Widening The Lens On A More Inclusive Science. Sept 6, 2019, Part 1

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Life Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Friday, Natural Sciences

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🗓️ 6 September 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

In 2012, the Obama administration projected that the United States would need to add an additional 1 million college graduates in STEM fields per year for the next ten years to keep up with projected growth in the need for science and technology expertise. At the same time, though, native Americans and other indigenous groups are underrepresented in the sciences, making up only 0.2 percent of the STEM workforce in 2014, despite being 2 percent of the total population of the United States. Why are indigenous people still underrepresented in science? Ira speaks with astrophysicist Annette Lee and anthropologist Kim TallBear about the historical role of science and observation in indigenous communities, and how Western scientific culture can leave out other voices. They also discuss the solutions: What does an inclusive scientific enterprise look like, and how could we get there? Learn more about the efforts in North America to recognize indigenous astronomy. Plus: After Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas, Florida braced itself for a brutal start to hurricane season. The storm didn’t cause catastrophic damage to the state this time, but Florida is just beginning peak hurricane season—and its nursing homes, which care for over 70,000 people, may not be prepared. Caitie Switalski of WLRN tells Ira more in the latest "State Of Science." And writer Annalee Newitz talks about the Trump administration's decision to roll back lightbulb efficiency standards, and other science headlines, in this week's News Roundup.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.
0:02.8	Later in the hour, we'll be talking about indigenous peoples and science.
0:07.6	But first, this week, as many of the Democratic presidential candidates talked about their climate policies
0:13.7	and the need for energy conservation in a seven-hour marathon on CNN,
0:19.5	the Trump administration announced that it would be rolling back
0:22.6	energy efficiency requirements for standard old light bulbs. Those requirements originally set up
0:29.2	during the Bush administration were aimed at pushing the country away from energy inefficient
0:34.5	incandescent lights and towards better options like LED lights.
0:39.6	Joining me now to talk about Trump's push to renew a 180-year-old technology,
0:44.5	plus other short subjects in science, as science journalist and author Annali Newitz.
0:48.5	joins us from San Francisco. Welcome back.
0:51.5	Hey, thanks for having me.
0:52.9	Nice to have you. So what do these new rules say? What's the big, one of the big effects on consumers here?
0:59.7	So these are rules that were set to go into effect in January of next year. And what they would have done is extend the energy efficiency requirements from not just the kind of typical pear-shaped incandescent
1:13.8	bulbs that we think of as screwing into our light sockets, but also all kinds of other bulbs
1:18.4	that are used in industrial applications, kind of funny-shaped bulbs that are used in chandeliers,
1:25.3	that are sort of candle-shaped. So basically, it would have swept all other light
1:29.0	bulbs that are not standard-sized into these already existing energy efficiency requirements.
1:34.7	And what the Trump administration has said is that it just didn't make economic sense to do that
1:40.4	right now. So is this going to go through, this undoing of that law?
1:47.7	So there's already been a lot of pushback.
1:50.5	There are consumer groups such as the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which have said
	...

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