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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..
I've read the article twice, but I still think I'm reading it wrong. Does he say that science should be more objective and apolitical, then complain that it is object and apolitical?
Life is too short and too important to { take seriously | use windows }.
Take Gender Dysphoria as an example. It is roughly just a mental state where one feels that one's secondary sexual characteristics don't conform to one's feelings about which gender you are. It is essentially a mental illness. That's all it really is. Does anyone seriously think she's going to support Science when the evidence says that it's a mental illness, not just an opinion? Unlikely...
This is politics, plain and simple. Once you understand that, everything is easier to understand. There is no political push for real, objective science because the cold truths about the universe would "trigger" every political faction in modern politics at some point, everywhere from Communists, to anarchists and in between.
The replication crisis is present in every field. Publish or perish creates fucked up incentives that guarantee shit science.
Whatever this bint is whining about is not a real problem, at least not at the importance and scale that she claims it is. If she wanted people to take systemic bias seriously, she should clean her own house first. The social sciences are little more than rationalization factories for fringe political ideologies. If you didn't talk like an activist zealot, maybe you would have some credibility, and people wouldn't balk at being associated with you.
Of course, for these activists, that is a feature, not a bug. They claim to speak for all women and minorities, people want nothing to do with them, they then use that as evidence that people want nothing to do with all women and minorities. It's a self-perpetuating, self-aggrandizing delusion.
...and at worst it is guilty of what it sets out to campaign against because it dismisses the idea that scientists should "remain apolitical and objective" as coming from "white men". This a violation of the basic rule of science that you consider ideas on their merits not based on who said them. Ironically it is also a textbook example of racism and sexism because it suggests we value an idea less because of the race and gender of the people suggesting it.
Her willingness to put her own personal beliefs before scientific values shows a complete lack of objectivity, This, together with her openly racist and sexist rant, does suggest that she might actually have a point though. This sort of behaviour is completely unacceptable for someone calling themselves a scientist and so if science is going to clean up its act giving her an education in basic scientific principles would be a good place to start.
most of these just aren't "scientific issues"
If there is a cause and an effect, it's science.
Why do you think that people have a problem with "global warming"? The same can be said of astronomy too. It's just that there are no highly disruptive public policy agendas being driven by it.
I fully realize that everything we think we know about exo-planets may be complete bullshit. There's no way of really knowing until we actually go out there. Nobody that thinks they are "scientists" or "support science" should have any delusions about anything.
The first thing you need to be willing to embrace is the fact that we might be wrong about everything. It's not religion.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Damned little. It's another contribution of "Fake News" masquerading as professional expression. The issues are endemic to the society, but science has no special place in trying to focus on these issues, specifically. When medicine creates a "cure" that works for 90% of the population, it's not generally true that the 10% are people of color, or of a particular gender. The reduction of fossil fuel by-products is neither gender, income-specific, or native heritage related...the lack of reduction harms everyone equally.
I stood up for Science during the recent march. I did not stand up for bogus opinions masquerading as "facts." Show me the data supporting these conclusions, and show me how they differ from the population-at-large, and you might create some cred.
I am a female, with 55 years' experience in computer technology, and--yes--I've had to work harder than male co-workers in some cases to achieve the same level of recognition and compensation. But, I built a successful, remunerative, happy career without griping about the hurdles I've had to master. It's called being an adult, instead of being a whiner.
Dr Piper Harron, writing on the AMS "Inclusion/Exclusion" blog, informs us:
"If you are a white cis man you almost certainly should resign from your position of power."
A reply from an anonymous University mathematician serves equally well as a reply to Dr Heather Metcalf.
"We are all painfully aware of the inequalities in faculty composition and trying hard to fix it. *Every* math department I know of is trying really hard to hire every qualified minority and female applicant out there (and by qualified I mean: a *very* generous ballpark within the hiring range of each department). The real problem is that there are not enough such candidates, and most departments end up making offers to the same few that are available in the market each year. By the way, our departments are aware of the problem, and so are our Deans and higher administration. In my experience, they are all very supportive of us hiring under-represented minorities, even offering additional positions when such opportunities occur, *as long as we conform with the laws*, and as long as the hire is within the 'generous ballpark'."
In other words, departments are willing to lower the standards for minority and female candidates, by a "*very* generous ballpark", with the consent of the University administration; but they are still unable to find sufficient candidates.
It is no wonder that there is "pushback" from white men; or that women and minorities are treated with suspicion as having benefitted from "affirmative action".
I fully realize that everything we think we know about exo-planets may be complete bullshit. There's no way of really knowing until we actually go out there.
Nonsense. Empiricism and experimentalism are thoroughly dead and debunked philosophies of science. Popper explained this quite clearly decades ago.
The way science works is though theories which attempt to provide explanations for observed data. Theories are tested by comparing them to what we've already observed, and by making predictions which we can test. It is in no way necessary that the testing process be experimental, only that the theory be falsifiable (actually, there are a few more requirements of a scientific theory, but I won't get into them).
For example, relativity makes many predictions that we cannot test experimentally, but only observationally. Indeed, the first really big confirmation of Einstein's hypothesis was based on the fact that relativity predicted that the gravitational lensing effect, light being bent by passing near a large gravity well such as a star, was roughly twice as strong as that predicted by Newtonian mechanics. There was absolutely no way for anyone to test this difference in a laboratory, you need a huge gravity well to produce observable effects. Luckily, we have a huge gravity well nearby (our sun) and during a total eclipse it was possible with early 20th-century technology to measure the deflection of light of distant stars that passed near the sun.
No one "actually went out there" to conduct that test of the theory. We just evaluated data that was falling on the Earth in the form of starlight, without our doing anything to create or control it. There's a great deal of science, both on the hard sciences like fundamental physics, and the squishier social science, that can be done only observationally, and that's just fine. Scientists working in those areas have to think a bit harder in order to rigorously test their theories than those who can craft exquisitely controlled experiments.
The first thing you need to be willing to embrace is the fact that we might be wrong about everything. It's not religion.
This is the core truth that makes science work. Science has nothing to do with experimentation, except that experimentation is a useful tool in the areas where it works. The fact that social sciences, climatology and astronomy often can't use experimental methods means nothing about whether they are real sciences.
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