Discussion: Scientist readers - help needed!

Hey everyone. I'm doing a project on diversity in Science as part of a scientific teaching course, and I'm making a tumblr plot of photos of "real" Scientists when they were kids. Lab scientists, science teachers, PIs (especially PIs), anyone who counts themselves as STEM.

If you're happy to be included, could you e mail me a photo and attach brief answers to these questions?

Current age:

Current job:

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Where did you grow up?

How did you end up a Scientist?

What’s your proudest moment as a Scientist?

What’s your proudest moment outside of that?

Any words of wisdom for wannabe Scientists?

And just so you get to see an adorable photo of me looking soggy halfway up a mountain: http://behindthescientist.tumblr.com/

Also, I'm going to queue up just one post a day. So don't expect to see yourself immediately!

If you want to pass this on to your students or lab mates, please do! The more variety, the better!
Thanks!

Fabulous idea! I'll join in, but I will have to pester my mother for cute pictures, since she has all the family photos.

I do have an adorable photo of arthurd being accosted by a marmot when she was about 4 or so. She's in computer science and deals with fewer marmots in her job these days. :)

I had to pester my Mum too! She sent many, but this one had the best adorable:embarrassment ratio.

ooh - this is a brilliant idea! And your example looks great too.

From a scientist wannabe- this is brilliant!

I need men! It seems women are much more forthcoming with silly photos of them as kids. Graeme, Hammer, Ian for starters?

It's in the post.

Thanks Graeme! I just bumped you ahead of Cristina :)

Age before beauty...

...aye, if I'm not in soon I'll likely be dead.

I need men!

Quoted for posterity.

Sounds great. I'm definitely in if/when I can find a suitable photo (not so easy for those of us who are old enough for their childhoods to have been in the pre-digital era :-), and will also circulate in my scientific circles.

Include engineers and your male to female ratio will sort itself out ;-). Until then I'm afraid I can't help.

Canadian, if you count yourself as a scientist (I'm hoping for quite a few submissions from Google engineers from Zan), you're in! I'm not only thinking about diversity of the scientists themselves but also diversity of jobs that make you a scientist.

I was pre digital too Blair! Had to get my Mum to scan one. I am lucky my Mum's good and super fast at that stuff.

Thanks for the clarification Becks!

As it happens I don't think I can justify saying I've done anything particularly sciency since about 1st year so I'll have to count myself out.

Good luck with this project - it sounds quite interesting.

It's already proving more interesting for me than I anticipated. Galactogogue and I were talking about the bias in early submissions. Is it simply because young women are happier to give out (and have in their possession) photos of themselves as kids? Is it because we're aware of the need for role models in the sciences? It's fun!

I'm not a scientist but find this project and thread interesting. I must hang out with different sorts of ladies because all the ones I know are loathe to have their photo taken (and not just with me!). Maybe there is a difference between how they feel about the way they looked as a child compared to how they look as an adult.

It is also interesting to note that a working digital camera has been around since Blair was a toddler so if Kodak had not sat on the technology for 25 years, there may have been msny more photos in the bank, so to speak.

Blair's photo, in the Bank:

Was that photo from APOC 2002?

On the gender issue, I wonder if another factor is generational - I can only speak for my own field of science and, to some extent, my own country, but from that field of experience, whilst the older generations are male-dominated, amongst those under 40 it's fairly close to an even split (and, in fact, most of the postdocs and graduate students I work most closely with are women).

speaking as a scientist myself(within your broad parameters at least!), you missed one vital question: "have you grown up?" Maybe this is something unique to biologists, but I'd expect most of my colleagues to join me in a resounding "No, never!"

If I had grown up then I would probably know the answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Blair - my field is certainly at least 60/40 women/men at the post doc level - maybe even as high as 70/30, don't think anyone's actually done the maths. My lab is 7 women and 2 men, including the PI. Rob pops his head in to even things up occasionally.

Yet my department has only appointed men to faculty positions in the last two years :s.

This is a real thing with data to support it, no? (I know I've read reports about it, someone help me out here...) There are more and more women getting PhDs in STEM fields, but the number of women in tenure-track positions isn't moving very much.

Yes, it is a real thing...I can't recall the exact links, but I'm sure there are plenty of them from this paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/12112...

That's the one that was in the news where faculty downrated a female applicant despite the fact that the CV was exactly the same, apart from the gender of the name. Both Male and Female faculty downrated the women.

There have been suggestions that this has to do with maternity leave/kids etc but older studies from places like Sweden where such things are more more common and lengthy suggest that the problem exists there too.

This article "same behavior, different consequences: reactions to Men's and Women's Altruistic Citizenship Behavior" is related and demonstrates different perceptions based on the same action due to gender.

In short, let's say somebody needs help with something random (like fixing a photocopier) at the office. People expect a women to help, so if she helps there is no uplift in their perception of her as a colleague (and performance/evaluation ratings) but there is a detriment if she doesn't help. In contrast, if a man helps there is an uplift in later evaluations/recommendations but there is no penalty if he does not help.

In more scientific wording, "In 2 experimental studies, the authors hypothesized that the performance of altruistic citizenship behavior in a work setting would enhance the favorability of men’s (but not women’s) evaluations and recommendations, whereas the withholding of altruistic citizenship behavior would diminish the favorability of women’s (but not men’s) evaluations and recommendations. Results supported the authors’ predictions. Together with the results of a 3rd study demonstrating that work-related altruism is thought to be less optional for women than for men, these results suggest that gender-stereotypic prescriptions regarding how men and women should behave result in different evaluative reactions to the same altruistic behavior, depending on the performer’s sex"

http://www.csub.edu/~mdulcich/documents/same_behav...

This pdf has a lot of references. Here is a collection of reports from various universities about the status of women.

We've just gathered a load of data on male/female students. There's a clear trend that female average marks have increased year on year vs male for some time. Average female marks are now statistically significantly higher.

...BUT...

The spread of marks among the males is much higher. In the UK system this means more first class degrees (and fails) go to men. If you assume that at each stage on an academic greasy pole only the minority go through, this data alone is sufficient to explain the underrepresentation of women.

Incidently, I don't doubt Suzanne's point about altruism. On a recent inverview panel we were advised that we should hire more women because they would be more altruistic... (!)

Your workplaces sound nice. I got penalized for helping a coworker, saying it distracted from my regular work and they got bonus points for accomplishing the task more efficiently. So much for cultivating unique skills.

Our very own Cristina is up today: http://behindthescientist.tumblr.com/post/67370115...

Awesome!

We know today's cutie too!

http://behindthescientist.tumblr.com/post/67469305...

Also, it would be great to have the queue filled up to get me through my vacation - I'm about halfway full now. So send me your submissions!

So, a nice chap from NPR gained me a ton of new followers...but I've run out of submissions! Those of you who promised them a while ago...now would be a great time!