Union of Democratic Labs

The Humane Labs Project is dedicated to an empirical understanding of laboratory practices across the social sciences. It is a meta-scientific endeavor, using the methods of social science to better understand how social science is actually conducted. Its goals are to catalogue the prevalence of (in)humane and (un)democratic laboratory practices, understand the effects such practices have on the scientific process, and examine how democratizing scientific spaces can improve social science as a whole.

Open Science Commitment: The Humane Labs Project is fully committed to rigorous open science practices. All data collection and analyses associated with the Project will be preregistered. Research through the Humane Labs Project will be made available for public comment prior to any implementation. All research materials, collected data, and performed analyses will be publicly available via open science repositories (data will be anonymized/de-identified). Any and all peer-reviewed publications that result from the Humane Labs Project will be published in open-access journals.

Getting Involved: If you wish to get involved in the design and/or implementation of the Humane Labs Project, please do not hesitate to reach out to the UDL at outreach@udlscience.org. We welcome all collaborators!

Financial Support: If you wish to make a monetary donation that will go entirely to the Humane Labs Project, you can do so via Paypal. We are incredibly grateful to any financial support you are willing to provide.

Humane Labs I is the first campaign of the Humane Labs Project. Its goal is to gather a descriptive account of the breadth of laboratory practices across the social sciences and measure the prevalence of inhumane practices.

Currently, Humane Labs I is in the design phase. We are actively working to devise a survey designed to measure researchers' experiences in their past and current labs, whether those experiences were inclusive and positive, and whether those labs had humane and accountable practices. This survey will eventually be distributed through as scientific-peer channels across social science disciplines.