Wisdom in the News

On obesity, cognition, and society:

Wisdom Student wins Award for Neuroethics essay

Each year, the International Neuroethics Society hosts a contest for students from high school, college, and beyond to promote interest in neuroethics and to increase awareness  of ethical  concerns in the study of cognition and the brain.

This year, one of the Center for Practical Wisdom’s researchers took home the prize as the Academic Essay Winner. Sarah Zinn, a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago under Professor Greg Engel, tackled the issue of research on obese populations from a neuroethical perspective (read the essay published here). 

The essay addresses the dangers and problems of studying neural and cognitive correlates of body weight in a social environment which displays deeply ingrained weight stigma. Zinn states, “I use historical ethical lessons to argue that extreme care needs to be taken and significant counter-induction performed when researching these stereotypical correlations, else we stunt scientific progress, commit significant methodological errors, and set the stage for human tragedy.”

Zinn’s current work at the Center for Practical Wisdom with Director Howard C. Nusbaum explores how cognitive task performance can be perturbed by an acute weight-stigmatizing experience in people with bodily dissatisfaction. Her interest in the topic of weight stigmatization and cognition stems from a long history of personal experiences with medical professionals in her journey to getting diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and lipedema. Both conditions went mis-diagnosed for more than a decade, and she was often accosted by medical professionals prescribing behavioral solutions. It wasn’t until she became a Ph.D. student where she had access to the nationally ranked academic medical center at the University of Chicago that she was properly diagnosed with blood work at a doctor’s visit. She notes, “In light of all of the research and sociocultural effort trying to reduce population weight, it blew my mind that it was such a journey for me to get the treatment and diagnoses that I needed.” Resolved to change careers and research weight stigmatization, scientific discrimination, and medical discrimination, she began exploring the topic through the university’s Psychology Research Incubator course to understand it from a psychological perspective. 

Zinn’s essay delves into the historical and present-day state of research in disenfranchised populations and argues that research on these populations often doesn’t take into full account the dangers of stereotype confirmation, stigmas, and cultural beliefs. Her matter of fact writing style commands your attention in her essay as she directly quotes a breadth of content from articles to social media which demonstrate this issue in academic and sociocultural contexts. 

Zinn will receive her formal award for the essay at the International Neuroethics Society annual meeting hosted online this year Oct 22-23. The award also includes a cash prize, membership to the society, and publication of the essay through the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing understanding about the brain in health and disease through research grants and public outreach.