Why Men Don’t Believe the Data on Gender Bias in Science

[C C]

https://www.wired.com/story/why-men-dont...n-science/

EXCERPT: [...] Given the enormous amount of data to support these findings, and given the field in question, one might think male scientists would use these outcomes to create a more level playing field. But a recent paper showed that in fact, male STEM faculty assessed the quality of real research that demonstrated bias against women in STEM as being low; instead the male faculty favored fake research, designed for the purposes of the study in question, which purported to demonstrate that no such bias exists.

Why do men in science devalue such research and the data it produces? If anyone should be willing to accept what the peer-reviewed research consistently shows and use it to correct the underlying assumptions, it should be scientists.

But it is in large part because they are scientists that they do not want to believe these studies. Scientists are supposed to be objective, able to evaluate data and results without being swayed by emotions or biases. This is a fundamental tenet of science. What this extensive literature shows is, in fact, scientists are people, subject to the same cultural norms and beliefs as the rest of society. The systemic sexism and racism on display every day in this country also exist within the confines of science. Scientists are not as objective as they think they are. It is an extremely destabilizing realization for someone whose entire career has been rooted in the belief in human objectivity....

MORE: https://www.wired.com/story/why-men-dont...n-science/

[Syne]

...or the relatively few women who do seek STEM careers still have statistically proven liabilities that men don't.

Women Leave STEM Jobs for the Reasons Men Want To
"...the data, like this 2014 study by the National Center for Women and Information Technology or this 2014 report by Catalyst, consistently show that more than half the women who enter STEM fields leave them within a decade, which is close to twice the frequency of their male peers in those fields."

As an employer, I would want a woman seeking a job in such a field to make more of an effort to demonstrate their dedication to their career. Simple fact of the different choices men and women tend to make.

[RainbowUnicorn]

https://www.wired.com/story/why-men-dont...n-science/

EXCERPT: [...] Given the enormous amount of data to support these findings, and given the field in question, one might think male scientists would use these outcomes to create a more level playing field. But a recent paper showed that in fact, male STEM faculty assessed the quality of real research that demonstrated bias against women in STEM as being low; instead the male faculty favored fake research, designed for the purposes of the study in question, which purported to demonstrate that no such bias exists.

Why do men in science devalue such research and the data it produces? If anyone should be willing to accept what the peer-reviewed research consistently shows and use it to correct the underlying assumptions, it should be scientists.

But it is in large part because they are scientists that they do not want to believe these studies. Scientists are supposed to be objective, able to evaluate data and results without being swayed by emotions or biases. This is a fundamental tenet of science. What this extensive literature shows is, in fact, scientists are people, subject to the same cultural norms and beliefs as the rest of society. The systemic sexism and racism on display every day in this country also exist within the confines of science. Scientists are not as objective as they think they are. It is an extremely destabilizing realization for someone whose entire career has been rooted in the belief in human objectivity....  

MORE: https://www.wired.com/story/why-men-dont...n-science/

Why do men in science devalue such research and the data it produces?

for discussion purposes i am going to give my opinion as if you are asking the question devoid of any potential bias from either side.
1. sample group
what is an acceptable sample group of "scientists" ?
2. is gender a rational point of classification inside a intellectual model of quntitative data seeking qualitative synopsis ?
3. if there were to be bias on either side of the proposed middle ground how would you know it is bias and not just a statistical representation of a variant model of intellectual distribution(which might well prove to be random).
4. is it possible to reverse engineer a model of intellectual distribution from a gender perspective ?

some thoughts ^

generally speaking i would suggest that the actual sample is of people in a defined profesionalparadigm rather than an intellectual scope.
thus patriarchal models dictate the vast majority of profesions.
... Given that profesions are biased by the very nature of historical and seminal construct, is it possible to find some type of median to qualitatively define a bias that would render a result that has no inferance on projected intent to act ?

additionally, from my very (i shall not go into details) slight malaise into the scientific world, it seems to me that those who are the savante scientist have little to no real leaning on gender bias, simply intellectual abillity and that personal models of socialisation may flavour interaction but not perceptual skill & ability.

[C C]

[...] additionally, from my very (i shall not go into details) slight malaise into the scientific world, it seems to me that those who are the savante scientist have little to no real leaning on gender bias, simply intellectual abillity and that personal models of socialisation may flavour interaction but not perceptual skill & ability.

The natural sciences (and possibly formal, too) often have less confidence in or respect for the output of the social sciences, and many issues which preoccupy them. Thus some of the former aren't apt to pay much attention to the latter's urges for rehabilitation -- in the beginning anyway. (Branches in science)

The majority of scientists don't have a half-foot in philosophy anymore, like they arguably still did back in the 19th or early 20th centuries. They study the world rather than the preset conditions for conduct and the scheme of operation for science itself. Some may even react as if the latter is a priori in the most literal sense, not constructed or invented beforehand at all. Equivalent to sacred, untouchable. Working scientists can occasionally go the opposite and dissent that there is little standard for their behavior at all, and little broad plan that they proceed under. But clearly the rejections and most extreme outcries of egregious errors and "crank!" dispel any self-skepticism about their activities being loosely regulated and of liberal laxness in instruction. As well as charges of sexist bias and harassment in regard to community conduct implying an expanding dimension to the governing template.

In the natural sciences (barring biological ones at times), what is investigated does not take offense, fight or argue back, protest, withhold funding, demand adherence to ideology, or engage in litigation. The social sciences (including psychological and economic disciplines), are never going to be as reliable or objective --- are always going to possess some degree of prescriptive art and worldview interpretation. They've been shaped / influenced in the past by both the conventions / agendas of past eras and now criticism from the changing culture and goals of the present.

The biomedical field is a kind of transitional boundary between the two broad categories (contingently excluding the formal one here), and can accordingly be unstable. There may be other endeavors on the natural side that are contaminated with commercial / business and diverse group self-interests, academic trends, and pop-orientation fads due to "people" becoming advocates (either preservationist or exploitive) for that "stuff" which cannot fight or argue back, protest, withhold funding, etc. Also, there's a deluge of unfamiliar research, models, and hypotheses in journals that either doesn't receive much attention or goes untested / un-utilized (remains ambiguous, suspect).

So the reliability in the physical sciences actually rests in the most time-worn and regular items in play that either get intermittently tested or repeatedly validate their usefulness. If straying off the beaten path from that, the natural sciences may as much similarly be infested with prescriptive art and community values (or whoever emerges as the most successful, persuasion by either nuisance or intimidation victor in an inter-tribal quarrel).

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[Yazata]

Why Men Don't Believe the Data on Gender Bias

I'm a male and decidedly politically-incorrect. And I'm exposed to a torrent of articles, by left-wing writers from left-wing publications, telling me what people like me supposedly think and why. Yet, whenever I try to explain what I really do think and my reasons for thinking it, I'm always shouted down and often insulted.

So that's a phenomenon that needs investigating right there.

Given the enormous amount of data to support these findings, and given the field in question, one might think male scientists would use these outcomes to create a more level playing field. But a recent paper showed that in fact, male STEM faculty assessed the quality of real research that demonstrated bias against women in STEM as being low; instead the male faculty favored fake research, designed for the purposes of the study in question, which purported to demonstrate that no such bias exists.

Maybe they disagree about which "research" is "fake".

Why do men in science devalue such research and the data it produces?

Perhaps because it's "social science" (an oxymoron) conducted by feminists (whose conclusions about the subject were already well established before the research was conducted) designed to produce results consistent with those views. In other words, probably because this isn't "science" at all, it's just politically-motivated rhetoric posing as science. (Pseudoscience.)

If anyone should be willing to accept what the peer-reviewed research consistently shows and use it to correct the underlying assumptions, it should be scientists.

You can get a crowd of feminists to cheer any pro-feminist conclusion. Trump gets a lot of support from his red-hatted MAGA crowd too. Peer review is meaningless when the sample of reviewers is skewed towards favoring particular conclusions without much interest in how they were obtained.

In real life, some university majors attract mostly men, others mostly women. Restricting discussion to math, physical science and engineering subjects already cherry-picks that data and biases the results. (Only 22.4% of Astrophysics PhDs are awarded to women. Obvious evidence of discrimination, right?) STEM subjects, especially those that are highly abstract and mathematical, attract mostly males.

The biological sciences show a slight bias towards females. (53.3% of PhDs go to women.) There's quite a bit of variation within that class, 66.0% of Bacteriology PhDs go to females, but only 29.0% in Computational Biology. (Quite likely the math thing again.)  

University subjects that are more personal-interpretive attract more females. 78.8% of PhDs awarded in Clinical Psychology are awarded to females. 79.8% of PhDs in Art History and Criticism are awarded to females. Is that evidence of systematic discrimination against males in those subjects? Or is it just evidence that those subjects are of more interest to females?

https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf1.../tab16.pdf

A question that underlies all this and that needs asking is: Why don't women like mathematics as much as men? I think that any disparities that might arise in some STEM subjects probably derives from that. (And why aren't men as into the subjects that attract females disproportionately?)

I frankly don't believe that women are being excluded from STEM subjects by some evil sexist conspiracy. If anything, the opposite is true. There are all kinds of organizations, targeted scholarships and clubs designed to attract girls into these areas. (Why don't we see the same thing trying to attract boys into psychology or some of the humanities?)

I just don't think that women are as likely to enroll in some of the STEM subjects. Just as men are less likely to enroll in some of the other subjects. It's their choice.

[Syne]

A question that underlies all this and that needs asking is: Why don't women like mathematics as much as men? I think that any disparities that might arise in some STEM subjects probably derives from that. (And why aren't men as into the subjects that attract females disproportionately?)

"Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests. ... The present study suggests that interests may play a critical role in gendered occupational choices and gender disparity in the STEM fields." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140

[C C]

Why is scientific sexism so intractable to reform?
https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-scientific...-to-reform

EXCERPT: In the final months of my physics degree, one of my professors asked me into his office – an exciting prospect, given that I assumed we’d be discussing subjects for my potential honours theses. He closed the door, invited me to sit, and declared he’d fallen in love. He wanted to have an affair, he said, and if I couldn’t share in that plan he couldn’t continue as my advisor – he’d find my presence ‘too distracting’. He was a senior academic, and married; but this was Australia in the late 1970s and the subject of sexual harassment wasn’t on any university radar. It seemed this was just one of life’s inequities, another hurdle facing being a woman in science. So I made the decision to leave physics – a subject I loved – and in the following academic year switched to computer science at a different university.

[...] In recent months, the world of academic science has been rocked by a number of high-profile scandals in which senior scientists at leading universities in the United States, including Caltech, the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, have been called out for sexually harassing female students and junior colleagues. The litany of cases involves graduate students who have been victims of groping, explicit emails, invitations to private dinners, and demanding, childish love letters. In one case, a professor of astronomy with a known track record of harassment moved universities. No one in administration passed on the information, and so the behaviour began afresh.

With every new report, a wave of weariness washes over me: ‘Really?’ ‘Still?’ my mind cries. When will we get over this? Anger used to be my pre-eminent response, but I’ve seen so much sexism in science over the past 30 years that nothing much surprises me any more....

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-scientific...-to-reform

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[Secular Sanity]

[Syne]

[Secular Sanity]

Since we know spikes in estrogen in women cause similar cognitive impairment, monthly, should we also generalize that to women's decision-making in general?

Touche.

How do you fair at the other two questions that make up the quick IQ test the ball and bat question was taken from?

If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

5 and 47.

Now, tell me if you think men have more trouble admitting when they're wrong.