5 ms·

One of the stupidest comments I've seen on HN. The Nobel Prize is well known for being sexist. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130519-women-sc

by aestra 13y ago

One of the stupidest comments I've seen on HN. The Nobel Prize is well known for being sexist. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130519-women-scientists-overlooked-dna-history-science/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130519-women... >Men have invented every major technological advance in history. One counter example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper Actually http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/15_most_important_women_tech_history http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/15_most_important_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_in_mathematics_worldwide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_in_mathematic... Sexism is still alive and well http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/2012/09/23/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/201... >But in a groundbreaking study published in PNAS last week by Corinne Moss-Racusin and colleagues, that is exactly what was done. On Wednesday, Sean Carroll blogged about and brought to light the research from Yale that had scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student. The scientists also offered lower starting salaries to the “female” applicants: $26,507.94 compared to $30,238.10. We are not talking about equality of outcomes here; this result shows bias thwarts equality of opportunity.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
It's also possible that the scientists correctly infer that, even conditional on having the same resume, female applicants were overall of a lower quality. The study doesn't prove whether this disadvantage comes from people discriminating against women merely because they are women, or people correctly identifying that the women on average perform worse, even given the same resumes. It is still possible that given full information about the candidate, (not just the resume), women would not be disadvantaged.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  people correctly identifying that the women on average perform worse, even given the same resumes. Where exactly are you pulling this from?
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    I'm giving an alternative explanation for why the female named resumes are rated worse by the professors. I'm "pulling it from" the same place you pulled your preferred explanation (that female performance conditional on the same resume is the same, and so the worse ratings were due to professors preferring males, even given the same performance, or incorrectly expecting worse performance from the females). The issue with your interpretation of the study is your selective appeal to evidence. You would like to provide evidence for the fact that worse outcomes for females are due to discrimination. But the evidence you provided is consistent with both explanations (discrimination vs actually worse performance from females)
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      Stop being a tosser, I haven't given a preferred explanation, I asked you where you sourced your assertion.
      - yetanotherphd 13y ago
        I asserted that both explanations are possible, which is an obvious fact to me, until it is shown that one of the explanations is wrong. I didn't notice I was replying to you, not aestra, who implicitly explained the results of the study in the way I described, when they used that study as evidence that "sexism is alive and well". Even though in this particular study, the authors (incorrectly) ignored my alternate explanation, it is in fact often discussed in this context (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_discrimination). And I am sick of your side of the argument swearing at your opponents while constantly playing the victim card. Fuck you.
pikachu_is_cool 13y ago
"women are oppressed" 500000 upvotes circlejerk circlejerk circlejerk you ever think that the reason why there aren't girl coders is because, I don't know, they think it's SOUL CRUSHINGLY BORING!?
nickthemagicman 13y ago
Lol you do realize for every Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace chestnut you pull out of the back of the drawer I could literally name hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of men who have done something similar? There's always a tiny few outliers in any study. Once again I say look out your window. Everything invented and built by men. And I used to agree with you in regards to institutionalized discrimination. But the more I thought about it....it's VERY VERY hard to believe that there's some sort of international century long conspiracy of white men that get's together and represses women in every industry, career,country,time frame and scientific field EVER. I'm not arguing that women are inferior in any way. I just think that women aren't as ambitious as men due to ease of resource acquisition that they have built in to their bodies and it's really that simple. Keep in mind the ratio of women to men in homeless shelters is like .000001 percent.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  it's VERY VERY hard to believe that there's some sort of international century long conspiracy of white men that get's together and represses women in every industry, career,country,time frame and scientific field EVER. Looking about there are many and varied ones and they seem to have been going a lot longer than that, not all of them are run by light skinned folk though. Quite often their leaders wear elaborate hats, you must have seen them on the telly. Is not all they do, but it does seem to be a theme. You must have seen them, they have loads of pointy buildings everywhere, with slightly different styles to show which team they are on. And each team has a book. You know.

by aestra 13y ago

yetanotherphd 13y ago

It's also possible that the scientists correctly infer that, even conditional on having the same resume, female applicants were overall of a lower quality. The study doesn't prove whether this disadvantage comes from people discriminating against women merely because they are women, or people correctly identifying that the women on average perform worse, even given the same resumes. It is still possible that given full information about the candidate, (not just the resume), women would not be disadvantaged.

moocowduckquack 13y ago
people correctly identifying that the women on average perform worse, even given the same resumes. Where exactly are you pulling this from?
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  I'm giving an alternative explanation for why the female named resumes are rated worse by the professors. I'm "pulling it from" the same place you pulled your preferred explanation (that female performance conditional on the same resume is the same, and so the worse ratings were due to professors preferring males, even given the same performance, or incorrectly expecting worse performance from the females). The issue with your interpretation of the study is your selective appeal to evidence. You would like to provide evidence for the fact that worse outcomes for females are due to discrimination. But the evidence you provided is consistent with both explanations (discrimination vs actually worse performance from females)
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    Stop being a tosser, I haven't given a preferred explanation, I asked you where you sourced your assertion.
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      I asserted that both explanations are possible, which is an obvious fact to me, until it is shown that one of the explanations is wrong. I didn't notice I was replying to you, not aestra, who implicitly explained the results of the study in the way I described, when they used that study as evidence that "sexism is alive and well". Even though in this particular study, the authors (incorrectly) ignored my alternate explanation, it is in fact often discussed in this context (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_discrimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_discrimination). And I am sick of your side of the argument swearing at your opponents while constantly playing the victim card. Fuck you.

pikachu_is_cool 13y ago

"women are oppressed" 500000 upvotes circlejerk circlejerk circlejerk you ever think that the reason why there aren't girl coders is because, I don't know, they think it's SOUL CRUSHINGLY BORING!?

nickthemagicman 13y ago

Lol you do realize for every Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace chestnut you pull out of the back of the drawer I could literally name hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of men who have done something similar? There's always a tiny few outliers in any study. Once again I say look out your window. Everything invented and built by men. And I used to agree with you in regards to institutionalized discrimination. But the more I thought about it....it's VERY VERY hard to believe that there's some sort of international century long conspiracy of white men that get's together and represses women in every industry, career,country,time frame and scientific field EVER. I'm not arguing that women are inferior in any way. I just think that women aren't as ambitious as men due to ease of resource acquisition that they have built in to their bodies and it's really that simple. Keep in mind the ratio of women to men in homeless shelters is like .000001 percent.

moocowduckquack 13y ago
it's VERY VERY hard to believe that there's some sort of international century long conspiracy of white men that get's together and represses women in every industry, career,country,time frame and scientific field EVER. Looking about there are many and varied ones and they seem to have been going a lot longer than that, not all of them are run by light skinned folk though. Quite often their leaders wear elaborate hats, you must have seen them on the telly. Is not all they do, but it does seem to be a theme. You must have seen them, they have loads of pointy buildings everywhere, with slightly different styles to show which team they are on. And each team has a book. You know.