historical exploitation of marginalized individuals in medical research and the importance of including their voices and consent in the design of medical studies and practices.
What is the speaker's vision for the future of biotechnology and medical research?
-The speaker envisions a future of biotechnology and medical research that is inclusive, considers the voices of those who are potentially harmed, and actively works to address social inequalities rather than perpetuating them.
Outlines
🌞 Discrimination in Public Design
The speaker discusses their experience with public benches designed to prevent loitering, highlighting the global phenomenon of discriminatory design. They mention examples from Helsinki, France, and a metered bench in Germany, which are intended to deter 'bench hogging.' The speaker argues that such designs reflect a societal preference for customers over people, and that this approach avoids addressing the root causes of social issues like homelessness. The speaker suggests that discriminatory design in public spaces is symptomatic of a broader issue where technological fixes are used to manage social problems rather than solving them.
🧬 Ethical Concerns in Biotechnologies
The speaker challenges the notion that the customer is always right, particularly when the interests of the affluent influence decisions that affect everyone. They advocate for considering the perspectives of those who might be harmed by new biotechnologies. The speaker shares the story of Siobhan, who suffered from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome after donating eggs for stem cell research. The narrative illustrates how the design of clinical research can lead to adverse outcomes for participants, emphasizing the need to include the voices of those affected in the decision-making process to prevent the reproduction of social inequalities in biotechnological advancements.
🧠 Neuroscience and Discriminatory Design
The speaker critiques the application of neuroscience in predicting criminal behavior, particularly in the context of studying impulsivity among incarcerated individuals. They argue that this approach tends to locate the problem within 'problem people' rather than addressing systemic issues. The speaker points out the potential for such research to exacerbate existing prejudices and profiling policies, particularly against black and Latino youth. They suggest that scientific research should be more inclusive and consider the broader social and environmental factors that contribute to societal challenges.
🔬 Genetics, Violence, and Social Responsibility
The speaker discusses the ethical implications of genetic research into violence, especially in the wake of mass shootings. They express concern over the focus on finding genetic predispositions for violence in individuals, which can lead to stigmatization and a neglect of broader social and political factors. The speaker uses the example of the New Town shooting to highlight how such research might divert attention from issues like gun control and mental health support. They emphasize the importance of considering the social and environmental context in scientific research and the need for a more inclusive and socially responsible approach to scientific inquiry.
🌟 Redesigning the Future with Inclusivity
The speaker concludes with a call to action for a more inclusive approach to design and research, using the story of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells as a case study. They recount how Lacks' cells were used without her or her family's consent, leading to ethical debates and eventually a more collaborative relationship between the scientific community and the Lacks family. The speaker suggests that the future of science and technology should be shaped by a diverse group of stakeholders to ensure a more equitable and representative outcome. They advocate for a future that values sociality and inclusivity, rather than a sterile and exclusive vision of progress.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Discriminatory Design
💡Privatization of Public Life
💡Benches as Social Commentary
💡Technological Fixes for Social Crises
💡Egg Donation and Stem Cell Research
💡Impulsivity and Neuroscience
💡Genetics of Violence
💡Henrietta Lacks
💡Social Inequalities in Biotechnologies
💡Designing Differently
Highlights
The speaker discusses the prevalence of discriminatory design in public spaces, such as benches with armrests to deter loitering.
Examples of discriminatory design are found globally, including single occupancy benches in Helsinki and caged benches in France.
The concept of metered benches that require payment to sit is introduced, highlighting the privatization of public life.
Discriminatory design is linked to the broader issue of creating technological fixes for social crises rather than addressing root causes.
The importance of considering who is missing at the lab bench when making important decisions in biotechnology is emphasized.
The speaker argues against the notion that the customer is always right, suggesting that the affluent should not govern decisions affecting everyone.
The story of Siobhan, who suffered from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome after donating eggs, is used to illustrate discriminatory design in medical research.
The lack of tracking the health of egg donors is highlighted as a significant oversight in medical research ethics.
The speaker critiques the use of brain scans to study impulsivity in incarcerated individuals, suggesting it targets already marginalized populations.
The potential for scientific research to reinforce existing prejudices and policing policies is discussed.
The genetics of violence is questioned as a field of study, with concerns about stigmatizing the mentally ill.
The story of Henrietta Lacks is recounted to discuss the historical context of medical research and privacy concerns.
The aftermath of Henrietta Lacks' story and the current involvement of her family in research decisions is highlighted.
The speaker calls for a future where progress is defined by inclusivity and the consideration of multiple perspectives.
The importance of consulting a diverse range of voices in the design of technology and research is emphasized.
The concept of 'getting our hands dirty' in creating a more inclusive material and social world is introduced as a call to action.
Transcripts
[Music]
so I've spent a lot of my life in warm
climates and now that I'm in the
Northeast I feel like I spend a lot of
time just chasing
Sunshine um on a recent trip to
California I was sitting on a bench
and
um the slides aren't
on give me one second while we queue
up sitting on this bench in California
on a recent trip um for that few minutes
before moving on with the business of
the trip I just wanted to lay down for a
few minutes and soak in some sunshine
and I quickly realized that I couldn't
lay down on the bench something was
wrong with the bench
whoever had designed the bench decided
to put armrests on it and while I don't
think it was created to give me trouble
I'm pretty sure that the armrests were
put there to deter loiterers from laying
down on the bench and with a little
digging what I realized was
actually this idea of discriminatory
design is a global
phenomenon I found single occupancy
benches in
Helsinki um I came across caged
benches in
France and I
think the most poignant example for me
has been the metered
bench where you actually have to pay to
sit down otherwise the spikes won't go
down
all right so single
occupancy
caged and the spike to metered bench
right and so you know this was created
by a German artist to actually get us
thinking about this issue of the
privatization of public life but it's
actually been taken up by cities in a
number of places in the world to
actually deter what they consider bench
hogging
one US Government rep said with respect
to loiters at bus
stops they're not our customers and our
customers come
first and I think this statement
actually captures the ethos of many
policies that govern public life where
we the customer not we the people come
first I think at the heart of
discriminatory design is this idea that
we can create technological fixes for
social
crises whether the crisis have to do
with housing or Health Care Public
Safety or
education rather than dealing with the
underlying conditions we create
short-term responses that often get the
issue out of sight out of
mind and these respons too often locate
the problem inside kinds of
people like the so-called loer rather
than deal squarely with the political
and economic conditions that create the
need to sleep on a park bench in the
first
place so if we think broadly with this
idea of discriminatory
design just as a park bench reflects
particular social
values so too is the lab bench and
medical research imbued with a range of
values so with respect to the
biotechnology re Revolution the kinds of
questions that researchers
ask where they go looking for the
answers and who they consult along the
way are all crucial for us to consider
another way to think about this is that
is to ask whose voices are
missing at the lab
bench as important decisions are being
made because I think without careful
consideration of this we really risk
reproducing existing social inequalities
whether it has to do with race or gender
class disability
nationality we unw wittingly design it
into new
biotechnologies and so what I want to
suggest to you is that the customer is
not always
right that is to say that the interests
and the concerns of the most affluent
among us should not
unduly govern the decisions that affect
everyone in fact I would say that we
have to act ly seek the input of those
who are potentially harmed by new
biotechnologies and so with that what I
want to do now is just switch gears a
little bit and Share three stories of
discriminatory design with you as a way
for us to begin to think about how we
might design
differently the first story is about a
young woman named
Siobhan now Siobhan was 28 years old at
the time that she uh responded to an ad
in her local paper for African-American
egg
donors and when she got to the
infertility Clinic what she what she
said was that among all those gathered
she she was the only one that seemed to
be asking a lot of questions and this
seemed to annoy the clinic
staff even so she decided to undergo the
procedure and eventually the the
receiving coup decided that they no
longer needed her eggs and it's at this
point that the clinic staff asked her
whether she would like to donate them to
stem cell research and she agreed to do
it and it's at this point that her story
takes a turn for the worst because the
drugs needed to stimulate her ovaries
create made them swell as the ex-ray
shows she uh got a condition called
ovarian hypers stimulation syndrome
which is actually very
common she accured huge medical bills
that took over a year and a half to
repay her own fertility was compromised
in the
process in 2008 she became pregnant and
miscarried so Siobhan's contribution to
stem cell research stands uneasily
against her experience as a
patient even so if we look carefully at
each part of the story it would be very
hard to pinpoint one person or one thing
to
blame that is the scientific Boogeyman
of old are not what we're talking about
when we're talking about discriminatory
design and if that's what we're looking
for we'll Overlook the very subtle ways
in which it's built into the everyday
architecture of work a day medicine and
Science and so if we think back to the
questions that Siobhan was asking when
she first got to the clinic we'll see
that it's actually through the design of
this clinical and research encounter
that makes her experience take a turn
for the
worse had the Siobhan of the world been
consulted it's likely that the
medication that is routinely used to
stimulate ovaries in this way would be
more efficacious or not used at all
right and so we have to think about
what's prioritized as of now there is no
mandate to keep track of the short and
long-term health of egged
donors so we can't even tell a young
woman when she comes to the
clinic with much confidence what the
likelihood of particular things happen
happening because no one is keeping
track no one is forced to keep
track so now let's move to the second
story of discriminatory design which
takes us to the field of
Neuroscience and here we find a growing
interest in studying
impulsivity and using brain scans to
study impulsivity like many
well-intentioned scientists who want to
use their training to address a problem
we see this happen
but if you recall there are many ways to
approach a problem right and too often
the approach is to locate it inside
problem
people and so in this case we have a
group a team of researchers who are
studying impulsivity among those who are
incarcerated and what they say is that
parole boards are faced with difficult
decisions every day and they have to do
a kind of risk assessment and try TR to
determine if someone is likely to commit
a crime again and so what this team says
is that what if we could predict it
right a kind of Minority Report 2.0 yeah
in response though there are a number of
scientists who question this right who
are saying that in
fact the use of brain scans in this way
uh is already targeting uh a already
subordinate population and so when I
heard this I thought impulsivity you
know not educational or employment
opportunities not family or housing
support as a predictor of whether
someone will commit a crime again right
brain sceds so while we're going around
scanning people why don't we set up
these scans up and down Wall Street you
know so like when Bankers are coming to
get their coffee on their lunch we can
figure out their rate of impulsivity
right it's not far-fetched to think that
poor decisions and financial crimes
right that were uh behind the global
economic crisis that have led to many
people being homeless had something to
do with
impulsivity but that's not the
population who's targeted that's not
where we train the scientific gaze
that's not the demographic who we locate
the problem in right and so we have to
think about even the definition of
pathology where we think the Menace to
Society is because there are many def de
demographics that avoid that label so we
think specifically about the Collision
of Neuroscience and criminology what we
know what we know is that many black and
Latino youth already face a version of
Minority Report when they wake up in the
morning and walk through their
day there's already assumption that they
have done something
wrong so add to this this line of
research in neuroscience and what you
have is the veneer of scientific
legitimacy layered on to already
existing prejudices and policing
profiling policies
right the third example of
discriminatory
design takes us to the field of
genetics in the aftermath of the New
Town Connecticut massacre and the close
to 100 school shootings since New Town
what we have is growing interest in
trying to understand the the genetics of
violence right looking for the reason
for these events in the DNA of mass
Killers so genotyping the shooter in
this
case right trying to find the reason in
the
person again well intentioned because
the idea is if we could predict whether
someone was going to do this look how
many lives we could
save look how many lives we could save
but in response there are many who
shudder in the scientific Community not
only because the science itself is
dubious that it's inconceivable really
that you would find similarities across
all these individuals but even
researchers speaking back to this
particular work say that it potentially
violates a number of personal Liberties
and that one Harvard geneticist says it
says more about us that we wish there
was something inside of these people to
explain it right it says something about
us and partly what it
says is that we haven't yet been will
willing to deal with the social and
political climate in which this is
happening and one element of that
environment is the
proliferation and accessibility of
firearms that we have
101 guns to every 100 people in this
country that there are over 30,000
firearm deaths every
year right and so what's key for us to
think about is not only does this line
of research potentially stigmatize
people who are mentally
ill who then we begin to think are all
potentially Mass murderers but it does
something even
bigger to those who avoid the
stigmatization it forces our view away
from the social and environmental
effects that that that impact all of us
right with dealing with this wider
environmental issues right and so as we
begin to think about how we might design
differently I think it's fitting that we
find ourselves in this
city right which has a rich and complex
history and one of the reasons is it was
home to someone who many consider as the
mother of modern medicine yeah Miss
Henrietta
LAX yeah and so let me briefly recap
Miss lax's story so that we can move our
thinking
along she was 31 years years old at the
time that she came to John's Hopkins
hospital because she had a cervical
tumor in
1951 and as she became more and more ill
and she went through radiation treatment
researchers took samples from her
cervix and they were astonished to find
that unlike cells they had been working
with before this was the first time that
they were able to actually have the
cells live indefinite ly in the
lab that is we call them
Immortal yeah and the reason why that
was so significant is because now they
could do research on a host of things
that they weren't able to do before
right on cancer on HIV hila cells hila
for Henrietta LAX were the basis of the
vaccine for
polio uh it was created a huge cell
Factory uh the first time cells could be
manufactured on an industrial scale
right sent to Labs all over the world
even sent into space so that we could
study the effects right and so while
miss LAX was buried in a you Family
Cemetery without a
tombstone her cells are
legendary there's almost no one you can
find in the Life Sciences who doesn't
know of them or hasn't work with them
right and despite the fact that her
story has become well known through a
well a a a a book that uh was a
bestseller on the New York Times list in
2013 German scientists after the book is
out after we realize that the family
didn't know how the cells were being
used for over 22 years this team decided
to publish the G Genome of Henrietta LAX
online for anyone to see for anyone to
download which without consulting the
family once again right so breaching
some privacy expectations and in the
aftermath of this the NIH and John's
Hopkins is actually now working very
closely with the family so much so the
two members of The Lax family sit on a
committee at the NIH so that anyone who
wants to use heila cells in their work
have to go through this committee right
and make sure that it is in line with uh
you know these new norms and
expectations this is just a small step
in designing the lab bench differently
in creating different Norms about who we
expect to be at the table and not just
on the table of medical research and so
as we move into the future one thing to
keep in mind is that there are multiple
Futures in front of us and where we end
up really is going to be shaped by who
we are Consulting who is participating
who is thought important to get us there
right it's very
possible if we only leave it to
technical experts that we will have a
future that is more unequal than our
present
right and this is really not just a
matter of some people moving ahead and
some people being left behind this is
about the very definition of progress
being questioned right because many
depictions of the future are one in
which we see a whitewashed reality a
sterile reality an artificially perfect
reality right in place of idealizing
sterility what I want to suggest is that
we work towards
sociality that we get our hands dirty in
trying to create a material and social
world that includes
everyone so coming full
circle the person who created this last
bench was inspired by the bahai n
pointed
star and what it does is it gives us a
glimpse into how we might reorient
ourselves towards our environment and
towards one another where we
incorporate the insights and the
experiences of people who see the world
from many different
angles with this model
I think that we can
redesign the lab bench
together thank
[Applause]
you
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)