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> Until we pay the most talented researchers It's not even that. One of the contributing factors is that we are no longer hiring for talent or merit. If you'

• Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  > If you're a male child interested in science and in high school right now you've been through 8 years telling you that you should not go into science because they need more women of colour who follow the right religions and have the right sexual orientation. You're constantly bombarded with "SCIENCE DOES NOT WANT MEN". Do you have any examples of teens / young adults being discouraged from going into science because they are white and male? There are certainly some (I'd say good!) programs to encourage women and minorities, but that's quite a different thing from men being actively discouraged. Scientific fields are still significantly more male than female, even among recent graduates.
  • v_lisivka 8y ago
    > Scientific fields are still significantly more male than female, even among recent graduates. Why "still"? Majority of mans are genetically selected to be adventurers, while minority of woman are adventurers. It's impossible to change genetics with advertising, so we will never have 50/50% split, until human genome will change. Why not just accept natural distribution?
    • max76 8y ago
      I'm not convinced that joining the scientific community is an adventure or that this genetic difference exists. The differences can be explained without using genetics. For example, there is a popularly held opinion that girls are bad at math. Girls who believe they are bad at math might try less in math courses. Girls that receive lower grades in math from trying less might be intimidated by the math requirements of a science program.
      • dnautics 8y ago
        It's not an adventure, but it is a high-risk with a slim chance of a very high payoff endeavor, and men are typically more drawn to that than women, for example there his a huge gender disparity in fishing the Alaskan fisheries or base jumping.
        • v_lisivka 8y ago
          Offtopic: Can you explain to non-native English speaker, please, why "adventure" does not match "a high-risk with a slim chance of a very high payoff endeavor"? I saw "adventure in science" few times, so I assumed that someone who does this "adventure in science" can be named "adventurer". What is wrong in my conclusion?
          • max76 8y ago
            I wouldn't consider a career in science to be high risk. It's often easy to transfer from academic science to private engineering. Science degrees holders have respectable earnings on average.
  • nine_k 8y ago
    The argument I like most is that young ladies are just smarter, and don't go as much to a field that promises low pay, long hours, and doubtful prospects; they choose careers more wisely.
    • scarejunba 8y ago
      How does that one square with the fact that the median income for women is lower than the median income for men while the median income for all groups correlates positively with intelligence? Seems like that kills the hypothesis that women are making better career decisions across the board optimizing for pay.
      • Retric 8y ago
        Pay is not the only issue when choosing a job. Job Stability, stress and work life balance are also huge factors rational actors should consider. Science does not simply pay poorly, the job also sucks.
        • Konnstann 8y ago
          So does nursing, but it is heavily female-dominated.
          • Retric 8y ago
            “Registered nurses (RNs) made a median salary of $68,450 in 2016.” That’s not really bad pay considering you can get an associate degree which only takes 2 years, and you make above median US wages. Being a scientist requires vastly more education, and long periods of low pay. I actually know a programmer that switched to nursing and he seems reasonably content.
      • dnautics 8y ago
        The reason why science sucks goes beyond pay. It's the repeated failure, long-ass hours (I once worked for 150 days straight, pulling >100 hour weeks), only to find out that in the end playing politics was more important than doing a good job at the work.
  • SamReidHughes 8y ago
    > Do you have any examples of teens / young adults being discouraged from going into science because they are white and male? I know a post-doc who was told to hire at least one female undergrad, even if there's a better man.
• thwy12321 8y ago
  The crazy thing is that in some companies/jobs you could be fired for posting this.
  • Falling3 8y ago
    In most (US) states, you can be fired for anything not specifically protected. What makes this case anymore interesting?
  • pessimizer 8y ago
    As a scientist, definitely. It would be evidence that you've lost your grip on reality and are entirely a creature of reactionary twitter rage, and trusting your judgment is probably not a great idea.
    • nonbel 8y ago
      >"As a scientist, definitely ... trusting your judgment is probably not a great idea." You should never trust someones judgement when it comes to science. That is practically the idea that started it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullius_in_verba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullius_in_verba
• eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  I'm in grad school at the moment, and it sounds to me like you're describing another planet from the one I live on. My entire lab has one woman in it, and nobody's come around to punish us or anything. Hell, I'm not just male, I'm white and male. I'm not even gay! My ethnicity (Jews) are over-represented in science. What sort of data have you collected, or received in summarized form, to come to these conclusions of yours?
  • khitan 8y ago
    Biology as a field ranges from majority female to 1:1 parity in the modern postgraduate cohorts I have seen; the physical and logical sciences at the postgraduate maintain large male imbalances and notably seem to do so across all western countries regardless of social ideology from the figures I have seen across various sources. It is true in my observation that gender-specific encouragements are consistently emphasized at the university level even oddly in scenarios where parity has been reached or exceeded.
• kiliantics 8y ago
  One must be delusional to believe something like this. I work in science and it is still extremely white and male dominated. All the students I teach are also mostly white and male and are very much enthusiastic about continuing in science. If anything, the people who are typically less enthusiastic are the non-white/non-male students. And understandably so, because - despite some minimal effort to change in recent times - the environment just isn't all that welcoming to them.
  • fromMars 8y ago
    I might quibble with the white part here. I see many people of Asian and Indian descent in STEM fields.
• troutwine 8y ago
  > If you're a male child interested in science and in high school right now you've been through 8 years telling you that you should not go into science because they need more women of colour who follow the right religions and have the right sexual orientation. You're constantly bombarded with "SCIENCE DOES NOT WANT MEN". This is profoundly contrary to my experience mentoring young students, the approach of my teacher friends and acquaintances, the experiences of family members. When this topic does come up -- and it does -- it's done specifically with the notion of normalizing the idea that people of all backgrounds can, should and will be scientists and mathematicians. It's entirely unproductive to the project of establishing a more welcoming future by, as you say, declaring "SCIENCE DOES NOT WANT MEN". The loss of an exclusive status does not necessarily imply a discriminatory regime, though you've clearly framed things that way for yourself. Governments aren't "shaping science funding to punish having male staff" they're preferentially awarding funding to labs that are not exclusively or predominately male. I know enough excellent scientists who've been chased out of labs on account of sexual harassment to know that there's _plenty_ of reasons for a lab to be exclusively male besides "merit and talent". In fact, I argue that if you allow systematic inequalities to shape a field you're specifically undercutting people who might otherwise have succeed because of their talents and drive. > I'm sorry but science has to go through a decline in the West for a bit. The real issue, as others have pointed out in this thread, is the need for scientists to chase funding at all times, whether by seeking out grants or side-gigs in graduate school to supplement a meager stipend. The issue is emphatically not that your favored subset of humanity isn't esteemed like you think proper. Fix your heart.
  • shard972 8y ago
    You conflate "losing your exclusive status" with the push to equalize representation in workplaces. There isn't an infinite amount of jobs for any particular field or workplace at any one time, if you pursue a campaign of equality of roles going to men/women in a male dominated field, your going to have to reject some men who otherwise would have qualified.
    • troutwine 8y ago
      > You conflate "losing your exclusive status" with the push to equalize representation in workplaces. I am not. You have done that for me and incorrectly. Firstly, It's absolutely appropriate to inform children that people of all backgrounds can, should and will become scientists and mathematicians and to encourage children with these interests to pursue them. Separately, it's entirely appropriate to be suspicious of behaviour as a society that artificially filters some subset of humanity out of a field they would otherwise be able to contribute to owning to individual talent and ambition. > There isn't an infinite amount of jobs for any particular field or workplace at any one time, if you pursue a campaign of equality of roles going to men/women in a male dominated field, your going to have to reject some men who otherwise would have qualified. This viciously cuts the other way too. If you leave a systematic inequality in place you prop up otherwise untalented schlubs who edged out people of merit. In my own field, software, I've seen talented software engineers leave companies that needed them because of continued, unwanted and rebuffed sexual advances by some EXTREMELY mediocre software engineers. These dullards then merrily added negative value alone in their pit of reinforced homogeneity. More effective HR would help in this particular example but, hey, so too would having a shop that wasn't almost entirely of homogeneous background in the first place.
• mturmon 8y ago
  > If you're a male child interested in science and in high school right now you've been through 8 years telling you that you should not go into science because they need more women of colour who follow the right religions... I have an 8th grader in California public schools, and this is just not at all the case here. There is a general STEM push that is sweeping many of the kids up. There is occasional special note of girls who are good at these subjects, but it doesn't seem to be at the expense of boys. The notion of "following the right religions" is even more out of touch with reality. At least in California. Are you seriously suggesting that, say, Muslim children are being specifically encouraged to go into science, and (say) Catholic kids are discouraged?
  • nonbel 8y ago
    > "There is a general STEM push that is sweeping many of the kids up." This is awful for science though. It is much better for it to be thought of a "nerdy" thing so people who aren't really interested in it stay away. EDIT: I'd like to hear from a downvoter who has tried to convince someone who actually doesnt care too much about science that they should test their own hypothesis rather than a strawman hypothesis when the latter gets them more rewards. It is infuriating, and you do not want them informing doctors/etc on how to advise you: "We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to which they could impede every sort of national effort." Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274. http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf
• Ar-Curunir 8y ago
  What? Get this sexist crap out of here. Do you seriously think that any educational programs are rejecting men today? Have you walked into any STEM department anywhere across the country? You can count the number of women on your hands. There is no discrimination against men in STEM.
  • ecr42 8y ago
    MY university said they aimed to get 50:50 gender representation of professors within a few years from the current 80:20. Now, you could achieve that in 2 ways - fire a bunch of old men, or hire mostly women for new jobs. As a young man, I'd much rather see the first and I think it's fairer... however there's tenure. That means the only way for them to achieve their goal is to hold down young men, who are made to pay for the 'crimes' of the old
• malnourish 8y ago
  I would like to see some sources for those claims.