PHOTO: JAVIER TORRES/AFP/GETTY IMAGES1144 10 JUNE 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6598 science.org SCIENCEmore than 2 million people or nearly 13% of
the population, recognized as autonomous
communities governing their territories.
They would in theory have more sway over
their lands, than, for example, Native Amer-
icans in the United States, where the federal
government holds Indigenous land in trust.
The draft constitution recognizes the
existence of Indigenous knowledge and
protects Indigenous peoples’ identities, cul-
tures, and territories, including nature in
its “material and immaterial dimensions.”
It also gives Indigenous peoples the right
to repatriate objects and human remains,
and mandates that the Chilean government
develop mechanisms for such repatriation,
perhaps including objects from abroad.
The new constitution isn’t explicit about
research with Indigenous communities. But
it could encourage a more collaborative ap-
proach that considers local and ancestral
knowledge, says microbiologist Cristina
Dorador Ortiz, a member of the constitu-
tional convention that wrote it.
This stance is new in Chile, where some
Indigenous people cite past examples of sci-
entific overreach. “Many times, communities
complain that research is done on them from
a Western perspective,” Dorador Ortiz says.
For example, in the 1990s, Chilean and Japa-
nese researchers took blood from Huilliche
communities, who are part of the Mapuche
people, in southern Chile. Those samples
and more than 3500 others from Indigenous
groups across South America are now in a
public cell bank at the RIKEN BioResource
Research Center in Tsukuba, Japan. Cell
lines derived from the samples, expected to
be useful for studies on human migration
or genetic variations in drug response, are
available to scientists worldwide, with a tube
costing about $110. But donors never saw
any benefits, Tonko Huenucoy says.
It’s a story familiar to others in Chile. “The
way research is done nowadays is super-
convenient” for scientists, says Constanza
Silva Gallardo, a biological anthropologist
at Pennsylvania State University, Univer-
sity Park, and a member of the Diaguita
Mapochogasta Autonomous Community in
Santiago. “There needs to be some sort of
pushback to bring effective change.”
The proposed constitution could help set
the stage, although polls suggest its initial
high popularity has recently fallen. But even
if it fails, other efforts are ongoing. In March,
a mostly Chilean team including Tonko
Huenucoy and Silva Gallardo published a
paper in Frontiers in Genetics urging geneti-
cists to abandon stigmatizing narratives that
magnify any genetic differences between In-
digenous people and other Chileans. They
also called for Chilean universities to de-
velop protocols to incorporate Indigenousvoices in designing sampling procedures,
drafting informed consent forms, and inter-
preting results.
In late 2021, this same group launched
a program, Ciencia y Comunidades, to im-
prove ethical standards in genomic studies
of Indigenous populations in Chile. Last
week, they held a workshop at the Pontifi-
cal Catholic University of Chile with mem-
bers of the Aymara, Diaguita, Colla, Chango,
Rapa Nui, and Mapuche (including Huilliche
and Pehuenche) peoples. Between opening
and closing ceremonies involving traditional
dances, attendees discussed how research
is done, who approves projects, and what
genetic data can and cannot say about a
person’s identity. The effort was modeled
after the Summer Internship for Indigenous
Peoples in Genomics workshop, an inter-
national consortium that explores the ethics
of genomics and aims to train Indigenous
scientists in the field (Science, 28 September
2018, p. 1304).Linguist Elisa Loncón carries the Mapuche flag at Chile’s constitutional convention in 2021 in Santiago.W
hen researchers from wealthy
countries engage in “helicopter
research”—field research
in poorer countries that
extracts data without respectful
collaboration—they violate research
integrity as well as pose a moral problem,
said attendees at last week’s World Confer-
ence on Research Integrity, held in Cape
Town, South Africa.
The conference saw the launch of
the Cape Town Statement on equitable
research partnerships, which attendees
will finalize and submit to an academic
journal. Those at the meeting hope theirnew framing will elevate the issue and help
spur systemic solutions, rather than leaving
the task of building fair collaborations up to
individual researchers.
Researchers in low- and middle-income
countries (LMICs) often feel unappreci-
ated when they partner with researchers
from wealthier countries, Francis Kombe,
co-chair of the African Research Integrity
Network and a contributor to the state-
ment, told the conference. Local experts are
too often not listed as authors, cannot ac-
cess data they gathered, and lack the power
to steer research to local priorities, studies
of the issue have found. All this can affect
the quality of research.
Such “scientific colonialism” uses thesame tactics as colonialism has historically,
Sue Harrison, deputy vice-chancellor for
research and internationalization at the
University of Cape Town, said at the event. It
extracts data instead of raw materials—and
undermines and underfunds local infra-
structure and skills. This leaves researchers
in LMICs without the publications, patents,
and skills of their wealthier counterparts.
The Cape Town Statement will offer a
guide for how institutions can improve
collaborations. For example, funders could
set out expectations for equal authorship
and data access, says Minal Pathak, a cli-
mate researcher at Ahmedabad University
in India.
She hopes the statement has impact.
“Maybe it’s not new. But maybe we need to
say it another time.”By Cathleen O’GradyCape Town meeting slams ‘helicopter research’
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