[Taxacom] Gender equality in science

Wed Jun 6 18:28:04 CDT 2018

Fred,

No, I still don't think that we want to spread approaches to curing cancer out to include, for example, indigenous medicinal approaches, pseudoscientific approaches (alternative healing), etc. We need to put the limited resources we have into the approach (or a few carefully selected approaches) that we think has/have the highest probability of success. The general point that I am trying to make here is simply that a greater diversity of approaches is not a priori preferable to problem solving (of any kind). It would also, for example, tend to increase the amount of disagreement, potentially leading to delays and/or other obstacles to progress and/or decision making. Diversity is not necessarily a good thing.

As far as I know, you may well be correct that many men think that men are smarter than women on average, and I very much doubt that they are correct, but that isn't relevant to what I was trying to say, namely that (1) measuring "competence" by way of income is a nonsense which allowed a supposed piece of "research" to seemingly argue for gender quotas in employment, something which should alarm anyone, like myself, who wants to see decision making be based on solid unbiased research; and (2) +ve discrimination (e.g. quotas) is simply more discrimination (against a different group - men in the present example) and therefore abhorent. The fact that there may very well be lots of incompetent men out there dominating jobs is bad, yes, but +ve discrimination in favour of women is not the answer! Instead, we need to figure out a way of ensuring that candidates get jobs based on merit, without regard for race, gender, sexuality, etc. Nobody is saying that there is an easy solution! There isn't! Positive discrimination, however, doesn't help, but just adds to the problem.

Cheers, Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 7/6/18, Frederick W. Schueler <bckcdb at istar.ca> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Gender equality in science
 To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
 Cc: "Aleta Karstad" <karstad at pinicola.ca>
 Received: Thursday, 7 June, 2018, 1:47 AM

 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.
 ================================================
 >
 --------------------------------------------
 > 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).
 >  
 ------------------------------------------------------------

 ------------------------------------------------------------
           Frederick W. Schueler &
 Aleta Karstad
           Fragile
 Inheritance Natural History
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    on the Smiths
 Falls Limestone Plain  44.87156° N 75.70095° W
 (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
 ------------------------------------------------------------
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   - 
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