15913493714266 1..2 RACISM IN SCIENCE We need to act now eLife, like the rest of science, must tackle the many inequalities experienced by Black scientists. MICHAEL B EISEN I do not know how any white American like myself can respond to the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Min- nesota with anything but sadness, horror, and above all else, an abject sense of failure. We have, obviously, failed as a society when our social structures not only fail to prevent – but in many ways actively encourage – atrocities like this. And we have failed as individuals and organizations by not transforming the anger and sadness we felt after the deaths of Breonna Tay- lor, Botham Jean, Stephon Clark, Philando Cas- tile, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and many others into any kind of meaningful action. I know it matters to some people to hear people like me say the right things in response: that Black Lives Matter; that racism is a malig- nancy; that we want science to be a safe and welcoming place for Black scientists; and that we are all complicit when the power of the state is used to enforce a racist social structure by kill- ing Black Americans. I think and feel all of these things. But I also feel like a charlatan in saying them. Because it is not the first, or the second, or the third time I have done so, and what do these words mean if they do not lead those say- ing them to do anything tangible in response? The disconnect between words and actions is everywhere, but as scientists we should be focusing a particularly harsh eye on our institu- tions and on our individual roles in supporting the systemic racism that pervades them. And I will start with myself. I like to think of myself as a progressive who has made a persistent effort to promote diversity in science. But of the 50 grad- uate students and postdocs I have trained, none are Black. I have volunteered in diversity efforts at my university and elsewhere, I have sat on diversity panels, and I have reviewed diversity fellowships. But none of the many faculty search committees that I have served on made an offer to a Black candidate. One of the things that drew me to pursue the job as Editor-in-Chief at eLife was the interest the organization had shown in promoting diver- sity in science. When I took over last year, I immediately began to address the lack of diver- sity on our editorial boards. You can judge the success of our efforts how you will, but we have unquestionably failed when it comes to race. The entire leadership team of eLife is white. We have no Senior Editors who are Black. And despite the rapid growth of our Board of Reviewing Editors, very few are Black. (See this blogpost for more details). So inured are we to the exclusion of Black colleagues from the halls of science that many of us do not notice it at all, despite claiming to want racial justice. It is easy to make excuses – the legacy of his- toric racism is so strong that there are not a lot of senior Black scientists to choose from, and those that have survived the gauntlet are in demand and overcommitted, and so on and so forth. But these excuses are lame. How can we think that scientists can figure out a way to cure COVID, but not figure out a way to increase the number of Black scientists and involve them as leaders in the field? The reality is this IS a solv- able problem: we have just chosen not to solve it. It is impossible for eLife to be true to our mission of encouraging and recognizing the most responsible behaviors in science without Copyright Eisen. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. Eisen. eLife 2020;9:e59636. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59636 1 of 2 EDITORIAL https://elifesciences.org/about/people https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/93d83e53/black-lives-matter-a-commitment-from-elife http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59636 https://creativecommons.org/ https://creativecommons.org/ http://elifesciences.org/ http://elifesciences.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access also becoming a model for dismantling white supremacy in science. We will begin by recruiting Black scientists at all levels of the organization and empowering them in planning and decision making. But that is obviously not enough. There is ample evi- dence that the entire system of science evalua- tion of which eLife is a part is structurally biased against Black scientists, and that significant changes are required to fix it. Where we can take tangible action now, we will: for example, we will ensure that our scope, policies and edito- rial board composition lead to fair consideration of work from fields with higher concentrations of Black scientists (Hoppe et al., 2019). And we will build on ongoing efforts to root out implicit bias in our peer review and editorial decision- making processes, working with experts on bias in science evaluation to identify additional areas where we are directly or indirectly biased against Black scientists, and determine how best to respond. However there is the real possibility that a system built around dispensing limited markers of prestige is fundamentally incompatible with true fairness, and cannot be fixed by restructur- ing. This is one of the reasons I have long advo- cated scrapping the journal system and rebuilding science publishing from the ground up. But I am conscious that a lack of bias is not the default state in new systems, and that we must be eternally vigilant in making the elimina- tion of bias our top priority. It might seem weird to be talking about science publishing with people being murdered on the streets. But the deep and pervasive prob- lems in policing in the United States do not exist in isolation – they are product of the ongoing legacy of white supremacy that pervades all aspects of society – and science is no exception. We need direct and decisive action to end police violence targeted at Black Ameri- cans. But we also need to eliminate the societal structures that fuel and support it. I know that people will be skeptical about our willingness to deliver on these promises – and empirical evidence suggests they should be. None of these words matter if we fail to turn them into action. White scientists of the world, it really is time for us to put up or shut up. Michael B Eisen is the Editor-in-Chief of eLife mbeisen@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7528-738X Competing interests: The author declares that no competing interests exist. Published 05 June 2020 References Hoppe TA, Litovitz A, Willis KA, Meseroll RA, Perkins MJ, Hutchins BI, Davis AF, Lauer MS, Valantine HA, Anderson JM, Santangelo GM. 2019. Topic choice contributes to the lower rate of NIH awards to African- American/black scientists. Science Advances 5: eaaw7238. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv. aaw7238, PMID: 31633016 We will begin by recruiting Black scientists at all levels of the organization. Eisen. eLife 2020;9:e59636. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59636 2 of 2 Editorial Racism in Science We need to act now https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7528-738X https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw7238 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw7238 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31633016 https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59636