7 ms·

Funder bars university from grant programme over white-male award line-up

33 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

joemazerino 5y ago
Seems these men didn't work hard enough to pass the diversity test. What ever happened to meritocracy?
- bogantech 5y ago
  - op00to 5y ago
    This seems a lot like an attempt to troll. Please don’t do that. It doesn’t advance the discussion, and devolves into noise.
    - lawlizard 5y ago
- EliRivers 5y ago
  Meritocracy is what we have. That's kind of the problem. Meritocracy wasn't considered to be a good thing by its inventor.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bell-cot 5y ago
  If M&M's were being randomly drawn from a jar...but the ones drawn were ~90% green - how long should a reasonable person take to conclude that either the ones in the jar are a "stacked deck", or else the "random draw" process is anything but? Is that "reasonable person" anti-green?
  - Jtype 5y ago
    Ignoring the issues with comparing random sampling to self selection, your analogy falls flat due to the population differences. Here you are assuming a racial/sex population distribution equal to the color population distribution of M&Ms, which is drastically different in even the most diverse countries in the world. If your starting population is 90% green M&Ms then pulling 6 greens in a row is quite high. Pulling grants because the racial/sex output isn't what you want is unethical and anti-science.
    - rak1507 5y ago
      <pedantry> if the population is 90% green, the chance of getting 6 greens in a row is only about 53% (tends to 53% as size -> inf) </pedantry>
    - bell-cot 5y ago
      No, my point was not that simple. No large human population will have the same race / sex distribution as a standard bag of M&M's. But anyone who got an "A" in Probability 101 can look at the actual distribution of M&M colors, and do the calculations. AND - as rak1507 effectively points out - "all 6 green" is both grounds for a touch of suspicion, and utterly wrong as a basis for concluding actual non-random selection. My other point was about motivated reasoning. One timeless hallmark of human bigotry (by sex, race, religion, age, social class, caste, nobility of blood, alma mater, or whatever) is that, so long as the outcomes of selection are what the bigots desire, then there really is no argument too flawed, nor excuse too weak, to proclaim that the outcomes are fair. But if the outcomes go against the bigots' preferences, then the standards of proof go way, way up.
akomtu 5y ago
"When Tom Snow, who chairs Snow Medical, saw the photo, and realized that everyone was white and male, his heart sank, he says." So, that Tom doesn't even care about the science, he sees race and gender of applicants and immediately makes a decision. Edit: if one of those applicants has a novel idea to solve the climate problem, it won't matter to Tom, unless the applicant has appropriate skin color.
- ratww 5y ago
  The funny thing is that the picture doesn't even depict the reality. "James McCluskey, deputy vice-chancellor of research at the university, says that other people, including three women and an Indigenous man, were scheduled to receive honorary awards that day but weren’t able to make it." So basically all the hoopla was due to some people missing an appointment, a picture and a bunch of assumptions.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    "Snow acknowledges that other actions — such as allowing only women or people of colour at the university to apply for the fellowships — might also have been effective."
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      This is really madness, I wonder if future generations will judge such policies as harshly as we judge policies of the 1930s (such as numerus clausus on Jewish students) today.
      - jaoa 5y ago
        This is happening now in Ivy League universities limiting the proportion of students that are Asian.
- EliRivers 5y ago
  Sounds like you've brought a lot of your own bias and preconception to this.
dijonman2 5y ago
It’s time to stop normalizing hating white males.
- InCityDreams 5y ago
  Hate everyone (equally)...problem solved.
hrorq 5y ago
It's wild when you lose your grant programme because a few people decided not to show up for Photo Day.
rnmwfQ3f 5y ago
So the issue isn't event that they didn't give awards to women or ethnic minorities, it's that the women and ethnic minorities weren't available for the group photo. This response makes no sense. The decision, announced by the Snow Medical Research Foundation on 7 March, comes after the University of Melbourne released a picture of six white men — but no women or people of colour — receiving honorary degrees, one of the university’s highest accolades, in a ceremony on 28 February ... James McCluskey, deputy vice-chancellor of research at the university, says that other people, including three women and an Indigenous man, were scheduled to receive honorary awards that day but weren’t able to make it.
- sn00tz00t 5y ago
  Why do they capitalise 'Indigenous' but 'white' remains without capital?
  - aahortwwy 5y ago
    To make it clear they're referring to Indigenous Australians (a particular group of people) rather than using the term as an adjective, like "white" is being used.
- chaircher 5y ago
  This is definitely a thing I've observed (marginalised groups being missed out of the photos). Why weren't they able to make it? Was it because they were only asked last minute? Is it because they keep getting cut out the loop? Some sort of passive protest? A deliberately awkward schedule?
  - belorn 5y ago
    I remember a story a few years ago where the woman missing from the photo was missing because... they were in a women-only meetup during the conference, followed by several interviews because they were the only woman there.
  - fnordpiglet 5y ago
jollybean 5y ago
"Australian researchers have largely applauded" Is there some science to indicate that 'researchers support' like some kind of private/anonymous survey to measure the mood? Or just the one's they've spoken to, or possibly worse, it's just something essentially 'made up'. Otherwise I fear its basically narrative fabrication, which is the opposite of news. These are tricky subjects they require thoughtfulness, nuance etc.. Ham-fisted approaches to communications I feel will not work in the end. This is rather ominous: "What remained were the six white men, and “rather stupidly, someone took a photo and posted it, thinking it was something to celebrate”, says McCluskey. “It backfired very badly.”" Seriously. You just read that. It was 'rather stupid' to take a photo of the people who showed up to receive the award. Because Race. While the issue is serious in a systematic way, again, this is getting bad.
cf141q5325 5y ago
As a little anecdote, during my computer science studies i had exactly one female student in a ~50 student class. A mandatory class, so that was it for female students that semester. That was general computer science. Those then split up into different specializations for their future line of work. From personal experience, quite a few theoretical computer scientists and more or less the rest into big data. Who went there for the math. People might be shocked to hear this, but not many little girls dream about becoming computer engineers. And i cant really blame them. Having to deal with registers and assembly isnt such an attractive proposition. Dont get me wrong, they sure exist, however not enough of them to fill any sort of meaningful quota. I have one female colleague in the department and she is very annoyed to be begged to be the token female. And not at all interested. It was somewhere along that road that it dawned on me that i have yet to meet any female colleague in computer engineering who thought any sort of quotas to be a good idea. They are obvious nonsense implemented by people who never in a thousand years would think about about going into that profession themselves. You cant use them to force people into existence. And outside of kidnapping first semester Psychology or MBA students there isnt much reason to be optimistic for quotas in the future.
- hulitu 5y ago
  This is because of " boys are prince, girls are princesses" and "blue is for boys and pink (or red) is for girls" propaganda. I went to faculty in an eastern europe country and we did not had such crap shaming of jobs based on gender.
  - gedy 5y ago
    I think it's more rich countries where women have options, many decide to do what they enjoy instead.
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    edit: Did you actually have noteworthy ratio in computer engineering? Unless you do something about the attractiveness of Psychology and Medicine, there will always be fields with a lack of female students. Computer Engineering being on the lower end of the list. Its a zero sum game, you wont get quota in waste disposal management without an upper limit in every profession that has more then the male/female ratio of the workforce. You opinion also assumes that socialization is everything. I would argue that there is ample evidence that women are more drawn into professions that help people vs building something alone in their basement. So unless you want to engineer a new women with less compassion and more obsession on tinkering i dont know what to tell you. Add on top of that the big bias of large parts of a given years computer engineering alumni being on the spectrum.
bell-cot 5y ago
From a quick read-over, I don't sense that either the grant programme or Nature bothered digging much deeper than the photo. Even really basic stuff, like finding out how sexist & racist the women & minorities on campus think the place is. Obvious Lesson: #1 Must-Do for universities is to have a first-rate troop of women & minority actors on hand, whenever "unfortunate" photos might be taken, to present shallow decision-makers with the "right" image.

33 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

joemazerino 5y ago

Seems these men didn't work hard enough to pass the diversity test. What ever happened to meritocracy?

bogantech 5y ago
- op00to 5y ago
  This seems a lot like an attempt to troll. Please don’t do that. It doesn’t advance the discussion, and devolves into noise.
  - lawlizard 5y ago
EliRivers 5y ago
Meritocracy is what we have. That's kind of the problem. Meritocracy wasn't considered to be a good thing by its inventor.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bell-cot 5y ago
If M&M's were being randomly drawn from a jar...but the ones drawn were ~90% green - how long should a reasonable person take to conclude that either the ones in the jar are a "stacked deck", or else the "random draw" process is anything but? Is that "reasonable person" anti-green?
- Jtype 5y ago
  Ignoring the issues with comparing random sampling to self selection, your analogy falls flat due to the population differences. Here you are assuming a racial/sex population distribution equal to the color population distribution of M&Ms, which is drastically different in even the most diverse countries in the world. If your starting population is 90% green M&Ms then pulling 6 greens in a row is quite high. Pulling grants because the racial/sex output isn't what you want is unethical and anti-science.
  - rak1507 5y ago
    <pedantry> if the population is 90% green, the chance of getting 6 greens in a row is only about 53% (tends to 53% as size -> inf) </pedantry>
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    No, my point was not that simple. No large human population will have the same race / sex distribution as a standard bag of M&M's. But anyone who got an "A" in Probability 101 can look at the actual distribution of M&M colors, and do the calculations. AND - as rak1507 effectively points out - "all 6 green" is both grounds for a touch of suspicion, and utterly wrong as a basis for concluding actual non-random selection. My other point was about motivated reasoning. One timeless hallmark of human bigotry (by sex, race, religion, age, social class, caste, nobility of blood, alma mater, or whatever) is that, so long as the outcomes of selection are what the bigots desire, then there really is no argument too flawed, nor excuse too weak, to proclaim that the outcomes are fair. But if the outcomes go against the bigots' preferences, then the standards of proof go way, way up.

akomtu 5y ago

"When Tom Snow, who chairs Snow Medical, saw the photo, and realized that everyone was white and male, his heart sank, he says." So, that Tom doesn't even care about the science, he sees race and gender of applicants and immediately makes a decision. Edit: if one of those applicants has a novel idea to solve the climate problem, it won't matter to Tom, unless the applicant has appropriate skin color.

ratww 5y ago
The funny thing is that the picture doesn't even depict the reality. "James McCluskey, deputy vice-chancellor of research at the university, says that other people, including three women and an Indigenous man, were scheduled to receive honorary awards that day but weren’t able to make it." So basically all the hoopla was due to some people missing an appointment, a picture and a bunch of assumptions.
- blitzar 5y ago
  "Snow acknowledges that other actions — such as allowing only women or people of colour at the university to apply for the fellowships — might also have been effective."
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    This is really madness, I wonder if future generations will judge such policies as harshly as we judge policies of the 1930s (such as numerus clausus on Jewish students) today.
    - jaoa 5y ago
      This is happening now in Ivy League universities limiting the proportion of students that are Asian.
EliRivers 5y ago
Sounds like you've brought a lot of your own bias and preconception to this.

dijonman2 5y ago

It’s time to stop normalizing hating white males.

InCityDreams 5y ago
Hate everyone (equally)...problem solved.

hrorq 5y ago

It's wild when you lose your grant programme because a few people decided not to show up for Photo Day.

rnmwfQ3f 5y ago

So the issue isn't event that they didn't give awards to women or ethnic minorities, it's that the women and ethnic minorities weren't available for the group photo. This response makes no sense. The decision, announced by the Snow Medical Research Foundation on 7 March, comes after the University of Melbourne released a picture of six white men — but no women or people of colour — receiving honorary degrees, one of the university’s highest accolades, in a ceremony on 28 February ... James McCluskey, deputy vice-chancellor of research at the university, says that other people, including three women and an Indigenous man, were scheduled to receive honorary awards that day but weren’t able to make it.

sn00tz00t 5y ago
Why do they capitalise 'Indigenous' but 'white' remains without capital?
- aahortwwy 5y ago
  To make it clear they're referring to Indigenous Australians (a particular group of people) rather than using the term as an adjective, like "white" is being used.
chaircher 5y ago
This is definitely a thing I've observed (marginalised groups being missed out of the photos). Why weren't they able to make it? Was it because they were only asked last minute? Is it because they keep getting cut out the loop? Some sort of passive protest? A deliberately awkward schedule?
- belorn 5y ago
  I remember a story a few years ago where the woman missing from the photo was missing because... they were in a women-only meetup during the conference, followed by several interviews because they were the only woman there.
- fnordpiglet 5y ago

jollybean 5y ago

"Australian researchers have largely applauded" Is there some science to indicate that 'researchers support' like some kind of private/anonymous survey to measure the mood? Or just the one's they've spoken to, or possibly worse, it's just something essentially 'made up'. Otherwise I fear its basically narrative fabrication, which is the opposite of news. These are tricky subjects they require thoughtfulness, nuance etc.. Ham-fisted approaches to communications I feel will not work in the end. This is rather ominous: "What remained were the six white men, and “rather stupidly, someone took a photo and posted it, thinking it was something to celebrate”, says McCluskey. “It backfired very badly.”" Seriously. You just read that. It was 'rather stupid' to take a photo of the people who showed up to receive the award. Because Race. While the issue is serious in a systematic way, again, this is getting bad.

cf141q5325 5y ago

As a little anecdote, during my computer science studies i had exactly one female student in a ~50 student class. A mandatory class, so that was it for female students that semester. That was general computer science. Those then split up into different specializations for their future line of work. From personal experience, quite a few theoretical computer scientists and more or less the rest into big data. Who went there for the math. People might be shocked to hear this, but not many little girls dream about becoming computer engineers. And i cant really blame them. Having to deal with registers and assembly isnt such an attractive proposition. Dont get me wrong, they sure exist, however not enough of them to fill any sort of meaningful quota. I have one female colleague in the department and she is very annoyed to be begged to be the token female. And not at all interested. It was somewhere along that road that it dawned on me that i have yet to meet any female colleague in computer engineering who thought any sort of quotas to be a good idea. They are obvious nonsense implemented by people who never in a thousand years would think about about going into that profession themselves. You cant use them to force people into existence. And outside of kidnapping first semester Psychology or MBA students there isnt much reason to be optimistic for quotas in the future.

hulitu 5y ago
This is because of " boys are prince, girls are princesses" and "blue is for boys and pink (or red) is for girls" propaganda. I went to faculty in an eastern europe country and we did not had such crap shaming of jobs based on gender.
- gedy 5y ago
  I think it's more rich countries where women have options, many decide to do what they enjoy instead.
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  edit: Did you actually have noteworthy ratio in computer engineering? Unless you do something about the attractiveness of Psychology and Medicine, there will always be fields with a lack of female students. Computer Engineering being on the lower end of the list. Its a zero sum game, you wont get quota in waste disposal management without an upper limit in every profession that has more then the male/female ratio of the workforce. You opinion also assumes that socialization is everything. I would argue that there is ample evidence that women are more drawn into professions that help people vs building something alone in their basement. So unless you want to engineer a new women with less compassion and more obsession on tinkering i dont know what to tell you. Add on top of that the big bias of large parts of a given years computer engineering alumni being on the spectrum.

bell-cot 5y ago

From a quick read-over, I don't sense that either the grant programme or Nature bothered digging much deeper than the photo. Even really basic stuff, like finding out how sexist & racist the women & minorities on campus think the place is. Obvious Lesson: #1 Must-Do for universities is to have a first-rate troop of women & minority actors on hand, whenever "unfortunate" photos might be taken, to present shallow decision-makers with the "right" image.