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Science suffers when STEM students with disabilities leave the field

Different chemistry beakers full of chemicals in the colors of the rainbow
“Hundreds of tweets posted with the hashtag #WhyDisabledPeopleDropOut illustrate what can happen when talented students don’t receive the accommodations that they need,” Bayer and Marks say. Image: four different beakers on a table contain red, orange, yellow, and green liquids, respectively. [Photo: flickr]
Having a disability has made Gabi Serrato Marks and Skylar Bayer better scientists, according to a recent Scientific American article by Marks and Bayer that was published last week. The women note that even though creativity and the ability to think differently are valuable skills for any scientist to have, scientific research is rarely designed to accommodate scientists with medical conditions or disabilities. Marks and Bayer, a postdoc and PhD candidate, respectively, say academic institutions need to provide more institutional supports to scientists with disabilities if they don’t want to lose out on promising young talent.

Read Marks and Bayer’s piece in Scientific American online by clicking here.