Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Did you fall for this? Science published a paper which claimed that reading literary fiction, you know that stuff that gets taught as highbrow reading material in college literature classes, is objectively better than genre or popular fiction at improving your mind and making you better able to understand other people’s mental states. It was all over the popular news sites.
Language Log shreds the paper wonderfully. It’s a great example of stirring the muck and taking whatever odor wafts out of the mess as a great truth. You might be able to see some obvious flaws just from my brief description: what the heck is “literary fiction”? Isn’t that a contentious division already? How do you recognize it (mostly, I fear, it’s because they’re old books that you’d never pick up to read for pure pleasure)? How did the authors of the study choose it?
As it turns out, the authors hand-picked a few passages from books that they subjectively placed into their categories of literary vs. popular fiction, had subjects read them, gave them a couple of standard tests of theory of mind or empathy, and got a very weak statistical effect. You know, if you shovel garbage at a wall, you can probably find some seemingly non-random distribution of the pattern of banana peels, too.
But it got published in Science, which is dismaying. Unfortunately, here’s where Language Log fails — they infer nefarious commercial intent from it.
The real question here is why Science chose to publish a study with such obvious methodological flaws. And the answer, alas, is that Science is very good at guessing which papers are going to get lots of press; and that, along with concern for their advertising revenues from purveyors of biomedical research equipment and supplies, seems empirically to be the main motivation behind their editorial decisions.
Oh, nonsense. I’m sure that Science is quite careful to keep editorial/review and advertising decisions entirely separate, and if their main concern was peddling expensive biomedical gear, why would they waste space on a simple and flawed paper using cheap psychological techniques? There are trade journals that are much better sources for overpriced gadgetry and reagents.
I’ll also point out that they’ve reversed the situation: Science isn’t good at guessing what papers will appeal to the popular press, the popular press is accustomed to turning to a few journals, like Science and Nature, for finding what the scientific soup d’jour is.
This is not to say that Science or Nature are objective paragons at finding the most important science of the day. To the contrary, both are self-consciously elitist journals, jockeying for position as the premier sources of distilled scientific wisdom. Language Log completely missed the boat: paper decisions at Science are not made to satisfy either the popular press or the scientific supply houses; they are decisions to appeal to the tastes of other scientists, and the financial benefits flow secondarily from that.
There is a Sci Culture, just like there is Pop Culture and High Brow Culture and Redneck Culture. And all of these fragments of a greater whole have their various organs of communication and modes and expectations of behavior, which are all much more complicated than being simply driven by the invisible hand of the market.
By now, you’ve all heard about the unpleasantry between Monica Byrne and Bora Zivkovic. Bora screwed up. He let his personal desires interfere with his professional obligations and he wrecked what could have been a productive interaction.
I’m happy that he has come forward and openly expressed contrition. We all screw up — what’s important is that we recognize it and try to better ourselves.
Janet Stemwedel has an excellent response in which she takes a broader view.
We should hold each other to high standards and then get serious about helping each other reach those standards. We should keep tinkering with our culture to making being better to each other (and to ourselves) easier, not harder.
Being good can be hard, which is one of the reasons we need friends.
I stand with others who have been harassed. And I hope, as a loving and honest friend with high expectations, I can help bring about a world with fewer harassers in it.
Meanwhile, we men (because it’s mostly us who have the power tilted in our favor) should just assume that every woman has laid out Kathleen Raven’s set of rules. Make those your base assumptions in every professional interaction.
Just as an exercise, when you read those rules, try imagining applying them to interactions between two professional men. That they would virtually never have to be stated tells you quite a bit about the differences in how women are treated.
Also, if you plan to protest that it’s unfair to expect men to behave this way, or that it’ll interfere with your love life, or that some women might like being treated specially in the office, please go read Chris Clarke’s metaphor. If you don’t get it, and don’t understand what he’s talking about, you’re not smart enough to converse here yet, and you should just read quietly until it sinks in.
First, let me apologize for the use of the word “unpleasantry” above — I was going for what I thought was obvious understatement, and it wasn’t read that way. I think this is a terrible, awful, miserable thing that Bora has done, and I sincerely hope he can do better.
Other news: Bora has resigned from the ScienceOnline board.
In a horrific excerpt from a book about the life of conflict in Israel, Max Blumenthal talks about the attitude of young soldiers in the Israeli army. They are taking trophy photos of dead Palestinians. They are gloating about how they like to beat “Palestinian wetbacks”. They are murdering people. And they are arrogant and sanctimonious in their absolute certainty that they are in the right and that they must dehumanize the enemy.
What really brought me up short, though, was this one ex-army woman who is extremely jingoistic, and who has been busily uploading trophy photos and captioning them.
“DDDEATHHH to ARABSSSSSS.”
Beside the next photo, Abergil wrote: “Fuck you, stinking Arabs!!!”
And then: “C’MON LET’S MAKE AN ARAB SHOAH NOWWWWW!!!!!!!!”
She wants to make an Arab … Shoah? She wants to commit genocide? I always have taken the lesson of the Holocaust as that we should never again allow a nation to commit mass murder in the name of race superiority or ethnic cleansing — that the act was a horror and a crime against humanity, no matter who the targets are. It is a moral abomination, and it doesn’t become acceptable if the victims are Jews, Romany, gay, Serbs, Croats, Hutu, Tutsi, American Indian, or Palestinian.
What are they teaching in Israel?
Buy the T-shirt!
You’re supposed to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and math today. Some of you women out there will be doing science today, some of you will read about it, and some of you will be doing like I’m doing: teaching it to women (and men!). At the very least, try to tell a girl that she can grow up to be anything she wants — and that includes being a mathematician, an engineer, or a scientist.
Oh, my. What a lovely example of a not-pology. I think it’s a common refusal to acknowledge error in full blossom!
We deeply regret that we were not able to communicate our decision to Dr. Lee before removing the post on a late Friday afternoon before a long weekend. We recognize that it would have been better to fully explain our position before its removal, but the circumstances were such that we could not make that happen in a timely way.
They did nothing wrong, they would have removed the post no matter what, her only sin was having a dying cell phone so she wasn’t able to bossplain to DNLee why she needed to roll over and accept this entirely reasonable executive decision. Oh, and Scientific American must protect their interests by making sure that all the facts presented by their bloggers are entirely accurate and confirmed.
Wow. So they go through every blog post over there with that degree of thoroughness? I’m impressed. I’m not so impressed with their respect for their bloggers, though.
She might be interested in looking at Popehat’s interpretation of events.
Perhaps “Ofek” is some kind of scientist. If he is, and his identity is revealed, he is likely to experience significant social consequences — that is, he is likely to be treated as someone who calls women “whore” when they decline to provide him with free content. But Ofek is currently in the business of spamming bloggers to ask them to contribute free content to a sordid little advertising-heavy aggregator site in order to increase traffic and thereby increase advertising revenue to Ofek and Ofek’s team. In other words, Ofek has ceased to be a scientist and begun a career as a marketeer.
And marketeers are entitled douchebags. Within the context of online marketing, Ofek’s behavior is perfectly typical. Ofek’s belief — that he is entitled to profit off of Ms. Lee’s work, and that she’s worthy of abuse if she objects — is the apotheosis of marketeer culture.
I see that not-pology as an admission that Scientific American is an enthusiastic collaborator in marketeer culture.
Justine has story of sexual assault in the tech industry. Long story short, she was at a Ruby conference (they apparently have a reputation for boozing it up at Ruby events), she was drinking, her boss was drinking, he took their mutual inebriation as an excuse to take serious liberties with her, she said “no”, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and another person had to step in and peel him away. The event was serious enough that her boss was subject to a later HR investigation and was fired.
All of these events have been thoroughly corroborated by a witness, and by the guy who stepped in. The assaulter has announced that he was in “funemployment”, of course expressing no remorse or guilt — you wouldn’t know it from what he wrote that he stuck his hand down an employees pants and his tongue down her throat while she vocally protested.
The problem is the aftermath. She liked and respected her boss before this incident, and now she’s wracked with guilt and self-recrimination and just general stress.
Joe O’Brien’s sexual assault on me impacted my life then and still continues to this day. Initially I went through a period of self-punishment. Convinced there was something I did wrong that made this assault happen to me. Did I wear something wrong? Did I lead someone on? Hugs hand forehead kisses have always been a big part of my relationships with my co-workers. We were always a tight knit family. But now I felt it was all wrong. Every day I went to work I second guessed what I was wearing. I kept my mouth shut for fear I’d say something wrong or misleading. In the worst case I stopped eating and lost 30 pounds in two months. People were worried but again, for the most part left me alone. Maybe out of awkwardness, maybe because they didn’t know what to say, maybe because they had no clue what was going on because nobody was notified.
These issues still affected me months later. I went months without eating. My boyfriend at the time witnessed me turn from a voluptuous woman to what he called a skeleton in just two short months. I couldn’t stand to be touched by him anymore. Our relationship fell apart within just a few weeks. I came home every night and drank myself stupid just so I didn’t have to think about the anxiety I felt having to go back to the office the next morning. Friday nights and Saturdays were mostly fine but pretty much on the dot, 8:00pm on a Sunday I would start hyperventilating, crying and binge drinking so I didn’t have to think about going back to the office the following morning.
These are appropriate responses to an event she took very seriously and found extremely traumatic — which also conflicted with her career and the community she was working within. This is how she reacted to an occasion when she was disempowered and manhandled and made to feel helpless by a person she had trusted, and no one else can tell her how she should feel about it.
But they do. Oh, they do.
Do not read the comments on Justine’s post unless you really want to lose all faith in humanity. I repeat, do not read the comments. They are the true horror here.
They tell her that she’s weak and she needs to toughen up. She’s a loser. “Bitch deserved it.” She should have called the cops! Because she didn’t call the cops, it was clearly not a major problem. She should be ashamed for costing a guy his job when his offense didn’t even rise to a level that would justify calling the cops. She’s an attention whore. “I hope you get raped tomorrow you dumb slut”. She enjoyed getting her vagina fingered, if they’d just gotten a room and had sex she’d be happy now. She overreacted. There are “people dying in Africa,” she should shut up. She’s playing the victim. She was drunk, so she deserved it. “another example how a woman can destroy a man’s life at a whim with a rape accusation.” She’s a whore. Women “simply don’t have the mental tools to survive outside the kitchen”.
Weirdly, Richard Stallman shows up to lecture everyone on how to properly refer to GNU/Linux.
There are rape threats. There are death threats. “Men are men” and “there is no rape culture.”
There are people with men’s names and people with women’s names shrieking at her — I even recognized some of them as people who have been banned here.
Don’t read that horrible comment thread. But if you do, recognize it for what it is: evidence of the truth that our culture has a sick attitude towards women.
The Washington Monthly has ranked UMM as a ‘standout school’.
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MORRIS (MN)
Predicted grad rate: 60%
Actual grad rate: 60%
Net price: $9,255
Reason it made the cut: One of the only public liberal arts schools in the nation, UMM ranks just behind cash-rich Amherst and Williams for bang for the buck among schools of its type.
Morris students, a third of whom are first-generation college-goers, shoulder the lowest debt burden in the University of Minnesota system, and among the lowest in the Midwest. The public school price tag, in tandem with a low student-to-faculty ratio of 15 to 1 and other private/liberal arts school attributes, makes Morris a unique value proposition. And if a liberal arts degree may not seem like the most efficient ticket to social mobility in a depressed economy, consider this: 94 percent of recent Morris grads either went on to pursue advanced degrees or found employment within a year of leaving school, which they attribute to the resources, reputation, and connections that the campus enjoys as part of the University of Minnesota system. In addition to being able to choose from thirty-five different liberal arts majors, Morris’s 1,900 students can select from eight preprofessional programs like engineering and nursing, as well as an online learning program—reminders of that public school status and network despite the school’s small size and capacity.
I’m tempted to say, though, that you shouldn’t come here. We’re really, really good, but we’re also full up with students. All the faculty in biology are stretched thinly to keep up with everything — I don’t know that we could handle any more workload.
So unless you’re absolutely brilliant, ambitious, and enthusiastic about getting an amazingly good broad education in the liberal arts, you shouldn’t apply here. Maybe you can go to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities instead? It’s a perfectly nice second choice.
If you can’t get in here, I’m sure you’ve got some acceptable safety schools, like Harvard or something.
I liked this video, but warning: bullying, and no, it doesn’t have a happy ending.
(via Joe. My. God.)
Unfortunately. What that means is that an endeavor that ought to be impartial and based on reasoned evaluation of the evidence is tainted by bias and unavoidable cultural preconceptions. We’ve got religion turning some people into credulous twits, but just as poisonous, we have sexism skewing our analyses.
The first thing we did was look at more than 3,000 articles published between 1980 and 2006 in 12 leading peer-reviewed international relations journals. We then controlled for every possible factor that could contribute to one’s citation count including the quality of the publication, its venue, methodology, the subject matter, and the researcher’s home institution (to name a few). We suspected that an article written by a tenured professor from an elite university, published in a top journal and written on a popular topic would get more citations than an article written by an untenured professor at a liberal arts college on an esoteric topic in a second-tier journal. What we didn’t know was whether gender would matter once you held all of these factors constant. Did knowing the gender of the author make other scholars cite an article more or less?
The results were striking. Even when we controlled for an enormous range of factors, gender remained one of the best predictors of how often an article would be cited. If you were female, your article would get about 0.7 cites for every 1 cite that a male author would receive.
This paper has garnered a lot of press here, here, and here, not because it’s telling us something we hadn’t already suspected but because the data are incontrovertible. Crunch the numbers in different ways and the results are always the same: articles written by women in IR are cited less than men, all else equal.
The authors of that study have some productive suggestions. One is anonymous review: publishers should mask out the authorship and affiliations when sending papers out for review. You’re judging the work on its own quality, right, so who wrote it shouldn’t matter. I do something similar when I’m grading papers — I refuse to look at the students’ names until I’ve evaluated the whole thing.
This would also diminish that other unfortunate bias, judging papers by what institution they came out of, rather than their content.
Another suggestion is simply to have first and middle names always reduced to initials. That’s not a perfect solution, but it helps. (It doesn’t help if you’re already known by your initials, but that’s a different problem.)
I have another suggestion: maybe graduate students should all get some kind of education in equality as part of their training, so they don’t go on to be bigoted asshats when they go on to full science careers. I’ve heard it all: prejudice against women, against blacks, against Asians, against historically black colleges, against liberal arts institutions. Maybe scientists should learn not to pay only lip service to that scientific virtue of objectivity.
