An expert committee convened by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) is the latest to address concerns about how scientists rely on racial and ethnic categories, and to call for more care and transparency on the issue.
The past few years have seen a groundswell of concern from researchers about how race, a social construct not based in biology, is misused in biomedicine. Science reports that the worries have already prompted overhauls of race-based clinical algorithms that were resulting in inadequate medical care for some black people.
The NASEM panel said that across biomedical research, scientists need to be more careful about how they incorporate race and ethnicity into research, their recently released report supporting similar reviews, such as one on genetics research published by NASEM in 2023.
The new report recommends scientists use data on these categories in their studies only when necessary to answer a research question; many lab studies of disease mechanisms do not require it, the panel argues.
The report suggested researchers should explain how they define race and ethnicity in grant proposals and papers. In their analyses, they should also include people who self-identify as mult-iracial or multi-ethnic, and partner with minority-group communities to guide research.
Funders and publishers, given their influence over scientists’ work, should provide guidelines to accomplish these goals, reports Science Insider. For example, some journals already provide checklists for authors on how to report race and ethnicity.
And the NIH has sponsored workshops to help scientists using data from decades-old studies figure out how best to describe those participants.
Ophthalmologist and former Wayne State University President Roy Wilson, the panel’s chair, said the message was that researchers “should really consider whether race and ethnicity are appropriate to use at each step of the research process… and in some cases, decisions should be made not to use these categories”.
“We emphasise that race and ethnicity is context dependent and try to provide some guidance. Regardless of the type of research or the discipline, the consideration of this should be ongoing.”
While the clinical algorithms are an example of where including race has been a problem, there has also been some pushback resisting the scrapping of race and ethnicity altogether.
However, he said, “You don’t just drop race because it can be (a proxy for) measuring something, whether it’s racism, some social determinants of health, or something environmental, that’s harder to measure.
“Another aspect is that if you remove race from a clinical algorithm, you don’t necessarily get more precise or accurate measurements or resolve the equity issue. It could have positive impact, detrimental impact, or no impact.
“So we emphasise a case-by-case consideration, to look at it more scientifically and comprehensively and make that decision based on the data.”
Asked what the new report means in the context of medical efforts targeting specific populations, such as recruiting more black people in Alzheimer’s disease trials, he said it was still important to have diversity of research participants in clinical trials.
“It’s just understanding that race is not a biological variable, and understanding the limitations of what race can tell you from a genetic standpoint. It’s also a joint accountability issue. We can’t put the entire load on the biomedical researchers to implement this without some support from publishers of journals, from the funders of research.
“Meaningful change can happen and is already happening. Quite frankly, I think that the way we view race and ethnicity now versus 30 years ago has evolved and is continuing to evolve.”
National Academies Report (Open access)
Reconsider use of race in biomedical research, panel urges (Open access)
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