摘要：The media has been flooded with responses to the commentary authored by Prof Nicoli Nattrass from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and published by the South African Journal of Science on the 20 th of May 2020. We regard this commentary as racist, offensive, damaging, and unscientific. Even more shocking has been the response attributed to Prof Nattrass by the media, wherein she reportedly claims that the statement issued by the UCT Executive condemning her commentary is ‘bending to political pressure and prevents debate on transformation’ (News 24 06 June 2020). Prof Nattrass appears to operate from an assumption that her speculative opinion piece is contributing to a constructive scientific debate because she framed her correlations in scientific language and statistics. She appears not to acknowledge that personal bias may have fuelled the foundational assumptions of her study, and thereby does damage to the name of science – and biological sciences in particular – in an era where there is already a tenuous relationship between science and the broader public. This lack of self-reflection is unfortunately an indictment of how most of us are trained to believe that we, as scientists, are fully objective, and that our research carries no moral or emotional valence. Our response to Prof Nattrass’s opinion piece highlights how damaging this lack of scientific introspection is in the hands of an esteemed researcher, and how an actual scientific investigation of the question ‘Why are black South African students less likely to consider studying biological sciences?’ should look like.
