I ran across Zapperz’s post Physics Departments Without A Single Female Faculty Member yesterday, and made a comment on the blog. Today I see that Chad has a post up, Baseball and Gender Bias: “Number of Women in Physics Departments: A Simulation Analysis “, which exceeds anything I would have said, had I cobbled together a post.
Which is not to say I would have, because this is the sort of subject where some scientist readers stop acting like scientists, in terms of data interpretation and/or reading comprehension. This was a narrowly-defined analysis, based on a specific premise. As Chad puts it
They have assumed a particular gender distribution among the imaginary faculty pool in their simulation, which matches the gender distribution of the real sample– 16% of the bachelor’s-only faculty are female and 11% of the Ph.D.-granting pool. That’s descriptive, not prescriptive
IOW, they used the actual gender ratios we have, because that’s what we have — nobody has said this is good, or appropriate. It’s not an endorsement. It also doesn’t say that there is no discrimination going on.
Science is sustained objective ability and accomplishment evaluated by empirical reality. Evolution is a hoot if you are one of the survivors. If not, think of it as evolution in action. March or die – or cool into the intellectual ground state that is professional management.
Those who can must never do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers. Those who can’t teach teachers manage teachers. Those who can’t manage teachers manage programs. Those who can’t manage programs dictate policy. Those who cannot dictate policy carry guns. Strength Through Sacrifice.