---
title: "Neo-colonial science"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-colonial_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:23:46.813925+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

An analysis of research money from 1990 to 2020 for climate change, found that 78% of research money for research on Climate change in Africa, was spent in European and North American institutions and more was spent for former British colonies than other countries. This in turn both prevents local researchers from doing groundbreaking work, because they don't have the funding for experimental activities and reduces investment in local researchers ideas and in topics important to the Global South, such as climate change adaptation.

=== Soil science ===
Soil scientists have qualified helicopter research as a perpetuation of "colonial" science. Typically researchers from rich countries would come to establish soil profile pits or collect soil and peat samples, which is often more easily done in poor countries given the availability of cheap labour and goodwill of villagers to dig a pit on their land against small payment. The profile will be described and samples taken with the help of local people, possibly also university staff. In case of helicopter research, the outcomes are then published such as discovery in tropical peatlands, sometimes in high-level journals without the involvement of local colleagues. "Overall, helicopter research tends to produce academic papers that further the career of scientists from developed countries, but provide little practical outcomes for nations where the studies are conducted, nor develop the careers of their local scientists."

=== Coral Reef research ===
A 2021 study in Current Biology quantified the amount of parachute research happening in coral reef studies and found such approaches to be the norm.

== Examples by region ==

=== Europe ===
The 2015 description of Tetrapodophis was performed by three European scientists. When the Brazilian newspaper Estadão – Brazil being the country where the fossil hails from – questioned lead researcher David M. Martill, he replied "It should be fossils for all. No countries existed when the animals were fossilized. [..] what difference would it make [partnering with Brazilian scientists]? I mean, do you want me also to have a black person on the team for ethnicity reasons, and a cripple and a woman, and maybe a homosexual too, just for a bit of all round balance? [..]  Now I don't work in Brazil. But I still work on Brazilian fossils. There are hundreds of them in museums all over Europe, America and in Japan."

=== Central Africa ===
A 2009 study found that Europeans participated in 77% of regionally co-authored papers in Central African countries. Even though local authors are credited with the work, they aren't always given participatory roles in the final production of the research itself—instead playing roles in fieldwork.

=== Indonesia ===
In April 2018, a publication about Indonesia's Bajau people received great attention. These "sea nomads" had a genetic adaptation resulting in large spleens that supply additional oxygenated red blood cells. A month later this publication was criticised by Indonesian scientists. Their article in Science questioned the ethics of scientists from the United States and Denmark who took DNA samples of the Bajau people and analyzed them, without much involvement of Bajau or other Indonesian people.

== See also ==

== References ==