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> There has to be a more charitable explanation than your implied "four scientists don't know how to do science properly" thesis. Indeed - one of them knows ho
by mjg59 9y ago
> There has to be a more charitable explanation than your implied "four scientists don't know how to do science properly" thesis.
Indeed - one of them knows how to.
> Is diversity honestly so narrow a field, that a social psychologist, personality psychologists, evolutionary psychology, and a sexual neuroscientist are in no position to say anything?
Unless they've done any research in it, sure. Why should any of them have more insight into diversity than, say, a nuclear physicist?
The issue isn't whether there are gender-related differences that are relevant to the job. It's not even whether those are significant enough to result in a measurable difference in outcome. It's whether those factors are the primary reason for the observed disparity, and neither the document author or the quoted scientists present any evidence whatsoever that that's the case. Failing to do that means that the conclusions drawn (ie, that existing diversity initiatives discriminate against men while providing no benefit to the company) aren't scientific.
- stoobe 9y agoThose scientists specifically studied gender differences so they can at least confirm the Google author was actually correct in his factual claims. Where anyone can disagree is how he interprets them, but I am glad to see four experts clarify a little bit about what is true.
- mjg59 9y agoThey can confirm that he was correct in a subset of his factual claims, but not in the further factual claims that he builds on those. Implying that they can is bad science.
- stoobe 9y agoPerhaps I misread it, but it sounded like all the gender differences he claimed were backed by research. What were the factual claims he got wrong?
- mjg59 9y agoI didn't say that the factual claims were wrong, I said that the scientists quoted in the article were not in a position to confirm them. Someone with appropriate domain expertise would be able to do so, but none appear to have been asked.
- yawaramin 9y agoAlso, even if the gender differences were backed by research, what's not backed by research is the assumption that those differences have any significant impact on women's capacity to perform the same work as men. Remember--the scientific method is about making a falsifiable hypothesis and then gathering enough evidence to be able to reject it. In this case the falsifiable hypothesis would have to be that men and women have no significant difference in their ability to perform the same work.
- renaudg 9y agoStrawman. Nobody and especially not the memo made a claim about capacity. It was all about interest on average, which is absolutely backed by research : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ Abstract : "There is considerable interest in understanding women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure. Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."
- yawaramin 9y ago