Comments on: 15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

By: m23

m23 — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:03:10 +0000

To all the male haters posting here: the point of this study doesn’t appear to be, “Now we can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, for all time, that this study definitively proves that there’s bias against women in the sciences.” Most science doesn’t stand up to that sort of thinking (re-read your Kuhn if you’re unclear on the concept).

The point of the study is, “Working in a well established realm of study, stereotype threat, this exercise helped women perform better in an extremely male-dominated science education environment.” Someday, someone can come up with some sort of dark matterish theory to explain why. For the immediate now? Increasing performance among minority students (and in science, women are a minority) is a good thing.

If you honestly believe there are no societal factors contributing to the dominance of men in the sciences, art, etcetera, then wow. Start at the beginning, do your homework, and THEN jump into this conversation.

By: Elly

Elly — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 18:55:29 +0000

This is an interesting concept and article, however, as a woman in science, and most specifically in physics, I have some points for discussion.

Firstly, there was only one study conducted alone, which does not equate to success or failure in any scientific endeavor. Furthermore the “random sampling” could have by chance had males which were better prepared from high school (this is an introductory course, so AP physics or quality of high school physics classes has a HUGE impact) paired with women who were not as prepared from high school lumped into the same category and vice versa. This is apparent in the graphs provided. The male statistics were ignored. If you look a the male control group compared with the experimental group, you can actually see the scores go down, not up, with the value affirmation. More studies need to be done before this is valid. I do hold that it is important to be confident in yourself, but I am not convinced that this exercise would have that profound an impact.

Secondly, on a personal note, when has the concept of “equality” among men and women, meant special treatment for one group. I find that increasingly so, women are given special treatment to make it “fair” and “equal”; specifically in this case, this article implies that women were given extra study sessions etc, to help fill the gap in the past. I find that this preferential treatment does the exact opposite, psychologically, of what is aimed to be accomplished by the writing task. The extra treatment isolates that whole group of the class, instead of promoting collaboration, impartiality and fairness in scholarly pursuits. By providing extra help specifically to women, it REAFFIRMS notions that they need more help, are not as naturally talented, and require extra attention in order to be “on par” with the men.

By: Katwoman

Katwoman — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:47:54 +0000

@Ed – I wonder if the timing and/or number of writing tasks play a role in the results? For example should the lapsed time between writing tasks not go beyond 2 weeks? Should the first writing task be given with the first month? You get my drift.

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:43:26 +0000

Ha! Not Exactly Rocket Science: inadvertently ruining experiments since 2006.

By: Nickolas

Nickolas — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:38:53 +0000

Holy Crap!!! I’m going to the University of Colorado at Boulder right now and I had to take this exact same survey! I was wondering why my friend told me that he had to write about why values were important to other people compared to me writing about my values. I’m ruining the results by reading this!!! OMG!@#$^@!#$$111!

By: Ann Onymous

Ann Onymous — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:27:05 +0000

I can see that this would work. I (female) studied physics in a class with Male to Female ratio of around 15:1. The most difficult thing about this was not the subject, but the perception that male class members seemed to know what they were doing, notably during lab sessions.

The males in the class would be very confident and sure of themselves in approaching practical work, whereas generally the females were tentative and felt that they would mess up or break something. Usually the males would take over the task and the female members would be pushed to the sidelines to watch. When the practical work was over, this left a feeling of not having participated enough to have fully understood the task, which lingered over the rest of the course. This would lower self esteem and turn into an inferiority complex. So it makes sense that a confidence boosting exercise would have this effect on women.

Something else which has been shown to close the gender gap, in stereotypically male subjects, is to have single sex classes.

By: Robbie Lamons

Robbie Lamons — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:05:23 +0000

Nullius in Verba wrote some lovely lines that I would like to be able to quote with a real name, and if not, to sew into samplers, carve into stone, or engrave onto brass plaques to hang in schools everywhere with Nullius in Verba as the author.
35.
“And one of those biases is confirmation bias – we examine theories we don’t like or that conflict with our current beliefs more critically than those that we are already inclined to believe. In science, we must guard carefully against it, and the first and most important step to doing so is to recognise and acknowledge that we have it. More, that all the other scientists have it, and that despite all our efforts to keep it out it inevitably pervades even published and widely-accepted results.”

By: Djuke Veldhuis

Djuke Veldhuis — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:47:26 +0000

Abi Millar from City University’s Science Journalism team did a nice review of Cordelia’s book a few weeks ago — http://www.elements-science.co.uk/2010/11/delusions-of-gender-by-cordelia-fine/ — that should whet your appetite

Regarding plagiarism, now I am reporting from science events, lectures etc. it never ceases to astonish me how I can read a review / blog weeks after I’ve written an article on subject ‘x’ and find that I had put in the same quotes by the same people who spoke on a particular subject. I suppose to some extent this is inevitable — a good journalist should be able to pick out the most salient points / theories / results / implications of a study or a lecture.

Conclusion: it’s like you say based on the sources you’re using there are only so many different combinations you could come up with, I would pay no heed to unfounded accusations of plagiarism

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 16:22:49 +0000

Cordelia Fine’s book is on my Christmas list but I haven’t read it yet. But don’t take my word for it – her book was published on 30th August 2010, and presumably written well before that. The research that I discuss in this post was published three months later on 25th November 2010. For plagiarism to have occurred, Fine would have to be capable of either time travel or clairvoyance and while she’s undoubtedly a great writer, I doubt she has either of those skills.

Of course, all of this information is readily available. I cited the research I wrote about. Google/Wikipedia reveal the details of Fine’s book. Given it would take less than a minute to establish both facts, the only reason I can think of for failing to do so before making the pretty serious accusation of plagiarism, would be if someone was a bit of a wanker.

Oh.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 10:45:50 +0000

So who plagiarised who here? Did you plagiarise Cordelia Fine, who has almost the same word for word outline about this in her latest book “Delusions of Gender” or did she plagiarise you?