(no subject)
The President of Harvard seems to have a little problem on his hands.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
I can cheerily say two things: One, at least someone bothered to stay
and challenge the comment and two, shame on the professor who stormed
out. I did not know that when people present ideas we dislike that our
academic duty was to flee. Last I checked, standing up and walking out
was not part of the scientific method.
When important issues are discussed, the ability to say "I'm interested
in what the truth is, regardless of whether I like that truth or not."
is paramount. Assume that the hypothesis of these innate differences is
true; testing for this information may be instrumental in bringing about
much needed balance to the engineering and hard science fields. Assume
it isn't true; it shows us that the issue is vastly social and we need
to take steps to improve the social procedures that enable these
pursuits. Either way, we know something. We can disprove old beliefs
and better tailor our efforts. If it is true, that knowledge could be
instrumental in helping us determine more effective ways to present
material. Ultimately it would not be true that "girls have a gene for
being bad at math", despite what raging opponents of such theories would
have you believe. If anything, it would probably be found that females
have a predisposition towards learning in a way that doesn't mesh well
with our current math/science educational system, after all most
competing theories about what allows us to do these activities are not
heavily predicated on gender. What does this mean? It means that if we
knew this, we could better tailor the system to our projected desires
and needs. No where does the fact that something is the way it is imply
that it ought to be that way and no where does the potential reality
described mean that females would have to be stricken from the sciences
because they're "bad at math" any more than it means we should
incarcerate males because they are more likely to commit a violent
crime. It also bears mentioning that, even if such a hypothesis were
true, that it says nothing about individuals and only something about
broad trends, much in the same way that women are more likely to develop
osteoporosis and men are more likely to die at a younger age. Are these
facts offensive? Even if they are, does it make the trend less true?
Certainly not, but it does give us some indications concerning where to
look for causes, which aides us in prevention.
If it were determined to not be the case then we know that the real
issue is a vast social structure that does not encourage these
activities in girls and probably actively dissuades them from
participation. At that point then we know there is no need to
restructure and rethink our teaching methods, we need to change the
circumstances, help facilitate entry into the sciences, and foster
interest. There is nothing shameful or offensive about different
learning styles, and shoving our heads in the sand and pretending there
are no differences, if they really exist, will not help anyone. We
instead need to meet the challenge head on and not shy away from
explanations until they have been discredited with a preponderance of
evidence, not with a degree of distaste of the explanation. Only then
can we effectively address the important issues at hand.
This scenario bears striking similarity to early anthropological
attempts to "prove the superiority of the white man". No matter how hard
they tried and how vigilantly they pursued, their theories ultimately
yielded to substantial evidence that refuted their claims. Ignoring the
issue and becoming indignant over hypotheses that we find offensive
didn't refute the theories, evidence did. Could Gould's famous
refutation of The Bell Curve(in his book The Mismeasure of
Man) ever have been as fundamentally challenging without the
application of actual quantifiable data employed to refute Herrnstein
and Murray's thesis? Certainly not, and the scientific community and
society are better for it. It is not enough to metaphorically stand up
and leave the room.
There is a vast and breathtaking misunderstanding in society today about
what genes mean, and it goes on even at the highest levels of academia.
People simply do not understand that a gene is not a yarn spun by fate.
Genes for things could often best be described as predispositions. A
predisposition is not a promise or a guarantee; it is a tendency for an
event to occur over many trials, sometimes in required and specific
conditions. Sadly, there is a fear in today's world that if there is a
gene that can reasonably be attributed to an event, disposition, or fact
that it pigeonholes us into an inescapable reality. Nothing could be
further from the truth, and the evidence for such claims abounds.
Our unique position on this planet affords us an ability that other
species do not; we can choose to ignore and circumvent our own genes.
Every day we research a cure for leukemia, use birth control, offer an
inhaler to an asthma sufferer, or any of a vast array of fundamentally
Human activities, we choose to circumvent our genes. Genes would have
the diabetic perish, but human activity denies it. Even if there was
determined to be a magic gene that established such ridiculous claims as
"girls are bad at math", would this result in the banning of females
from math and science? Certainly not, we continually ignore such things
and navigate ourselves around them in a way that denies their
actualization. No one accepts and resigns to their fates females who
are more likely to suffer from osteoporosis, why would this be any
different?
What I find most disturbing is the perspective that is latent in
peoples' reactions and what it could indicate about their opinions
towards themselves and others. If one can come to the conclusion that
someone thinks less of you (as the girls are quoted in the conclusion of
the article) because of your genes, then what does this say about their
attitudes about genes and themselves? Does it mean that they think this
way about other genes, or that they simply fear a world in which they
are measured solely by their genes? The latter will never be the case
because of a gene's strong contingency on proper environments to express
itself. The former is a more terrifying proposition anyhow, because the
former is the attitude that attempts to give rise to the latter. They,
like so many others, make the common leap from "is" to "ought"- a leap
that has been shown countless times to be an unjustifiable one.
Genes are not the deterministic end of humanity. You are not doomed to a
fate if you carry the gene for something. The sooner that people begin
to understand this, the better knowledge of ourselves we can begin to
acquire and utilize. Why is it wrong to understand that we may or may
not have a predisposition to a certain way, especially if we can use
that knowledge to circumvent things we do not deem desirable. The
academic culture has decided it wants more females in the math and
sciences and they will take steps to achieve that. Nothing about the
President of Harvard's hypothesis prevents this from occurring or says
that it cannot happen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
I can cheerily say two things: One, at least someone bothered to stay
and challenge the comment and two, shame on the professor who stormed
out. I did not know that when people present ideas we dislike that our
academic duty was to flee. Last I checked, standing up and walking out
was not part of the scientific method.
When important issues are discussed, the ability to say "I'm interested
in what the truth is, regardless of whether I like that truth or not."
is paramount. Assume that the hypothesis of these innate differences is
true; testing for this information may be instrumental in bringing about
much needed balance to the engineering and hard science fields. Assume
it isn't true; it shows us that the issue is vastly social and we need
to take steps to improve the social procedures that enable these
pursuits. Either way, we know something. We can disprove old beliefs
and better tailor our efforts. If it is true, that knowledge could be
instrumental in helping us determine more effective ways to present
material. Ultimately it would not be true that "girls have a gene for
being bad at math", despite what raging opponents of such theories would
have you believe. If anything, it would probably be found that females
have a predisposition towards learning in a way that doesn't mesh well
with our current math/science educational system, after all most
competing theories about what allows us to do these activities are not
heavily predicated on gender. What does this mean? It means that if we
knew this, we could better tailor the system to our projected desires
and needs. No where does the fact that something is the way it is imply
that it ought to be that way and no where does the potential reality
described mean that females would have to be stricken from the sciences
because they're "bad at math" any more than it means we should
incarcerate males because they are more likely to commit a violent
crime. It also bears mentioning that, even if such a hypothesis were
true, that it says nothing about individuals and only something about
broad trends, much in the same way that women are more likely to develop
osteoporosis and men are more likely to die at a younger age. Are these
facts offensive? Even if they are, does it make the trend less true?
Certainly not, but it does give us some indications concerning where to
look for causes, which aides us in prevention.
If it were determined to not be the case then we know that the real
issue is a vast social structure that does not encourage these
activities in girls and probably actively dissuades them from
participation. At that point then we know there is no need to
restructure and rethink our teaching methods, we need to change the
circumstances, help facilitate entry into the sciences, and foster
interest. There is nothing shameful or offensive about different
learning styles, and shoving our heads in the sand and pretending there
are no differences, if they really exist, will not help anyone. We
instead need to meet the challenge head on and not shy away from
explanations until they have been discredited with a preponderance of
evidence, not with a degree of distaste of the explanation. Only then
can we effectively address the important issues at hand.
This scenario bears striking similarity to early anthropological
attempts to "prove the superiority of the white man". No matter how hard
they tried and how vigilantly they pursued, their theories ultimately
yielded to substantial evidence that refuted their claims. Ignoring the
issue and becoming indignant over hypotheses that we find offensive
didn't refute the theories, evidence did. Could Gould's famous
refutation of The Bell Curve(in his book The Mismeasure of
Man) ever have been as fundamentally challenging without the
application of actual quantifiable data employed to refute Herrnstein
and Murray's thesis? Certainly not, and the scientific community and
society are better for it. It is not enough to metaphorically stand up
and leave the room.
There is a vast and breathtaking misunderstanding in society today about
what genes mean, and it goes on even at the highest levels of academia.
People simply do not understand that a gene is not a yarn spun by fate.
Genes for things could often best be described as predispositions. A
predisposition is not a promise or a guarantee; it is a tendency for an
event to occur over many trials, sometimes in required and specific
conditions. Sadly, there is a fear in today's world that if there is a
gene that can reasonably be attributed to an event, disposition, or fact
that it pigeonholes us into an inescapable reality. Nothing could be
further from the truth, and the evidence for such claims abounds.
Our unique position on this planet affords us an ability that other
species do not; we can choose to ignore and circumvent our own genes.
Every day we research a cure for leukemia, use birth control, offer an
inhaler to an asthma sufferer, or any of a vast array of fundamentally
Human activities, we choose to circumvent our genes. Genes would have
the diabetic perish, but human activity denies it. Even if there was
determined to be a magic gene that established such ridiculous claims as
"girls are bad at math", would this result in the banning of females
from math and science? Certainly not, we continually ignore such things
and navigate ourselves around them in a way that denies their
actualization. No one accepts and resigns to their fates females who
are more likely to suffer from osteoporosis, why would this be any
different?
What I find most disturbing is the perspective that is latent in
peoples' reactions and what it could indicate about their opinions
towards themselves and others. If one can come to the conclusion that
someone thinks less of you (as the girls are quoted in the conclusion of
the article) because of your genes, then what does this say about their
attitudes about genes and themselves? Does it mean that they think this
way about other genes, or that they simply fear a world in which they
are measured solely by their genes? The latter will never be the case
because of a gene's strong contingency on proper environments to express
itself. The former is a more terrifying proposition anyhow, because the
former is the attitude that attempts to give rise to the latter. They,
like so many others, make the common leap from "is" to "ought"- a leap
that has been shown countless times to be an unjustifiable one.
Genes are not the deterministic end of humanity. You are not doomed to a
fate if you carry the gene for something. The sooner that people begin
to understand this, the better knowledge of ourselves we can begin to
acquire and utilize. Why is it wrong to understand that we may or may
not have a predisposition to a certain way, especially if we can use
that knowledge to circumvent things we do not deem desirable. The
academic culture has decided it wants more females in the math and
sciences and they will take steps to achieve that. Nothing about the
President of Harvard's hypothesis prevents this from occurring or says
that it cannot happen.