How does science sound when practiced with ethics, equity, and many voices?
It sounds like salsa.
Growing up listening to salsa was one of my most formative experiences. Almost every Sunday, my parents would play Rubén Blades or La Fania. I especially loved Live at the Cheetah and Cheo Feliciano’s version of Anacaona in that album.
So when someone asked me that question yesterday, at an event celebrating the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (celebrated every year on February 11) at the University of Puerto Rico, that was my answer: salsa.
When you listen to a salsa song, you hear many instruments — el timbal, el trombón, el cencerro — each with its own sound. A solo, giving each instrument its own moment to shine. But throughout most the song, every instrument works in synergy, creating something none of them could create alone.
That's what science practiced with ethics, equity, and many voices should sound like. Not a single instrument dominating the sounds. Not some voices drowned out by others. Every voice heard. Every contribution valued. All identities welcomed. A science richer, fuller, and more powerful because of its diversity, not in spite of it.
Salsa is in Puerto Rico's DNA. And so is science — even if we haven't always been told that. Maybe that's why the analogy resonated so deeply with me: I didn't have to reach for it. It came naturally, because both salsa and science are part of who I am.
For the past two decades, that's been my mission: to help people hear, see, feel how science is connected to Puerto Rico. To make the connection visible. I wrote about baseball not to make science easier to swallow, but to show that science was already there in our lives — in the arc of a curveball, in the statistics of a season, in the games Puerto Ricans have loved for generations. The message underneath was never really about physics or sabermetrics. It was about belonging. It was about telling my community: science was never foreign to you. You just haven't been told that it was yours.
But for years, I had to defend that choice. Who cares about Puerto Rico? Why is that your focus? If I had a dollar for every time someone questioned that, I'd have many dollars. The pushback was real, and it was exhausting.
I've thought a lot over the years about how Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—Bad Bunny—has built his entire career on the same principle: an unapologetic, intentional embedding of Puerto Ricanness into everything he does. His slang, his storytelling, his music. No explanatory footnotes. No code-switching for comfort. Just a deep, deliberate rootedness in who he is. And the world didn't just accept it. The world came to him.
I see my work in his. Neither of us translating ourselves for comfort. Neither of us positioning our Puerto Ricanness as a limitation to work around. Benito weaves bomba and plena with reggaeton not to dilute either, but to show the full richness of who we are. I have done the same with science — finding it in baseball diamonds and salsa rhythms, in the everyday realities of Puerto Rican life, and insisting that it belonged there all along.
We have both spent years doing the work before the world caught up. Ten years ago, he was bagging groceries at a supermarket in Puerto Rico. He made history winning Album of the Year at the Grammys with his album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. A week later, he brought all of Puerto Rico to the Super Bowl stage. He introduced himself not as a global superstar, but in his full name: "Mi nombre es Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio." He performed entirely in Spanish.
A decade ago, I was defending my focus on connecting science to Puerto Rican culture. Our paths are different, but the principle is the same: we never stopped believing that Puerto Rico mattered. That our culture wasn't something to apologize for or explain away—it was the whole point.
That's always been my north star. My Puerto Rican identity isn't a liability in my work as a science communicator. It's my superpower. It's what makes science feel like home for me and for the communities I serve.
Because when science welcomes many voices, it doesn't just become more inclusive.
It sounds like salsa. And it becomes better science.