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Male Scientists More Prone To Misconduct
sciencehabit writes "Male scientists — especially at the upper echelons of the profession — are far more likely than women to commit misconduct. That's the bottom line of a new analysis by three microbiologists of wrongdoing in the life sciences in the United States. Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, Seattle; Joan Bennett of Rutgers University; and Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine combed through misconduct reports on 228 people released by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) over the last 19 years. They then compared the gender balance — or imbalance, in this case — against the mix of male and female senior scientists and trainees to gauge whether misconduct was more prevalent among men. A remarkable 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, or 63 out of 72 individuals. The number of women in that group was one-third of what one would expect based on female representation in the life sciences."
Their conclusion: Men commit more misconduct.
My conclusion: Women are sneakier at committing misconduct.
So, the misconduct incidence among male scientists mirrors exactly the misconduct incidence among male non-scientists (by-gender incarceration rates.) Erm...okay.
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How is this news? I mean, really: In every aspect of society, men are more aggressive and prone to antisocial behavior than women. The headline might as well be reading "Sky found to be blue, water wet." It might be interesting if it turned out that the ratios were significantly skewed only in scientific endeavors compared to the baseline, but I'm not seeing that here. I'm seeing someone study a sample from a specific subculture and realize that... it's just like a random sample from the general population. It isn't new or groundbreaking. It's simply confirmatory... extra empirical findings that support what's already established.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'm willing to bet that this discrepancy is more a factor of groups vs. individuals than male vs. female. Aka "peer pressure" aka "everyone is doing it" etc.
Hard to read - you need to learn about to/too.
And... isn't this akin to the Muslim world, who ask that the women cover themselves so as to not incite the lust of men? If men get excited, it's women's fault.
Nonsense, of course - just in case you thought I was being serious.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
The opposite result would be unpublishable, and in an academic setting unspeakable. Can it be credible science if only one result was permissible?
Posting as AC for the obvious reason.
I believe it. And I don't care. I would also not be surprised that a higher percentage of male athletes use steroids. Cheating is an unfortunate byproduct of being competitive (although maybe an evolutionarily advantageous one).
It does piss me off though to see garbage like
They then compared the gender balance — or imbalance, in this case
in the summary.
I interprit this as follows. Gender imbalance in a field increases the likelyhood that that the biased for gender contains low quality employees. These people would not have their job in a fair job market. Likewise the other gender will contain higher quality people who were able to overcome the gender bias with exceptional skills.
Misconduct is a very broad term.
I know I've been accused of being hard nosed and stirring plenty of times. Had the written warnings and the likes.
But I consider myself pretty honest, to the point of having loose lips.
FTA
The trend seems clear, but the authors did admit that "[w]e cannot exclude the possibility that females commit research misconduct as frequently as males but are less likely to be detected."
I remember reading once that as a child Mao Tse-tung often witnessed his parents fight. He concluded the more effective tactics were the indirect ones used by his mother. These recollections lodged in his memory -- it is no mistake that the Art of War, of which many of the tactics described therein are predicated on deceptiveness, became the revolutionary army's bible.
I'm willing to bet that this discrepancy is more a factor of groups vs. individuals than male vs. female. Aka "peer pressure" aka "everyone is doing it" etc.
And the combination of
1) certain research areas are predominantly male
2) certain research areas misconduct is more profitable
any non-trivial intersection is going to skew the results.
Needs more than 73 cases, please.
That explains the gender pay gap and glass ceiling; it's easier to appear exceptional than to be exceptional, and one side is more willing to cheat :)
This seems like a horrible comparison considering there are only 16% females in the scientific industry compared to men. Not only that but this is collected from data of known misconduct. I could easily see a female as being more likely to get away with scientific misconduct and thus they would not even be represented in this comparison. Used http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=2264&page=5 as reference for the 16% women scientist figure.
http://interserver.net/
A remarkable 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, or 63 out of 72 individuals.
Since the majority of the study consisted of men, they should normalize it based on the percentage of men in the study. Considering that only 72 individuals were examined, there isn't a scientific conclusion that can be drawn from this study.
Since they didn't have enough females to make a male vs female comparison, they could have done it as "a percentage of scientists are prone to misconduct".
The summary and its linked article are both unclear as to what "misconduct" is being discussed. Fortunately, clarity is available through the original paper:
. . . we found that misconduct is responsible for most retracted articles and that fraud or suspected fraud is the most common form of misconduct. Moreover, the incidence of retractions due to fraud is increasing, a trend that should be concerning to scientists and non-scientists alike.
The study is looking into why scientific papers are being retracted and what trends there are in the retractions.
It's too bad that the summary was so generic it could have meant anything from nosepicking to marital infidelity to fabricating data. This is an interesting topic, and it's sad that the frequency of fraudulent publications is increasing.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Did they correct for risk aversion? Not being adverse to cheating, but being adverse to entering a field where luck / risk plays a pretty big part in success which means more motivation for cheating?
For example, lots more women in lib arts, where pretty much any result is acceptable. In the hard sciences, negative results are pretty much unacceptable, although in many ways they're just as important as positive results.
Examples:
Say you wanna prove women don't make as much money as men in field XYZ. Doesn't really matter what the result is, you get to publish, and in a publish or perish world, you win.
Say you wanna methylate some weird hydrocarbon. And you just Freaking Cannot Do it. Perhaps because its impossible. Oh well I guess you fail and become homeless and live under a bridge. Or you could bend the rules just a tiny bit just this one time....
I would stand by my lifetime observation that women are dramatically less tolerant of risk.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Go too school.
Stop spreading your religious indoctrination.
Seriously, why is this here? I imagine the same could be said for any another male dominated industry...if their study was on womans basketball you can sure as hell bet those figures would look better for us men, grrr..
Nonsense.
Women earn degrees at just about every educational lever at a higher rate than men. Women account for the majority of post secondary degrees in the US.
The old idea that women have to work harder to achieve degrees simply has very little data to support it.
As far as facing more scrutiny, why would that be the case since they are caught far fewer times than men? If some one is going to be scrutinized its most likely the person with a higher than average statistical propensity to bend the rules. In almost every aspect of society, that would be men.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Your right! If a woman gives a man a pat on the butt and the man complains in 99% of all cases nothing will happen. If that man even looks at a woman with subjective eyes then he can be fired or suspended from work. Women have been able to create a system where men can't even look at them subjectively but they can do almost anything and get away with it.
.... I never mentioned religion, but good job extracting meaning.
Seriously, you need to get laid. That way, you'd stop getting overly excited whenever something without a beard walks around.
Although, I do understand that with your kind of attitude, getting laid by any self-respecting woman could be a problem.
Ezekiel 23:20
is the dumbest study I've read on Slashdot to date. Congrats. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50510582/ns/health-mens_health/#.UQBxUWdBqrg/ is random better news. Also, male doctors have a higher rate of sexual misconduct than female doctors, study pending.
The post had nothing to do with not having a girl friend and in fact by your very response you seem to want to objectify women mentally, so by that very post your part of the issue. Everything must be on even playing field, the second you allow one side a handicap you are not longer comparing apples to apples and hence a study or test no longer has meaningful results.
It looked to me from the article that P=0.24.
That is really not a reasonable basis to draw all these conclusions from.
By your own admission, you have problems with women around you. I find it unlikely they that they have the same problem with you. I've just stated that the problem is on your side and yours to solve.
Ezekiel 23:20
After having actually read TFA, I still don't know what they mean by "misconduct." Are we talking academic, i.e. falsifying data or plagiarizing, or sexual misconduct, or what? The article carefully avoids ever joining an adjective to it.
Because come on...in general, does anybody believe males if they report being accosted?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Oh sure! Everyone's ALL FOR preserving Hitler's Brain, but the moment you try to put it into the body of a great white shark, then all of a sudden you've gone TOO FAR!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In almost any study of gender behavior, males tend to fall on the extremes of both ends (the good and bad). We soar higher, but also crash more. Males score the very top in math, but also tend to fill up the very bottom. Male behavior just plain seems to be more varied than females, at least when objectively measured.
It could be because over the course of human evolution, male roles have been more varied than females such that nature gambles more with the male brain so that males can find or create different niches and/or to avoid direct competition with other males.
Table-ized A.I.
It's 3 pages long, the last page is half references, the first page is a title page, the second page is half abstract.
It's got one page of content.
It fails to account for gender ratio in each of the job categories. It's not even mentioned other than to say it is comparable with other areas of science.
Wow... rather than look at logical behavioral and sociological differences in men and women that might result is this finding, the male response is women are just as bad at men but aren't held to account for their misdeeds. Hhmmmm. Interesting. So in how many societies on the planet are baby boys being slaughtered or dumped on orphanage porches to make way for female babies? How many men are being forced to stay in their houses under threat of death even when staying in that house may include starvation? How many men are surgically mutilated to ensure that they will never enjoy sex and remain faithful to their wives? How many men are being raped, mutilated, burned, disfigured or killed by women committing acts against society? How many men are being hired by women for their large bulges and rippling muscles? How many men have to deal in a daily battle of sexist, matriarchal social norms that cause them to be members of the poorest classes in society, be burdened by frequent abandonment by women, left holding the bag for raising single parent families? You know, they used to keep statistics about Single Fathers who were abandoned by their wives, but the number was so ridiculously small that it disappeared into the statistical noise so they stopped tracking it. How many men have to deal with a female controlled medical system that caters to women's every sexual whim but virtually ignores even the most basic reproductive needs of men? You know... you guys are a bunch of whining ass hats who haven't even gone to the slightest trouble to come up with a world view that reflect anything that has to do with this space time continuum, talk about narrow minded and delusional.
Try this on, just as a possibility. For a woman to succeed in science she has to work 3 time harder than a man, undergo 3 times as much critical scrutiny by a male dominated peer review and sweat 3 times harder about getting it right in the first place. Consider men tend to be more competitive and women more collaborative, so men working more alone might be more tempted to fudge results because 1. They want to beat the competition and 2. There are fewer folks looking over their shoulders. Might it even be possible, that women have stronger social orientation then men and therefore a stronger sense of consequence for their actions. This would be consistent with research that suggest most female misconduct happens after menopause when estrogen drops and testosterone rises.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of snooty little self serving bitches out there who use sex as a way to get ahead. You just want to notice "That Girl" inn't getting patted on the back or "high fived" by the other women in the office for her behavior, because most of us want to succeed on our merits, intelligence and personal dignity, and we see a little trollop screwing her way to the top as a cheater. Winning is less important to us, that contributing and leaving things better than we found them. Perhaps that is the important difference between women and men in general. Winning is great, winning at all costs, not so much.
At first glance I thought the title said "Mad Scientists More Prone To Misconduct" and thought this could be an interesting article.
I'm sure AC was deliberately being misogynistic, but I assumed the first guy was trying to be funny. I shake my head at the insightful mod, though.
I'm a little disappointed that they didn't conduct a parallel study where they asked a random sampling of people the same question, though.
The real question is: What were the genders of the researchers who posted this study to begin with? Maybe the study itself is a paradox, or at least self-fulfilling.
if ($question !~ m/bb|[^b]{2}/i) { die(); }
If we're to argue that 9 females is enough to judge the entire population by, then we might want to tell every statistician that they're wrong about, well, everything.
Excuse me, but I've been in business settings now for nearly 40 years... I've never, ever seen a woman pat a man's ass, wait... there was a pediatrician and the man was about 14 months old... but that's it. Guys, face it. Take responsibility for it. Just own the simple fact that testosterone is an amazingly powerful chemical. Here's a trick, give estrogen to a biological male... sexual impulse goes BYE BYE. Give testosterone to a biological female, she becomes a freaking sex fiend. Its not your fault, testosterone is a way powerful chemical. But for the love of Jebus don't try to suggest that there is a double standard here. Women seldom stalk men, the other way can't be said. 99.99999% of all sexual harassment is committed by men, and the woman who commits the 0.00001% is hyper testosteronal, uber competitive and scares the men around her every bit as much as alpha males scare the women around him.
If you haven't bothered watching men talk into women's breasts like they must have microphones in the nipples, or the Pavlovian drooling that so many men have in the presence of women with large mammaries, then you can't honestly judge how it feels to be a woman who feels like men are stripping her naked with their eyes. Its disconcerting and terribly uncomfortable outside the bedroom. I do understand, and I'm not belittling men. I'm just saying, rather than spending all your energy defending your ideological turf, stop for a moment and put yourself in someone else's pumps, to see what it must be like to get all that unwanted attention. SHOW A TINY BIT OF EMPATHY.
Oh, so it's only ok for feminists to stereotype?
Oh yeah, because everyone knows that women scientists like to work in their lingerie. Women in the middle east wear black gunny sacks, and the men still piss all over themselves to get a glimpse of fingernail... dude, its your hormones, your erection, your behavior, blaming other people because you have poor self control is like blaming fast food because it tastes good. That's the way its made, welcome to biology. Now take responsibility for your behavior.
Oh yeah, because everyone knows that the uterus contains an invisibility field... sorry girls, I know, we all took the oath not to tell the men about the powers of the uterus, but its time they understood just what they're up against. At least I didn't mention the nipple death rays... Oops!
You have a valid point, how ever it was an example. The point is if a woman did touch a man I highly doubt anything would happen even if the man complained. I'm not going to blame chemicals or nature I'm just commenting on the fact of the matter.
Ya ...... I love seeing responses which contain NONE of the points I mentioned. I don't even understand your point because it's based off what you didn't read and couldn't assume. I"m literally amazed you pulled that reply out of no where.
Wow... rather than look at logical behavioral and sociological differences in men and women that might result is this finding, the male response is women are just as bad at men but aren't held to account for their misdeeds.
They merely mentioned a few alternate possibilities. The rest of that paragraph is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with whether or not those possibilities are realistic. It's just, "Women endured and continue to endure sexism far more than men." How did you believe that that was relevant at all? Talk about off-topic.
Try this on, just as a possibility.
That's another possibility. The difference between you and me, though, is that I won't go on an irrelevant rant to try to 'disprove' it.
You've made a large number of presumptions here, most of which don't hold water. The first is that life sciences have been dominated by men for many decades and only now are beginning to get access from women. I personally had three girl friends who went to prestigious schools (Cal Tech, Stanford and Carnegie Melon) in the 70s and did very well in Biological Studies receiving Masters and PhDs degrees. Each woman was sat down and told that nobody would hire them. Nobody would fund them. That they exactly 0 future in life science and that their only avenue of expression in the field was to go into medicine. All three women became doctors.
Even today, women only account for less than 38% of the life science researchers. So the fraud finding among female scientists being 12% suggests a 3X lower fraud rate than their male counterparts. They do have to work harder in life science which is still male dominated. The people who will review your work are men. The people who set the directions for rewarding researchers are men. Pretty much all the rule in life science are made by men. The competition is fierce, funding is a winner take all proposition and they only fund publishers of successful research. Men get the lion's share of research dollars. So pretty much everything you said is simply refuted by the facts.
Things may change in the future, but this is the current state of affairs.
Please show me the woman who is working 180 hours a week.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Your extremely misogynistic views as well as your poor usage of English suggests you're an Islamist.
I knew a woman who complained of sexual harassment when she was asked why she became an engineer. Some are just too sensitive.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The thought a woman in "life sciences" would have any measure of the futility in verbosity, expressed thusly, I rest my case.
The Vagina Lobby! you just made me blow peanuts out my nose... owww! So what exactly is a Vagina Lobby??? A place for Vaginas to go and wait while a Penis movie is playing? The all powerful vagina lobby... oh yeah baby! Like if that existed there'd be insured women's reproductive rights insurance before a man's right to fixing erectile dysfunction. But I don't see that, damn Vagina Lobby must be sleeping on the job! Friend, I don't know what planet you're from but women in the United States (at least) have about seven strikes against them, and to suggest for a second, that men have it worse in this society shows both a clear lack of empathy and a relationship to physical reality.
Whats really happening is that women are actually JUST beginning to equalize things and men are complaining that they've lost a 10% slice from their 100% Control pie. I can see where that would be upsetting and completely unfair. Guys should have that 100% control. Only they don't, and eventually its gonna be 50/50. So rather than bemoaning a mythical lobby comprised of female sex organs (that is just so wrong on so many levels), perhaps you might consider working to ensure that the transfer of power serves everyone equally and that the men and women of the future actually get a fair shot at having a great life. Or you can piss and moan that its not 1950 any more. Good luck with that.
Show me a statistic, or you're just making crap up...
Oh yeah, because everyone knows that women scientists like to work in their lingerie. Women in the middle east wear black gunny sacks, and the men still piss all over themselves to get a glimpse of fingernail... dude, its your hormones, your erection, your behavior, blaming other people because you have poor self control is like blaming fast food because it tastes good. That's the way its made, welcome to biology. Now take responsibility for your behavior.
Better put than I managed - thanks Genda...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Depends on how pretty the man or woman, and whether the hittee is straight or gay... but yeah, pretty much.
Alternatively, women face a much greater burden to be taken seriously in their profession than men do, and less leeway leads to cleaner habits.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
All I can think while scrolling through this trainwreck is, "oh. this thread again."
Come on, Slashdot, let's hear ALL OVER AGAIN about how a particular demographic has myriad unfair advantages over others, and yet mysteriously, has not managed to leverage those advantages into a superior social or economic position. Do your worst.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I just wanted to say that I fervently hope that Ferric Fang goes by the nickname 'Iron'.
This isn't a formal proof read essay or document, it's a quick post.
Okay, let me put the dots a wee bit closer so you can follow the line. Women aren't meat. Women aren't things. They are fully functional, distinct human beings complete with rights. If the law allows a woman to legally walk done the street buck naked, she has the right to do so without you attacking her because you refuse to put your libido on a short leash. A woman's choice of social presentation is not a pass on your ability to function in a social manner. Sorry. I know its not fair, but you're the one with the outtie and keeping in check is YOUR responsibility, not the lady's. Is that clearer, do you understand now.
Oh, please all you want. Men do have problems, but being treated worse than women is not one of them.
So in how many societies on the planet are baby boys being slaughtered or dumped on orphanage porches to make way for female babies? How many men are being forced to stay in their houses under threat of death even when staying in that house may include starvation? How many men are surgically mutilated to ensure that they will never enjoy sex and remain faithful to their wives? How many men are being raped, mutilated, burned, disfigured or killed by women committing acts against society?
So you're saying women are less prone to scientific conduct because they don't want to be slaughtered in an orphanage? I guess that makes sense.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Mates were taken by the best of the hunters and gatherers for thousands of generations before the cathode ray tube was available. Taken, by the males who could survive and provide. Nature saw fit that the male's predisposition to more muscle mass trumps the females primary responsibility as child-bearer ..... different advantages that magnified in a two parent family. Pre-civilized society, the man's physical advantage was a tremendous opportunity to dominate the weaker matriarch. Physically inferior, the woman had to work twice as hard on the intangibles: cunning, strategy, and treachery. That said, a man's reputation as a risk taker is well documented. Consult any insurance industry actuarian.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Am I the only one that read the title as "Mad Scientists More Prone To Misconduct" and said to myself "Duh?"
So you're not belittling men, you're just claiming that they simply can't help it because of their inferior chemical addled minds? That's almost word for word the same "logic" used by patronizing racists to justify their belief that blacks are mentally inferior.
The chance of a male or female to be sexually assaulted during their life is 1 in 6 for both both genders. Related to that women are more likely to abuse, more likely to commit abuse, commit more severe abuse on average, and to use a weapon than men. The reason you see such disparity in crime statistics is because the entire legal and judicial system is so absurdly tilted in favor of women that it's practically a kangaroo court; in many areas a man can't even be considered a victim of certain crimes because of how the laws are worded, and in the rare case a woman is prosecuted (assuming the rarer still case that she's actually convicted) women recieve incredibly disproportionately lenient sentencing compared to men.
As for all that "unwanted attention"... have you actually ever seen women in the real world? Women are no better than men, they just get a free pass because men are expected to like it or shut up.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The chance of a male or female to be sexually assaulted during their life is 1 in 6 for both both genders.
[citation needed]
In fact the sources I can find say a woman is about 5x more likely to be sexually assaulted among population 15 and over.
About the same ratio holds for sexual harassment at work.
You're going to ask for a citation in the most pretentious asshole way possible, while claiming you've found contradicting sources, and not provide those sources yourself? Let me take a guess, your sources also follow the trend of increasing absurdity by claiming 90%+ underreporting rates, right?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
[citation needed]
is a rather standard way to ask for references in online discussions. For example:
Usage in Discussion
Since gaining its catchphrase status, "citation needed" has been used in online discussion forums to humorously point out biased or baseless statements made by others. The xkcd forum thread that resulted from the 2007 comic strip provides early examples of the [citation needed] within forums, e.g., from one response:
Just think of how this could apply to memes?
So I herd u leik Mudkips? [citation needed]
I shot a man in Reno. [citation needed]
ONE CAN NOT SIMPLY WALK INTO MORDOR. [citation needed]
Examples of Usage in Forums
Slashdot: example
Digg: example
Something Awful: example
At this point the standard thing to do would be to comment on the fact that you must be a new user here, but not using quite those words.
p.s. and you still haven't provided references, since your numbers are clearly made up.
Sorry. I wasn't really serious. I should have been more clear about that. Maybe a ;). My point is that the sample is non-statistical in nature. There are many possible explanation of why the reports would be skewed. Included in this would be reasons why one group of the other was being more prone to being caught.
I know gender issues are really challenging subject, especially in science. I think the exchange here highlights the point. The direct meaning of what I wrote is that men are not even good at cheating. It is interpreted as bias because of the stereotypes in the culture. The accurate interpretation is that I'm not very good at making a point.
In all honesty I know lots of scientists, Some are really good at what they do some aren't. Gender does not make an appreciable difference from what I have noticed. With older scientists, now near retirement age, what I have seen is that all the women are quite good. I think this is because only the really good ones could succeed despite the biases. Of course this is very anecdotal and I am no expert in judging scientists.
Two can play at this game. Genital mutilation is still regularly practiced on males in the US. Women are more physically violent in relationships (see any of the 200+ studies on this topic), but men are ridiculed if they ever complain about it, are arrested if they report it to the police, and any defensive action will result in a prison sentence.
Single fathers are rare because the legal system overwhelmingly favors taking children away from their father. Divorce is similar. The homeless are almost entirely men because there is far more government support for poor women. Women's reproductive health is a medical specialty paid for by insurance, while male contraceptives haven't fundamentally changed for a thousand years and "men's health" isn't really a thing (beyond some rare doctor's individual interest).
Something that is likely most relevant to Slashdot's user base is society's expectation that men drive the entire courtship process, and suffer countless painful rejections by women. Men are also pushed into the dangerous or unhealthy jobs, while society is perfectly accepting of women as homemakers.
Heck, 60% of men throughout history never had surviving children, so society has always treated men as expendable. Men are competitive because the prize for first place is one or more women of your choice and a position of authority, second place is being first place's servant, and third place is dead. Men have to go big or go home, so I'm not particularly surprised that this mentality would lead to academic misconduct. OTOH, men tend to be in more senior positions than women since feminism is somewhat recent, so that would skew the results. (It also skews the "three times harder" nonsense, as does maternity leave and the tendency of women to not negotiate salary or pursue jobs with long hours but high pay.)
right after you show me your tits?
Winning is great, winning at all costs, not so much.
Well, you're never going to rule the world with that attitude!
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
It's a very male dominated field of course women are going to be crossing every "t" and dotting every "i". Take any field where a particular gender is going to have a hard time as a peer and I can guaranDAMNtee you that gender will have a lower rate of misconduct.
A remarkable 88% of faculty members who committed misconduct were men, or 63 out of 72 individuals, or not large enough of a sample size to mean anything.
"Try this on, just as a possibility."
Calm down. Don't get your knickers in a twist.
According to OP, this analysis was done by three "microbiologists of wrongdoing". I would not place much faith in their accuracy. Unless I am mistaken, they belong to the same professional organization as the "physicists of pillage".
There used to be strong religious taboos and social morays that kept people faithful, but after the sexual revolution of the 60s and cheap and effective birth control, the gloves are now pretty much off.
...and the youngins used to respect their elders.
Giacomo Casanova was a real guy, you know?
And the fact that the ten commandments have to mention infidelity TWICE, while murder only once, indicates how much of that was going around (and kept going around) WAY before "the 60s".
Actually, there are some excellent articles on primate behavior that suggest there are many reasons for infidelity among both sexes. Its not to hard to figure out why women are sneakier... think people, men outweigh women by 50% or more and have twice the muscle mass. If your spouse can kill you with their bare hands,you tend to unconsciously avoid circumstances where that behavior might be expressed. Duh! Many women are taught from an early age to marry a good provider, but when Mr. Oh My Gawd shows up... stuff happens.
Why go down to the biological level or even psychological level? Women ARE better at social interaction. That's it.
Human relationships (including love triangles, rectangles etc.) are literally exactly that - any relationship between two or more individuals.
End of story.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...and confirmation bias.
Also, the article is VERY light on data and heavy on rationalization for its theories.
But let's address the "scientific/engineering academia" issue first.
An overwhelming 88% of faculty members committing
misconduct were male, compared with 69% of postdocs, 58%
of students, and 42% of other research personnel (Fig. 1). The
male-female distribution of postdocs and students corresponds
with the gender distribution of postdocs and students in science
and engineering fields (4).
"88% of male faculty members" is clearly NOT a trend.
In all other cases male-female distribution of misconduct MATCHES the general male-female distribution.
If anything, this indicates that faculty members in general are held to higher standards of scrutiny.
Or that students and postdocs are held to lower standards than the faculty members - if you want to look at it that way.
So, no. Neither men nor women commit more misconduct than "their average fair share".
Now... the other thing.
This is a clear case of a study NOT finding results it went looking for, so instead it changes the goal.
I.e. Percentages match in the case of "all science and engineering fields" - let' narrow the field to only "life sciences".
Whoomp! There it is! There are more misconducts among males in general, than there are males in life sciences.
Ergo - Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct.
Hold on a second... I do not think it means what they think it means.
There are 58% of male students committing misconduct, but only about 45% of students in life sciences are male?
There are 69% of male postdocs committing misconduct, but only about 61% of postdocs in life sciences are male?
There are a whooping 88% of male faculty members committing misconduct, but only about 71% of faculty members in life sciences are male?
Where does any of that say how many male (or female) LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCHERS (of any academic level) have committed misconduct? NOWHERE.
They are taking the entire set A, extracting a subset B out of it, then comparing the sizes of incidences of characteristic C in the entire set TO THE SIZE OF THE SUBSET B.
Not to the incidence of C in the subset B.
I.e. "Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct."
Oh and...
Those 72 cases (9 of them women) of misconduct in academia, women being only one third of their "predicted number among life sciences faculty"?
Life sciences faculty has male-female distribution of about 70% to 30%, right?
70% of 72 people is 50 people.
88% is 63 people.
That's 13 more guys "then there should be", or 13 less gals, when using the faulty math comparing 88% overall numbers with unrelated numbers in life sciences.
Compared to "ALL science and engineering" distribution of 74-26%, or 53-19 people - those 63 guys are 10 more guys "than there should be".
You wanna know how many "science, engineering, and health doctorate holders employed full time in academic institutions" article's main source claims there were in 2006?
72.500 females, 161.200 males, 233.700 total.
Out of that, 39,3%, 30,9% and 33,5%, respectfully, were employed in life sciences.
Or 28492, 49810, and 78289.
10 more guys "than there should be". See? There they are, right there.
Forty-nine thousand eight hundred AND TEN.
Assholes.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
No, asking for sources or *gasp* investing a little of your own intellectual effort of your own and providing your own sources contradicting the original claim was standard. [Citation Needed] has pretty much always been one step shy of trolling at best, especially since it's most often used as a drive by or as part of the "accuse the other guy of what you're guilty of" trick...
Like yourself, for example. You start out with [citation needed] before claiming you had sources proving something else. Sources that you didn't provide then and still haven't provided now, even though you've expanded to borderline ad hominem claiming my "numbers are clearly made up" despite it being literally impossible to NOT find proof they aren't IF you'd done so much as a Feeling Lucky google search for "one in six male sexual assault".
As for your claims that women are 5x as likely to be victims of sexual assault... There's a little thing called a "sanity test". Basically you run a rough working of the numbers and see if the result is either definitively impossible or otherwise sufficiently implausible as to warrant further investigation. Now you claim your still undisclosed sources place a woman's odds of sexual assault over the age of 15 at 5x that of a man's, that means either women's odds are much higher than the odds I gave for men or men's odds are much lower than what I provided. The latter flat out fails the sanity test without even needing to think about it because the rate of confirmed crimes is already high enough to support a 1 in 6 rate of victimization for men, which leaves the former.
If a mans odds are 1 in 6 (ie ~16.66%), which you're about to be literally BURIED in the proof of regardless of the previous sanity test, that would make a woman's 5x greater odds ~83.3%. In other words it would be virtually a statistical certainty that every single woman in the united states would at some point in her life be sexually assaulted. As before the numbers completely fail the sanity test unless you also follow the claim that upwards of 90% of all sexual assaults are completely unreported and never discovered... but THAT in turn completely fails yet another sanity test: the nation's population simply cannot support the absolute number of offenses that would be required to satisfy those probabilities. With the confirmed facts about condom use and physical violence it's just not possible for that quantity of sexual assaults to be taking place in utter secrecy, it'd basically be the sexual assault equivalent of living in Buffy The Vampire Slayer or renting a room in Halliwell Manor and never noticing anything supernatural.
Now if you'd like to rejoin the real world, where we don't have entire suburbs dedicated to 24/7 mass raping women in utter secrecy, here are some ACTUAL facts:
Dube, S.R., Anda, R.F., Whitfield, C.L., et al. (2005). Long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse by gender of victim. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 28, 430–438.
Briere, J. & Elliot, D.M. (2003). Prevalence and psychological sequelae of self-reported childhood physical and sexual abuse in a general population sample of men and women. Child Abuse & Neglect, 27, 1205–1222.
Holmes, W.C., & Slap, G.B. (1998). Sexual abuse of boys: Definition, prevalence, correlates, sequelae, and management. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 280, 1855–1862.
Lisak, D., Hopper, J. & Song, P. (1996). Factors in the cycle of violence: Gender rigidity and emotional constriction. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9, 721–743.
Finkelhor, D., Hotaling, G., Lewis, I. A., & Smith, C. (1990). Sexual abuse in a national survey of adult men and women: Prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors. Child Abuse & Neglect, 14, 19–28.
Holmes, G.R., Offen, L., & Waller, G. (1997). See n
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
a new analysis by three microbiologists
Men or women?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
How many men have to deal in a daily battle of sexist, matriarchal social norms that cause them to be members of the poorest classes in society
It is true that there tends to be more men then women on the top societies. However, it is also true that there tends to be more men than women on the very bottom of societies. Just look at the prison population in ... well ... anywhere. Look at who gets to die in battle for their country, or for their clan, or for their family. Look at who lives on the streets, at least in western societies.
For a woman to succeed in science she has to work 3 time harder than a man, undergo 3 times as much critical scrutiny by a male dominated peer review and sweat 3 times harder about getting it right in the first place.
There was a study done on all new Danish professorships some years ago (I think i covered 5 years). Only 25% of them were given to women. However, for 50% of the positions, there were no female applicants. When the number of applications were taken into consideration, female applicants were around twice as likely to get the job (I don't remember the exact number). This was before the Danish universities started discriminating against male applicants by giving the departments an economic bonus for hiring a female professor.
Mind you, the US seems to have much more sexism than Europe*, at least from what I can gather in comments online, so that could be the reason for the differences in outlook.
* OK, at least Denmark. Given how long time it took me to figure out how different it was in the US, I can't really talk about any other countries.
All day long, a tough gang of astrophysicists...
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Something that is likely most relevant to Slashdot's user base is society's expectation that men drive the entire courtship process, and suffer countless painful rejections by women.
Actually, this means that as a man, I get to be in control of the process. I (usually!) don't have to deal with random creepy women coming on to me at all times, but only the ones I want to deal with (a beautiful woman acting aloof usually isn't because she's a bitch, it's a time management technique). I can schedule dates at times and places convenient to me (especially important on the first few, since there's a risk of her not showing up). There are thousands of reasons a woman might "reject" you that have nothing to do with them thinking that you're a loser (maybe she's late for something, and doesn't have time to talk?).
Where's the downside again?
"Excuse me, but I've been in business settings now for nearly 40 years"
well, you're anecdote will certianly wrap this issue up.
". Take responsibility for it. "
No. I don't behave like that, and I refuse to be held responsible simple becasue I am the same gender as some of these assholes.
Also,l I refuse to be help responsible for what happened to the American Indians, since i was not alive at the time.
I will not be responsible for slavery, having never owned a slave.
So stop trying to make all men guilty.
" 99.99999%"
do you understand how percentages work?
BTW: 40 to 60% of women report harassment, 10 to 20% of men, so it is not 1 out of 10 million.
Harassment is hard in that the grey area is very wide, and more charismatic a person is the less like their behavior will be considered harassment.
Example: The Charismatic man complements you on a new hair cut, and its fine. The "creepy' guy does it and it's unwanted attention, or harassment.
The are a lot of 'harassment' behavior that when happening to men aren't considered harassment.
The example isn't given to excuse any behavior, just to underline how hoard these number are to determine.
" then you can't honestly judge how it feels to be a woman "
but you can judge all men?
"be like to get all that unwanted attention"
and you fail like so many HR people have failed.
Don't do that,many thing that you list as unwanted are wanted by most men. So telling them to walk a mile in there shoes is naive as best.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I glanced at the headline, and misread it as "Mad scientists more prone to misconduct", and thought, what's surprising about that?
mark "mwuhahahahahahaha!"
Surely if the headline was "Female Scientists More Prone to Misconduct" and someone comments that men can get away with it because they're part of the club, you would be lashing out against their lack of interest in investigating behavioral and sociological differences with just as much vigor?
So in how many societies on the planet are <long list of grievances but with gender roles reversed>. You know... you guys are a bunch of whining ass hats who haven't even gone to the slightest trouble to come up with a world view that reflect anything that has to do with this space time continuum, talk about narrow minded and delusional.
Just curious, how many /. readers do you think are directly involved in burning and raping women and female "circumcision" (not suggesting it's as innocuous, just brevity)?
Try this on, just as a possibility. For a woman to succeed in science she has to work 3 time harder than a man, undergo 3 times as much critical scrutiny by a male dominated peer review and sweat 3 times harder about getting it right in the first place.
Where does that number come from? What does it mean to work three times harder? Are you suggesting women are working 24 hour days in the science fields while men are working 8 hours? Three times as much critical scrutiny? I'd be happy if my papers were read by three times as many people. Sweat three times harder? Maybe you should be more honest and just admit you pulled a number out of your ass because it sounds good and fits with your fantastical preconceived notions.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of snooty little self serving bitches out there who use sex as a way to get ahead. You just want to notice "That Girl" inn't getting patted on the back or "high fived" by the other women in the office for her behavior, because most of us want to succeed on our merits, intelligence and personal dignity, and we see a little trollop screwing her way to the top as a cheater. Winning is less important to us, that contributing and leaving things better than we found them. Perhaps that is the important difference between women and men in general. Winning is great, winning at all costs, not so much.
So, you're all for women getting ahead (because it's unfair to work, what was your number? 3 times as hard?) except when they do it in a way you don't approve. It can't be because they play the game better than the dungeon masters. We're talking science here, getting to a position where you can lead the direction of research isn't a win for the self, it's a win for everyone. And if we are going to expand the scope to include what is outside of science, would you be such a defender of dignity towards someone who, say, tried to make ends meet standing on a street corner dancing with a sign? I personally think that's very demeaning, but I would never wish ill upon them for doing so.
Maybe by dignity you refer to sex. My theory on why slut shaming is so ingrained in many women is because they see their sex as an asset to hold power and can't stand to see other's spend their assets and exercise that power.
That sounded pretty misogynistic, didn't it? Well your comment is equally misandristic and I have to wonder if it's copypasta flamebait and if I just fell for it.
More Twoson than Cupertino
The report title does not describe the actual analysis done;
Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientic Misconduct
The main issue is that the source of the statistics is the ORI of scientists found to have committed misconduct. These numbers do not reflect any of the following;
1. Misconduct not noticed
2. Misconduct caught by fellow scientists
3. Misconduct not reported
4. Misconduct not investigated
5. Misconduct not proven.
The more accurate title of the paper would be as follows;
Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Found by the OSI to Have Committed Scientific Misconduct.
Since they only looked at researchers found by the ISO to have committed misconduct that is the only conclusion that can be drawn. To attempt to extend that to all scientists who have committed misconduct would only be valid if all scientists who committed misconduct were caught and convicted by the OSI. Since we all know that not everyone is caught and convicted that extension is patently false. I wonder if such blatant misrepresentation of facts would be considered misconduct.
It reminds me of a joke;
An economist, an engineer and a mathematician are on a train to Glasgow. The economist looks out the window at some black sheep in a field and says, "All sheep in Scotland are black." The engineer looks out the window and says "Some of the sheep in Scotland are black.". The mathematician looks out, sighs and says "In Scotland there exists at least one field in which the sheep are black on at least one side."
Considering all they observed was one field and one side of each sheep that is the only absolutely correct conclusion.
A Woman without clothes is nude.
A Man without clothes is naked.
Offtopic, but I had always referred to the difference between nude and naked as context. One gets nude to pose for a camera or go to the beach. One gets naked to shower or show the doctor something. One is the point, and the other is a transition between two states of dress.
More Twoson than Cupertino
You seem to be under the misapprehension that the OP said "Male nurses and educators more prone to misconduct." Check yourself.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Logic has no place here, it's an excuse to bash the patriarchy! TAKE THAT SOCIETY!
More Twoson than Cupertino
Actually, the study included also papers retracted due to suspected fraud. I can imagine that people, especially male ones, are more cautious about telling suspicion of fraud about the work of women than on the work of men. So there might actually be such a systemic bias in the data.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
A bit of googling came up with this page where some statistical data is given:
The odds a driver stopped by the police for speeding will be ticketed are 1 in 1.37 (73%). Men fare slightly worse than women, with 1 in 1.34 (75%) male drivers getting tickets compared to 1 in 1.44 (69%) female drivers.
The source of the numbers (revealed if you click on them on the web page) is given as:
Durose MR. Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by Police, 2002. Bureau of Justice Statistics. June 2006.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
He didn't claim that Mao Tse-Tung wrote the art of war. He claimed that Mao appreciated the deceptive tactics of his mother and he appreciated the Art of War (which uses many deceptive tactics). Frankly, I don't know if this is factually correct (though it's plausible).
Reading comprehension around here is really pathetic.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Male-dominated forum completely unable to accept empirical data with deprecating implications for males! Frothing rationalizations, irrelevant diatribes, and repeated demonstrations of a failure to even read the summary ensue...
I doubt this has anything to do with bashing of any kind.
A cock-up is always a much more likely reason.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I've been in situations at work where a female has told a dirty joke and everyone laughs, but when a guy tells a similar dirty joke it's straight to HR and either out the door or some sort of reprimand. (I've also seen where one guy can say almost anything, sexist or sexual etc, and everyone laughs and just says, 'Well, that's Marty for you!' where as another male saying something not quite as bad gets his nuts in a bind over it). I'm not discounting that men would be the main perpetrators, because that's usually the case from what I've seen myself, but that the results might be skewed because of the fact men wouldn't report some sorts of misconduct done by men. I might add, a girl I used to work with was constantly getting propositioned by her female boss. She was afraid to make a complaint in case she lost her job. So, ones persons misconduct is another persons free pass. (And I'm damned if I know how Marty gets away with saying the sorts of things he does ... but everyone just lets it slide!)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Confirmation bias? More like cognitive dissonance -- on your part.
I.e. Percentages match in the case of "all science and engineering fields" - let' narrow the field to only "life sciences". Whoomp! There it is! There are more misconducts among males in general, than there are males in life sciences.
You either didn't read the article carefully or didn't understand it. From the article: "...nearly all instances of misconduct investigated by the ORI involved research in the life sciences, and the proportion of male trainees among those committing misconduct was greater than would be predicted from the gender distribution of life sciences trainees. Males also were substantially overrepresented among faculty committing misconduct in comparison to their proportion among science and engineering faculty overall, and the difference is even more pronounced for faculty in the life sciences (5)." (Emphasis mine). In other words, they weren't cherry picking a damn thing. They didn't need to limit it to life sciences to find the disproportionate misconduct. That's just where it was most egregious. Playing with the numbers to make them say something different isn't going to change the findings. I don't even understand your bizarrely cryptic note at the end about the fact that there are 49,810 -- ZOMG TEN -- men in life sciences. It doesn't seem that's even an actual literal number, but instead something you got to by plugging percentages into your calculator. This proves.... what, exactly?
Perhaps instead of feeling like your masculinity is somehow threatened by the fact that in the upper echelons of academia, EXTREMELY PRIVILEGED AND POWERFUL MEN tend to be worse actors than their extremely privileged and powerful female peers, you could instead put your energy into, I don't know, something actually useful. And if you're afraid that the numbers about a specific subset of powerful people might lead people to draw unfair conclusions about your gender as a whole, well, gee. What on earth would make you think people might respond so unfairly. Perhaps, I don't know, maybe the fact that this is what people do to women all the time?? How about that -- maybe the problem, then, isn't the facts, but the sexism. Almost like the feminists have a point or something.
Sorry for the delay. I'm not really the master of my own waking hours these days.
Also, sorry if the following seems smug, condescending or unnecessarily sarcastic.
Plain text + Poe's law + hostile media effect + confirmation bias does that.
Aaaand I guess that saying "See, this is why you are wrong - it's in your brain." doesn't help much either.
Just trying to set the stage and explain myself as a "trying to be helpful asshole" instead of a "condescending jerkoff".
Also, sorry for the length of this reply. Just trying to be extra clear this time around. No guarantees though... It's late and I've been yawning for quite some time now.
First, I must correct you on the cognitive dissonance part. I do not think it means what you think it means.
It's either that or this is the case of a bit of projection happening here.
And from that second paragraph of yours... I'm afraid that is exactly the case.
Perhaps instead of feeling like your masculinity is somehow threatened by the fact that ... MEN tend to be worse actors ... you could instead put your energy into... something actually useful. And if you're afraid that the numbers about a specific subset of powerful people might lead people to draw unfair conclusions about your gender as a whole, well, gee. What on earth would make you think people might respond so unfairly. Perhaps, I don't know, maybe the fact that this is what people do to women all the time?? How about that -- maybe the problem, then, isn't the facts, but the sexism. Almost like the feminists have a point or something.
You clearly went full emotional there and I'm a bit inclined to give you a pass on those ad hominems.
If for no other reasons then for the fact that your assumptions of my "masculinity being somehow threatened" made me laugh.
My gripe with the article is related purely to it being yet another example of bad science - cause there's plenty of that out there already.
Then again I simply MUST point out a very dangerous error in your logic there. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here, I'm just rephrasing that last part up there.
Basically, you are saying "So what if bad statistics lead to faulty conclusions about one gender? People make faulty conclusions about other gender based on its "otherness" all the time."
Three wrongs somehow making a right.
It's OK to present bad science as facts, cause it's representing only MEN in a bad light. Which is OK.
Cause it's OK to be sexist against men - cause "people" are sexist against women.
Then, you follow that up with "Sexism is bad."
Screw facts. Sexism is OK because sexism IS. Sexism bad.
So basically, once that entire thing runs it course and cancels itself out it boils down to just "Screw facts".
And that really isn't much of a motto to live by.
they weren't cherry picking a damn thing. They didn't need to limit it to life sciences to find the disproportionate misconduct. That's just where it was most egregious.
Ugh... I am really sorry... but you are taking that quote out of context and using faulty logic on it.
However, the gender predominance varied according to academic
rank. An overwhelming 88% of faculty members committing
misconduct were male, compared with 69% of postdocs, 58%
of students, and 42% of other research personnel (Fig. 1). The
male-female distribution of postdocs and students corresponds
with the gender distribution of postdocs and students in science
and engineering fields (4). However, nearly all instances of misconduct
investigated by the ORI involved research in the life sciences,
and the proportion of male trainees among those committing
misconduct was greater than would be predicted from the
gender distribution of life sciences trainees. Males also were substantially
overrepresented among faculty committing misconduct
in comparison to their proportion among
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm replying late since you did, so I presume you don't have a problem with late replies. As humorous as I found your self-righteous preamble, I'll spare you mine.
Basically, you are saying "So what if bad statistics lead to faulty conclusions about one gender? People make faulty conclusions about other gender based on its "otherness" all the time."
Sigh... no. Nope. Not what I said, and not what I meant. There was some heavy sarcasm sprinkled in my last paragraph, and while sarcasm is difficult to translate from the written word, it was pretty damn blatant (and presumably the source of your odd note about "full emotional," which I'll chalk up to a combination of fatigue inhibiting reading comprehension and a veiled reference to quasi-ironic ableist humor rather than sexism). I'll try to explicate and see if that helps you out: my point was NOT, as you assume, that since sexism causes bad things to happen to women, therefore it serves you guys right, too. My point, rather, was twofold: first, I suspected (and still suspect) that you were willing to apply a harsher critical lens to this study because it happened to implicate the male gender (this is very common in society -- there's a lot of work I'm not going to rehash here going into the different ways that information about men is evaluated versus how information about women is evaluated -- this is part of how sexism is insidious and ubiquitous). Second, to the extent that you were implicitly fretting over any problems with using the study to draw broader conclusions about men in the abstract (and there is a valid concern there; assuming the study is factually valid -- and you've still yet to identify actual problems with it -- those facts don't tell us anything about the group of Men as a whole), it seemed an opportune time (particularly given all the unironic "wimmins is sneaky" comments getting crazy upmods left and right) to point out that, hey, what do you know, how about that, lazy thinking can be bad for men too. It was less a substantive point regarding the wrongness of sexism (to be clear, it's wrong no matter which way it cuts) than it was an implicit chastisement against hypocrisy, I suppose, though perhaps not entirely fair, as I can't *conclusively* prove from your comments that you're particularly sexist. So, yes, I made some assumptions about you, just as you made assumptions about me. It happens. I would've thought the relevant xkcd would have clued you in to the flippant tone, but different strokes and whatnot.
I'm going out of order here, but you brought up a point without finishing: whence the implicit accusation of cognitive dissonance in my post? Unless you're referring to your belief that I'm misreading the study, which results, rather embarrassingly, from an unfortunate **second** misreading on your part.
And it IS, unfortunately, another misreading. Here's your "gotcha":
Ugh... I am really sorry... but you are taking that quote out of context and using faulty logic on it.
Okay, first off, speaking as a philosophy major, it's like nails on a chalkboard when people misuse the word "logic" the way you just did. Good god please stop. If you want to tell me I'm misreading or misunderstanding it, go nuts. But the only "logic" I'm applying to it is implicit (the proof would go something like "abc words written in English have xyz meaning; the words set forth here are abc words words written in English; therefore, the words set forth here have xyz meaning," etc., etc. Boringly banal stuff. Unless you meant to make an epistemological point about assuming coherency and constancy and the existence of an objective universe and such, but I didn't get that vibe from your post. Let me know, however, if I'm wrong there and you really were trying to start a debate about whether or not language is an objectively meaningful communicative form, and/or whether or not you and I actually exist.) "Logic" doesn't mean any kind of argument. It refers to a v