It’s not about what you do, it’s about who gets to do the research in the first place. I have diverse friends all over academia, and career advancement is not as merit-based as some want to believe. There are barriers for women and people of color that have nothing to do with their qualifications and everything to do with social attitudes toward them. I’ve had more than one female friend who had to deal with pervy advisors who used them as scapegoats for their own fuckups. But if we go much farther down that road we’d be on a whole other subject: how easy it is to exploit and manipulate graduate students.
This unfairness is what (sane) proponents of diversity in science are pointing out. I’m sure there are some whackjobs proposing we discount research by white people, but they are whackjobs that diminish the overall validity of this totally legitimate concept.
You may misunderstand my point. It’s not about what PatriotX does while ‘‘sciencing.’’
He’s not obligated to check the race or gender of the people whose research he is drawing from. His only obligation, as a scientist, is to check the quality of the research. The issue is about disproportionate representation in the sciences on the basis of discrimination. The obligation is to transform academic culture into one that doesn’t tolerate discrimination. But as I said, doing that is an uphill battle, given how much power and control is aggregated in the hands of a few in academic circles, and how easy it is to break your career when you stand up for yourself.
Part of the issue of having not-diverse researchers is that while the scientific method itself is not biased, people frame hypotheses based on assumptions that may be purely culturally driven. This matters less in the case of theoretical physics, but far more in the case of, say, mental health treatment. People coming from diverse backgrounds widen the overall scope of what is being studied, and the different angles from which it is studied. This is ideal.
Case in point, when I was a student at U of M my husband worked with an Asian-American researcher who studied concepts of self among white, Chinese-American and Chinese populations. He had a unique cultural insight into the general mindset of Chinese people that enabled him to frame his hypotheses in a way that no white American probably ever would have considered. And he was uniquely equipped, from that cultural vantage point, to operationally define certain concepts better than a white person would.
Do you not see the obvious advantage to the scientific community at large?
But that is exactly what the article that triggered this sub-thread is advocating. From the abstract of the paper (the rest is hidden behind a paywall.)
That’s written in irritating academic jargon, sure, but nowhere there do they say, “don’t cite white dudes.” They’re not calling for fewer data. Do you understand what they’re actually calling for?
They don’t say to trim the white dudes. They don’t say to substitute lesser works by non-academics. They say to pay attention to what you’re doing; gather your own data on how you’re working.
Sorry, I was building on the general argument in favor of diversity in science rather than that specific claim/paper. I came into the middle of the conversation so I thought that’s what PatriotX was responding to. I don’t mean to be confusing; it’s just a gift.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Scholars should read through their work and count all the citations before submitting their work for publication, and see how many people of diverse backgrounds — women, people of color, early-career scholars, graduate students and non-academics — are cited.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, but then as PatriotX points out, how is that realistically possible? Should every author of every cite be googled and demographically catalogued? Is that a reasonable expectation? How do we even determine who is an ‘‘early-career scholar’’ with accuracy? Why would an academic paper cite a non-academic source?
This feels weirdly like asking people to catalogue the outcome of publication inequality, not do any actual thing to create a more equal society.
Nah, wouldn’t qualify this as SJW.
Besides your statement is a bit unfair, as it is not that he states that white women should make way for him, just that it is white women that always plow straight ahead.
Don’t forget ageism. Except for the skipper on the Moonstone and the Commander wandering around on the quay, everybody’s so young. True, Michael Caine played the flight leader, but you never see his face – too old I imagine.
Speaking a little off the cuff here, but I’m thinking that the fact that the ancient Greeks and Romans used to paint their statues was forgotten for a long time. Michelangelo might have left David unpainted because people at the time thought that was the way the ancients did it.
