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Research finds no gender bias in academic science

insidehighered.com

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Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#31

Post by photochemsyn »

This is a much better study than this recent one on HN that only looked at publication count, because it has six metric rather than one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35699889

There's been a lot of discussion about diversity and equity in the sciences, but fundamentally, efforts to predict what young individuals are best suited to academic work based on their identitarian profile are foolish and doomed to failure.

The best approach is to take the largest possible pool of candidates, i.e. eliminate all restrictions on who gets to enter the pool, and then proceed to put them through the same series of challenges and see who makes it through each successive stage, while also offering the same level of support to each individual. This 'salmon swimming upstream' approach doesn't attempt to predict outcomes based on race/gender/class/etc., it instead selects neutrally based on ability and effort.

Given that only a small fraction of the overall population is going to have the necessary combination of mental ability and dedicated interest that it takes to do painstaking scientific research, you want to start with the largest pool of candidates possible, and this is why limiting that pool to members of one group is a very bad idea if you value scientific progress. This makes clear the point at which anti-discrimination policies should be applied: everyone who wants to should get to enter the competition and have equal initial support.

Of course, there are issues here with academic development in the K-12 pre-college years, related to parental involvement and cultural expectations, economic disadvantages and quality of local schools, etc. but some of the responses - cutting back on algebra for 8th graders in California etc. - are just idiotic.

Incidentally, nepotism is probably more of a problem today, i.e. tenured professors may use political maneuvering and social networking to get their grad students and postdocs jobs as academic professors even though they aren't necessarily the best candidates for those positions.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#32

Post by Volundr »

rajin444 wrote: post #13
kenjackson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NBA cares. In terms of bottom line, they are helped by having diverse players. Yao Ming opened the game up to a billion audience market. Top jersey sales often go to rising white stars in the game. Ones of the pushes in the league is to make foreign European players appeal more to white Americans. We’re not trying to have the league match US demographics, but make no mistake that diversity is a big deal to the NB…

Diversity should only matter in that it furthers the level of basketball being played. Diversity because it opens up additional markets is an awful incentive. That they only care about diversity because it makes them richer is very telling. On top of that, the NBA is always going to have a problem with height diversity. I don’t think this is a problem, but viewed with an equity lens it is.

> Diversity should only matter in that it furthers the level of basketball being played.

The NBA is in the business of entertainment. If something means that more people enjoy the game if basketball it IS better basketball, by the only sensible metric.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#33

Post by hackernewds »

letrowekwel wrote: post #9
onos wrote: post #3

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historically mistreated groups because it’s important context. Yet, in higher ed this often entails favoring the child of doctors who will help diversity numbers over the poor white male. I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity poli…

I agree. Old school leftists were smart enough to understand that being rich is the ultimate privilege, nothing else comes close. Help the poor, and you will also help minorities which are poor due to historical racism, slavery and so on. Help people based on their skin colour/ethnicity, and you'll unnecessarily make all the poor, unprivileged people not included very bitter, increasing political divisions, racism an…

> European style model couldn't work well also in the US.

If you lived here, you would find that European style models barely work in Europe

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#34

Post by hackernewds »

NalNezumi wrote: post #27
jandrewrogers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. The US already does this. Taxation is more progressive than Europe and large amounts of money are redistributed to poor and troubled schools, in some cases as much as twice the European average. It is not correlated with any of the outcomes you are imagining. Throwing…

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

Which wealth class do you reckon pays more property taxes?

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#35

Post by vlovich123 »

NalNezumi wrote: post #27
jandrewrogers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. The US already does this. Taxation is more progressive than Europe and large amounts of money are redistributed to poor and troubled schools, in some cases as much as twice the European average. It is not correlated with any of the outcomes you are imagining. Throwing…

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

Yeah that’s my understanding of the situation. Additionally, politically governmental funding of schools stagnates while richer areas use funding drives to make up for it (in addition to the difference in property taxes already making a huge difference). Additionally, when the wealthy live in an area without the aggregate property taxes covering the school costs (eg because local governments slash funding anyway) they send their kids to private schools.

To improve outcomes you need a unified school district and limit the existence of private schools. Charter schools are positioned as “choice” but quality schools will remain out of reach of people using the vouchers to try to get to a better school - transportation is the first hurdle and as soon as meaningful number of “poors” move in, the wealthy will abandon the public schools and move to private institutions with entrance requirements that try to filter out the less wealthy masses.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#36

Post by revelio »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #12
revelio wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Headline: "Research Finds No Gender Bias in Academic Science" Subheading: "women have an edge over men in hiring." Paper abstract: "[women] are advantaged over men in a fourth domain (hiring), For teaching ratings and salaries, we found evidence of bias against women; although gender gaps in salary were much smaller than often claimed, they were nevertheless concerning." Paper contents: - "Lutter and Schröder (…

That doesn't count as gender bias. Gender bias is when the system discriminates against women. When it does the same against men, it's equity.

Assumed /s but yes that seems to be the (re)definition they're using.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#37

Post by toomim »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #12
revelio wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Headline: "Research Finds No Gender Bias in Academic Science" Subheading: "women have an edge over men in hiring." Paper abstract: "[women] are advantaged over men in a fourth domain (hiring), For teaching ratings and salaries, we found evidence of bias against women; although gender gaps in salary were much smaller than often claimed, they were nevertheless concerning." Paper contents: - "Lutter and Schröder (…

That doesn't count as gender bias. Gender bias is when the system discriminates against women. When it does the same against men, it's equity.

Are you being sarcastic, or serious?

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#38

Post by hackernewds »

ramraj07 wrote: post #15
onos wrote: post #3

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historically mistreated groups because it’s important context. Yet, in higher ed this often entails favoring the child of doctors who will help diversity numbers over the poor white male. I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity poli…

The report only concluded that women didn’t have worse outcomes in acadrmia _after_ getting their PhDs. How are you taking this as a vindication of all affirmative action? Given through my decade long academic journey I barely saw any African American PIs in biomedical sciences, I don’t think that it’s a solved problem yet for other cases. Even within gender biases, the moment you include PhD enrollment and graduatio…

Seems that you are advocating both for equality of outcome, and equality of opportunity. It's hard to argue for both, since in a free choice world the opportunities may not be taken up proportionally

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#39

Post by ttpphd »

m-watson wrote: post #11

Man that is not a great headline from Inside Higher Ed. In the discussion section the authors explicitly layout that this is a specific slice they are looking at not all of Academic Science. "Before we summarize our findings below, we reiterate a caveat noted throughout this article: The failure to support specific claims of bias does not deny the possibility that broader, systemic barriers against women in the acade…

Thanks for spotlighting this. It is encouraging to see people seriously engage with the writing and surface the nuanced words of the researchers themselves.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#40

Post by hajile »

NalNezumi wrote: post #27
jandrewrogers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. The US already does this. Taxation is more progressive than Europe and large amounts of money are redistributed to poor and troubled schools, in some cases as much as twice the European average. It is not correlated with any of the outcomes you are imagining. Throwing…

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

This you get the argument for child tax credits. Let the money follow the child instead of the school.

In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt.

Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living).

At that point, schools will have to compete on offering a good education instead of being the local monopoly you are forced into using. It also offers smart kids born into bad school districts a way out of the cycle of poverty.

Politically, it’s weird too. This policy is fundamentally socialist redistribution, but is embraced by the right while being decried as evil by the left.

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