duplicate
Look, diverse teams are generally a good thing. I’ve worked in plenty of them over the years. The problem is that it was said that if I’m writing a paper, I should pay attention to the gender, race, nationality, etc. of the authors of the papers I’m citing. Except there are at least three problems with that.
First, I can’t control who published what in the past. Second, I need to cite what was actually relevant, whether it’s the seminal paper(s) (which is always a citation that is in there for completeness and nobody goes back to read) or the more recent work that’s either in the same area–again, something I have no control over–and especially the previous work I relied on to actually do whatever it is I did, which is, yet again, something I have no control over.
Third, it is extremely rare in most of the sciences to have a paper with a single author. Two is pretty rare these days, and I think most papers I read these days have five or six on average. If the paper is from academia, the author list is going to have the professor leading the group, a principal investigator, probably a post-doc, a couple of grad students, and possibly an undergrad. If it’s from industry, it’ll probably be a mixture of PhDs, MS, and BS holders and could be rather interdisciplinary. There could be authors from multiple companies, or a mixture of industry and academia. I’ve seen papers from various national labs that had something like one hundred different authors. I might be using part of the description in a patent or patent application.
I’m annoyed by the article because the authors seem to ignore how research and citations actually happen in the hard sciences.
Oh, piffle. I didn’t come in here to pick a personal fight, and I was wrong to do it. I apologize for the insult, but I still think the report you cite has zip to do with overreaching social justice warriors and a lot to do with undermining actual social justice.
u don’t have to apologize, I was just trying to deescalate by being self-deprecating.
Maybe it doesn’t really have to do with social justice, but this thread has kind of morphed into ‘dumb stuff the left does’.
I’m not quite grokking your point. Are you saying I’m trying to undermine feminism??
No…I’d start a whole thread over that if I wanted to do that.
It’s just more “Whoooo Che!!” leftist nonsense. With I thought this thread was for.
When you seem to propagate the fiction that womens’ rights activists are associated with murderers of police on the basis of a single electronic message, then yeah, you’re either trying to undermine feminism, or you’re ridiculously credulous, or you’re just irresponsible, or you just were quicker on the internet trigger than you might have been. In any event, the least and most you’re accomplishing with this is distracting attention from the cause of social justice, not impugning the folks who fight for it.
But I was too quick to impute evil motives to you, and I don’t mind admitting it again.
If you think its fiction because of the link I gave, you may want to google “Jake Tapper Cuban fugitive womens march” cause he’s gone after the story too. And of course sections of the left are trying to tear him down. Mostly with “Why didn’t you condemn XYZ” nonsense.
And at the least this nonsense will hurt the left in 2018 because as in 2016, a shit load of people don’t want to be associated with this stuff and will sit out.
EDit: actually don’t. I did and it leads to crazy rightist links. Doesn’t mean theyre wrong but id like to give a more credible source.
Ah yes, let’s play the Tone Police game and claim that lots of people will decide not to vote for this.
Seems to be the right wing game since the whole Deplorables thing. Claim that the left are saying bad things and people will be offended and not vote for them. Which ignores the huge mountain of terrible things the right does and says.
Fuck off.
You first little bitch.
Now go finger yourself at the kids table, the semi-adults are talking now.
Yeah, you’re only a semi-adult alright.
Chimera you never bring anything to these discussions except your constant toxicity and tiny outraged fist shaking at the sky. You’re just another sophomoric, 95 IQ LINO and I’m done being nice to LINOs.
Then you’re not reading anything I actually do contribute, you little worm.
LINO? Please, make it more clear that you’re a righty playing games.
Nope. I’m a Bernie-loving Carter defender from way back. Pretty much the only one. At best you’re a centrist liberal pretender.
I do apologize for my potty mouth Chimera, and no I’m not looking for an apology. I should hold myself to a better standard.
Then don’t be starting that LINO shit. Enforced orthodoxy is bullshit.
I agree! And that’s the vibe I get around here that if I DARE to present a differing opinion or point out something dumb the left has done…well now I failed some kind of purity test.
I have a lot of problems with the basic idea that if people on the left dare to insult anyone, they won’t vote for us. For the reasons I stated. Republicans throw out offense and insults and have built a mountain of lies and slander. There is simply no comparison between the two and the idea that the left has to be absolutely perfect or we’re as bad as them is absurd.
Unfortunately, I see that as being one of the big problems of the Democratic Party. The party does too much hand wringing and is far too passive for fear of offending anyone. The party as a whole needs to stop being such timid little cowards. THAT is one of the things many people in the middle and right hold against us - that we’re too PC and afraid to speak our minds for fear that someone may get upset.
And yet you look at all the incredible things Western science has achieved…
Look, I want more people - men, women, rich, poor, disabled, genius, layman, young, old - generally to be involved in science, but I don’t want our science to get bogged down with ever more papers/research/symposia/energy expenditure etc on “Random shit through a feminist lens” or “Neocolonialist undertones in addressing third world challenges” or whatever.
Yeah, the Chinese or the Indians might be missing out on some diversity from saying “actually, we don’t give a flying fuck how many minorities - or lack thereof - are involved in our Science! programmes, as long as we’re getting results” - but they might figure the gains they make from not being sidetracked by social justice aspects probably outweighs any perceived drawbacks of a Straight Chinese/Indian Science Dude-fest.
I didn’t say I was in favor of that at all, but we have 20th century examples where women discovered things or researched things and their work was credited to men. And many many more where women scientists were just not taken seriously only because they were women.
“Sidetracked by social justice aspects”? See, this is where I get off the train; if we are looking to do the best possible science with the best possible people, then yes, we should care deeply if women or minorities or what have you are being locked out or held back, because we are unnecessarily reducing our talent pool. I work in a department that has quite a lot of women and non-white people in it who wouldn’t be here and doing the world-class work that they are if we took the attitude that “it’s fine if science is all white dudes as long as we’re getting results”. (And even so, women and minorities are still significantly underrepresented at higher seniority levels, even just relative to their rates at the graduate/postdoctoral levels).
Re citations: yes, in the sciences it’s hard to control who you cite. But there is evidence of lingering gender and racial bias at the peer-review, grant-application, and promotion level, which do have an influence on who gets to do the research and publish the papers that become citable.