Science Estranged: Power and Inequity in Laboratory Life during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In March 2020, academic research laboratories across the world shut down in response to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. As labs began to resume work in the weeks and months following the shutdown, the realities of daily life in the lab changed. This article offers an empirical investigation of how COVID-19 disrupted laboratory life and impacted laboratory workers in the United States, drawing on in-depth interviews with biomedical research trainees (postdoctoral researchers and advanced doctoral students) conducted between September 2020 and March 2021. This article demonstrates how laboratory life during the pandemic was marked by emergent stratifications and inequities in access to sufficient lab time, increased stress around productivity, and frustrations with the culture of academic science. I show how the loss of social interaction, and the ensuing lonely scientific struggles, made visible the importance of sociality in science for workers. Finally, I contend that pandemic disruptions not only amplified and exacerbated existing social inequities in lab settings but also resulted in workers’ estrangement from science itself.