Written, compiled | Li
In the United States, there are many private institutions, organizations, and scientific associations that award various awards to encourage scientists who have made significant scientific contributions in the biomedical field. Ideally, the ethnicity of the laureate could reflect the ethnic makeup of the person engaged in scientific research, or vice versa, but is that the case?
On February 3, 2022, Yuh Nung Jan, a Chinese scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, an academician of the American Academy of Sciences, and a researcher at HHMI, was born in Bingxi Town, Yushan County, Jiangxi Province. Born in Shanghai on January 11, 1947, he settled in Taiwan with his parents at the age of 2. He graduated from the Department of Physics, National Taiwan University in 1967. In 1968, he went to the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology and later transferred to the Department of Biology. In 1971, he married Ye Gongzhu. He received his Ph.D. in Biology in 1974. From 1977 to 1979, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. In 1979, he moved to the University of California, San Francisco to teach. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in early May 1996) published an opinion article in Cell that reviewed the awards of Asian scientists in the field of biomedicine in the United States and suggested that this phenomenon reflects the chronic undervaluation of Asian scientists. And this trend has not improved significantly in recent years.
In the United States, Asians are considered "people of color." Unlike minorities such as blacks or Hispanics, Asians are increasing in biomedical sciences year by year, and account for more than 20 percent. Although Asians are either born in the United States or immigrated to the United States, they sometimes feel like outsiders to this society. Especially since the COVID-19 epidemic, anti-Asian sentiment has been on the rise, and being an Asian scientist in the United States has become increasingly challenging.
The table below shows the awards of some of the most prestigious awards in the field of biomedicine in the United States, and it can be seen that in most awards, the proportion of Asians is only single digits, and taken together, Asian americans account for only 6.8% of all the awards counted (57 out of 838 are Asian). With the exception of a few who come from outside the United States (mainly Japan), most are U.S. citizens or have settled in the United States. So does this 6.8% ratio reflect that scientists of Asian descent in the biomedical field are also about 6.8%? According to a 2019 report by the National Science Foundation, Asians make up 31 percent of the doctoral and post-Doctoral groups, 21.3 percent of faculty members, and 12.3 percent of long-term staff.
Another possible more appropriate way to judge is to look at the availability of R01 funds in the NIH. Based on R01 applications between 2000 and 2006, Asians accounted for 16.2% (13481/83188) and only 14.7% (3430/23381). This proportion is also rising steadily, reaching 25.9% (7791/30061) and 23.8% (2138/8990) in 2020, respectively. From this ratio, we can also see the low representation of scientists of Asian descent in terms of awards.
Given that the number of Asians in the life sciences is gradually growing, it is understandable that no Asians, or very few Asians, have received these awards in the early years. So, has the number of Asian winners increased in recent years? Looking at the three awards established after 2004, their proportions in the past decade are: 33.3% (Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science, 2006-2022), 23.5% (Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, 2004-2021) and 14% (Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, 2013-2022）。 However, these are only a few. Take the 8 awards with a history of 35 years and more (Lasker Award, Horwitz Prize, Rosenstiel Prize, March of Dime Prize, E.B. Wilson Medal, Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, Genetics Society of America Medal and Gerard Prize), Only 3 of the 117 winners in the past 10 years are of Asian descent, accounting for only 2.6%, which is even lower than the proportion of Asians among all the winners of these awards (29 of the 619 winners are Asian, or 4.7%). Even more frustrating is that the proportion of women of Asian descent is only 0.8% (7 out of 838 winners are of Asian descent).
In different disciplines, the situation of Asians is also different. Neurological awards are more inclusive than genetics awards, with Asians accounting for 27.6 percent of The Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, compared to 0 percent of Asians in the Gruber Prize in Genetics. Only 2 of the 44 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal winners are of Asian descent and none of the 42 Genetics Society of America Medal winners are of Asian descent. This is ironic, with genetics awards having the worst racial inclusion.
If you analyze it carefully, unlike the proportion of Asian women, perhaps due to the awakening of gender equality awareness, 129 of the 838 winners are women, accounting for 15.9%; 84 of the 619 winners of the 8 awards are women, accounting for 13.8%, and in the past decade, 32 of the 117 are women, accounting for 27.4%.
So, what is the reason for this phenomenon? One theory is that asian scientists have not made significant or pioneering contributions and have done more derivative work. The authors don't agree with this view, whether they read relevant journals or participate in academic reports, they can notice that Asian-American scientists are doing cutting-edge work in this field. It can also be confirmed by Clarivate, who accounted for 84, or 14.4%, of the 582 highly cited authors in biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, genomics, neuroscience, and behavior. This proportion is roughly the same as the proportion of R01 funded in the previous 10 years. As another way to evaluate the contributions of different ethnic groups in the United States to the field of biomedicine, see Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
https://www.hhmi.org/scientists）。 Of the 265 HHMI fellows, 45 were of Asian descent, or 17 percent, about the same percentage of R01 granted Asians. So, as can be seen from the high citation and HHMI data, Asians are not bad at doing major or groundbreaking work.
There are a variety of factors affecting the underrepresentation of Asian Americans. One of them is the "relative invisibility" of Asians, just as in some of the top companies there are many Asians in the middle but very few at the top. There are many root causes of this phenomenon, one of which is the daily confusion of identity. Here, Zhan Yunong gives an example from his own experience, talking about attending the HHMI conference many years ago and being mistaken for Susumu Tonegawa, Zhan Yunong can't be sure whether the other party necessarily knows himself, but he is sure that the other party must know LiGengawa Jin, because Li Nechuan jin is a Nobel laureate in the field of immunology (1987 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). For comparison, Zhan Yunong mentioned that, like in the field of neurology, no one mistakes others for Eric Kandel (winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine).
Another factor is the nomination process. Many awards are nominated by past winners or by organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, who prefer to nominate familiar people. This leads to unexpected biases, because in the past, the number of Asian-American winners was very small, not only the number of winners was underrepresented, just as only 63 out of 963 members of the American Academy of Sciences were Asian-American, accounting for 6.5%. So one way to reduce bias is to change the nomination process, which is still the way the National Academy of Sciences nominates, and HHMI has long been a self-nomination, i.e., application method. In addition, this year, the American Society for Cell Biology has also changed to the application form, and how to develop in the future will be an interesting thing.
Going back to the table above, none of the winners are black or black American, and it's hard to tell who's Hispanic or Latino, but it's certain that the percentage is even smaller. Blacks and Hispanics make up 31.7 percent of the population, compared to just 14.7 percent of phDs/postdocs and 5.4 percent of faculty and staff. In 2020, the proportion of applications for R01 was 7.5% (2257/30061) and the proportion of successful grants was 6.6% (594/8990).
Regardless of these scientific awards, the authors argue that the underrepresentation of Asians indicates that Asians are underrepresented, and that the academic "bamboo ceiling" (a bamboo ceiling that describes the difficulty of Asians to advance to management and leadership even though they are highly educated, skilled, and well-paid in the United States).
Finally, in response to this inequality, Zhan Yunong also made several suggestions: 1) be aware of the existence of prejudice or inequality; 2) strive to recognize each Asian individual, such as remembering the name of each of them, rather than labeling them as Chinese, Korean, Japanese; 3) change the nomination process; 4) pay more attention to the substantive contribution of the nominees.
This article is reprinted with permission from the WeChat public account "BioArt", originally titled "cell | the current situation of Asian scientists in the field of biomedicine in the United States".
Original link:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.01.004
Special mention
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