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Finally Studying Those Research Has Left Behind in Favor of White Subjects
Research is only valuable when the sample of patients includes people from all groups, but that hasn’t always been their design, and it leaves a gaping hole in the results.
Years ago, while visiting a major pharmaceutical firm engaged in research all over the United States, I questioned who was in the sample and why it seemed certain groups were missing. I also asked about research in China. The answers came back in a casual manner. “Oh, we can’t get them” or “They’re different from us.” The “us” meant white people, and there is some evidence in certain groups for genetic differences that might affect results in studies, but it was disturbing.
More disturbing than the comments was that they were coming from a Black researcher at the company. But color or ethnicity aren’t the only reasons some are missing from research projects. We might also say the same about women being missing—that bridge has been crossed now after a prime market for medications aimed at women was realized, I am assuming.
Psychology has been guilty of the same selective method of choosing samples. Remember the famous Milgram study of obedience to authority or Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment? Milgram wrote that he dropped women, “assuming that there was no need to test females as the results…
