A split bar chart showing the percentage of speakers at neuroscience conferences who were Black, both before and after the protests of summer 2020. Several conferences did include their representation after summer 2020, but many neuroscience conferences are still lacking any Black speakers whatsoever.
Data were manually compiled by Lewis Wheaton. Platform speakers were identified at 18 U.S.-based conferences scheduled to occur between 15 May 2019 and 31 January 2020 or between 27 October 2020 and 27 May 2021. Conferences were not necessarily the same in the two time ranges, and so are not directly comparable. Black speakers were identified by looking at images or performing Google searches. ASNR (American Society for Neurorehabilitation) data were compared for the 2019 and 2021 conferences.