• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories
  • You may need to edit your signatures.

    When we moved to Xenfora some of the signature options didn't come over. In the old software signatures were limited by a character limit, on Xenfora there are more options and there is a character number and number of lines limit. I've set maximum number of lines to 4 and unlimited characters.

Science is sexist because it is objective, is this for real?

Graham2001

Graduate Poster
Joined
Aug 19, 2006
Messages
1,743
Courtesy of Coast 2 Coast AMs 'Science Advisor'

College science classes are hostile to women and minorities because they use the scientific method, which assumes people can find reliable truths about the natural world through careful and sustained experimentation, concludes a recent dissertation by a doctoral candidate at the University of North Dakota.

The source is one I find highly dubious (It's obviously right-wing.) and I am guessing the full article linked below has been exaggerated for effect, the student has not actually been given a Phd for this. I'd love to find a more unbiased account.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/29/feminist-phd-candidate-science-sexist-not-subjective/
 
If you want to go straight to the source and judge for yourself, here it is:

http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&context=tqr

My first problem with it is the impenetrable language it uses. One might almost say it is "hostile" to people who don't understand words like "interdiscursivity"

Conceptual Framework
This study was framed through the lens of poststructuralist feminist thought to provide a lens through which I explored how power is gendered (Hesse-Biber, 2014). Poststructuralism “rejects objectivity and the notions of an absolute truth and single reality,” and “knowledge is complicated, contradictory, and contingent to a certain social context and historical context” (Hesse-Biber, 2014, p. 44). For poststructural feminists, emphasis is placed on language and discourse, “regarded as constitutive of experience and not simply representative of it” (Hesse- Biber, 2014, p. 44). As such, discourse analysis is a key tool of poststructuralist researchers because the link between power and knowledge can be seen by exploring language-in-use (Hesse-Biber, 2014; Lazar, 2005). Analysis of texts looks for practical ideologies to uncover what is framed as logical ways of thinking that, in reality, perpetuate inequality (Hesse-Biber, 2014). Since patriarchal gender ideology is structural, it is enacted in institutions and reflected in institutional texts, therefore, “The task of feminist CDA is to examine how power and dominance are discursively produced and/or resisted in a variety of ways through textual representations of gendered social practices” (Lazar, 2005, p. 10). Through a framework of poststructuralist feminist thought, this discourse analysis uncovers the ways that gendered practices that favor men are represented and replicated in the syllabus.

Bleh!

I don't have the patience for this sort of stuff. Plain English for me please!
 
I've heard this before from New Age Feminists: That Science is a male paradigm that to its essence precludes having an intimate relationship with nature, and that it denies the place of feelings and intuition in life.

It's "from Mars," cold and analytic.

So the sexual stereotypes tell young women that Mathematics and Science are contrary to their feminine nature.

This kind of feminist rhetoric winds up undercutting the equality feminism says it seeks to promote.
 
If you want to go straight to the source and judge for yourself, here it is:

http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&context=tqr

My first problem with it is the impenetrable language it uses. One might almost say it is "hostile" to people who don't understand words like "interdiscursivity"



Bleh!

I don't have the patience for this sort of stuff. Plain English for me please!

Now that's a more nuanced philosophical approach. However all the "interdiscurvisity" sounds so patriarchal.
 
The main problem is that the approach being used (poststructuralism) is itself antithetical to the field it is studying. It would be like using a heat lamp to examine the structure of ice crystals and determining they don't actually exist!
 
The main problem is that the approach being used (poststructuralism) is itself antithetical to the field it is studying. It would be like using a heat lamp to examine the structure of ice crystals and determining they don't actually exist!


Sure they do... they're just ephemeral.

And you have to, you know, feel the tragedy of their passing. :(


:p
 
I've heard similar things before.

Feminism is riddled with pseudoscience.
 
I don't have the patience for this sort of stuff. Plain English for me please!

But why? Don't you like colorful assertions?

Oh, this reminds me of Popper Vs Adorno and Habermas, where the former made fun of the latter's pompous and pedant discourse by "translating" their long and, for the most part, inane, propositions.

This type of "intellectualism" is like building a house with invisible bricks, where people pretend each turgid concept is a premise with a solid foundation. When you unravel what's behind those long-winded sentences and what type of evidence supports what's left of any substance, it's like the reverse of The Frog Prince tale.
 
Last edited:
But why? Don't you like colorful assertions?

Oh, this reminds me of Popper Vs Adorno and Habermas, where the former made fun of the latter's pompous and pedant discourse by "translating" their long and, for the most part, inane, propositions.

This type of "intellectualism" is like building a house with invisible bricks, where people pretend each turgid concept is a premise with a solid foundation. When you unravel what's behind those long-winded sentences and what type of evidence supports what's left of any substance, it's like the reverse of The Frog Prince tale.
Reminds me of Asimov in The Foundation series. Therein, some of the main characters applied symbolic logic to some flowery, absurdly lengthy treaties which, after being put through the symbolic mill, reduced to saying and promising literally nothing.
 
This passage is interesting:

the paper in question said:
Another aspect of the chilly climate is competitiveness, and the STEM syllabi were also framed as competitive courses, exemplified by grading on a curve, “The final grading scale may be curved based on class performance” (Lower level biology). Grading on a curve is one way that the literature has found to be competitive and discouraging to women and minorities (Shapiro & Sax, 2011). Finally, the competitive, difficult chilly climate was reinforced in the syllabi through the use of unfriendly and tough language, “Do not ask me to figure out your grade standing. I’ll be glad to show you how to do it yourself, but the homepage includes that explanation already”

I think what the author is saying is that competitive classes are generally viewed as unfriendly to women.

I'm not sure what to make of that. I think it might be true, but I'm not sure what difference it makes.

Yes, science course are hard for many people, and they are harder for some poople than for others, and many women might not like that. And?
 
If you want to go straight to the source and judge for yourself, here it is:

http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&context=tqr

My first problem with it is the impenetrable language it uses. One might almost say it is "hostile" to people who don't understand words like "interdiscursivity"



Bleh!

I don't have the patience for this sort of stuff. Plain English for me please!

I can't tell if the author really is a Politically Correct Activist or if he is parodying activists of this type.

This quotation illustrates the Poe effect very well. One can't tell the difference between something written by an extremist or something written to make fun of the same extremists.

In either case, I think the writer is an unreliable source. Edgar Allen Poe wrote many of his fiction stories where the reader can't rely on the narrater. The fictional character telling the story is obviously crazy, but he still may be telling part of the truth.

I hypothesize that this the origin of the phrase, 'Poe effect'.
 
My inference can only be that the author thinks women aren't as good at the subject as men???

No, that's not it.

I was prepared to absolutely hate the paper until I read it. I then thought the paper had some excellent points. I then paid attention and decided it was even worse than I thought. I'll try to explain some other time.

For this one, rather narrow, point, though, what the author is saying is that women don't seem to like the competition. We go to classes, at least partly, in order to learn, not necessarily to be compared to everyone else and judged against them. Women, in particular, don't seem to like the competitive aspect, regardless of whether they are winning or losing.
 
No, that's not it.

I was prepared to absolutely hate the paper until I read it. I then thought the paper had some excellent points. I then paid attention and decided it was even worse than I thought. I'll try to explain some other time.

For this one, rather narrow, point, though, what the author is saying is that women don't seem to like the competition. We go to classes, at least partly, in order to learn, not necessarily to be compared to everyone else and judged against them. Women, in particular, don't seem to like the competitive aspect, regardless of whether they are winning or losing.


Thanks for that.

The weak corollary would be that (all?) men enjoy academic competition?
 
Courtesy of Coast 2 Coast AMs 'Science Advisor'



The source is one I find highly dubious (It's obviously right-wing.) and I am guessing the full article linked below has been exaggerated for effect, the student has not actually been given a Phd for this. I'd love to find a more unbiased account.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/29/feminist-phd-candidate-science-sexist-not-subjective/

Welcome to the logical end result of extreme feminism and social justice nonsense: by using feeling-based reasoning, it leads one to think that it's just as useful and reliable as fact-based reasoning. If something feels right, it must be.
 
This passage is interesting:



I think what the author is saying is that competitive classes are generally viewed as unfriendly to women.

I'm not sure what to make of that. I think it might be true, but I'm not sure what difference it makes.

The difference it makes, if true, is that it would mean that women simply aren't as science-compatible, or indeed job market-compatible as men.

If that's what feminists are going for, they might as well argue for a return to the kitchen.
 
The thing about this article is that it actually makes a lot of interesting points, but throws in just one that's ridiculous. The whole idea of engagement vs. lecture is interesting, to me.
 
Science was meant for men. Women are to stay home and clean and cook. How else are scientist going to get anything done if dinner isn't served by the time they get home from the lab?
 
Science was meant for men. Women are to stay home and clean and cook. How else are scientist going to get anything done if dinner isn't served by the time they get home from the lab?

Yes I think is important for us women to know our limits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w
I always found that "All I know is kittens are soft and fluffy" was a safe answer in vivas.

It is a fair question to ask what are the barriers to women entering science. Here I think 'science' often refers to the 'culture of science'. What I think is wrong is to assume the barriers for women are the same as the barriers for ethnic minorities. In the UK at least the white majority population is underrepresented in STEM at university level. BME women STEM graduates are more likely to have careers in STEM than white women or BME men. Just lumping ethnic minorities in seems to be a 'racist' attitude that the author should be called out on. (My guess is in North Dakota ethnic minorities will be native americans?)
http://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk/asset/7E74D16B-9412-4FA7-9CD361C8371DBD02/
 
I can't tell if the author really is a Politically Correct Activist or if he is parodying activists of this type.

This quotation illustrates the Poe effect very well. One can't tell the difference between something written by an extremist or something written to make fun of the same extremists.

In either case, I think the writer is an unreliable source. Edgar Allen Poe wrote many of his fiction stories where the reader can't rely on the narrater. The fictional character telling the story is obviously crazy, but he still may be telling part of the truth.

I hypothesize that this the origin of the phrase, 'Poe effect'.

It's actually called "Poe's law" not "Poe effect" and it doesn't have anything to do with Edgar Allen Poe.

It was coined in 2005 in an Internet forum similar to this one by a user called Nathan Poe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

(Regarding the paper, I do not believe it was intended as a parody, and the author is a female.)
 
Last edited:
Science was meant for men. Women are to stay home and clean and cook. How else are scientist going to get anything done if dinner isn't served by the time they get home from the lab?

You mean that scientists are incapable of managing the chemical reaction of the application of heat to foodstuffs to create tastier foodstuffs? How can I trust that they could manage other complex subject matters?
 
The thing about this article is that it actually makes a lot of interesting points, but throws in just one that's ridiculous. The whole idea of engagement vs. lecture is interesting, to me.

That's what I found, as well, almost.

I think there is more than one point that is ridiculous, or at least wrong.

The author seems to elevate one learning mode over another. She criticizes the "bank" model, in which teachers impart knowledge to students, who store it and withdraw it at test time. This, she believes, is superior to an educational experience where students cooperate to discover knowledge. She notes that women tend to do better in the cooperative model.

I seriously doubt that's true, in a couple of different ways. First, I think there are certain subjects, especially mathematics but others as well, where the "bank" model really is what works best. If you get a bunch of students together to try and discover how to solve a system of linear equations, you aren't going to stumble on Gaussian elimination. Sometimes, the teacher really does know best, and the best way is to have him present the material, as a right answer, and make himself available for questioning if there are portions of the material not understood.

I strongly suspect that in the cooperative model, females really did do better in comparison to males, but I'll bet that for the "bank" model, the average student just learned better.


Reading through this paper, though, I wondered just how influential this mode of thought has been. I suspect very. One thing I noticed as my son grew up was the extreme emphasis on "group work" in lots of classes, all the way into high school. Instead of traditional learning methods, the class would be split into groups, and each would give a presentation after a day or two of work.

I found it hideous. It resulted in a lot of what I ended up calling "art project assignments". Whether in literature, or science, or language classes, they were graded on their ability to make a presentation. These kinds of projects were especially prevalent in 5th through 8th grade, and it seemed that the whole teaching method was not very effective, and was very biased against boys. They just didn't have the social skills to do well in the groups, but the girls' work, which was better than the boys, was still mediocre. I never thought anyone left those classes actually understanding science.
 
This passage is interesting:



I think what the author is saying is that competitive classes are generally viewed as unfriendly to women.

I'm not sure what to make of that. I think it might be true, but I'm not sure what difference it makes.

Yes, science course are hard for many people, and they are harder for some poople than for others, and many women might not like that. And?

Just a question: How are classes competitive? What does it mean?
 
Grades. Test scores.

If I get a 97 on the test, and you get a 95, I did better than you.

If it ends there, then who cares? I thought there might be some more to it, then just simple grading which is mostly irrelevant (just says passed/didn't pass).
 
If it ends there, then who cares? I thought there might be some more to it, then just simple grading which is mostly irrelevant (just says passed/didn't pass).

Grading on a curve means how well you do depends on how well you do relative to everyone else.
 
Grading on a curve means how well you do depends on how well you do relative to everyone else.

Ah, sorry, forgot about this stupidity. Not sure I would want to know that "hyper-intelligent" person who thought it is great idea. (Not having encountered such hopelessly broken education system...)

ETA: Well, there are exactly two fixes which would likely solve many problems at once: No more tuitions and terminating curve-based grading. AS a bonus get those textbooks to be cheaper.
 
Last edited:
The author seems to elevate one learning mode over another. She criticizes the "bank" model, in which teachers impart knowledge to students, who store it and withdraw it at test time. This, she believes, is superior to an educational experience where students cooperate to discover knowledge. She notes that women tend to do better in the cooperative model.

I think you meant to say "inferior".
 
I think you meant to say "inferior".

Yes.

See, she must be right. By cooperating on our knowledge, we were able reach a superior conclusion......or maybe it's just important to have knowledgeable teachers.
 
I'd say both models have their place, it's mostly about finding right balance for given subject. There are cases like physics were cooperative model is of limited usefulness. Each student needs to learn fully necessary material. At best laboratory experiments can be collaborative.

Where collaborative model can actually work and I have seen to work is in programming and similar areas. But it ahs to be coupled with "bank" model to ensure each student has actual knowledge. (my university does it for number of subjects - project and final exam) Usually teams are highly recommended or almost mandatory (to ensure that students have experience with collaborative effort), but one can ask for exception. IIRC only I asked and got exception. (Several times it was because I used different programming language from the one thought... - C++ versus Java)
 
Courtesy of Stephen Novella's blog:

The core point that the primary speaker is making is this: Science is nothing but Western colonialism imposed upon the African people (and presumably others). The only solution is for science to “fall” – she would like to wipe away all of science and start with a blank slate, so that Africans can develop their own knowledge.


She gives as an example that Newton saw an apple fall, made up gravity, wrote down some equations, and now that is scientific truth imposed on the world forever....

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/science-is-not-colonialism/

Who's to blame, teachers in the 1980s who told students that their self esteem would be damaged if they failed their tests, told them that school was not for the purpose of education but rather to 'validate' the student...
 
It's actually called "Poe's law" not "Poe effect" and it doesn't have anything to do with Edgar Allen Poe.

It was coined in 2005 in an Internet forum similar to this one by a user called Nathan Poe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

(Regarding the paper, I do not believe it was intended as a parody, and the author is a female.)

In this particular case, instead of "is this a Poe", I would ask "is this a Sokal".
 
I like this epistemic nihilism (aka postmodernism) where the slightest mention of "conclusion" is seen as a "positivist" and "unchanging" view of knowledge. I'd say it's a bit audacious to conclude that, let alone conclude anything, but hey, long live anarcho-knowledge, unless it's derived from my own ideas, right?
 
Just found another example of a right-wing blogger exploiting the paper for their own ends:

Remember that University of Oregon study about how historical depictions of glaciers have somehow undermined the cause of feminism? This one might actually be more absurd.

The syllabi for college-level STEM courses—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—are "gendered" because they promote the idea that knowledge can be ascertained through reason. This is a masculine concept that hurts women's feelings and makes it difficult for them to succeed.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/22/are-stem-syllabi-gendered-a-feminist-pro
 
Courtesy of Stephen Novella's blog:



http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/science-is-not-colonialism/

Who's to blame, teachers in the 1980s who told students that their self esteem would be damaged if they failed their tests, told them that school was not for the purpose of education but rather to 'validate' the student...

Why the 80's - it is happening now - I teach a lot of University students and the amount of **** they come out with is truly baffling.

Here is Thunderf00t's take on the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i80qaETtw8
 
Reading through this paper, though, I wondered just how influential this mode of thought has been. I suspect very. One thing I noticed as my son grew up was the extreme emphasis on "group work" in lots of classes, all the way into high school. Instead of traditional learning methods, the class would be split into groups, and each would give a presentation after a day or two of work.

I found it hideous. It resulted in a lot of what I ended up calling "art project assignments". Whether in literature, or science, or language classes, they were graded on their ability to make a presentation. These kinds of projects were especially prevalent in 5th through 8th grade, and it seemed that the whole teaching method was not very effective, and was very biased against boys. They just didn't have the social skills to do well in the groups, but the girls' work, which was better than the boys, was still mediocre. I never thought anyone left those classes actually understanding science.

It is critically important to identify whether this is an inherent and immutable quality of maleness or a result of socialization.
 
This passage is interesting:



I think what the author is saying is that competitive classes are generally viewed as unfriendly to women.

I'm not sure what to make of that. I think it might be true, but I'm not sure what difference it makes.

Yes, science course are hard for many people, and they are harder for some poople than for others, and many women might not like that. And?

That seems like a valid point to me. A person's grade should be based on how well they learn and understand the material, and not necessarily in comparison to how well their classmates learn it.

It also seems like a rather minor point.
 
Back
Top Bottom