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| 19 June 2026 | Today is Juneteenth here in the United States, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people in this country.
On this day, we acknowledge the deep connections between slavery and science, from the pseudoscientific ideas white anthropologists have used to define racial hierarchies to the thousands of plant and animal specimens housed in natural history museums that were collected through the slave trade.
Confronting this legacy, as well as committing to the work that must still be done, is essential for science to move forward. So, in honor of Juneteenth, this edition of ScienceAdviser is centered on science and academic initiatives that are relevant to and/or being conducted by the descendants of enslaved people. | |
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| | | Protostar |  | | Photo courtesy of Roslyn Curry | | Roslyn Curry | Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University
Harney, É et al. The genetic legacy of African Americans from Catoctin Furnace. Science 381, eade4995 (2023). 10.1126/science.ade4995
Harney, É et al. Ethical considerations when co-analyzing ancient DNA and data from private genetic databases. The American Journal of Human Genetics 110, 1447–1453 (2023). 10.1016/j.ajhg.2023.06.011
Curry, R. Ethics and the Study of Historic DNA of African Americans Buried at the Catoctin Furnace. 23andMe blog (2023)
| Roslyn Curry has always been fascinated by science, but when she was growing up, the idea of becoming a scientist didn’t feel “completely real.” As an undergraduate studying biology at the University of Arizona, she initially planned to follow in her father’s footsteps and pursue a career in the military. Then her younger sister urged her to join the school’s Partnership for Native American Cancer Prevention, a program designed to help students with Indigenous ancestry pursue careers in biomedical research and healthcare.
Curry spent several years studying protein structure and function in the lab of biochemist William Montfort. There, she became interested in genetic predisposition to diseases like diabetes, which disproportionately affects African American and Native American people. While finishing up work for her master’s degree, she briefly considered going into industry, but Montfort encouraged her to stay in academia and find a research subject she was passionate about. That search led her to human evolutionary biology and ancient DNA, a topic that combined her interest in genetics with her life-long obsession with maps.
Curry, who is Diné and African American, had already spent some time researching her own ancestry. “On both sides of my family, it’s hard to look back,” she says. “There’s not a lot of records.” The study of ancient DNA, however, can help reconstruct histories, including ancient patterns of human migration, that might otherwise be lost to time.
As an intern at the biotechnology company 23andMe during the summer of 2021, Curry worked to analyze the DNA of enslaved and free African Americans buried in a cemetery at Maryland’s Catoctin Iron Furnace in Maryland during the 18th and 19th centuries. That research, which was later published in Science, revealed connections to more than 40,000 consenting research participants in 23andMe’s genetic database . Curry took a particular interest in the ethical considerations surrounding the project, which involved active engagement with the descendants of individuals who labored at Catoctin, helping to produce an ethics paper that accompanied the study.
Curry, who was the first in her family to graduate from a 4-year college, is now pursuing her PhD at Harvard University in the lab of geneticist David Reich, where she continues to emphasize the importance of community engagement in her studies of genetic ancestry. “There’s a lot to be done in terms of ethics in this field,” she explains. “From the beginning, that’s been a huge focus of mine.”
ScienceAdviser recently sat down with Curry to talk about her work. Below is that conversation, edited for brevity.
How do you think about ethical issues and the importance of community engagement in your work?
Back when I was in the biochemistry lab, I was thinking about looking at genetic predispositions for diabetes in Native Americans and African Americans, which is very ethically complicated. I had the opportunity to take some classes on the ethics of doing biomedical research with Native American tribes, and I always related that back to the other half of my family. There’s a lot of similarities, a lot of shared oppression and trauma. I couldn’t help but think about it.
A huge part of what I’m trying to do is make sure that these descendant communities are as informed as possible while also trying not to burden them, asking them if they want to participate, and trying to give them something as well. There’s a lot of trust-building that needs to happen.
It’s very interesting to compare and contrast the experiences of working with Indigenous descendant groups and African American descendant groups. There are different levels of excitement, skepticism, and optimism. I hope to write about that, because I think people will find that interesting, and it might inspire people from these communities to get into the field, seeing that there’s space for them. There’s not a lot of people who are doing it like this, and it would be great if there were more.
How did you apply this focus in your work on the Catoctin Furnace project?
When I was talking to my P.I. and my mentor, I told both of them that I wanted to really amplify the voices of historically oppressed communities. I also wanted to make it approachable and interesting to youth in those communities. That matters a lot to me, so I really wanted to make that a huge part of what I was trying to do.
A big part of my role in that project was interviewing the 23andMe team and the Harvard research team, bringing in my own experiences and training, and trying to think about what this all means ethically. I also interviewed representatives from the Smithsonian and Elizabeth Comer, an archaeologist and president of the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, with the goal of creating an FAQ document and blog post to accompany the study. I was very happy to take that on.
What are you working on now?
My focus is ancient DNA and ancestry within North America, predominantly. In May, I published a paper looking at colonial Europeans at a different site in Maryland, St. Mary’s City . I’m currently working on a project similar to the Catoctin project, which is also being done with a community that is descended from enslaved people in America. I’m leading that project, which is exciting for me. I’m also doing a couple of projects on precolonial history in North America involving ancestral Indigenous DNA, and that is a lot more complicated. It’s a bigger challenge, because there’s a lot more work that needs to be done to build trust.
I’m in a position where I can reach out to people and ask the descendants, “What do you want done?” Is there a way we can work together to enhance the oral tradition that they already have? Do they have any questions they want to answer? And if they don’t think their ancestors would want this, then I can ask that the data be made no longer accessible for analysis. I’m also trying to build relationships with tribes and First Nations, so that they have a say in the design of these projects. I feel good about the work I’m doing, but I’m always questioning, and I think that’s good.
What does Juneteenth mean to you, both as a scientist and an individual?
It’s so important that there’s national recognition for this holiday, and it’s important to acknowledge how core the history of slavery is to our country. If slavery isn’t acknowledged in your history, it’s so easy to just not even think about it or not even believe it. And if it’s not acknowledged, then the systems of oppression will just keep happening. | | Read the Catoctin Furnace paper | |
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 | | | The Disordered Cosmos | | Chanda Prescod-Weinstein |
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| | The field of physics often regards itself as having a culture of total objectivity, uninfluenced by personal or cultural biases. Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shatters this narrative in The Disordered Cosmos, a sweeping account of modern physics that delves into the science of dark matter and general relativity while also interrogating the systems of oppression and exploitation that have shaped the discipline. “In the end, The Disordered Cosmos calls for a reimagining of physics that not only realizes diversity in science and physics faculties but also creates a future where Black children can gaze at the naked stars, free of smog and city lights,” writes reviewer Marco Muzio. “The book, which is challenging and, at times, upsetting, is nonetheless a worthwhile and rewarding read that is certain to earn its place on reading lists for activists and science enthusiasts. But its intended audience—physicists themselves—may prove to be the most difficult to reach.” | | Read the full review | |
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 | | | The Alchemy of Us | | Ainissa Ramirez |
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| | In The Alchemy of Us , materials scientist Ainissa Ramirez recounts the ancient, intimate relationship between humans and our stuff, exploring how our cultural values and biases shape the materials we create while being shaped by them in return. Early photographic film, for example, failed to correctly capture darker skin—a problem white manufacturers knew about but didn’t bother to correct. “Ramirez is particularly keen to debunk the idea that materials arise from flashes of insight experienced by extraordinary individuals, instead painting a picture of a diverse range of people from all walks of life driven by love, passion, and intellect,” writes reviewer Mark Miodownik. “The culture of innovation, she maintains, does not belong only to privileged elites, it can be found in all those who care enough to reinvent the material world and, as a result, themselves.” | | Read the full review | |
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 |  | | Parable of the Sower
Parable of the Talents | | Octavia Butler |
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| | Although Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents are works of speculative fiction, many aspects of the novels feel as strikingly—and in some cases unsettlingly—familiar now as they did when they were first published in the 1990s. Author Octavia Butler, whose imagination and skillful prose have earned her a place as an unparalleled luminary of the science fiction genre, explores the potential environmental ravages of climate change, the social ramifications of virtual reality technology, and humanity’s undying fascination with space travel. At the same time, these books are also a meditation on people’s capacity for unimaginable cruelty, as well as our ability to work together as a community in pursuit of a greater purpose. Although Butler never finished writing the series’ third installment, her planned epigram for the book might be one of my favorite quotes of all time: “There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” | | —Phie Jacobs, General Assignment Reporter, News from Science | | Read the Black and Bookish Review | |
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| Be sure to check out all the reviews in our Books et al. section. |
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| NIH diversity programs doubled doctorates | | Students who participated in two diversity-oriented science training programs supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were more than twice as likely to earn a Ph.D. than their peers, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed 20 years of data from the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) and Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC), both of which are aimed at encouraging underrepresented minority undergraduates to pursue a research career in the biomedical sciences. The team found that both initiatives had a considerable positive effect on doctorate completion rates for scholars from underrepresented demographic groups. “Targeted and sustained undergraduate interventions provide a practical, empirically supported route to a more inclusive and thus more innovative and resilient U.S. biomedical research enterprise,” the study authors wrote. Over the past year, however, both of these programs—along with funding for the study itself—were terminated by the Trump administration. | | Science Advances Paper | |
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| Inequality written in DNA | | Race, ethnicity, income, education level, and occupation can all impact a person’s health and life expectancy, but it is difficult to find biological indicators that can capture the cumulative effects of all these varying social factors together. In a recent study, scientists found that certain DNA methylation clocks—measures of aging based on how genes are suppressed over time—are more associated with biological aging than even robust clinical markers like cholesterol level or smoking history. The findings help reveal how social inequality becomes biologically embedded and may prove useful for future studies on the health impacts of social policies. | | Aging Paper | |
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| Forgotten no more | | When Pittsburgh’s Freedom House Ambulance Service—an all-Black team of paramedics that served as the nation’s first modern emergency medical service—shut down in 1975, it was largely forgotten to history. But a half-century later, the pioneering service was brought to center stage through a starring role in an episode of the hit television show The Pitt. After the episode “2:00 P.M.” premiered in February 2025, Google searches for Freedom House spiked 170%, and discussions about the service flourished on Reddit, a recent study finds. “People were captivated,” said the study’s lead author. “They kept saying, ‘I can’t believe this is the first time I’m hearing about this.’” | | American Journal of Health Promotion Paper | |
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| | In this case, the risk is worth it because the potential rewards are substantial: a flowering of scientific innovation with results that stand up to scrutiny, reward the very best of us, and help solve nature’s greatest puzzles. | | Undark | 4 June 2026 | C. Brandon Ogbunu | | Ogbunu, a computational biologist at Yale University and the Santa Fe Institute, argues that scientists’ aversion to risk—including the unwillingness to overhaul processes that don’t work—is stifling innovation. | |
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| Last but not least | | Thanks for reading! We’ll see you again on Monday. |  | Phie Jacobs, General Assignment Reporter, News from Science
With contributions from Benjamin Hack
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