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'Science Must Clean Up Its Act' (scientificamerican.com)
Our science community still struggles with diversity, equity, and inclusion issues, including systemic bias, harassment, and discrimination among other things, writes Heather Metcalf, mathematician, computer scientist, social scientist, and also the director of research for the Association for Women in Science. From her piece, in which she has shared both personal anecdotes and general examples, for the Scientific American: [...] Take the recent March for Science. Nearly two weeks ago, scientists and science supporters gathered in Washington, D.C, and around the globe to stand up for "robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity" and put forth a vision of science that "serves the interests of all humans, not just those in power." However, in its attempts to remain apolitical and objective, the march focused primarily on funding and communication aspects of its mission while losing sight of the need for a science that addresses human freedom and prosperity for all, not just the privileged. [...] In the early days of its organizing, the march offered up a strong statement of solidarity acknowledging the complacency with which the scientific community as a whole has handled issues that primarily impact marginalized communities: "many issues about which scientists as a group have largely remained silent -- attacks on black and brown lives, oil pipelines through indigenous lands, sexual harassment and assault, ADA access in our communities, immigration policy, lack of clean water in several cities across the country, poverty wages, LGBTQIA rights, and mass shootings are scientific issues. Science has historically -- and generally continues to support discrimination. In order to move forward as a scientific community, we must address and actively work to unlearn our problematic past and present, to make science available to everyone." This messaging was removed and replaced after much pushback, largely from white men, about the need to remain apolitical and objective. These debates resulted in many women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ scientists, and their allies feeling ostracized and even receiving disrespectful and hateful messages about their place in science generally and in M4S specifically. Rather than standing up for a science that is available to everyone, these conversations and the march itself merely served represent an exclusionary science by reinforcing longstanding, divisive norms within the scientific community, all in the name of objectivity..
A dog-whistle for "funded by taxes"...
Because some people's jobs are too important to be paid for voluntarily, by the willing people desiring the fruits of their labors.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is just a rant/op-ed.....at best
Science is facing a raft of politically-motivated studies, rigged or suppressed medical trials, false or irreproducible results are rampant. But the big problem is "lack of diversity"??
I would think if you demanded rigor and accountability for the actual science part of the job, you wouldn't have to worry too much about who was doing the work.
Of all the places SJW types should stay the hell out of, aside from politics, its science.
The article has such a focus on race and other "ism" bent agendas that it pointed out the exact reason why it wasn't valid. SCIENCE doesn't care. It is a process, not an agenda. Trying to bend science to a liberal agenda is just as bad as it being bent to a political power elite agenda.
Dumb, dumb, dumb...
In the three months leading up to the March for Science and in the days since, many in the scientific community engaged in heated debates about how political science and the march should be, especially around social justice issues. In the early days of its organizing, the march offered up a strong statement of solidarity acknowledging the complacency with which the scientific community as a whole has handled issues that primarily impact marginalized communities: “many issues about which scientists as a group have largely remained silent—attacks on black & brown lives, oil pipelines through indigenous lands, sexual harassment and assault, ADA access in our communities, immigration policy, lack of clean water in several cities across the country, poverty wages, LGBTQIA rights, and mass shootings are scientific issues. Science has historically—and generally continues to support discrimination. In order to move forward as a scientific community, we must address and actively work to unlearn our problematic past and present, to make science available to everyone.”
(Facepalm) I can't think of the words to describe how disgusting this is that some group of people would mix science and politics. The only point at which science might mix with politics is if politics is in opposition to science for political reasons. But this is different. This is pulling political issues into the scientific realm and that's just absolutely absurd and discredits science. NO NO NO. LGBT rights have NOTHING to do with science. Mass shootings have nothing to do with science. There is a reason why scientists are usually not politicians and vice versa.
We'll make great pets
Whiny social justice warrior demands science be primarily a political tool for her pet causes, complains more when told science is supposed to be apolitical about facts and reproducible experiments - and can't resist implying that those things are bad because she was told so by scary 'old white men'.
Maybe Heather Metcalf should shut the hell up and spend some time thinking about why the 'old white men' are right and she's a complete idiot. Scientific American does itself a disservice by letting her post this crap under their banner, blog page or not.
Any issue you may see with the sex ratio of scientists or treatment scientists tend to receive based on sex or gender, whether they're famous or toiling in obscurity, or sex or gender issues in the community at large... has nothing to do with whether or not science should a political arena. It should not. Science seeks facts and understanding, what we do with that is the arena of politics.
Yeah, I was about to shout "Bingo!" There's a difference between political activism and studying the world; there's also a difference between voluntary support, and compelled groupthink.
Scientists aren't known for going along with compelled groupthink, especially as disproving groupthink can make their career.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Wow. In general, I am sympathetic to the goals (although not always the rhetoric) of "social justice warriors"-- social justice is, in fact, something we should strive for, and I'm in favor of that part of the pledge of allegiance saying "with liberty and justice for all" as a goal that we should aim for, even if somethings we fall short of the mark.
But this article is just wacky. “many issues about which scientists as a group have largely remained silent—attacks on black & brown lives, oil pipelines through indigenous lands, sexual harassment and assault, ADA access in our communities, immigration policy, lack of clean water in several cities across the country, poverty wages, LGBTQIA rights, and mass shootings are scientific issues."
No, actually most of these just aren't "scientific issues". Scientists, of course, can and even should have opinions on these subjects, but, really, these aren't scientific issues-- these are social issues.
If these issues were left out of the march for science, there's a good reason: they didn't belong there. They are issues needing a consensus by society as a whole.
...have nothing to do with science. They have everything to do with the politicization of science, which turns science into something else.
Science: Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
Special interest groups: Yeah but woman and minorities and not white men and political correctness, how are you supporting that?
Science: Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
Special interest groups: Yeah I don't see how you're supporting our agenda on equal rights for human behavior etc.
Science: Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
Special interest groups: Science is discriminating against us! Down with "their" science.
The problem you see is that women have had equality of opportunity for decades, and have yet to reach parity by the metrics feminism chooses to measure (basically fraction of cushier highly paid positions held by women.) Any suggestion that this is due to the choices women make and / or natural aptitude is about 15 types is *ism and makes you literally Hitler. Thus the solution wasn't to give women the same opportunities, but to demand equality of outcome (or "equity") because god forbid being an overweight women with one leg should preclude you from winning an Olympic gold in the Men's 100 meters
I especially like the part where the pushback was "largely from white men", meaning that it can be safely ignored because their input doesn't count.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Some socially valuable things aren't profitable
Name one. All things are potentially profitable. There is a thriving private space industry now when it was claimed only governments could really explore space...
Also another side question, what does "socially valuable" have to do with science anyway? I think there is the root of your problem, and the problem of the current scientific community. Science is about building tools and fostering an understanding of an issue, without judgment or preconception. In that regard modern "science" is often anything but.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is it in a tobacco company's interest to pay for all of the facts of the research that merely correlates cancer with smoking
No - but it is in an *insurance companies* interest to know that. There is always some party who gains benefit from knowing the truth.
What's wrong with cases favouring *robustly funded* science?
As always, the certainly of graft, corruption, and the pushing to the side of REAL science in the rush to prove some assertion is true regardless of facts.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Scientists have scientific results and publish them; if you check Metcalf's scientific publication record, it's pretty much non-existent.
Science should "clean up its act" by making it clear that people like that are not scientists, don't speak for scientists, and aren't welcome in the scientific community.
Similarly, this felt like a lecture to scientists and those who associate with them. The lesson appeared to be "searching for answers is not enough. You must find the answers that support this specific agenda, otherwise your science is deficient." Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The responsibility is on the individual that wants to change these things to change them through their presence, their effort, and ultimately their exemplary contribution. Changing people's minds is that easy.
Unfortunately, people who are consumed with gender politics, panning for "microaggressions," and warrioring for socialish justiceness will never have the time to be a significant contributions to actual science that make a difference where it really matters. Instead they seek to make up artificial reasons why those who actually do scientific work and those that fund that work should be ashamed of themselves and their science. They want to change science into a slave to their political agenda. Circumventing the method that makes it science and enforcing a strict set of rules that ensure the output of any science meets their predetermined acceptability matrix.
In other words, these people think that science, just like language and behavior, should be beholden to their politics and nothing else. I can't think of anything more destructive to real science than than focusing on a political agenda first and then organizing science around it afterward.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
The inability to come up with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement is what separates astrology, social "science" and "climate science" from astronomy, biology and meteorology.
Whenever we want to start the science game we need:
1) a list of observations, if observed, would prove our hypothesis false;
2) an argument that the lack of those observations excludes all other explanations other than our own (including the null).
Ignoring this cornerstone of the scientific method leads to scientism, rather than science.
Equal opportunity, not equal outcome.
This is a key that is so often overlooked.
The article is right about several things. There are abuses, there is discrimination, and there is harassment. Those absolutely should be identified and eliminated.
However, we are talking about humans who have actual preferences. Even if opportunities are equal, people have preferences. When offered a formal dinner with plate choices of Steak, Fish, and Veggie entrees, the general popularity for steak isn't because of a "bias in the system".
Nobody seems to care that 99.6% of drywall installers are male, there aren't documentaries about how the drywall installation business is biased against women, or research how women have no chance to succeed in their drywall career. Same thing about 99.9% of bricklayers and stonemasons are male. There is a little discussion about how 99.5% of firefighters are male, there are a few more women in the ranks, but generally people accept that these are going to be male-dominated fields.
Similarly, there isn't much anger about how 91.1% of registered nurses are female, no outcry about how men don't want to be nurses. In fact it is the opposite, I know a few men who are nurses at a nearby hospital, and they talk about discrimination and bias the opposite way, against the males. Where is the outcry that 94.1% of childcare workers are women? Instead the outcry is about how men getting into child care must be quietly pedophiles and are potential rapists. Just like above, people accept that these are currently female-dominated fields. (150 years ago nursing was male dominated, but it shifted during the big wars a century ago. Shifts happen.)
Even though it is gender biased, computer programmers have been gradually drifting away from male dominated fields, from about 91% in 2007 down to about 82% today based on US DoL statistics. Some schools even report equalization of women to men graduating in CS and engineering, and a small number have seen it cross over completely with more women graduating than men.
The article includes discussion of LGBQ groups. The groups make up about 3.5% of Americans so it shouldn't be any surprise that they make up a tiny minority of scientists. The group makes up a tiny percent of the general population, so it would be quite surprising indeed if they were clustered into a specific career field.
So yes, I agree in general with the article that abuses, discrimination, and harassment need to be addressed. But like the grandparent post mentions, equal opportunity doesn't mean equal outcome. Some careers are more attractive to different genders, hence the male bricklayers and female childcare workers. Many science fields seem to be more attractive to certain groups and not to others, that is not inherently a problem.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
WHOA there. Whoa. If science supports discrimination, then you've suggested we ought to discriminate. You got the priority of these two issues backwards. If the science says it's true, it doesn't matter if it's unpleasent.
Scientists, for at least half a century, were really big on social darwinism. That meant the scientific community would just assume black people were dumber, or Poles were naturally servile or whatever based on speculation. If there were any doubts, you could always cite some social scientist who did a study to 'prove' it. WW2 ended all that, but you can still see remnants with books like "The Bell Curve" or James Watson's fairly recent racist comments.
Science is hard, doing good science is harder (we can see this because of numerous mistakes in scientific papers), and doing good sociology might be the hardest of all. Because of this, there is a lot of space where we don't clearly know the answer, but unscrupulous people can take advantage of this and make it look like the science supports their agenda. It's hard to say, "We don't know" and it's hard to hear it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."