Tuesday, February 05, 2019

#Wikidata - Naomi Ellemers and the relevance of #Awards

In a 2016 blogpost, I mentioned the relevance of awards. At the time Professor Ellemers received an award and it was the vehicle to make that point in the story.

Today in an article in a national newspaper, Mrs Ellemers makes a strong point that the perception of awards is really poblematic. What they do is reinforce a bias that American science is superior. It leads to a perception by European students that it is the USA "where it is all happening". A perception that Mrs Ellemers argues is incorrect.

NB Mrs Ellemers is the recipient of the 2018 Career Contribution Award of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Wikidata re-inforces this bias for American science by including a rating for "science awards". This rating values awards by comparing them. This rating is done by an American organisation and the whole notion behind it is suspect because the assumptions are not necessarily / not at all beneficial for the practice of science.

How to counter such a bias? As far as I am concerned there is no value in making a distinction between awards and "science awards" and biased information like this should be removed. Just consider, when European science is considered less than American science... how would  African science be rated?
Thanks,
     GerardM

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