What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Athene Donald

When I was a child a common response, from boys only I suspect, to ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ was ‘An engine driver’.  Even if a few girls shared the dream, I doubt they would have spoken out to say so back then. I am – just – old enough to recall shunting yards with engines getting up steam and belching out dirty smoke in the process. I can recall the London pea-soupers too, as I walked to my primary school, although they were probably past their worst by that point, and the removal of the coal fires in my house as the Clean Air Act came into force in my London suburb. These memories have been triggered by a visit to the National Railway Museum in York during my recent wet holiday; the large covered yard housing so many famous steam locomotives from the past was a good place to be as the rain thundered onto the roof.

Now I am most certainly not what would be regarded as a steam buff. I don’t have nostalgic memories of the steamy journeys of my youth, as it were, and although I’ve enjoyed occasional relatively recent trips on tourist steam trains for a family day out (including one memorable trip in Somerset with a family member on crutches who struggled to clamber into the carriage) I had no particular reason to expect to be star-struck by visiting the Museum. But – and I say this completely decoupled from the fact that I am a Trustee of the Science Museum Group of which the York NRM is a member, although it was one reason I visited  – it really was quite an experience. My first reaction was, this is just a load of old engines, but the more time I spent there the more impressive it all seemed.  There was the first startled recognition at the sight of King George V, a fetching green locomotive familiar to me through a wooden jigsaw I used to do in childhood. Then there was Mallard, which I recall from a set of cards given away free in packets of Rice Krispies when a small child; I remember it because it was the last card I needed to complete the set, and it is a very sleek beast. And the iconic Flying Scotsman is there being renovated in their workshops under the public eye, being got ready to ‘fly’ again. If you’d asked me in advance to name some locomotives, I would have declared I didn’t know any; but I did.

However, merely looking from the outside is not really enough to excite, and it was the chance to get closer to the hardware that was so stirring. Climbing up to the footplate of the Duchess of Hamilton was where things really took off. There we found a wonderful Explainer (thank you Lorna!) on board to, well, explain the knobs, pipes and controls, as well as what life was like for an engine driver and his fireman, and just how hard the latter had to work to keep the fire stoked up. It seriously made me wonder why any little child should think this was a career worth pursuing, the height of their fantasies – but I’ll come back to this point later. Shovelling a ton of coal an hour in cramped, unstable conditions, exposed to the elements does not strike me as the stuff of dreams, but clearly that sort of fireman apprenticeship did not put the aspiring engine-drivers of yester-year off.

Having got a feel for the conditions of work for this team of two, we then heard a clear exposition of the innards of the locomotive and how it all worked together to generate the speed exhibited by the classiest engines, demonstrated by another  excellent female Explainer (cheers, Lesley) in front of the sectioned engine of Ellerman Lines, a relatively late engine. It’s all very well to know the thermodynamic theories behind how these powerful beasts work, but this is totally different from getting to grips with the feats of engineering and design that made it really work.  That’s what seeing the complex network of tubes and more tubes, the baffles and vents really showed up. It made real the words on the pages of textbooks. As a simple-minded physicist it was a wonderful lesson in the ingenuity of designers who probably didn’t want to sit down and consider the application of the 2nd law of thermodynamics to an ideal gas in an ideal Carnot engine. This was about solid, inventive reality, and very impressive it was too.

As I say, I am old enough to remember these giants in action. I am less clear how a child of the 21st century, lacking that context, relates to what may seem like ancient history to them. (As an aside I’d be keen to see more context discussed in the Museum, about how trains changed the pattern of people’s lives in Victorian times, and what these changes meant for industry, families and society then and thereafter). But the children in the Museum seemed happily engrossed in what was around them, charmed by its magic; it clearly satisfied something in them, even if briefly. But it did make me wonder whether a modern child, after visiting the Museum, might be sufficiently impressed by the workmanship, the scale and potential power of these beasts – even if not seen in motion in their glory – to think about engineering as a career (if not becoming an engine driver explicitly), or would it seem an irrelevant curiosity hard to position next to modern trains with their totally different source of power.

It is so hard to identify what triggers a lifelong love for a discipline/career. Museums have their place as one potential trigger, clear teaching and enthusiastic teachers are a sine qua non, some decent careers advice would seem more than desirable, but there is no single recipe for success. Much as I loved the Science Museum in London as a child, I am quite sure it isn’t why I became a scientist. But I cannot identify what did, and had I been asked as a primary school kid what did I want to do when an adult, I would probably have come out with the standard unimaginative answer for a girl of my generation – be a nurse. It was only when exposed to doing science, with good teaching, at my secondary school, that my enthusiasm could take off.

Posted in Careers, Communicating Science | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

In Defence of Academics

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Athene Donald

I’ve been away on holiday for the past week, cowering beneath the clouds, storms and floods this Great British summer has been throwing at us and catching up with some reading. Consequently, I have had more time than usual to scan the newspapers (the print version at that, as I left my laptop and iPad behind), with much about the Higgs Boson and Bankers to amuse, inform and irritate – you can assign the verbs as you like. And in reading Simon Jenkins discussing the case for Bankers to be interrogated by a Parliamentary rather than judicial review in the Guardian, I came across this biting comment towards the end:

I believe that parliament, however ropey its institutions and personalities, is still the best inquisition of the disasters that afflict any community. The reason is that, come the day of reckoning, all professions fight back in defence of their own interest. Bankers, journalists and politicians have recently struck unlucky. Others still lead a charmed life.

When will we hear where the auditors were when the credit bubble burst? When will doctors account for their closeness to big pharma, and hospital consultants for their restrictive practices? When will someone ask the true productivity of academics? As for the fee-fiddling, court-delaying, job-sharing, ambulance-chasing antics of the legal profession, you will wait to Doomsday for a judge-led inquiry into that.

I will leave others to comment on the legal and medical professions, but why does he question the ‘productivity’ of academics? Indeed what does he mean by his question other than a cheap jibe at the expense of a profession he may know precious little about? We academics actually supply plenty of metrics in different guises as we complete the many forms that occupy so much of our lives: numbers of papers in the last 5 years; amount of grant income; numbers of successful grants and failed ones; numbers of talks to schools and numbers of school children reached; numbers of students supervised at master’s and PhD level; numbers of patents granted or applied for; the list goes on and on, if Jenkins did but know. How would Jenkins relate ‘impact’ and productivity? I have no intention of re-opening the debate (or even facilitating the debate to be reopened here) about whether measuring impact is desirable or possible, nor whether a Pathways to Impact statement is the way of the future or the spawn of the devil. Nevertheless the whole point of it is surely that there is some measurable ‘product’ foreseen or, in the case of the REF, already on the books. Putting all these strands together one could argue (although I would hate to do so) that our productivity is indeed being ‘measured’ all the time, in some more or less meaningful way, without the need for a Parliamentary enquiry.

But the question is almost certainly about something rather different than a ‘product’ in this sense. I would hazard a guess that Jenkins is thinking something along the lines of ‘those academics have a cushy life because they only teach for a fraction of the year. Just think how productive they would be if they didn’t have all those vacations….’, which is of course depressingly wide of the mark but a common misconception. As it is, teaching in the sense of the familiar lecture to a hall full of eager 18 year olds is limited to the weeks of the teaching year, which may indeed be only around half the year (as in my own University) or somewhat more, but that is not where our teaching begins and ends.  Graduate students are with us year round, and may see rather more of the average academic out of teaching term than in it. Undoubtedly that should count as teaching, as should mentoring students at all levels and postdocs. Teaching involves a great deal more than the standard 1 hour lecture: ‘contact hours’ involve many different kinds of contact (labs and tutorials for starters) and many hours of preparation beyond the formal contact – for instance I’ve heard a mean figure of 12 hours per new lecture hour quoted, and that sounds about right, although it does depend just how ‘new’ the lecture material is and how much passed on by the one who went before – plus marking and ultimately writing references for one’s students past and present. This isn’t simply a case of delivering a lecture in a bored monotone and heading for the pub, whatever Sir Simon may believe.

Nor is it simply scientists who work insane hours, as anyone who keeps an eye on classicist Mary Beard’s blog will know. Her passion for teaching is manifest, although she accomplishes far more than just that. But perhaps Jenkins believes that writing for papers – as she does so readably – is something that should be left to professional journalists like him, or believes that squeezing in jet-setting off to Rome to make a BBC programme which reaches – and educates – millions is ‘fun’ rather than what academics should be doing of teaching, more teaching and nothing but teaching. All the academics I know work ridiculously long hours (which means I find the 37.5 hour week nominally attributed to me on Research Council forms so insulting), doing many vital tasks in making sure the students are educated and nurtured, that ‘internationally leading’ research is completed and that our universities run efficiently (I’d like to write ‘as efficiently as possible’, but that perhaps is too optimistic).

Actually I suspect Mary and I had it easier in our earlier generation (near contemporaries as we are) than those setting out now. We were not required, as the new academics on the block are, to succeed on all fronts simultaneously and immediately, but were allowed a more gradual progression. We didn’t have instantly to become expert teachers – possibly by virtue of attending mandatory courses, as more and more universities require but which may or may not be helpful, or maybe merely by osmosis from watching our own lecturers’ styles; to pull in the pounds/euros/dollars from the day of first appointment to independent positions; to know intuitively how to encourage students as they face the realities of research for the first time; to be cognizant with health and safety lore and law; to contribute to committees and be able to make useful contributions from the outset; to wow schoolchildren at festivals and in their classrooms. Maybe for Jenkins only the first item on that (non-exhaustive) list counts, that he believes productivity can be measured by counting bums on seats (currently held back by all sorts of government policies) and numbers of 2.1’s or better achieved as a result. How Thatcherite and how depressing. Mercifully, the lot of an academic is a lot more interesting, varied and productive on myriad fronts; it would have been nice if he had stopped to think about his casual sneer before publishing it.

 

Posted in Education, Science Culture | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

Writing the Wrong Stuff

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Athene Donald

Previously on my blog I have discussed both the challenges of writing for different audiences and the difficulties for students to get on top of thesis writing with little prior experience to help.  I have written from the point of view, particularly in the latter context, of seeming to know what is required and with a hope that the student embarking on thesis-writing has somehow picked up the necessary conventions by osmosis or, preferably, a helpful supervisor.  However, my recent experience with ‘journalism’ has shown me just how much I myself need good advice when faced with an unfamiliar writing situation.

In any situation there are always cultural norms which may be visible to an outsider or newcomer to a greater or lesser degree.  Hence my comments in the earlier post about the different forms paper titles take in different disciplines, which seem culturally well-established but not necessarily ever explicitly discussed; and I discussed the idea of scientists forming a ‘tribe’, with stylistic conventions newcomers are meant to have an innate grasp of as they write their thesis. I suppose it simply hadn’t crossed my mind that the Guardian’s Comment is Free (CIF) was as susceptible to this pattern as anything else, and I am grateful to (the pseudonymous) Peter Guilliam and Ally Fogg for providing the expert’s view of how CIF operates in comments on my earlier post about this topic. It should teach me not to undertake new tasks without carefully scouting the background, albeit time was not on my side for this particular novitiate .

I have from time to time read CIF, but just about never the comments. To me they have too often smacked of people either rehearsing well-known grievances in disagreement with the article, or been comments tangentially related to the original article and so allowing someone to get a grumble off their chest. Hence, it hadn’t seemed worth studying them in depth. Clearly Ally in particular has done so, and (presumably from trying different strategies) worked out what seems to be the most effective way of dealing with the different kinds of comment. I had felt that, when looking at the comment stream on my own piece, replying could lead me down a path of blind alleys and ever more bitter exchanges; I am pleased to hear that this need not be so if properly managed. Indeed – according to Ally – that commenters respect the exchanges, given that the tone of some of the original comments implied a distinct lack of respect (I can’t believe it’s common for a self-declared Cambridge physics professor to be told to go and spend more time with scientists so as to learn something about their world).

Nevertheless I have learned more from the experience than simply receiving advice as to how to respond to what I now know is called BTL (below the line) comments. I have learned that writing about something which could fill a book in a mere 550 words, without introducing ambiguity or accidentally assuming prior knowledge of context or fact, was beyond me in 18 hours. This isn’t merely a problem of précis, reducing the word count to that which space permits, so much as having sufficiently vigilant eyes to spot where background information is being taken for granted or I am using a word in ways that not everyone else does. In trying to write an article for people beyond the readership I’ve grown used to on this blog, I probably didn’t spend long enough working out what is common knowledge and what isn’t. If I complain not all students understand when writing a paper for the first time that the structure should be clearly defined and have a beginning, a middle and an end, then equally I failed in realising that when trying to write a short piece I shouldn’t try to squeeze in multiple arguments. In this case I attempted to cover the overall culture (macho, particularly when use of that term in itself led to so much misinterpretation) plus different disciplines not all being the same (when I had no space to give the relevant statistics for different stages of the career pathway) plus using a quote from  study where the lack of qualification about the quote misled people. I think the correct hashtag (for twitter users) to apply at this stage would be #epicfail.

However what I take away is, just because I got a B- on my first attempt I shouldn’t give up. New challenges are just that, challenges, but one is never too old to learn new tricks despite the old adage. I have learnt some interesting facts that I had never had occasion to contemplate before. I would like to think I can do better if a further opportunity were ever to come my way. It is interesting that Peter Guilliam feels I could just pitch to the Guardian for another slot, but I suspect I won’t be rushing off to do that just yet. I may feel this was a less than perfect outcome, but I most certainly do not regret the taking part. And, the bottom line is perhaps I shouldn’t care anyhow. Just getting folks beyond the usual suspects to contemplate the issue is a plus. That is the great thing about having space in a mass circulation paper. Random people from different walks of life may just briefly have glanced at it and thought about their own daughters, or children of friends or colleagues, and for an instant thought ‘is that world as good as it can be in letting them fulfil their dreams, and if not why not?’

Posted in Communicating Science | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Real Women, Real Success Stories

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Athene Donald

I am not in the habit of reposting posts, but the timing of events means that  it seems to be timely on this occasion . Last week we had the furore around the EU’s extraordinarily ill-judged video for their website Science: it’s a Girl Thing (there has been so much written about this already, I don’t want to dwell on it). Rapidly withdrawn (although not rapidly enough to stop it going viral), there was then a move to create a list of ‘realwomenforscience’ through Twitter, rather than the ridiculous, plastic ones created by some PR firm: these girls were presumably actresses rather than practicing scientists, and one has to doubt whether they would make good ambassadors for science if a microphone had been thrust under their noses.  In response to the anger vented on twitter about the video, the EU has now created a list of female scientists who tweet (at @eu_commission/realwomeninscience; probably a stil -increasing list) so that people can follow them, but none of this appears on their website, at least as yet. There are, however, and always were, some videos of young women talking about what excites them about the STEM subjects, and what got them into the field on the EU website. I hope these are of some value to teenagers considering careers – and  their teachers and careers’ advisers.

This is also the week when in the UK L’Oreal/UNESCO announce its winners of their 4 UK Fellowships. The post below gives my thoughts on the process last year, which apply equally well to the situation this year. It serves to remind us that there are plenty of wonderful role models whom the EU could call upon to inspire the next generation, particularly in the biosciences. Tomorrow we will be interviewing 8 fantastic up-and-coming- scientists (the shortlist is here) . I am sure it will be – as it was last year – fantastically hard to choose our 4 winners from them.  The winners will have lots of opportunities to demonstrate what real women scientists do wihout needing to prance around in high heels. L’Oreal certainly never expects its winners to discuss the merits of different types of lipstick, or even discuss its science, but you may think there is some irony in the EU getting things so wrong and a cosmetics firm getting things right on this front.  One of last year’s winners – Heather Whitney – will be joining me on the Southbank in London on July 16th for Soapbox Science, where we get to stand on a ‘soapbox’ and talk about our science and why we love it to passers-by. I hope this will provide another opportunity to convince schoolchildren that ‘Science; it’s a Girl Thing’ in that slightly tainted phrase.

Posted on June 27th 2011

Prizes for Women? Again? What more can I possibly have to say, having written twice (here and here) in different veins on this subject already.  Tomorrow I chair the jury to judge this year’s L’Oreal/UNESCO For Women in Science UK and Ireland Fellowships, and the truth is I think there is still much to say, both about the specifics of this prize and what it implies for the community and the women who will come out of tomorrow evening’s ceremony £15,000 the richer.  That anything needs to be said at all simply reflects the imbalance that persists in the number of women progressing up the scientific career ladder and the underlying reasons for this.  These prizes are about celebration, an opportunity to highlight successful women at an early stage in their careers and to create a network of visible role models and ambassadors.  The women whom we will be interviewing are all capable of being the leaders of tomorrow. We have narrowed the field down from 229 applicants, to a longlist of 21 and then further narrowed this list down to the shortlist of 8 we will meet in person.  Getting down to this final group was tough, because so many of the applications were really strong; women who had followed a multitude of paths, some with ease, some having to overcome major obstacles to reach their current positions.  It is a shame that so many necessarily are disappointed, but that is the case with any prize or in some senses it isn’t worth having.  So, when the winners are announced tomorrow I can say with certainty they will be exceptional women, and I sincerely hope they find the prizes facilitate their career progression.

So much for motherhood and apple pie statements, what more needs to be said? First of all, there are some dangers in what I have written above for the women who win. If we expect them to be ambassadors, as I’m sure they will be proud to be, we are putting a burden on them that standard awards do not impose. We should recognize that for what it is. When my own department was preparing for its Athena Swan application, it was noted that women (at all stages) do a disproportionately large amount of outreach activity. Anecdotally – or at least I cannot immediately produce firm evidence – across higher education women do more of the pastoral and tutoring side of things as well than men.  It could be argued that women do this voluntarily, that they don’t need to do it. But I wonder. Do we need to train women to say no, but also train the wider community that women saying no must be treated in exactly the same way as men saying no? As I described recently, women standing up for themselves don’t seem to prompt an identical reaction – in men or women – to men doing so.  Is it reasonable to ask women, because of the crying need for role models, to take on this additional ambassadorial task when they are still trying to establish their careers? On balance I think the answer is yes, not least because the enhanced visibility will help their careers, one hopes at least as much as the time taken away from their research may hinder. Furthermore, there will be many skills they will be picking up which will stand them in good stead for the years ahead: skills such as fending off probing questions during interviews, mentoring others and talking to school children – all things I would imagine will come their way in the months ahead. Taken in a positive spirit, just think how good the latter two will look on CV’s (incidentally, the last looks like ‘impact’ doesn’t it, if they choose to portray it that way), and how useful the first on that list will be when it comes to interviews for permanent positions.  Nevertheless, it has to be recognized that there is a loss in time, even if a gain in opportunity.

Secondly, I have indicated that we had a fantastic pool of applicants from which to select our final 8. You might think that means ‘problem solved’, we have got ourselves into a position where there is an excellent supply of first class women. So why am I still sounding off about the ‘problem’ when it no longer exists? Without wishing to make the simplistic assumption that the problem really is solved when we reach a 50:50 balance of men and women at every stage of the career ladder, I think it is clear we have not yet reached a situation where all women are able to fulfil their potential. If we had, I don’t think we would still be talking about the leaky pipeline, but the reality is the leaks remain manifest. It seems to me that a world in which in 2010, women made up less than 20% of the applications for Royal Society University Research Fellowships on the physical sciences side (charmingly known as the A-side within the Royal Society; no doubt there is some good historical reason for this nomenclature with which I have never caught up), has some way to go in terms of a level playing field.  I use this figure as a comparator because it corresponds to the approximate career stage of the women we are looking at for the FWIS prizes. Indeed it was very clear from our longlist that physical sciences were very much in the minority in our own applications, a fact that tallies with the significantly higher figure of 35% of URF applications on (yes, you guessed it) the B-side of the biological sciences.

However, there is an interesting corollary about the URF’s success rates which, on the statistically dubious basis of figures for the single year of 2010 which I have to hand, actually showed that women were more successful than men in obtaining a fellowship. There are a couple of obvious conclusions that might be drawn from this (and I have no idea if either of them actually apply, because more work would need to be done to test them). Firstly, that women interview better than men and so are more likely to be successful; or secondly, that the field of women who have persisted to this career stage have self-selected down to a much greater extent so that only the really brilliant and/or confident are applying for URF’s. The men, on the other hand, may be more inclined to stick around – as the recent RSC/IOP postdoctoral survey suggested – whether they have much hope of future success as independent researchers or not, but they are nevertheless willing to chance their arm with an application for a fellowhip. It will be interesting to see how these various numbers change over the coming years, and I know the Royal Society will be monitoring things closely.

So, I don’t for one moment think we have yet reached a point where women-only prizes have lost their importance and function. I am quite sure that tomorrow the jury will be impressed by the quality of the talks and interviews we will have with the shortlisted 8 in the FWIS competition this year. I am equally sure we will have a fiendishly difficult time coming up with the final winners. I hope the eight we meet find the experience rewarding and that the eventual winners relish the responsibilities that come with the awards – as well as the cash.


 

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Comment is Free, but Not Necessarily Sensible

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Athene Donald

Just as I was leaving my office at the end of last week’s typically frenetic activities, I was caught on the phone with an invitation to write a Comment is Free piece on women in science for last Sunday’s Observer. The aim was to complement a news story being run on the incoming President of the RSC, Professor Lesley Yellowlees.  As the first woman to hold this role she has decided to use it as a platform to plug this important issue, as I described in a previous post. I am delighted to see the RSC re-engaging with this important topic after a few years of it slipping down the list of their priorities. And given the chance to use a national broadsheet as a platform to bring it to the attention of the wider public, I was not going to let the opportunity slip either.

So, I had Friday night and part of Saturday to meet my first ever journalistic deadline(quite generous really). It turned out to be a much tougher assignment than I had thought, because the word count was about half the length of most of my blogposts. This meant, as I discovered, that nuancing the text was well nigh impossible, or putting in all the evidence or a lengthy background to the story. I’d like to think this was why some of the comments were quite so daft and wide of the mark, rather than that some people out there remain hideously misogynistic and ignorant of reality. But maybe I’m an optimist.  I will try to deconstruct some of the more unbelievable comments below.

I completed a first draft on Friday night, but wasn’t really satisfied with it. So I sought a second opinion on the Saturday – from my husband. He also wasn’t very happy with what I’d written, felt it would just provoke responses of ‘diddums’ . So he suggested some replacement sentences. Interestingly, the ones he wrote are exactly the ones that provoked the most ire on the grounds they were sexist. I find that somewhat amusing, even if depressing. Men too can feel that ‘aggressive men with one-track minds’ describes too many men and that they don’t like it.

By the time I looked at the web on the Sunday morning at around 8am, already more than 80 people had commented. Some people, it would seem, just sit there waiting for articles to disagree with in a public forum. So,here are some of the issues that were raised – on the CIF website and through twitter – and my thoughts on them.

Macho

Of course I didn’t write the headline ‘End the Macho Culture that turns Women off Science’, some editor took a casual mention of the word macho in the final paragraph (which tied in with Lesley Yellowlees’ terminology) and turned it into the hook for the whole piece. In fact I use macho in this context as describing someone ‘having a strong or exaggerated sense of power or the right to dominate’, to quote one dictionary, not as something only associated with men as I spelled out previously. I would say Maggie Thatcher was macho; it is a trait that I find unattractive but certainly not restricted to men. However, that was the sort of nuance that got lost in my 550 words, and many got angry with the headline and their translation of it as necessarily anti-male. Interestingly, the defence of many seemed to be that science is full of nerds, geeks and boffins who are necessarily feeble so what was I talking about? Clearly I was ill informed. In fact many started to make…

Dangerous Assumptions 

It was assumed that Ms Donald could not know what she was talking about and – and this comment was my all-time favourite comment for sheer inaccurate unpleasantness –

Article number 132 of a disgruntled feminist targetting one area of society at a time and trying to shoe-horn her ideology into it and pick a fight where none exists in order to keep herself in employment. Anyone who thinks there’s a macho culture in science definitely hasn’t spent any time around scientists and is also scrapping the already well scraped bottom of the barrell. Time for a new career I would suggest, you’re not really cut out for journalism.

This commenter couldn’t even read the tagline which pointed out I was a professional scientist, but just assumed I was, as another put it, simply some sad journo writing

another rant by a Guardian pundit disconnected from the real world.

I do wonder how many of the commenters were themselves scientists, probably few or they wouldn’t have been so rude about us all being dweebs and losers. But they clearly believed they were more well-informed about what happens in science than poor old Ms Donald.

I wasn’t the only one who came in for flak. Sally Davies did too:

Dame Sally Davies should be sacked. She hasn’t any business funding research on any other basis that the excellence of that research and its medical promise. Awarding medical research funding on the basis of presentations on “Gender Issues” is a gross misuse of public funds, an abuse of power and is tantamaount to fraud.

(Spelling as in the original.) Interesting assumption to make, that by working to improve issues around gender she is likely to reduce the overall excellence of the research.

PhD is an Ordeal

This was the topic where probably cutting out words caused most problems. I used the quote that women found their PhD’s an “ordeal filled with frustration, pressure and stress”, but the full story (which I’d reported on before) made it clear many men did too. People seemed to assume that I was implying women were feeble things that couldn’t cope with this rather than, as I’d meant to convey, that I didn’t see why anyone should have to endure an experience that was unnecessarily unpleasant. However I rather thought people responded as if it was a case of ‘I was beaten when a child and it didn’t do me any harm, so let’s continue to beat our children’. PhD’s may be hard work, challenging, but they should also be exciting and stimulating and not simply an ordeal. Of course, I’d put the link to the report in to the online article so people could have read the whole thing if they’d wanted, rather than to assume whatever they wanted to assume from a single sentence. But then, some of these would seem to be people who prefer to complain than to think.

Cherrypicking the Research

I was accused of cherry picking the research I quoted because I used physics as an extreme example. I would have loved to be able to compare physics and biology and where the leaks predominantly occur in the different disciplines. The overall length did not permit, but it wouldn’t have altered my basic premise.

Nursing Mothers

One commenter said helpfully that

It is a rare woman who can think about string theory or the mathematics of population genetics while nursing a baby.

This caused a lot of people to explode with ire over twitter and in the online comments. Comments included

My personal fav is the guy who said you can’t think about string theory while breastfeeding. Really? How does he know?!

I think nursing time, and bedtime often great time to think about science – not much else to do than think..

and more than one person indicated that they stopped reading the comments at this point:

Going to stop reading comments on Athene Donald’s Observer piece due to extreme depression about human race.

Is Alice Roberts a Real Scientist?

Finally, people got waylaid into what strikes me as an irrelevant discussion as to whether Professor Alice Roberts  – whom I’d identified as one possible very visible role model for girls contemplating entering science – was a real scientist, by which they seemed to mean a practicing research scientist. She is certainly a woman who read science at university and is now leading a very successful, and presumably satisfactory, career in the scientific domain. Is academic research the only way to be a scientist? I think not, particularly when it comes to trying to convey to schoolchildren contemplating their futures what careers scientists have and for whom ‘research’ probably means little more than looking up stuff on Wikipedia. On the other hand, was it right to use her as the rather more glamorous image to top my story – as the online version did – than the standard photo the Guardian has of me which the print copy used? Or is this simply another way of drawing the reader in with an attractive image, which a middle-aged woman, who just happened to have written the piece, might not manage?

So, an interesting experience overall. If I discount the vitriol tossed off by inveterate CIF commenters, I can take more satisfaction from the fact the article was picked up on websites around the world, with people as far afield and as different in culture as Australia, Malta and Portugal all agreeing that what I wrote rang true in their own part of the world. But girls being put off science is not a story that is going to go away. Just look at the EU Science is a Girl Thing website, where the EU is trying to tempt more girls into science. But whatever you do, don’t look at the taster video…unbelievably inappropriate, and also viral. I hope by next week someone will have had the good sense to pull it, although some of the other parts of the site are probably helpful for teenagers, despite the lipstick logo which pervades it.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 33 Comments