Thread by @prashanthns

1/ Joining some wonderful people from what I am seeing as a diverse group of researchers at the #EditorialBoard of @PLOSGPH; journal has given itself the tall order of “addresses inequities in public health and makes impactful research accessible to all… (1/n) #Threads

2/ In words of @paimadhu "the journal will amplify the voices of underrepresented and historically excluded communities and prioritize equity, diversity, and inclusion at all levels"; I am highly skeptical of this,

3/ yet I am thrilled that a #PublicHealth journal would give itself such a vision; #Knowledge #Science #Evidence all reproduce the same kind of social hierarchies that drive unfair accumulation of resources in our society

4/ A #journal cannot contribute to #Health merely by being a tower of "privileged" knowledge because such towers are far away from the main action on #SDOH, the social determinants of health, healthcare, health status

5/ Journals after all are quite "exclusive" (the word paradoxically can be both a compliment and a cause for pause); how many English-speaking well-educated academics & professionals read them? #Evidence-apart, who do they speak for? Whose voice do they carry?

6/ We must hold journals to account on these, but we can't shy away from the imperfect models of holding peers to account, repair and mitigate broken #PeerReview systems and address excluded voices, communities and ideas

7/ Skepticism also stems from current history of journals largely confined to #English #Colonial #Academia; our ability to meaningfully engage with #TraditionalKnowledge and create a dialogue is limited by our language, our knowledge paradigms and adverse social hierarchies;

8/ What comes through as #PeerReviewed science hence is the trickle-through of knowledge that has had many exclusions to begin with, primarily exclusions related to "who gets to be a researchers....and who cannot" #gender #caste #SocioEconomicStatus #Disability

9/ Many wonderful examples have shown us how such exclusions have conditioned even biological sciences, let alone the social sciences; #GenderedKnowledge for example is an expression; there can be many other -ed kinds of knowledge similarly

10/ See for example what @seyeabimbola calls "pervasive disordering of value" in his recent @GlobalHealthBMJ article on uses of knowledge in #GlobalHealth; and his reflections in this article on the injustices in the use of knowledge itself gh.bmj.com/content/6/4/e0…

11/ So, powerful barriers exist before well-intentioned folks could make a difference; some structural barriers can't be overcome by intentions of "a few good men"(thankfully the EB is not, but many EBs are #WhiteMale!), but require collectives to emerge; paradigms to shift;

12/ but intentions matter and ought to be strengthened and celebrated, and in this I commend the EB of Plos GPH in taking this on; am sure this won't be easy, nor is it feasible through "merely a journal" yet, it is needed and ought to be done.