Blogs / Cosmic Variance

Would you be shocked to hear that the readership of general-circulation science magazines is overwhelmingly white, male, and middle-aged? Probably not. Of course, you might comfort yourself with the thought that lack of interest in such magazines is programmed into the DNA of women, young people, and non-Caucasians, despite evidence that the relevant genetic information is apparently evolving awfully rapidly.

Would it surprise you to learn that overtly sexualized images of women cause tangible harm to adolescents and young women? Maybe it would. Not that there’s anything wrong with sexy images of people of any gender in appropriate contexts, but in the actual context in which children grow up in our culture, the way in which these images appear enacts a vastly disproportionate toll on young girls.

Are you at all taken aback by the cover of the latest catalogue for Edmund Optics, purveyor of scientific optical equipment?

The same image appeared in ads in Physics Today. Which, by the way, is not a biker magazine.

This sales pitch has caused a bit of consternation, including a lot of conversation on the AASWomen mailing list. But it’s not just those uppity wymyn who are upset. Geoffrey Marcy of Berkeley has written to the company to complain:

Dear Mr. Radojkovic and Mr. Delfino and Mr. Dover,

As representatives of Edmund Optics, I hope you will pass the following message to the appropriate management at Edmund Optics.

I just saw the images from the Edmund Optics catalog that show a woman in a tight red skirt lounging next to some optical devices, some with the caption, “Red Hot”. I hope Robert Edmund and the board of directors of Edmund can be alerted to this problem.

As a scientist and professor at UC Berkeley I am embarrassed on behalf of the many female science students coming along. I wonder what message such images of sex objects in your ads send to bright young scientists
of both genders.

Moreover, after decades of overt discrimination against women in the physical sciences, including precluding their admission to the best universities and the denial of access to the world’s best telescopes, your ad represents a setback. It reminds us of a dark era of clear discrimination against women, a time that I’m sure Edmund Optics hopes is long gone. If so, you have made a very serious error that insults the scientific community.

As you can imagine, your ad has already generated extraordinary discussion in the scientific community, analogous to the discussion over the comments by Harvard’s president who implied that women might not have what it takes to be great scientists. In short, your company has left open the question of your equal and unbiased treatment of women in your company and in your contracts.

Sincerely,
Geoffrey Marcy
Professor of Astronomy, UC Berkeley
Elected Member, United States National Academy of Sciences

To which Bill Dover at Edmund replied, in a classic example of “not getting it”:

Hi Geoff,

Thank you for your feedback regarding the EO catalog and our recent cover. No need to be embarrassed for the many female science students coming along. Rather, encourage them to celebrate that another smart, young, and attractive female has joined the ranks of women in a technical field, which breaks the pattern of discrimination you describe. You see, the woman featured on the cover is a six-year employee of Edmund and our Trade Show Manager and Spokesperson. Over the years we’ve received numerous positive comments and she has proven herself to possess the needed technical and social ability to successfully coordinate our tradeshows that showcase our products.

The recent cover photo emphasized a new product launch by Edmund. Our Trade Show Manager coordinated the showcase of these products at Photonics West last month. Had you happened by our booth for a visit, you would have had the opportunity to meet and speak with her about our Kinematic mounts as well as receive additional technical information from two other smart, young, and attractive, female optical engineers present at the time. So that you know, this line of Kinematic Optical Mounts, Table Platforms, and Mechanical Accessories are technically situated to become the standard for optical positioning equipment in the marketplace. We are excited about the quality, features, and price of these products and know that they will be very difficult to compete with and we chose our Trade Show Manager to help commemorate their release.

Professor Geoff, please encourage ALL of your female students to join the technical, engineering, and science ranks. There are too many that fall prey to the stereotypical concepts of what a person should look like or dress like which keep them from significant contributions in our society. That said, we value the opinions of our customers and we evaluate the feedback in developing our future strategies. I appreciate the time you have taken to mention your concerns here. I hope you will take the opportunity to encourage your female students to meet our female optical engineers at Edmund Optics. I think they, and you, will be impressed with their ability to support and represent woman [sic] in engineering.

Best Regards,
Bill

As far as I can tell, he’s saying that “she” is smart (so smart that she doesn’t need a name, apparently), so it’s okay! This is America, so any talented and attractive young woman with an interest in engineering can grow up to be a Booth Babe. He forgot to mention that “Better Performance. Better Price.” is the kind of slogan that any female should be proud to be associated with!

Actually it’s not okay. We’re not going to see this any time soon:

A little parity goes a long way, though. I have a vision of the next catalog cover–it features a handsome young man, maybe in chinos or a nice pair of jeans, barefoot, shirt halfway unbuttoned, an alluring gleam in his eye. Maybe a caption like “Well Oiled Mounts.”

And even if we did, it still wouldn’t be okay. (Although it would be highly amusing.) These images don’t appear in a vacuum; as long as the way that women and men are put on display in a wider cultural context remains dramatically imbalanced, a little equal-opportunity cheesecake here and there isn’t going to fix things.

Feel free to email Bill Dover (wdover-at-edmundoptics.com) and VP of Marketing Marisa Edmund (medmund-at-edmundoptics.com) to let them know what you think. (Thanks to Chaz Shapiro for the pointer.)

Ok, I need to get involved in another CV fracas about women in science right now like I need a hole in the head, but here goes:

As a female scientist, I explain my situation to my male peers with the following analogy: Why don’t more men knit?

Is it that evolution has denied most men the finger control, patience, and artistic vision needed to knit? Or, is it that a man who knits will spend all his free time engaged in a pastime of no interest to practically every other man he knows? That almost all the people he can turn to discuss his ideas and knowledge with will be women? Now suppose that knitting took years of advanced training, beginning in high school. How many teenage boys do you think would be eager to enroll in knitting classes? How long would it take for those young men’s skills to be viewed and judged neutrally, rather than being praised as “remarkably good knitting for a man”? How would they feel being one of very few men at every knitting workshop and conference they attended? Would others at the conference assume they were there as the spouse of a “real” knitter? Would anyone think to go to them for expertise unless they’d spent years proving that they were the Best Knitter Ever?

I am currently in a department where women are one-third to one-half of the undergraduates, graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and tenured faculty. Such bright spots indicate directly the primary role that a positive culture has on promoting women’s participation in science. (Same for minorities, but we’re way behind on that one.)

And yes, we have a number of men in our department who knit. You gotta problem with that?

I love science, because the universe has very little tolerance for wishful thinking. You can believe whatever kind of nonsense you like about how the world works, but eventually the data will come along and slap you upside the head. Sadly, not everyone lets the sting of reality affect their prejudices, but that’s another story.

Here’s a fact: among chess grandmasters, there are a lot more men than women. Chess is great, because it’s pretty much a meritocracy, not an old-boys network (colorful parables notwithstanding). There is a simple old-fashioned sexist explanation for this phenomenon, which is that women just aren’t as good at chess as men are. Back in the veldt, you see, when the men were celebrating a successful hunt by playing chess with sticks in the dirt, the women were busy washing the dishes, so there was no evolutionary pressure for them to develop those skills. These days, however, there is a more sophisticated new-fangled sexist explanation for these kinds of discrepancies, which invokes bell curves. It’s not, so the story goes, that the average woman isn’t just as good as the average man, it’s just that their standard deviations are different, so there is underrepresentation at the high end. This hypothesis suffers under the weight of making all sorts of predictions that aren’t true, but it’s kind of scientific-sounding, so it’s gained a measure of popularity in certain circles.

So now someone has looked in detail at the situation in chess. Jake Young at Pure Pedantry points to a study by Chabris and Glickman, “Sex Differences in Intellectual Performance: Analysis of a Large Cohort of Competitive Chess Players.” I noticed the link at Marginal Revolution, and I agree with Tyler Cowen about the most striking findings:

They found no greater variance in men than women. It had been suggested that since science selects for individuals at the upper tail of the distribution, a higher variance in men than women might explain their greater representation. However, the researchers found that — with respect to chess — if anything in most age groups women had a higher variance then men. Upper tail effects do not explain the differences in the numbers of grandmasters…

And:

If you look at the participation rate of women and relate that to performance, you find that in cases where the participation rate of women and men is equal the disparity in ability vanishes. Basically, this means that in zip codes where there are equal numbers of men and women players there is no great disparity between male and female ability — and certainly not a disparity in ability large enough to explain the difference in the numbers of grandmasters.

How about that? It’s not any differences in innate ability, it’s just that women are “choosing” not to play competitive chess. Choosing is put in scare quotes because there’s obviously going to be a great deal of influence from parents encouraging/discouraging their kids at a very young age, but whatever. It’s a shame if young girls who would have been enthusiastic about chess are pushed away by social pressures of one form or another, but for most people chess is not a central part of their lives.

It’s a much bigger deal when women (or whomever) are enthusiastic about choosing something as a career, and are pushed away by an impressive battery of systematic biases. Which is what is clearly going on in science, especially in physics. If girls are given just as much encouragement and opportunity as boys are, and nevertheless choose to become truck drivers or gourmet chefs rather than scientists, that’s fine with me — the goal has never been equal representation of the genders, it’s equal chances for everyone to do what they find interesting. But we have a long way to go before we get there.

Everybody has their expectations. About basically everything in life. Will the Cardinals win the World Series? Will my date be nice? Can I solve this problem? What can I achieve in life? These are the types of things we all have expectations about.

A Canadian research group recently reported the results of their study on women’s expectations for solving math problems. You can find the article in Science (sorry, you need a subscription), and a report in the NYT. 220 women were divided into 4 groups and given math and reading comprehension tests between 2003 and 2006. The women were given a GRE (Graduate Records Exam)-like math test, then asked to read an essay, and then given a second math exam. Four different essays were handed out. These essays argued that gender differences in math performances were due to (i) genetic (G), or (ii) experiential (E) differences between the sexes, or (iii) employed standard sexual sterotypes without mentioning mathematical abilities (S), or (iv) argued that there are no gender related math-differences (ND).

The results showed that the women receiving the (S) and (G) essays answered 5-10 out of 25 math questions correctly, while the (E) and (ND) essay groups answered 15-20 of the questions correctly. That’s a factor of 2 difference! In other words, the women that were told they would perform poorly because they were women, did.

The results do not seem surprising to me, but I am glad someone has quantified this. I would like to see another study with a larger statistical sample, and I would like to see the results of the first and second math tests to ensure the four populations were statisitcally even in their inate mathematical abilites.

The study was performed by Steven J. Heine, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, and his PhD student Ilan Dar-Nimrod.

Why do we keep writing about women in science? And even inviting guest posts that touch on the topic? Haven’t we more or less exhausted what needs to be said? Maybe it’s time to concentrate on cosmology and/or the World Series? After all, I’m not even a woman! Maybe I’m just trying to impress the chicks? (Honestly suggested at least once.)

Rob Knop has an excellent post up about a presentation he just gave to his department at Vanderbilt (where I’ll be visiting Thursday). He was emphasizing that the department — much like the vast majority of physics departments — doesn’t always present a hospitable environment to female students and postdocs.

We have an issue in our department right now which has (tangentially) brought up the issue of the climate for women in physics. We have a serious problem with the climate for women students and post-docs (at least). I don’t really know if it’s worse here than physics departments elsewhere; I know the climate is globally bad everywhere, and maybe it’s worse on average, or maybe it’s better on average. But I do know it’s bad here, and unless we think about it, it will stay bad.

In a short presentation to the department today, I included a slide with this statement on it:

The biggest problem among the faculty is that we all allow things to slide. None of us speak out when we see and hear things that we should be questioning. We are all, constantly, guilty of this; I can name a few instances for myself, and doubtless have forgotten many more.

In retrospect, using the absolute term “none of us” was probably a mistake, but certainly it’s rare when people speak out. This statement was close to a direct quote from a female graduate student I’ve talked to; I asked her what she thought the biggest climate problem was, and it was this: the fact that behaviors are accepted, not questioned, evidently by all.

Amazingly, some of his fellow faculty members didn’t agree! Other people/places might have issues, but not them.

In fact, it wasn’t until I started blogging about it that I really understood the depth of the problem. I had long known that women faced obstacles, but I thought that the vast majority of male physicists were benignly clueless rather than actively contributing. But there appear to be substantial numbers of people at all levels of academia who are quite convinced that the present situation is determined more by genetics than by bias. Reading the comment sections on these posts, notwithstanding the presence of a good number of thoughtful and intelligent participants, is an incredibly depressing exercise.

But it’s still worth doing. Progress doesn’t happen automatically; it’s because people make the effort to cause it to happen. And when it comes to women in science, there are good reasons why men should take it upon themselves to raise a ruckus. (I suspect that analogous statements hold true for the status of minority groups in science, although I readily admit to being less knowledgeable about those issues.)

I recently had coffee with my friend Janna Levin, author (most recently) of A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. Janna recently wrote a provocative essay for Newsweek, entitled This Topic Annoys Me. The topic, of course, being the status of women in science.

But while earning my Ph.D. at MIT and then as a postdoc doing cosmological research, the issue started to loom large. My every achievement—jobs, research papers, awards—was viewed through the lens of gender politics. So were my failures. People seemed unable to talk about anything else. Sometimes, to avoid further alienating myself from colleagues, I tried evasive maneuvers, like laughing the loudest when another scientist made a sexist remark. Other times, when goaded into an argument on left brain versus right brain, or nature versus nurture, I was instantly ensnared, fighting fiercely on my behalf and all womankind. I was perpetually inflamed and exhausted. It permeated every aspect of my life. Take this very essay. Here I am, somehow talking about being a woman in science, trying not to even as I do so. Imagine my frustration.

The point is, it’s not easy to be a scientist. There is a great amount of competition (whether we like to think that way or not) for resources, especially jobs. Research is hard, as you are pushing with all your brainpower against some of the knottiest unsolved problems concerning the workings of the universe. Even if you did nothing else, being a successful scientist is a full-time job.

And then women, as a reward for making it through an already-difficult gauntlet made more harsh by lingering Neanderthal attitudes, are asked once they succeed to take on a whole new set of responsibilities — serving on extra committees, making public appearances on behalf of the department, providing a sympathetic ear to younger women. All worthwhile activities, no question, but not the kind of thing that pushes one’s research agenda forward. I admit that I had a certain initial reluctance to ask Chanda to contribute her guest post. She has something interesting to say (from a perspective I can’t possibly offer), and can certainly take care of herself, so in the end I felt quite comfortable making the request. But every minute spent on stuff like that is a minute that isn’t spent doing research. Women should be free to concentrate on thinking about black holes and the early universe, just like guys are.

It’s a balance, of course, and as a blogger I certainly believe that one can do research and other activities at the same time. But it’s completely unfair to expect women and minority scientists to do all the work in trying to eliminate the discrimation that they face. It is perfectly defensible, maybe even highly recommended, for any individual woman scientist to decide that the cause is better served if they concentrate on collecting data and writing papers rather than organizing conferences and raising consciousnesses. So, for the foreseeable future, it’s a good idea for the rest of us to put some effort into making the situation better all around.

In the meantime, how ’bout those Cards?

I first met Chanda (briefly) when she was visiting the University of Chicago as a summer undergraduate research student. Since then we’ve corresponded occasionally about life as a physicist and which general relativity textbook is the best. She emailed me a thoughtful response to a couple of posts about string theory and the state of physics (here and here), and I thought it would be good to have those thoughts presented as a full-blown guest post rather than just a comment; happily, Chanda agreed.

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A few months ago, Sean posted an entry on this blog addressing his concerns about Dr. Lee Smolin’s (then forthcoming) book, The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Dramatically titled and well-hyped, Lee’s book was sure to arouse strong emotions and plenty of debate on publication. However, it managed to do that even before it was out, and the commentary on Sean’s entry included correspondence from Lee as well as several other great contemporary thinkers in theoretical physics. The dialogue was inspired, passionate, argumentative, sometimes rude, and always exploratory.

But something was missing. I wondered how there could be a discourse about the marketplace of ideas and about who gets to participate in science without a component that addresses the obvious (at least for those of us with some relationship to the US academic system): the community of scientists in the United States is overwhelmingly homogeneous, white (of European descent) and male. That sounds like a pretty narrow marketplace to me, given that over half of the US population is either female or a member of an underrepresented minority group or both. Surely this must mean that we are under-utilizing our potential talent pool in our drive to better understand the physical world.

As a member of the National Society of Black Physicists’ (NSBP) Executive Committee and Editor of their newsletter, I like to stay on top of the statistics related to these issues, so let me mention a few to satisfy those who like to see data. (All stats are borrowed from the NSF unless otherwise noted.) At the moment, only about 12% of doctoral degrees in physics go to women. The number going to people identified as Black/African-American hovers around an average of 14 per year out of an average 738 total degrees. That’s 1.8% despite making up about 12% of the population. Further investigation uncovers the (to me) monumental tragedy that almost no other field in science and technology is doing worse at diversifying than ours, physics. (See Dr. Shirley Malcolm’s symposium paper from AIP’s 75th Anniversary celebration.)

Knowing all this, I want to share with you how shocking it is to me when I have regular conversations with my peers who express to me that they don’t see a problem. And if they do express concerns to me, a lot of the time it’s guys who want more women in the field because they want to find dates. Sorry guys, we’re here because we’re interested in physics, not you, and on top of that, some of us like women better! And yes, sometimes it’s just a joke, but sometimes it’s hard to tell, and believe me, we’ve heard that one many, many times before. On the topic of seeing more people of color (Blacks, Latina/os, etc.) most often I am met with disinterested silence or an insistence (the knowledge base this derives from is always hazy, in my opinion) that there’s nothing the physics community can do to resolve the issue because the problem is in the high schools and has nothing to do with post-secondary academe.

This attitude is disappointing, to say the least. First of all, the numbers contradict these sentiments. While it is true that there are deeply troubling issues facing the K-12 education system in the US, especially in low-income neighborhoods which are disproportionately populated by people of color, women and other underrepresented groups fall out of the pipeline at all stages, from the post-baccalaureate to the post-doctorate level, and they do so at a much higher rate than white men. Clearly something is happening. What is happening is far too full a topic to tackle here, but perhaps I will be invited to say more about it in the comments section. I invite readers to participate in a knowledge-based discourse about this issue.

On the other hand, if you’re having a hard time figuring out why you should care about diversity, the President of Princeton can offer you a helping hand. In the 2003 Killam Lecture at the University of British Columbia, Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman identified four reasons for why we should care about diversity in science. I paraphrase them here:

1. If we aren’t looking at the entire talent pool available, scientific progress will be slower by default.
2. It’s possible that women and other underrepresented minorities will identify unique scientific problems that their majority peers might not.
3. Science will find it increasingly difficult to recruit the brightest minorities as other fields diversify and therefore look attractive to members of underrepresented groups. An attractive work environment is essential to competing on the job market for the best thinkers.
4. The scientific establishment ought to pursue diversification as a matter of fairness and justice.
   In a small (statistically insignificant) survey of various scientists and leaders in scientific organizations, I found that the question of “why is diversity in science important?” is addressed in these four points. While point four is possibly closest to my heart, I think that points one and two are two of the strongest arguments out there. (An aside: As I am tidying up this essay, one professor writes me and says that he finds four to be most compelling! I hope that others will agree.)

I would like to reflect on point one in the context of work in theoretical physics, specifically in quantum gravity and cosmology. If we are to take seriously the concept that what we seek in physics is truth and a better understanding, don’t we want to have the broadest pool of talent available to participate in the process? I think this applies to people and ideas alike. Until we have a theory that pulls out ahead of the others, what are we doing arguing about whose theory is doing better? Right now, neither loops, nor strings, nor triangles, nor anything else has ANY data to back it up, so perhaps the best thing we can all do on that front is get back to work.

An aside to that last remark: It’s hard to get to work when no one will hire you. It remains true that even if I do good work in my field, if my field is not strings, I will have a difficult time finding a job in theoretical physics. Some might argue that this is fair because I have made the foolish error of working on a silly (let’s say loopy) theory. But honestly, to those who like to toe that line, I’d like to say that since you don’t have the LHC data in hand or anything else that proves/disproves strings/loops/anything else, at this stage we’re all in the same boat. And what if strings is wrong? Has the physics community gained anything by suppressing and/or ignoring the alternatives?

To speak in more general terms, I could ask the broader question: what has the scientific community gained by choosing not to pro-actively welcome a broad and diverse set of people and ideas into the fold? Well, again there isn’t enough space for the details, but there is increasing evidence from research in science education that supports the point that diversity of perspectives accelerates problem solving.

Moreover, a fellow grad student and active member of NSBP’s sister organization, the National Society of Hispanic Physicists (NSHP), pointed out to me that we can definitely be aware of what the scientific community potentially loses when people from different backgrounds aren’t allowed to participate in science. Laura noted that our society has thrived on the contributions of women like Marie Curie (discovered radioactivity) and Emmy Noether (Noether’s theorem) and African-Americans like Benjamin Banneker (early civil and mechanical engineer, self-taught astronomer and mathematician). At this point, I think it is easy to ask and answer, “what would our world be like without the Marie Curies and Benjamin Bannekers?” Most likely lacking.

But another, equally important question isn’t raised often enough: What are we missing by living in a world where only the Marie Curie’s make it through? A few women and underrepresented minorities have always found a way to challenge the status quo. Let’s face it: physics is hard for anyone. It’s not hard to imagine that it takes a certain type of determined personality to overcome barriers and make new discoveries. What of the rest? The people who didn’t find the right friends and family to help them? The ones who never had a chance to learn physics? The ones who thought that people who look like them don’t succeed at physics? (And yes, they are out there; I’ve met some of them.) Might we be further along in our understanding of dark matter? Perhaps, perhaps not, but until we push harder to integrate, we’ll never know.

At this stage, it occurs to me that many of you will look at my definition of diversity and think it is too narrow. I’ve left out all of the international collaboration that goes on in physics, and surely, isn’t that a wonderful kind of diversity which is plentiful in our world? Yes! One thing that endeared the Perimeter Institute to me almost immediately was the fact that my peer group hails from all over Europe and Asia, and at the lunch table, as many as five or more cultures may be represented. But to me this highlights the problem — if the North American physics community has been able to welcome an international populace with open arms, why can’t they do the same with the diversity that already exists at home?

In the end, perhaps this is not a fair way to raise the question. International members of the physics community also have to confront issues of racism and discrimination. Racism is not a uniquely American problem, nor do people of color suffer alone from it in the US. But I still have a question, then: if the academy is ready to bring those of us who earn Phds into the fold, why isn’t it doing more to encourage more of us to reach that far? Those of us who do make it that far are left wondering why it doesn’t bother anyone else that we are more likely to see a German in our graduate classes than another Black person.

The challenges we face in confronting these issues are not easy. First we must accept there is an issue, a problem. Then there must be open discussion about how we understand the problem. I realize that it is difficult to step into someone else’s shoes and understand where they are coming from. But to an extent, like Albert Einstein before us, we must rise to the challenge of the barriers placed before our understanding and transcend them.

For my part, as a Black woman, I would ask my white (and male) peers to remember that many of us (though not all) experience our differences as a negative in this environment. Where I see it as a Black cultural tradition to lend a helping hand even as I continue to achieve my own dreams, others see my commitment to NSBP as a signal that I am wasting my time not doing science. Do my friends who play music in their spare time get this same signal? Moreover, many of us who are women or people of color or both are often involved in efforts to change the face of science. When we are challenged about that by our peers, not only are they standing in our way, but they are also failing to recognize that for many of us, this investment in the community is necessary to our survival, much like someone else might say playing music is for theirs.

Furthermore, where I wish to understand other people’s choices of identification, there are those amongst my peers who have felt they had the right to make my choices for me. I find myself now terrified of mentioning my Blackness in any way, lest I become dehumanized, my personal identity reduced to an object of debate. These are examples of the way my background has been turned into a negative for me. I know others have similar and worse experiences, and surely, this is one major leak in the aforementioned pipeline. My hope is that physics will evolve not only in concept, but also in its sensibilities about who a physicist is and what she looks like. What if we came to value our heterogeneity, to see it as an advantage?

It is important to note that there are white men out there thinking about these issues. I know Sean Carroll is one of them. For me, Professor Henry Frisch at the University of Chicago has been an amazing mentor. His father, the late Professor David Frisch of MIT, was influential in the graduate career path of Dr. Jim Gates, now an accomplished African-American theorist at the University of Maryland. People who take the time to be concerned, therefore, do have an impact. A common complaint that I hear from interested people is that there aren’t enough people with diverse backgrounds in the talent pool when they are choosing grad students, postdocs, and faculty. I believe that this points to a fundamental problem that physicists can help with: somewhere a pool of talent is getting lost, and we need to push harder to find it again by taking a pro-active role in education policy, mentoring (studies show this makes a big difference in minority performance), and anti-discrimination activism.

I hope that many of you will take this to heart and realize that for the sake of science, if nothing else, diversity matters. There’s a lot to be done to change things, and I encourage you to support work that is being done in your community, whether it’s by contributing hours designing a website or giving a tour of your department to local students who wouldn’t normally be exposed to science. Moreover, I strongly urge you, especially those of you who are not from an underrepresented background, to take seriously the idea that not everyone experiences the physics community like you, not everyone has the same ideas, that some people face real barriers to academic progress, and that we’re all better off when we make a genuine effort to listen to and understand the other side.

Before I finish, I’ll make a last comment on the science. One of the ways I’ve seen these divisions hurt us is the way in which we seem completely stuck on some pretty major problems. As it stands, we have a standard model of cosmology where we don’t know what form 96% of the energy of the universe takes, and we only know the barest of details about the properties of dark energy and dark matter. The model is also still hazy on many of the details of the first 400,000 years or so. This is where the quantum gravity community should rise to the challenge of seeking new and unique ways of approaching the problem since the old ones clearly aren’t working. This means we have to encourage new ideas. Even if they turn out to be wrong, we’ll probably still learn something. So to partake in some near trademark infringement, it’s time to “Think Differently.”

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein earned her BA in Physics and Astronomy and Astrophysics (yes, it is gramatically incorrect on her diploma) from Harvard College in 2003. She went on to earn an MS in Astronomy and Astrophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz (2005), where she studied black holes in higher dimensions. She is now beginning a Phd under Dr. Lee Smolin in Waterloo, Ontario, recently dubbed the Geek Capital of Canada. A product of the integrated public magnet schools of Los Angeles, she is proud to be both a Black woman and a physicist.

I have heard variations of this line so many times over the years that I lost count long ago and certainly don’t remember half of them. As familiar as it is, my internal reaction to it is never totally simple. It is clearly often meant as a compliment, I’m glad that I don’t look like your average concept of a physicist [nerdy white guy with funny hair?], and in fact one of the things I like about what I do is that I defy expectations every day just by showing up at work. But there’s of course so many stereotypes (about, depending on what’s said, science, gender, looks, style, age, personality, smarts and their various correlations) in variants of that statement that it’s hard to even know where to start.

But all that aside, I got a new one recently: “You seem too relaxed to be a physicist.” Now, that’s probably just because I took my first real vacation in years, and a proper time on Kaua’i followed by a move to a wonderful city will make anyone seem relaxed — people who know me well would hardly say that “relaxed” is my general demeanor, and I’m sure it won’t last. But I was surprised to hear that it was perceived by someone as the anthesis of being a physicist.

Actually, the one I have been getting most often recently since I acquired my new professorial title is “You look too young to be a professor”. Now, although I am 10 years out of college and older than these young humanities whippersnappers who show up to teach fresh from defending, since the average time that a professor spends on a faculty (or some combination of them) is probably of order four decades and I’ve been here a month, this isn’t too surprising of a comment. Regardless, I still haven’t come up with a witty comeback. Any suggestions?

I was hoping to actually say something substantive about this, but time is precious these days (and it’s been all over the blogosphere anyway). The National Academy of Sciences has released a report, Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. They seem to think that the relative paucity of women in science is not due to differences of innate aptitude, or even to an aversion to hard work and competitive environments, but to systematic biases within academia. Hmm, fancy that. Cornelia Dean in the NYT writes:

Women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and “outmoded institutional structures” in academia, an expert panel reported yesterday…

The panel dismissed the idea, notably advanced last year by Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard, that the relative dearth of women in the upper ranks of science might be the result of “innate” intellectual deficiencies, particularly in mathematics.

If there are cognitive differences, the report says, they are small and irrelevant. In any event, the much-studied gender gap in math performance has all but disappeared as more girls enroll in demanding classes. Even among very high achievers, the gap is narrowing, the panelists said…

The report also dismisses other commonly held beliefs — that women are uncompetitive or less productive, that they take too much time off for their families. Instead, it says, extensive previous research showed a pattern of unconscious but pervasive bias, “arbitrary and subjective” evaluation processes and a work environment in which “anyone lacking the work and family support traditionally provided by a `wife’ is at a serious disadvantage.”

As Bitch Ph.D. says, “I, personally, am expecting the apologies from Larry Summers’ apologists to start pouring in any day now.”

So I have a question. The reason why most of us were upset by Larry Summers is that he was wrong, in a spectacular and potentially damaging kind of way, and the new NAS study supports this (yet again). But, almost without exception, Summers’ supporters pretended that what got people upset was the very idea of raising the possibility of gender-based cognitive differences, and that these people were anti-free-inquiry and afraid of the truth. Steven Pinker was the most dogged straw-man-constructor, but there were plenty of others. (See also Lawyers, Guns & Money.)

My question is: was there anyone who was actually upset at Summers for this reason? That is, was there any respectable academic who really came out against even asking whether there were gender-based cognitive differences? To make things precise, I’m looking for (1) actual professors or other academics, not crazy blog commenters and so on; (2) people who explicitly were against even asking the question or doing the research, not people who (quite reasonably) argue that bias and discrimination are much more important factors in explaining the current gender disparity; and (3) did so in response to Summers, not some time back in the 1970’s or whatever. I sincerely want to know, did anyone take that position? I’m sure it wasn’t the position of most of us, strawmen notwithstanding, but given the speed and efficiency with which the fairy tale was promulgated among Summers’ supporters, I can’t help but think that at least one person did say it. There are alot of crazy academics out there who say all sorts of nonsensical things, it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone.

As Sean has just reported, Ben Barres, a tenured professor in neurobiology at Stanford, is speaking out about his experiences as a scientist. His story is an interesting one and, in my book at least, there’s enough material for a second post.

There has been much recent discussion on the cause of the dearth of women working in the sciences. One hypothesis is that there is a systemic bias against women in the system. Barres has performed the ultimate experiment to test this hypothesis by starting life and her career as female, undergoing a transgender process, and continuing life and his career as a male. Same person, same innate scientific abilities, with observations and experiences from both sides of the fence. One couldn’t ask for a better experiment in a controlled laboratory environment! The only systematic error introduced into the process is that scientific acceptance and recognition takes time to establish and can come more easily to a more senior scientist. Provided, of course, that their early work was any good.

Barres has described his experiences in a recent Nature article (subscription required unfortunately), which has been picked up by a horde of newspapers. The summary is that doors and acceptance she never ever knew existed, suddenly opened up to Barres as a male. For some reason, I’m not surprised… I won’t be surprised either if the sun sets in the West tonight. Kudos to Barres for telling his story!

A main focus of the Nature article is a set of action items that Barres suggests to remedy the systemic bias and increase the number of women in the sciences. These are important and are the reason for this second post. They are:

1. Enhance leadership diversity in academic and scientific institutions.
2. Recognize the importance of role models and increase the diversity of faculties.
3. Take the responsibility to speak out against discrimination.
4. Boost the self-confidence of girls.

In my view, this is a great list! Each step is simple enough to inact and from my own experience I can say that they are somewhat lacking and would make a difference. They are not the only positive steps one can take, of course, but they are a good start. It’s time for institutions to tackle these 4 steps in a serious manner.

Lastly, I feel compelled to spout my personal opinion regarding the hypothesis that innate differences exist in the mathematical and scientific abilities between the female and male brains. (Restricting myself to family oriented language here) It is a complete, total, unadulterated, unmitigated, pile of crap. Some will undoubtedly cry out that I am being unscientific by refusing to test a proposed hypothesis. However, from my view, the hypothesis has already been tested and disproved. It’s been proven wrong by the number of successful women scientists working today. The number is not 50%, but in fact, is large enough to be statistically significant. Take a look at the accomplishments of the women who are stubborn enough to have pushed past the systemic bias – women such as Helen Quinn, Sally Dawson, Lisa Randall, Anne Nelson, Young Kee Kim, Vera Luth, Persis Drell, Risa Wechsler, Eva Silverstein, Nan Phinney, Helen Edwards, Elizabeth Simmons, Marcela Carena, Ritchie Patterson, Janet Conrad, Kay Kinoshita, Sau Lan Wu, Angela Olinto, Marjorie Shapiro, Mary Kay Gaillard, and hell, let’s include me too. This is just a random list of women scientists working in the US in HEP that I can think of at the moment, and yet they are all amongst the top in the field. If we are innately inferior, then how come so many of us do so well? What better set of data does one need?

Ben Barres had just finished giving a seminar at the prestigious Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research 10 years ago, describing to scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and other top institutions his discoveries about nerve cells called glia. As the applause died down, a friend later told him, one scientist turned to another and remarked what a great seminar it had been, adding, “Ben Barres’s work is much better than his sister’s.”

There was only one problem. Prof. Barres, then as now a professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, doesn’t have a sister in science. The Barbara Barres the man remembered was Ben.

That’s the opening of this Wall Street Journal article about Ben Barres, a neurologist at Stanford who has been written about by just about everybody over the last week (including Arun in comments here). Not about his neurology research in this case, but about an article he wrote for Nature (subscription required) about his experiences as a transgendered scientist. Barres underwent treatments about ten years ago to go from being female to male, so he has a unique perspective on the different ways that male and female scientists are treated. Not completely unique, of course; the WSJ article also quotes Joan Roughgarden, also at Stanford, who was “Jonathan” up until 1998:

Jonathan Roughgarden’s colleagues and rivals took his intelligence for granted, Joan says. But Joan has had “to establish competence to an extent that men never have to. They’re assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, whereas a woman is assumed to be incompetent until she proves otherwise. I remember going on a drive with a man. He assumed I couldn’t read a map.”

They seem to be implying that women face obstacles in the world of science that men do not. In other news, the Sun rose in the East this morning.

Today’s New York Times has an interview with Barres by Cornelia Dean. They get right down to it:

Q. What’s your response to people who say you rely too much on your own experience and should take scientific hypotheses less personally?

A. They should learn that scientific hypotheses require evidence. The bulk of my commentary discusses the actual peer-reviewed data.

That’s not fair! Barres needs to understand that phrases like “scientific hypotheses require evidence” are only to be used by people who believe that the differences between men and women can be traced to variations in innate qualities. The mountains of data pointing to systematic biases are to be ignored.

So who are these unnamed people who think that Barres “should take scientific hypotheses less personally?” That sounds suspiciously like a straw man — most careful scientists would be reluctant to stoop so directly to an ad hominem attack, rather than dealing with the aforementioned mountains of data. Sadly, it’s a direct quote from our old friend Steven Pinker, himself a master of the straw-man technique.

Professor Pinker, if you are reading this, you are a brilliant thinker and an extraordinary writer and lecturer. The Language Instinct was one of the all-time classic books on science for a wide audience. Please do not work to make your public profile identified primarily with the claim that innate differences in capacity are more important than systematic biases in keeping women out of science. It is not only wrong, but wrong in a particularly damaging way.

One more time, to be as clear as possible, so that nobody reading in good faith can possibly misunderstand. I (and most people who harp on this) am not objecting to the hypothesis that there are innate differences in how male and female minds work, nor am I discouraging research on the subject. It’s an hypothesis, it should be tested, knock yourself out. Okay? It’s just not the question that is being talked about here. The questions “Why are there fewer women in science?” and “What are the innate differences in mental abilities and inclinations between boys and girls?” are just not the same. They may be related, obviously, but they are just not the same. And while the latter question is subtle and extremely hard to answer at the current state of the art, due to the extraordinary difficulty in separating out what is “innate” from what is influenced by the outside world, the answer to the former question is blindingly obvious to anyone who cares to open their eyes. Do you really need Ben Barres or Joan Roughgarden to tell you that men and women are treated differently as scientists? Read the Xie and Shauman book. Read Meg Urry’s article. Just look at what goes on around you. And don’t take reality so personally.

Update: via Crooked Timber, some interesting stories at Science + Professor + Woman = Me. For example, a question asked by a professor to a female grad student:

Q. So you’re doing a Ph.D.? Couldn’t you find anyone to marry you?

Of course, they are only anecdotes, so you should feel free to pretend that this stuff almost never happens, if that makes you feel better.