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What research questions are funded, which papers are accepted for publication, and who is invited to teach courses, speak at conferences, or otherwise conduct science over time becomes science. It's a runaway train. Studies produced by members of esteemed social classes and their institutions will amass citations faster than those from outgroups, if those works are even published. If researchers and their institutions harbor social bias or explicit disdain for certain demographics, the science they produce will often contain evidence of that bias. Eventually, no matter how flawed, these highly cited works may become canon, their authors immortalized in textbooks, and their lessons taught to future generations of scientists. And when a competing idea is introduced-perhaps one that seeks to correct the initial bias—it may be seen as an affront to science itself.
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