[Taxacom] Gender equality in science

[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 05/06/2018 8:52 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:

> I'd written:
>> in a research  institution it may well be valuable to have folks with as diverse points-of-view as possible, just to be sure problems are considered in  as many ways as possible 

> well, I wonder! It isn't obvious to me that having problems considered in as many ways as possible increases the likelihood of solving those problems! If anything, it is likely to work against consensus! Apply it to medicine, for the sake of argument. If your hypothetical child was dying of cancer, would you want someone in a team of doctors considering the case to be pushing for a traditional indigenous approach with no scientific basis?

* we're talking about research here, and if a group was working on 
studying cures for cancer, I'd think one would want a wide range of 
approaches represented, since cancer is about as poorly understood as 
the phytogeography of Nothofagus, and a lot of the work seems to be 
biased by funding from for-profit pharmaceutical companies.

I've been studying the employment thing for decades now, and one 
conclusion I've come to is that in many cases wanting a "job," 
especially in administration, is an indication that you're incompetent 
to do it. When I was a graduate student we didn't even know academic 
politics existed, because the department chairman had been torn away 
from his work on Mites to run the department, and he and his 
administrative assistant made things run so smoothly that when he went 
back to his Mites the eruption of normal academic politics was quite a 
novelty.

Here's a study that comes to much the same conclusion - 
https://hbr.org/2013/08/why-do-so-many-incompetent-men - "The truth of 
the matter is that pretty much anywhere in the world men tend to think 
that they that are much smarter than women. Yet arrogance and 
overconfidence are inversely related to leadership talent — the ability 
to build and maintain high-performing teams, and to inspire followers to 
set aside their selfish agendas in order to work for the common interest 
of the group. Indeed, whether in sports, politics or business, the best 
leaders are usually humble — and whether through nature or nurture, 
humility is a much more common feature in women than men."

This goes beyond higher salaries not being an indication of competence, 
and suggests that just the desire for conspicuously higher salaries may 
be a sign of incompetence.

fred.
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> --------------------------------------------
> On Wed, 6/6/18, Frederick W. Schueler <bckcdb at istar.ca> wrote:
> 
>   Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Gender equality in science
>   To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>   Received: Wednesday, 6 June, 2018, 12:27 PM
>   
>   On 05/06/2018 7:54 PM, Stephen
>   Thorpe wrote:
>   
>   >  At the end of the day, we want the best candidate to get the job.

>   * well, I wonder. And I wonder if in the high-pressure kinds of  competition that hiring for academic jobs currently involves, if the selection process can even remotely identify the "best" candidate for a position, since a criterion for "best" might include "not wanting to do the kind of self-promotion needed to apply for the job."
>   
>   But in the case of gender and ethnic-background equality, in a research institution it may well be valuable to have folks with as diverse points-of-view as possible, just to be sure problems are considered in as many ways as possible.
>   
>   It is said that studies of avian courtship shifted from mostly focusing on male combat to focusing on female choice when women moved into animal behaviour studies in the early 1980s... - fred  (totally inexperienced in employment).
>   ------------------------------------------------------------

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          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
          Fragile Inheritance Natural History
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