Since the Renaissance, those with disposable funds and time have been able to dedicate themselves to research, but those with fewer of those advantages have struggled to take part. The ‘gentleman scientist’ of the 19th century is a great example of this. Think about Charles Darwin, able to leave his family for months and take part in an unpaid trip to the Galapagos Islands to pursue his interest in natural selection. Had his wife been the keen naturalist, it is unlikely that she would have been able to do this.

Even in the contemporary era we see stories of lone geniuses, often white and male, who have changed the face of science. A little dig into their stories inevitably uncovers a whole team of people working with these individuals for years to develop new technologies and research new discoveries. The Nobel prize exemplifies this thinking. Each prize can only be split three ways, which rarely covers all the individual team members who have been working with the prize winners. If we look at the first 23 years of prize winners in the 21st century (Figure 8.1), it is easy to see that this is not just a problem for the past. The number of women who have won Nobel prizes is far below 60%, even in fields such as literature and medicine where the gender balance has swung in favour of women. It doesn't appear that anyone identifying outside the gender binary has ever won a Nobel prize. When looking at ethnicity the picture is even worse. The medicine, chemistry or physics prize has never been awarded to a Black person. See Nobel Prize (2024) for details.

In research, the contributions of people from minority groups have traditionally been ignored, stolen or downplayed. But the crimes of the research world against outsiders does not simply stop there. Scientific and medical research, in particular, has a long history of exploiting women, Black and minority ethnic people, LGBTQ+ people and the working class. These groups have been seen as work horses or lab rats, but rarely have their contributions been fully valued.