Blinding and Dangerous Cultural Narratives

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Cultural narratives blind even the seemingly most objective people, scientists, to even basic truths of biology and nature. I always believed that scientific facts are the purest, most unbiased statements of truths. But even biological phenomenons are subject to the grotesquely distorting lenses of prejudices. Stereotypical male-female roles narratives colored how scientists described the biological process of fertilization for hundreds of years. With such cultural biases, it's hard for scientists to describe what they see in non-biased language. Obviously, humans totally suck at being objective and non-biased. All humans are biased, and scientists are only humans after all so how they interpret and explain their findings will also be distorted by their prejudices.
How do cultural narratives end up in science? It can start when scientists form their hypothesizes. As David H. Freedman describes in “The Aggressive Egg” in Discover on June 1, 1992, “The imagery you employ guides you to ask certain questions and to not ask certain others.” So the first place where prejudices ca...

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