The 1953 paper in Nature by Watson and Crick positing a structure for DNA is about one page long, while the Wilkins et al. and Franklin and Gosling papers in the same issue are about two pages each. Altogether, these five pages resulted in three Nobel Prizes (it might have been four had Franklin lived).
Sadly, such concision has fallen by the way now that ideology has invaded the journal. This new paper in Nature (below), a perspective that touts the scientific advantage to neurobiology of combining indigenous knowledge with modern science—the so-called “two eyed seeing” metaphor contrived by two First Nations elders in Canada 21 years ago—is 10.25 pages long, more than twice as long as the entire set of three DNA papers. And yet it provides nothing even close to the earlier scientific advances. That’s because, as you might have guessed, indigenous North Americans do not have a science of neurobiology, or ways of looking at the field that might be helpfully combined with what we already know. What the authors tout at the outset isn’t substantiated in the rest of the paper.
Instead, the real point of the paper is that neuroscientists should treat indigenous peoples properly and ethically when involving them in neurobiological studies. In fact, the paper calls “Western” neuroscientists “settler colonialists,” which immediately tells you where this paper is coming from. Now of course you must surely behave ethically if you are doing neuroscience, towards both animals and human subjects or participants, but this paper adds nothing to that already widespread view. And it gives not a single example of how neuroscience itself has been or could be improved by incorporating indigenous perspectives.
The paper is a failure and Nature should be ashamed of wasting over ten pages—pages that could be devoted to good science—to say something that could occupy one paragraph.
Click below to read the paper, which is free with the legal Unpaywall app, or find the pdf here,
My heart is sinking as I realize that I have to discuss this “paper” after reading it twice, but let’s group its contentions under some headings (mine, though Nature‘s text is indented):
What is “two-eyed seeing”?
This Perspective focuses on the integration of traditional Indigenous views with biomedical approaches to research and care for brain and mental health, and both the breadth of knowledge and intellectual humility that can result when the two are combined. We build upon the foundational framework of Two-Eyed Seeing1 to explore approaches to sharing sacred knowledge and recognize that many dual forms exist to serve a similar beneficial purpose. We offer an approach towards understanding how neuroscience has been influenced by colonization in the past and efforts undertaken to mitigate epistemic, social and environmental injustices in the future.
The principle of Two-Eyed Seeing or Etuaptmumk was conceived by Mi’kmaq Elders, Albert and Murdena Marshall, from Unama’ki (Cape Breton), Nova Scotia, Canada, in 20041 (Fig. 1). It is considered a gift of multiple perspectives, treasured by many Indigenous Peoples, which is enabled by learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of non-Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. It speaks not only to the importance of recognizing Indigenous knowledge as a distinct knowledge system alongside science, but also to the weaving of the Indigenous and Western world views. This integration has attained Canada-wide acceptance and is now widely considered an appropriate approach for researchers working with Indigenous communities.
It is, as you see, a push to incorporate indigenous “ways of knowing” into modern science—in this case neuroscience, though there’s precious little neuroscience in the paper. The paper coiuld have been written using nearly any area of science in which there are human subjects. And, in fact, we do have lots of papers about how biology, chemistry, and even physics can be improved by indigenous knowledge (“two-eyed seeing” is simply the Canadian version of that trope).
And as is so often the case in this kind of paper, there are simple, almost juvenile figures that don’t add anything to the text. The one below is from the paper. Note that modern science is called “Western”, a misnomer that is almost always used, and is meant to imply that the knowledge of the “West” is woefully incomplete.
Isn’t that edifying?
What is two-eyed seeing supposed to accomplish? Some quotes:
Here we argue that the integration of Indigenous perspectives and knowledge is necessary to further deepen the understanding of the brain and to ensure sustainable development of research4 and clinical practices for brain health5,6 (Table 1 and Fig. 2). We recognize that, in some parts of the world, the term Indigenous is understood differently. We are guided by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues that identifies Indigenous people as
[…] holders of unique languages, knowledge systems and beliefs and possess invaluable knowledge of practices for the sustainable management of natural resources. They have a special relation to and use of their traditional land. Their ancestral land has a fundamental importance for their collective physical and cultural survival as peoples. Indigenous peoples hold their own diverse concepts of development, based on their traditional values, visions, needs and priorities.
. . . There are many compelling reasons for neuroscientists who study the human brain and mind to engage with other ways of knowing and pursue active allyship, and few convincing reasons to not. Fundamentally, a willingness to engage meaningfully with a range of modes of thought, world views, methods of inquiry and means of communicating knowledge is a matter of intellectual and epistemic humility11. Epistemic humility is defined as “the ability to critically reflect on our ontological commitments, beliefs and belief systems, our biases, and our assumptions, and being willing to change or modify them”12. It shares features with interdisciplinary thinking within Western academic traditions, but it stands to be even more enlightening by providing entirely new approaches to understanding. Epistemic humility is an acknowledgement that all interactions with the world, including the practice of neuroscience, are influenced by mental frameworks, experiences and both unconscious and overt biases.
“Humility” and “allyship” are always red-flag words, and they it is supposed to apply entirely to the settler-colinialist scientists, not to indigenous people.
Why is “one eyed” modern science harmful? Quotes:
Brain science has largely drawn on ontological and epistemological cultural ways of being and knowing, which are dominantly held in Western countries, such as those in North America and Europe. In cross-cultural neuroscience involving Indigenous people and communities, both epistemic and cultural humility call for an understanding of the history of colonialism, discrimination, injustice and harm caused under a false umbrella of science; critical examination of the origins of current and emerging scientific assessments; and consideration of the way culture shapes engagement between Western and Indigenous research, as well as care systems for brain and mental health.
. . . Why, then, is such engagement with Indigenous ways of knowing not more widespread in human neuroscience research and care? There would seem to be a litany of reasons: ongoing oppression and marginalization of Indigenous peoples in many societies and scientific communities, individual and systemic epistemic arrogance in which only the Western way of knowing is perceived to be of value, lack of knowledge of other knowledge systems, lack of relationships with Indigenous partners that has been fuelled in part by the exclusion and marginalization of Indigenous scholars in academia, challenges to identifying ways of decolonizing or Indigenizing a particular area of study and fear of consequences for making mistakes or causing offence9,15, among others.
. . . Given existing power imbalances, Western knowledge largely dominates the world in which Indigenous peoples reside and, as a result, there is often no choice as to whether to engage with it. In contrast, non-Indigenous peoples have the privilege to choose whether to engage with Indigenous knowledge systems. Although significant learning about Indigenous knowledge systems for settler colonialists remains, full reciprocity is not necessarily a requirement.
Here we see the singling out of power imbalances, the emphasis on colonialism, and the supposed denigration of valuable “indigenous knowledge systems” (which aren’t defined)—all of which are part of Critical Social Justice ideology. But note the first sentence above: the implication that “two-eyed seeing” is supposed to actually improve brain science itself.
On neuroethics. In fact, the authors give no examples where it does that. Instead, the concentration of the paper is on “neuroethics”. I talked to my colleague Peggy Mason, a neuroscientist here, about neuroethics, and she told me that it comes in two forms. The first one, which Peggy finds more interesting, is looking at ethical questions through the lens of neuroscience. One example is determinism, and in Robert Sapolsky’s new book Determined you can see how he uses neuroscience to arrive at his deterministic conclusions and their ethical implications.
The other form of neuroethics is the one used in this paper: how to ethically deal with animals and people used in neuroscience studies. These are, in effect, “reserach ethics”, and have been a subject of discussion in recent decades. As the paper shows above, the real “revolution” in neuroscience touted in the title is simply the realization by those pesky settler-eolonialist neuroscientists that they must exercise sensitivity and empathy towards indigenous people (the implication is that they are uncomprehending and patronizing).
The next section shows the scientific vacuity of melding two types of knowledge: the real “two-eyed seeing” objective.
How has two-eyed seeing improved our understanding of neuroscience? No convincing examples are given in the paper, but here are a few game tries:
Historically, Indigenous peoples have been largely excluded from brain and mental health science, or included but never benefited from the scientific advancements. There are also ample examples, in the brain and mental health sciences and elsewhere, in which the cultural beliefs of Indigenous peoples were patently disrespected. A distinct example is the Havasupai Tribe case, where scientists at Arizona State University in the USA used blood samples they had collected from the Havasupai people to conduct unconsented research on schizophrenia, inbreeding and human population migration20. The Havasupai people, who have strong beliefs about blood and its relation to their sense of identity, spiritual connection and cultural cohesion, were advised that the blood samples were being collected for purposes of conducting diabetes research. The community filed two lawsuits against the university upon learning about the misuse of their blood samples for research questions they do not support.
In another stark example, results from an international genomics study on the genetic structure of ‘Indigenous peoples’ [sic] recruited in Namibia21 were compared to results of a study of the ‘Bantu-speaking people of southern Africa’22,23. The Namibian people were the Indigenous San (including the!Xun, Khwe and ‡Khomani) and Khoekhoe people who include the Nama and Griqua, first to be colonized in southern Africa21. Among numerous missteps in the research, published supplementary materials contained information entirely unrelated to genomics and other information about the San that was unconsented, private, pejorative and discriminatory.
These examples of violations of research ethics in neuroscience and genomics highlight the need for Two-Eyed Seeing to ensure individual and professional scientific integrity.
Neither of these are examples of improvements in understanding neuroscience via “two-eyed seeing”. One is about the proper and ethical way to collect blood from indigenous people; the other is about genetic differences between African populations.
Can we do better? How about an example from studies of mental health?
Other successful studies among the amaXhosa people in South Africa in 2020 exemplify the embodiment of cultural humility and trust-building. Gulsuner et al.29 and Campbell et al.30 demonstrated the importance of inviting people with lived experience of a mental health condition, brain and mental health professionals, members of the criminal justice system, local hospital staff as well as traditional and faith-based healers to provide education about severe mental illness and local psychosocial support structures to promote recovery. Through co-design, implementation and evaluation, the researchers assessed the effects of the co-created mental health community engagement in enhancing understanding of schizophrenia and neuropsychiatric genomics research as it pertains to this disorder30. They collaboratively presented mental health information and research in a culturally sensitive way, both respecting the local conceptualization of mental health and guarding against the possible harms of stigma31. They incorporated cultural practices, such as song, dance and prayer, with the guidance of key community leaders and amaXhosa people that included families affected by schizophrenia, to foster a process of multidirectional enlightenment and, in effect, Two-Eyed Seeing.
Again we see the emphasis on cultural sensitivity, which of course I agree with, but whether and how this method helped us understand how to cure schizophrenia and improve “neuropsychiatric genomics research” is not explained. There may be something there, but the authors fail to tell us what.
Finally, the authors relate the sad story of Lia Lee, a severely epileptic Hmong child in California whose treatment was difficult (she was in a vegetative state for 26 of her 30 years after her last seizure), for the doctors couldn’t communicate with the parents (see here and here) . Treatment was further impeded because the Hmong parents, who really loved Lia deeply, also believed that epilepsy was a sign that she was spiritually gifted, and so were conflicted and erratic in giving her the prescribed medication. This is an example where some indigenous beliefs are harmful to treatment, just as in some cultures that mistreat people who are mentally ill because they think they are possessed by supernatural powers. Two-eyed seeing is not always good for patients! From the paper:
Epilepsy serves as a poignant example of how a dual perspective can enrich the spirituality of health and wellbeing, and where collisions with biomedicine can lead to tragic consequences. One example can be taken from the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, in which author Anne Fadiman51 documents the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong child affected with Lennox–Gastaut syndrome. Lia’s parents attributed the symptoms of her seizures to the flight of her soul in response to a frightening noise—quab dab peg (the spirit catches you and you fall down; translated as epilepsy in Hmong–English dictionaries) and, although concerned, were reluctant to intervene because they viewed its symptoms as a form of spiritual giftedness. Lia’s doctors were faced with limited therapeutic choices, challenges of communication, and a general lack of cultural competence. Exacerbated by disconnects and failures of both traditional and Western healthcare, responsive options and years of effort were eclipsed in a perfect storm of mistrust and misunderstanding.
Since the 1990s when the book was written, closing gaps in health equity, reducing the marginalization of vulnerable and historically neglected populations such as Indigenous peoples and promoting individual and collective autonomy have become a focus in both neuroscience research and clinical care.
Fadiman’s book is read widely in medical schools, used to promote cultural sensitivity towards patients. That’s fine (though it couldn’t have helped Lia), but again it doesn’t help us understand neuroscience itself.
What are some of the indigenous practices said to contribute to neuroscience? Several are mentioned, but have nothing to do with neuroscience. Here’s one:
. . . ,. there remains significant potential integrating Indigenous theories around the brain and mind. For example, while the Kulin nations conceptualize distinct philosophies of yulendj (knowledge/intelligence), toombadool (learning/teaching) and Ngarnga (understanding/comprehension), views of the mind and brain tend to not be static and individualistic, but holistic, dynamic and interwoven symbiotically within the broader environment. The durndurn (brain) is not just a singular organ, but a part of the body that contains some aspects of a murrup (spirit), within the pedagogy of a broader songline.
This concept of a songline is present across many Indigenous cultures35. Although songlines can present as dreaming stories, art, song and dance, their most common use is as a mnemonic. Such is the success of using songlines in memory that it has allowed oral history to accurately survive tens of thousands of years—with accuracy often setting precedent for scientific verification. The breadth of their use would allow the common person to memorize thousands of plants, animals, insects, navigation, astronomy, laws, geological features and genealogy. Whether conceived as songlines, Native American pilgrimage trails, Inca ceques or Polynesian ceremonial roads, all use similar Indigenous methods of memorization36. This aligns with modern neuroscience findings that emphasize the capacity of the brain for complex memory processes and the role of mnemonic techniques in enhancing memory retention. Moser, Moser and O’Keefe were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research that grounded the relationship between memory and spatial awareness when establishing that entorhinal grid cells form a positioning system as a cognitive representation of the inhabited space. Elevated hippocampal activity when utilizing spatial learning encourages strong memorization through associative attachment, and these techniques are readily used by competitive memory champions. Two-Eyed Seeing songlines for the mind and brain build capacity in facilitating a respectful implementation of traditional memorization techniques in broader contemporary settings37.
Songs and word of mouth allow indigenous people to pass knowledge along. That’s fine, except that knowledge passed on this way may get distorted. Writing—the “settler-colonialist” way of preserving knowledge—is much better and more reliable. It also allows for mathematical and statistical analysis. Again, there is nothing in the two-eyed seeing that improves neuroscience, at least nothing I can see.
There’s a lot more in this long, tedious, and tendentious paper, but I won’t bore you. I do think it would make a great pedagogical tool for neuroscience students, who can evaluate the paper’s claims at the same time as discerning the ideological slant of the paper (as well as its intellectual vacuity). We’ve come to a pretty pass when one of the world’s two best scientific journals publishes pabulum like this in the interest of sacralizing indigenous people. Yes, indigenous people can contribute knowledge (“justified true belief”) to the canons of science, but, as we’ve seen repeatedly, that knowledge is usually scanty, overblown, and largely irrelevant to modern science. But Social Justice has stuck its nose in the tent science, and papers like this are the result. . .
Rhetorical quiz :
Imagine for a moment we did not just read this paper. What, exactly, does “sacred knowledge” refer to?
____________________.
2nd point :
I like how “other” has been almost surgically excised from “ways of knowing” in the article*. This stands out like a sore thumb if you’ve read enough material in this category. Extremely effective.
*PCC(E) – I think in the commentary you wrote “other” above once only out of a force of habit from analyzing such literature so much.
It’s sacred knowledge because it is non-Western. As we all know, the Christian creation myth is nonsense to be rejected. But indigenous creation myths must be reverently respected. I don’t get it. Nonsense is nonsense irrespective of which particular culture came up with it.
Power dynamics. All part of getting what we have by taking it from us.
I don’t agree with that diagnosis. As I read it, the craze in New Zealand for Matauranga Maori is not primarily motivated by desire to “take things from us”. It seems to be a genuine cultural inferiority complex that inspires the nuttier of the Māori (though large driven by white pointy-headed progressives) to seek recognition of their culture as “equal” to the West. And that also motivates the same nonsense in Canada.
It is particularly silly in the case of Canada. Which indigenous knowledge should be elevated? Traditional “ways of knowing” are VERY different among the Mic Mac, Huron, Osage, Cree, Inuit, Kwakiutl, and etc. and etc. Are they all equal to Western science? When Osage and Kwakiutl knowledge contradict each other, which one must I regard as sacred?
When the Osage and the Kwakiutl get together on Zoom which they pay for with electronic funds transfer raised from the sale of mineral rights that they didn’t even know existed before Contact, they will make sure to iron out or paper over any discrepancies between their indigenous ways of knowing so as to present a coherent demand for rent extraction from the pipeline company to square things with the water spirits. That’s what I mean by power dynamics.
They might not really want the land back, but they do want money. A lot of money.
I just don’t think that indigenous people believe any of their own woo. Do you really think they do? They say it with a straight face and we don’t dare say, “Oh, come off it!” Going back to the fur trade they learned to be sharp operators. Mother Earth may have birthed the beaver but the French were paying cool magical stuff for pelts and seemed to want them really really badly.
China is now a world leader in science in many areas. According to the figure in the paper, China is conducting Western science. So we should be happy to learn that China is a western country. As was the Soviet Union, world leader in physics and mathematics.
I have zero depth of knowledge on this, but in China there is a thriving traditional medicine industry with plenty of magical woo in its practices (and some herbal medicines that are medicines). Along with it have been considerable efforts to do some science-based research on the efficacies of these traditional meds. But the research is admittedly in chaos because of uneven standards. Still, they are trying. Here is a short review that I think is pretty honest about the issues: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1550493/
China’s worldwide promotion of Traditional Chinese Medicine is one of the major reasons why we should quit the WHO.
We should quit and make a non-communist, non-dictatorship WHO of our own. Without acupuncture, wildlife killing commie woo.
Most of the members are recipients who could join either, or not.
We make the rules.
D.A.
NYC
Three things about this. 1. Indigenous perspectives or knowledge systems are frozen in time. They stopped developing on contact with European technology and science. But nobody is talking about two-eyed seeing where the other eye is 18th-century technology (sailing ships, blood letting, the four humours).
2. “Two eyes” are not enough. At the time of first continuing contact with Europeans, the Mi’kmaq people who came up with two-eyed seeing had no knowledge of the dozens of other indigenous cultures across Canada (let alone other parts of the New World). They barely knew that the Iroquois existed a few hundred kilometres to the east, and had no even mythical understanding of the prairies, the Rockies, or the Pacific Ocean. Dozens or hundreds of eyes would be needed to see in the way these elders imagined.
3. These authors, oy, who are they to be lecturing us about how others should do neuroscience (or any other science)? The senior author Velarde is not a neuroscientist.
orcid.org/0000-0003-3747-3306
T. Ryan Gregory is also not a neuroscientist
http://www.uoguelph.ca/ib/people/gregory
I can’t be arsed to look up all the other authors. It’s all remarkably similar to that 2022 article that Jerry stumbled on a couple weeks ago in American Naturalist on ableism and how the geneticists of the Modern Synthesis were actually Nazis (no kidding, one of the footnotes has the word “Nazi”).
doi.org/10.1086/720003
[sorry for all the links – tried to disable]
[also edited to remove disparagement of the authors; unwarranted]
Question for the supporters of “traditional ways of knowing”…are these beliefs tentative? Meaning, can they be shown to be false or at least modified with additional evidence? As in, does it function like science?
If these traditional “other ways of knowing” cannot be challenged, modified, or falsified, which is almost certainly the case, then how are they different to religious dogma?
Reintroducing religious dogma to science is not adding another eye…it’s functioning more like cataracts on the perfectly good eyes of science!
The supporters of traditional ways of knowing whom I’ve dealt with would answer your question on falsification by pointing out that it only makes sense within the framework of Western Science. Therefore, it can’t be answered.
These more open, gentle, generous ways of knowing are different from religious dogma because religious dogma is confined to Western Colonialist Religion, which is very bad.
At least with cataract or trachoma, the brain knows which eye is blind. Perhaps more like strabismus or diplopia. Where the two eyes both see but don’t see the same thing, the brain suppresses the visual signals from one. Let’s hope in two-eyed seeing the brain preserves the right one.
Being subject to unpredictable failures of binocular convergence, I can testify that Cross-Eyed Seeing is indeed a different experience, but is very ill-suited to driving a car or managing a civilisation.
Cataract quip is amusing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9ihRXhFCDM
In the above link, Dr. Myrle Ballard (who was also Canada’s Director of Indigenous Science) suggests “three-eyed seeing” is even better, which is: Indigenous Science, Western Science, and “Our Relations”, which includes land, water, air, flora, fauna, (the crawling, the four legged, the winged, the two legged) because we know “they are all alive, trees are alive, water had to be disrupted, we have to speak for the air.”
Further, a quote from Ballard’s talk: “Indigenous peoples know what the land and waters are saying, and they can be the interpreters.”
Three-eyed seeing is best done by the Three-Eyed Raven, a greenseer revered among the Children of the Forest who can visualize both past and future and is currently ruling Westeros. I believe a paper is coming out on this in an upcoming edition of Nature, just as soon as researcher G. Martin gets around to completing it.
All this Noble Savage guff is starting to sound like fantasy fiction.
Yes, like fantasy fiction but far less amusing.
“…we have to speak for the air.”
Oh, don’t worry Myrle, you’re speaking for the air alright.
I have painstakingly compiled a comprehensive list of all of the great contributions stemming from indigenous ways of knowing to Western science – see my list below:
For decades, the medical profession has been moving in the direction of Evidence-based Medicine,* whereby medical practice makes use of treatments that have been upheld by scientific study and analysis. This approach is meant to replace or augment practices that historically became standard as much through tradition and anecdote as through hard science. One would think that the paper discussed here advocates for the very opposite of where medical practice is headed and needs to go. If indigenous practices can meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, I’m all for them. Let’s see the evidence that they can.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine
Dan W has made a list above.
🙂
Excellent comment. It’s exasperating that the editors of one of the most important scientific publications agree to publish this nonsense.
“Attained Canada-wide acceptance” to our detriment as a nation.
I noticed that too. The whole thing is very discouraging.
For what it’s worth–I remember reading about this scientist who was in the genetic field (I can’t remember who–another reader may remember) who when the DNA nobel prize was awarded for the structure of DNA and looked back at his copy of that issue of Nature and he had ticked off that he had read the paper, but didn’t realise the significance of the paper.
I wonder if this is in part by the low key whit that finished with:
“It has not escaped our notice that the specific
pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a
possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.”
https://dosequis.colorado.edu/Courses/MethodsLogic/papers/WatsonCrick1953.pdf
I was going to comment on how this was yet another example of numinous woo (and the paper does indeed have a lot of woo in it), but instead I want to say that this time the authors actually have a point although that point is overwhelmed by unnecessary distractions.
The authors describe a few cases where scientists had misled indigenous subjects about the purpose of their research, with pretty significant disregard to the beliefs and sensitivities of those subjects. Now those beliefs/sensitivities involve magical thinking that has no real place at the science table, but it does no harm to be honest about what you are up to, and honesty goes far in building trust. There is a thing called ethics, you know.
Unfortunately, this message is lost in all that two-eyed seeing stuff and other fluffery that is far, far removed from empirical science. I guess the authors could not leave those distractions alone, and in fact they put them front and center. It’s a shame bc a basic message about ethics is being lost in translation.
I’ve just had a scout at some of the citations in the article to see how bad some of claimed ethics violations were. On this one:
OK so what’s wrong with that?
The cited links say, regarding “the first human genome sequences from southern Africa […] and four San men from Namibia. The Namibian government and ethics committees at the scientists’ universities in Australia, South Africa and the United States approved the study. The researchers also filmed the San men giving verbal consent with the help of a translator.”
But also: “But some San leaders were upset that the team did not consult them, and were concerned about how the researchers obtained informed consent from the San men, according to Roger Chennells, a human-rights lawyer …”
As for:
First, what’s wrong with “contained information entirely unrelated to genomics”? And what was unconsented and private? No specifics are given.
On “pejorative” the only specifics I could find is a letter to the journal saying: The authors explain their choice of names in their Supplementary Information, but the terms Khoisan, Bantu and Bushman are perceived by those populations as outdated and even derogatory. … and going on to say that the San prefer “San” to “Khoisan” or “Bushman”, though it then doesn’t give a preferred alternative to “Bantu”.
So far this seems pretty weak beer to me, and hardly a “stark example” of major wrongdoing. I’m willing to be told that I have over-looked something or that I am unsympathetic.
Hmrph. I’d rather be thought unsympathetic than simply pathetic, which you are not.
That is useful! I was thinking about adding a bit of caveat to my comment about whether those examples are as dire as made out. But I left that out.
Why are the Hmong considered “indigenous”? Other Asian migrants don’t get this label.
“Indigenous” makes sense to refer to the people who were living in the various lands colonized by Europeans. But the Hmong don’t fit that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/us/life-went-on-around-her-redefining-care-by-bridging-a-divide.html
Um, no one had better suggest four-eyed seeing because I was teased brutally about my glasses as a child, and I could not handle hearing it.
Me too, but now that I have cataract lenses, I guess I am six-eyes (or more, counting my trifocals). That said, I stared long and hard at the figure above with all of my eyes open, and all I could see was a great bloody big black hole in the center. Two-eyed seeing indeed!
It’s sad indeed to see how Nature has fallen. It’s important to always push back against it.
In the 19th century, anthropologist James Frazer noted that human societies first developed magical thinking to understand reality, then religion, and then science. He praised science for its unique power to understand the world, but now it seems we are reversing to magical thinking.
I came here to write something similar to #10 Mark S. It is important for practitioners of arts, sciences, and technology to engage in discussion about the ethical issues impacted by, and generated by, their practice. If the article had been written as an ethical position paper, perhaps it would contribute to such debate. Unfortunately it is framed as stating that pre-scientific understanding is to be considered equal to the scientific method because colonialism etc. That immediately reduces it to an ideological position paper that results in its rejection.
So, the indigenous tradition of “Two-Eyed Seeing” goes all the way back to 2004. Bah, humbug. More numpty muck.
And re the “indigenous lens”, AFAIK the pre-contact indigenous had no such concept as “lens”. So here they are using Western knowledge to express the value of indigenous knowledge. Bah, humbug.
And, does anyone anywhere ever use “allyship” to mean anything more than performative crapola? Bah, etc.
And, “epistemic humility” presupposes that the target has some knowledge that they might reasonably brag about, but are being told to shut up about it.
etc. etc.
The bit about having “humility” can be translated as: No traditional science finding, however replicated and supported by controlled experiments, can ever be couched as being more reality-based than traditional practices and legends.
The word settler means a person or group who moves to live in a different country.
Colonist is someone who lives in a colony. All so called indigenous peoples of north and south America are settler colonists.
“This concept of a songline is present across many Indigenous cultures… their most common use is as a mnemonic. Such is the success of using songlines in memory that it has allowed oral history to accurately survive tens of thousands of years”
This made me think of Homer’s The Iliad. Wasn’t this poem spoken for 100s, 1000s? of years before being written down? Therefore, doesn’t the West also have its indigenous knowledge that should be respected by other indigenous cultures? Did the authors bring up The Iliad?
Also, was it the Utes that were nearly wiped out by the Comanches? The Comanches were something like an imperial colonizing force. Should the indigenous knowledge of the Comanches be respected?
Reminds me of the Carlos Castaneda books I was assigned in entry level social anthropology back in 1972, but it appears far more pernicious and widespread because it is the hard sciences being subverted now. Crazy town.
All I can say after seeing that is that Creationists must be laughing their heads off.
How, exactly does the discovery of grid cells in the 70s (nobel 2014) relevant to anything indigenous other than those people – being humans and mammals- OWN THEM? What an insane connection, so tenuous as to be parody.
FFS.
Embarrassing.
D.A.
NYC
First saw this years ago. Still relevant:
Two-eyed seeing is not necessarily bad. I have seen it used responsibly.
For example, Indigenous people may have a particular belief based on their local/historical knowledge (e.g., that wolf populations are increasing). That provides the impetus for testing their hypothesis using “Western science”. That can be called a “two-eyed seeing” approach.
If you can get Indigenous people to buy into this kind of collaborative approach, it’s actually quite valuable. The problem is that there is so much distrust/hostility between these groups that they may not accept your results if they don’t like them. But that’s not at all unique to Indigenous people.
But I’m not sure how much it has to add to neuroscience…
Also, LOL, that’s evolutionary biologist T. Ryan Gregory on the paper.
Late comment on the research ethics raised in the Nature paper.
Ref 20 in the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303837639_Lessons_from_Havasupai_Tribe_v_Arizona_State_University_Board_of_Regents_Recognizing_Group_Cultural_and_Dignitary_Harms_as_Legitimate_Risks_Warranting_Integration_into_Research_Practice
This story describes what I would call a contract dispute, not an ethical transgression, and raises the same issues as Elizabeth Weiss describes in her book, On the Warpath: My Battles With Indians, Pretendians, and Woke Warriors (Academica Press, 2024)
I see two questions:
1) Do specimens (or in this case gene libraries created from them) taken from human subjects for a properly consented research study become the property of the research institution, in effect a gift from the subjects to science? That is, can they be used for any subsequent research without going back to the original subjects (if they can even be located) to give consent for the new research? As a person who has given specimens for research, my view is a strong Yes. The only caveat is that the original researcher must take care to anonymize the gene library so the second researcher (to whom I didn’t give consent) can’t use my information to tie the genes to me. My information is private but the specimens and products are not, and should be available to the world (in my view as a citizen, not as a researcher.)
It is irrelevant that I might have mystical views about blood that perhaps no sincere researcher would have any reason to know about, or to ask me, an ordinary mongrel white guy about. If some later researcher used the gene library (with me being one “book” in it) to make a new vaccine, my (unknown because unasked) views as an anti-vaxxer would not be binding on the second researcher using anonymized specimens, one of which was mine. If I read about the vaccine research in the newspaper I wouldn’t have any ethical case to interrupt it that it didn’t have my consent.
But the Tribe argued that the secondary research (into schizophrenia) was improper because the researchers should have regarded the Tribe’s official mystical views about blood as a bar to sharing the gene library. (Note that the individual views of Tribal members were not considered, only those of the Tribal leadership, a point which I’ll get to in 2) below.) You can read the details about the way the specimens/genes were shared with the second researcher and the steps taken to ensure privacy. Spoiler alert: the steps were not ideal but there was no evidence that any harm or breaches resulted from this imperfect process.
So 1) can be summed up as: mystical cultural views ascribed to Indians in the Tribe were claimed by the Tribe Chief to bar later anonymous unconsented use of the specimens. But possible mystical views of ordinary “settler” residents of eastern Massachusetts who had given blood to study diabetes for the Framingham study would not have been considered in approving derivative research. This only makes sense if one is privileging Indigenous Ways of Knowing (over settler pseudoscience) and is assuming all Tribal members share the views simply on the assertion of a Head Man or tribal elders etc.
2) Does a Tribe retain a corporate interest in the specimens/genes even after they have been given freely by consenting individuals in the Tribe, just because the Tribe allowed access of the researchers to the Tribal members in the first place? (Recall that Tribes will not allow researchers to approach their members without permission from the Chief. It would be as if the Framingham researchers couldn’t solicit participation from residents of, say, Waltham or Natick without the permission of the mayors of those towns.) Can the Tribe control what the university sponsoring the original diabetes research does with the specimens or genes or even the results of the study? Can the Tribe veto publication of results or demand the return of the specimens/genes if it doesn’t like the direction the research is going? There are many scientific questions that Indian activists do not want to see answered in a way that reflects badly on their advocacy-based view of themselves in the world. These questions were all settled with cash, not litigated, so we don’t know.
This is where the case rhymes with Prof. Weiss’s concerns in anthropology. The Tribe claimed that the specimens, genes, and results were its private property and demanded their return, a claim which the mayors of Massachusetts town would never make about Framingham material.
I recommend reading this reference 20…but don’t miss any of the Super Bowl commercials of course. Opinions of any PIs would be welcome. I’m speaking only as a citizen supporter of science and as a subject.