Person: Richardson, Sarah
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Richardson
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Sarah
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Richardson, Sarah
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Publication Sexing the X: How the X Became the “Female Chromosome”(The University of Chicago Press, 2012) Richardson, SarahThis essay examines how the X became the “female chromosome” and how the association of the X with femaleness influences research questions, models, and descriptive language in human sex chromosome research. I trace how the X is gendered female in scientific and popular discourse; document the contingent technical, material, and ideological factors that led to the feminization of the X during the first decades of sex chromosome research; and track the introduction of the “female chromosome” into human genetics at midcentury. In the second part of the essay, I document the continuing influence of the feminization of the X on genetic research, exemplified by “X chromosome mosaicism” theories of female biology and behavior.Publication Race and IQ in the postgenomic age: The microcephaly case(Nature Publishing Group, 2011) Richardson, SarahA convergence of contextual factors, technological platforms and research frameworks in the genomics of the human brain and cognition has generated a new postgenomic model for the study of race and IQ. Centered on the case study of Bruce T. Lahn’s 2005 claims about the genomic basis of racial differences in brain size and IQ, this article maps the disciplinary terrain of this research, analyzes its central claims and examines the rigor of critical debate within the genomics community about new race and IQ research. New postgenomic race and IQ research, while displaying some continuities with previous eras of racial science, also differs in important ways, both contextual and conceptual. In particular, this new research draws on methods and hypotheses that are widely accepted across many fields of the contemporary molecular genetic sciences. This has implications for the forms of critical engagement that science studies scholars might pursue.Publication Plasticity and Programming: Feminism and the Epigenetic Imaginary(University of Chicago Press, 2017) Richardson, SarahThe new science of epigenetics has raised hopes of an embrace of greater plasticity and variation within the biology of sex, gender, and sexuality than previously appreciated. This essay describes and analyzes the integration of epigenetics research into the scientific study of core biological pathways related to sex, gender, and sexuality in the brain in the post-Human Genome Project era. Through a close reading of the primary scientific literature, it demonstrates that epigenetic approaches in this subfield remain continuous with historically well-entrenched models of hardwired brain sexual dimorphism. Considering the opportunities and dilemmas of feminist engagements with the fast-moving and still nascent field of epigenetics, it argues that while epigenetics might become a resource for studies of the development and plasticity of gendersexed bodies and identities, this will require active feminist contestations of the ontological and epistemological commitments of mainstream research in this field. Feminist attraction to the possibilities for epigenetic research to enable material investigation of gender embodiment and sexual variation follow a long tradition of feminist theoretical interest in plasticity-affirming biologies. Careful consideration of the case of epigenetics suggests a need for revised and more nuanced feminist appraisals of both plasticity-affirming and programming-centric models of biology, body, and sociality.Publication Opinion: Focus on preclinical sex differences will not address women’s and men’s health disparities(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015) Richardson, Sarah; Reiches, Meredith; Shattuck-Heidorn, Heather; Labonte, Michelle; Consoli, TheresaPublication Feminist philosophy of science: history, contributions, and challenges(Springer Science + Business Media, 2010) Richardson, SarahFeminist philosophy of science has led to improvements in the practices and products of scientific knowledge-making, and in this way it exemplifies socially relevant philosophy of science. It has also yielded important insights and original research questions for philosophy. Feminist scholarship on science thus presents a worthy thought-model for considering how we might build a more socially relevant philosophy of science—the question posed by the editors of this special issue. In this analysis of the history, contributions, and challenges faced by feminist philosophy of science, I argue that engaged case study work and interdisciplinarity have been central to the success of feminist philosophy of science in producing socially relevant scholarship, and that its future lies in the continued development of robust and dynamic philosophical frameworks for modeling social values in science. Feminist philosophers of science, however, have often encountered marginalization and persistent misunderstandings, challenges that must be addressed within the institutional and intellectual culture of American philosophy.Publication Is Poverty in Our Genes?(University of Chicago Press, 2013) d’Alpoim Guedes, Jade; Bestor, Theodore; Carrasco, David; Flad, Rowan; Fosse, Ethan; Herzfeld, Michael; Lamberg-Karlovsky, Carl C.; Lewis, Cecil M.; Liebmann, Matthew; Meadow, Richard; Patterson, Nick; Price, Max Daniel; Reiches, Meredith; Richardson, Sarah; Shattuck-Heidorn, Heather; Ur, Jason; Urton, Gary; Warinner, ChristinaWe present a critique of a paper written by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, which is forthcoming in the American Economic Review and which was uncritically highlighted in Science magazine. Their paper claims there is a causal effect of genetic diversity on economic success, positing that too much or too little genetic diversity constrains development. In particular, they argue that “the high degree of diversity among African populations and the low degree of diversity among Native American populations have been a detrimental force in the development of these regions.” We demonstrate that their argument is seriously flawed on both factual and methodological grounds. As economists and other social scientists begin exploring newly available genetic data, it is crucial to remember that nonexperts broadcasting bold claims on the basis of weak data and methods can have profoundly detrimental social and political effects.