Editorial - Bias

Hello Dear Reader, and welcome to Issue 3 of Consilience.

In this issue we explore the notion of ‘bias’, the myriad of different interferences that can significantly alter the interpretation of scientific studies and lead them astray. Bias can occur in all stages of scientific research, from planning and experimentation to analysis and interpretation. Understanding research bias allows scientists to critically review both their own results and also that of the scientific literature more widely. This is an essential step for the development of science.

Sadly, the bias that we observe in science permeates far deeper than the relative skewness of our results. For centuries science has been biased towards the actions and voices of a select group of people, meaning that even though huge advances have been made in recent years there is still a certain perception of what a ‘typical’ scientist looks, sounds, and acts like. This bias perniciously manifests itself into the hopes and dreams of whole generations of future scientists and is potentially a death knell for science itself – stymying the kaleidoscope of scientific insight and creativity that comes with the implementation of genuine diversity across any field.

Unconscious or implicit, bias is something that all of us experience, with racial and gender stereotyping shown to begin to form in early childhood, with the potential for prejudice seemingly hard-wired into human cognition. As humans we experience bias because we experience the world as ‘I.’ Everything we see, touch, experience, is biased toward our own opinion. Bias is itself not negative. It is only when we do not acknowledge, or purposely ignore, bias, that it becomes negative. And thus, just as awareness of experimental biases is essential for the development of effective and impactful science, so too is the consciousness of the other forms of bias that infiltrate the discipline.

However, even when we acknowledge our biases (both unconscious or otherwise), they are not as easy to ‘fix’ as the omitted variables, attrition, or recall bias that we might observe in our data. Part of this difficulty might be explained because of a sort of observer bias, a form of bias that occurs in scientific studies when the researcher subconsciously projects their expectations onto the research. By subconsciously projecting our own expectations and experiences onto scientific studies, we also project them onto the scientists who have conducted this research, without instead necessarily appreciating the researcher for who they are, and for their own experiences and expectations. This problem is somewhat exacerbated by the ill-conceived ideal that scientists should be hesitant in displaying any element of pathos, thereby acting to further dehumanise the scientists behind the science.

Poetry offers powerful tools for tackling bias, creating as it does an opportunity for us to momentarily inhabit the lifeworld of others. In reading poetry, we are thus presented with an opportunity to truly empathise with the poet and their subject in a way that is simply not possible with science. Poetry opens up a window through which we can experience for ourselves the biases that we might project onto others. Science and society revolve around the perspective forced by bias, and therefore can be bettered only when other perspectives are observed and encouraged. Or, as the American poet, and 2020 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Louise Glück put it:

“It is the absence of bias that convinces, that encourages confidence, the premise being that certain materials arranged in certain ways will always yield the same result.”

As ever, thank you to all of the poets that feature in this issue, as well as to Stephanie Bull who designed the beautiful cover image. We hope that these poems help you to experience the interior of the authors, that they represent a small step towards challenging the past hegemony of western and patriarchal scientific thought, and make possible a less biased and more diverse scientific future.

The Consilience Team