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Public genomic datasets like the 1000 Genomes project (1KGP), Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study are valuable public resources that facilitate scientific advancements in biology and enhance the scientific and economic impact of federally funded research projects. Regrettably, these datasets have often been developed and studied in ways that propagate outdated racialized and typological thinking, leading to fallacious reasoning among some readers that social and health disparities among the so-called races are due in part to innate biological differences between them. We highlight how this framing has set the stage for the racist exploitation of these datasets in two ways: First, we discuss the use of public biomedical datasets in studies that claim support for innate genetic differences in intelligence and other social outcomes between the groups identified as races. We further highlight recent instances of this which involve unauthorized access, use, and dissemination of public datasets. Second, we discuss thememification,use of simple figures meant for quick dissemination among lay audiences, of population genetic data to argue for a biological basis for purported human racial groups. We close with recommendations for scientists, to preempt the exploitation and misuse of their data, and for funding agencies, to better enforce violations of data use agreements.
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Visualizing Life in the Deep: A Creative Pipeline for Data-Driven Animations to Facilitate Marine Mammal Research, Outreach, and Conservation
In this paper, we introduce a creative pipeline to incorporate physiological and behavioral data from contemporary marine mammal research into data-driven animations, leveraging functionality from industry tools and custom scripts to promote scientific insights, public awareness, and conservation outcomes. Our framework can flexibly transform data describing animals’ orientation, position, heart rate, and swimming stroke rate to control the position, rotation, and behavior of 3D models, to render animations, and to drive data sonification. Additionally, we explore the challenges of unifying disparate datasets gathered by an interdisciplinary team of researchers, and outline our design process for creating meaningful data visualization tools and animations. As part of our pipeline, we clean and process raw acceleration and electrophysiological signals to expedite complex multi-stream data analysis and the identification of critical foraging and escape behaviors. We provide details about four animation projects illustrating marine mammal datasets. These animations, commissioned by scientists to achieve outreach and conservation outcomes, have successfully increased the reach and engagement of the scientific projects they describe. These impactful visualizations help scientists identify behavioral responses to disturbance, increase public awareness of human-caused disturbance, and help build momentum for targeted conservation efforts backed by scientific evidence.
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- PAR ID:
- 10342952
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 10
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/VISAP52981.2021.00007
