Colonial Shadows in Scientific Journalism: A Legacy of Bias?
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Science; the objective pursuit of knowledge. However, considering 98% of scientific publications are written in English (compared to only 18% of the world speaking it), is this objectiveness truly applied? Science is inextricably entrenched with a darker bias. The language hierarchy established within scientific journals, whereby ‘foreign’ languages are othered, represents the Anglocentric, western hegemony that has not yet rectified its own colonial past.
So, how exactly did the world’s ‘smartest minds’ accept English as the shared scientific language?
Early religion, however, offered a drastically different dynamic. While European Christians believed disease was God’s punishment, those of the Islamic faith saw scientific progress as pleasing Allah. Whilst Western Medicine was halted, Islamic Medics were making insurmountable progress, with Ibn Sina writing about complex medical disorders, like anorexia, in 1025. His work gained widespread recognition, and eventually became a French University standard textbook. Yet, it is the Brit, Richard Morton, who is instead credited with anorexia nervosa’s first medical description, nearly 5 centuries later.
But here’s the catch; it was simply the first English description.
Despite Arab and Islamic scholars being far more progressive than the religious restraints of Western knowledge, that knowledge is only acknowledged when authorised by an ‘English Stamp of Approval.’ Our history has carried an explicit prejudice towards non-Western Knowledge, whilst we continue to appropriate and refashion it as our own.
The European Enlightenment is a key contributor to the idea of Western domination in scientific fields. Home to Galileo, Montesquieu, Newton, and Bacon, these minds revolutionised Science's very fabric. But who, in turn, revolutionised them?
Under rigorous scholarship, Kondiaronk, a Native American scholar, is found at the centre. His book critiquing European Law, in response to French Canadian colonists, may have sparked the Enlightenment itself. While we have the power and resources to recognise the importance of these specific voices, Kondiaronk and Ibn Sina have one privilege in common: access to text.
Expression of knowledge can vary greatly between societies and cultures, and is not always textual. In 2023, Fire-hawk birds were ‘discovered’ to have been intentionally ‘fire-starting’ by Northern Australian Scientists. This work had been previously studied, observed, and recognised through indigenous ceremonial practices, creation stories, and wider popular belief. This ‘discovery’ presented a familiar colonial dichotomy; Western science being acknowledged as legitimising whereas indigenous knowledge is incapable of standing independently as a legitimate or respected form of science. Scientific knowledge originating from a socially experienced, phenomenon seemingly destroys its integrity and credibility, purely due to the fact that it is different.
Indigenous knowledge as a shared phenomenon rather than property means it unfortunately falls victim to Western piracy, manipulating this generational knowledge as an ‘original Western production’. This difference creates a system that justifies the Western pedestal. But at the crux of it, they share the same values; repetition verification, inference and prediction, empirical observations and recognition of pattern events. So how and why is this knowledge hierarchy still being upheld?
The appropriation of knowledge from medieval to the Enlightenment to modern times demonstrates our continued protection of Western knowledge and methodologies in a ‘scientific’ hierarchy. The English language monopoly solidifies this theoretical hegemony by physically excluding non-Western scholars. Even if scientists can write in English, the additional effort it requires immediately poses disadvantages and a high likelihood of exclusion, whereby 43.5% of scientific articles were rejected for grammar alone. More can be done to include these scientists by protecting indigenous knowledge, promoting multilingualism, embrace scholarly diversity, and questioning what science is, and who it is for.
The prioritisation of English writers as to prevent a language barrier means one thing: Western Scientists produce the only legitimate science. This cannot maintain itself. Not only does it disadvantage incredible minds around the world, it disadvantages science itself, stunting its progress by maintaining one type of scholar. For the sake of decolonisation, ethics, but also science, this hierarchy cannot be protected. As students of science, we must reflect and challenge texts and authors to decolonise the science that maintains wider social, racist phenomena.