---
title: "Science for the People"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_for_the_People"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:27.934052+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Position on science education ===
One of the core tenets of the SftP was that science and particularly biology and medicine cannot remain neutral. The organization not only believed that these disciplines should focus on correcting societal ills they also actively participated in educating people on work place hazards such as asbestos and other chemical and environmental exposures.
In the early 1970s a Boston several SftP members known as the Boston Science Teaching Group, published and distributed series of pamphlets on topics such as genetics and ecology. Other members who were professional educators volunteered to teach biology in Boston’s underserved school districts. In 1971 two university professors, Rita Arditti and Tom Strunk, in an attempt to reform college biology curriculum, created a socially conscious first year college course called "Objecting to Objectivity: A Course in Biology". The course covered genetic engineering, physical and social limitations and implications of human gene maps, polygenic inheritance and prenatal diagnosis. It also discussed reproduction, birth control and abortion including the contemporary research and public policies about reproductive health. Other topics included population growth and Malthusian and Marxist theories and ethics of human research.

=== Positions on race and gender ===
Advocating for racial and gender equality in science and medicine was one of the core tenets of SftP. The organization included multiple feminist members who were pioneering women in science. These included Arditti and other biologists such as Anne Fausto-Sterling, Freda Friedman Salzman, Ruth Hubbard, and author and activist Barbara Beckwith. Hubbard, for instance, was the first woman to attain tenure in biology at Harvard University. SftP also embraced the cause of gender equality in the society at large and advocated for reproductive rights, gender equality at the workplace and addressed issues surrounding sexuality. It also fought against domestic violence and traditional gender roles in family structure. While focusing on the world of science, feminist members of SftP faced an uphill battle in introducing gender parity for women in science at the universities. They also sought to change the discriminatory gender dynamics in academia and in laboratories.
SftP's efforts at promoting gender equality were paralleled with its efforts to promote racial and ethnic equality. Although made up primarily of white Americans, some SftP members maintained relations with the Black Panther Party. The two organizations urged the scientific community to create a free science program for black communities to enhance their scientific knowledge. The organization also criticized attacks on affirmative action and featured pieces by black and other minority scientists in its publication. It also uncovered occupational health hazards among black and ethnic minority workers both in the US and abroad and fought to improve workplace conditions to eliminate these risks. SftP's antiracist ideology put it at odds with the concepts of sociobiology and genetic determinism.

=== Criticism of sociobiology ===
Biologists within SftP were highly critical of sociobiology, because of objectionable premises to the organization of the discipline and for the implications of using sociobiology to support racism, capitalism, and imperialism. E. O. Wilson, a biologist and entomology professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, whose 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis had helped start the debate, wrote that "the political objections forcefully made by the Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People in particular took me by surprise."
SftP condemned the 1969 arguments that genetic differences were the underlying reason for differences in educational achievements between blacks and whites. SftP also took issue with the Harvard XYY study in 1975. The goal of the XYY study was to assess the risk of criminality the extra Y chromosome supposedly conferred. The SftP scientists pointed out the ethical and methodological failures of the above study, including open ended consents, stigmatization of individuals with XYY, lack of controls and absence of double blinding.

=== Positions on healthcare and medicine ===
Health care providers who were SftP members worked to strengthen healthcare infrastructure in underserved communities. They partnered with both the Black Panthers and Young Lords Organization to bring medical services to minorities, who often could not access the medical establishment both as practitioners and as patients. SftP joined with other New Left Health organizations such as Health Policy Advisory Center and Medical Committee for Human Rights, fought for a fair and just healthcare system and advocated for women’s reproductive rights.
SftP members, such as cancer researcher John Valentine at Wayne State University, exposed the capitalist interests that drove biomedical research. He argued that the 1971 National Cancer Act, signed by president Richard Nixon, failed to fund research into cancer causes such as poor preventative healthcare, occupational hazards and environmental exposures. He also criticized the use of public funds only to develop new chemotherapeutic agents instead of using some of it to minimize cancer risk due to workplace exposures and cancer-causing consumer products.
SftP biologists also opposed recombinant DNA (rDNA) research before its public health and environmental impact can be thoroughly elucidated.  They also expressed concerns and, accurately, predicted that rDNA can commercialize biomedical research and make it a market commodity.  They urged the scientific community and the general public to consider who decides what research gets done and who benefits from these decisions.

=== Views on agriculture and ecology ===
SftP argued that the existing contemporary agricultural models were neither benefitting the consumer, as food prices were rising astronomically, nor the farmer because their increasing debt without a raise in income.  The primary benefiters were input and output capital enterprises such has fertilizer companies, insecticide and herbicide manufacturers and farm machinery companies. Members of the SftP formed the New World Agriculture Group (NWAG) that attempted to discover and develop ecologically rational alternative agricultural methods.  Methods that protected the environment and preserved long-term productive capacity.  NWAG also proposed partnering with farm labor organizations to help bring an end to worker exploitation and the unequal wealth distribution.