Since the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on the 26th of July 1990, Disability Pride Month has been celebrated throughout July every year. In recognition of the start of Disability Pride Month 2022, Dr Keren Turton writes about her experience of ‘Scientisting with a Disability’.
The loose thumb finger of my glove dropped into the pink media as I lifted the lid off the dish of cells. Contaminated. Probably. I groaned and contemplated whether to discard the dish, berating myself for carelessness. How could I have forgotten to fold in the empty finger? Accidents like this have become more sporadic in my progression as a research scientist, but when they do occur, they still sharply remind me that I am in a lab space that was not made to fit people like me. I don’t say that self-pityingly, since it would be impossible to tailor lab spaces and equipment to meet the needs of every different body using them. No, I mention it simply to illustrate that navigating even “minor” disabilities as a scientist can make one painfully self-conscious. Scientific training systems largely inculcate a sink-or-swim attitude that suggests if people can’t quickly pick up functional experimental praxes, they don’t belong in the lab. This ethos is damaging for those who need a longer time to find their feet. Or hands.
When I was learning new techniques, I was not simply studying them to copy in a “monkey see, monkey do” fashion. I was calibrating, considering my own limits and imagining how my body could achieve the same outcome. Especially in the beginning, that made me a slow study, and liable to dropping or spilling things. It was hard not to feel shame when those training me got frustrated. Despite my love for reading and writing science, I developed anxiety about doing lab work, without being able to articulate why. If I could now, it would simply be this: “Please be patient. I am not simply learning how to mimic your movements. I am studying the salient features of the experiment so that I can create a way of repeating the protocol faithfully with my own hands.”