Parachute Science | December 7, 2021
In the wake of international disparities in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI), parachute science is an underhanded means by which typically wealthier nations conduct research in another location with minimal engagement with local scientists or decision-makers. As scientific challenges increasingly occupy a global scope, scientific practices must coincide with JEDI initiatives to remain ethical. This workshop overviewed these challenges and outlined pivotal steps in preventing parachute science with a focus on projects related to remote sensing of the environment and biodiversity.
Presentation
Panel
Abel Ramoelo, Associate Professor/ Director at the Centre for Environmental Studies, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Abel researches remote sensing and its applications for environmental assessment and monitoring.
Amy Frazier, Associate Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. Amy is interested in using remote sensing to benefit conservation and biodiversity.
Anabelle Cardoso, Science Team Manager for BioSCape. Anabelle has spent most of research career in universities in the UK and USA collecting data in Gabon, South Africa, and Ghana.
Izak Smit, Science Manager for the South African National Parks. Izak has an interest in applied conservation/ecology science with relevance to management of protected areas.
Asha de Vos, founder and executive director of OceansWell, Sri Lanka's first marine conservation research and education organization. Asha is a marine biologist, ocean educator and pioneer of blue whale research within the northern Indian Ocean.
Participants
Locations where participants had conducted research or collaborated.
Highlights
Participants' ranking of the most relevant areas in the issue of parachute science.
What does parachute science look like in biodiversity and related fields?
Remote sensing is quite technical, and lower-income countries may lack the capacity to utilize remote sensing data collected in their country. Higher-income countries collecting data need to upskill local scientists on how to use the data they collect, not simply make it accessible ("dump data and leave").
Grants often include capacity-building workshops, but publications define the success of the grant. Broader implications, typically tacked on at the end, are at risk of a sole PI design instead of a co-design approach with the community. Defining this community requires recognizing positions of power, affected parties, and the current systems and hierarchies in place.
Equitable pay is a present problem that needs immediate attention. A science group could wrongly assume local collaborators need or will be okay with less pay than international collaborators.
Sometimes, scientists feel their research is "helping" solely because it addresses an important topic, so they fail to ask the local community for their perspective on what they think is meaningful. Though unethically so, remote sensing can be done without ground-based support. Thus, a foreign scientist risks collecting data while having zero conversation with local scientists.
How do we work towards meaningful and equitable collaboration in remote sensing of biodiversity?
Co-develop projects. Notify your partners when you're looking for funding so they can do the same.
Co-supervise students/postdocs (helps share funding across borders).
Discuss expectations of contributions and the allocation of resources.
Establish transparent and inclusive authorship guidelines/expectations. Be clear about who leads which papers. This may include pre-registering research papers so that authorship conversations happen at the beginning rather than the end of the process.
Build your "soft skills" (empathy, active listening, recognizing internal biases).
Have a project associate (provided through the funder) whose responsibility is to facilitate, track and maintain relationships for the project's success.
Be deliberate about who you work with and avoid tokenism (e.g., partnering with someone only to access their research permit).
Aim to understand local research priorities.
Advocate for changing the incentive system for researchers. Currently, lead and senior author publications receive priority for tenure applications, but limiting a researcher's assessment to publications restricts progress in any field.
Be aware of the opportunities and challenges of journals with open-access models. These journals have waived fees for corresponding authors from certain countries, erecting the potential for more author involvement with the risk of advantage.
Recognize and celebrate non-English journals. Refrain from treating English journals as the only ones of high impact.
What are some effective means of engagement we can track?
Equitable pay.
Co-authorship (including facilitating overseas lead and senior authors).
Long-term engagements.
Local language engagement.
The degree to which the research product meets the end user's needs.
Assessing the narrative that surrounds the research. Keeping any assessment open enough is pivotal for a transparent story.
Tracking co-mentored students or postdocs. Take note of where they end up, their impact, their support to their local community, and if they continue to facilitate international collaborations.