AS LONG AS SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN EXPLORING THE natural world, they’ve encountered dangers. In their quests for knowledge, for instance, Alfred Russel Wallace and Ernest Shackleton endured disease, harsh weather, and dangerous wildlife. Such perils harmed them and hampered their journeys or even halted them altogether—as when Wallace fell ill with recurring malaria in Indonesia in 1858 and when Shackleton’s ship Endurance froze in the ice in 1915, forcing the crew to abandon their polar expedition.
Since then, we’ve gotten much better at mitigating the kinds of dangers that nature throws at scientists in the field. Manuals outline how to avoid injury, from wearing appropriate gear to taking antimalarial medication, and federal agencies require special training for handling chainsaws and driving forklifts and motorboats. To deal with minor medical emergencies, many employers offer basic first aid, CPR training, and even wilderness first aid for staff and interns. And today’s biologists have strategies to minimize physical safety risks, like using “push poles” to put distance between themselves and sharks. They also generally hew to the mantra “safety in numbers”: they work in pairs or more when possible or, when going solo, track destinations and expected return times and check in regularly via phones or radios.
Yet there is growing recognition that some people face greater safety risks than others—and these stem not from the nature of the job, but from who they are. For women, Black, Indigenous, people of color, those who identify with minority religions, and LGBTQIA++ individuals, being secure is about more
