Professor Anneke Lucassen and Dr Faranak Hardcastle: Why data isn’t neutral

Today, on The G Word, Lyra Nightingale, our ethics lead at Genomics England, is joined by Professor Anneke Lucassen and Dr Faranak Hardcastle in a deep discussion about ethics and data. They discuss the neutrality of data, cultural humility in research, the role of structural racism in science and the role of co-production in diversity.

You can read our transcript here: https://files.genomicsengland.co.uk/documents/Podcast-transcripts/Professor-Anneke-Lucassen-and-Dr-Faranak-Hardcastle.docx   

 

"Data is not neutral, or objective, because they don't exist in a vacuum. And they are produced by processes that we put them through, we curate them, we select them, collect them, clean them, edit them, and classify them and then end up analysing them."

References:

1. Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. MIT press, 2000.
2. Gitelman, Lisa, ed. Raw data is an oxymoron. MIT press, 2013.
3. Ruppert, Evelyn, and Stephan Scheel, eds. Data practices: Making up a European people. MIT Press, 2021.