There is an article in today’s Times in which Baroness Susan Greenfield is interviewed (read it here), following the unsuccessful attempt to get the ruling committee of the Royal Institution to resign, and for a new council of her supporters to be appointed along with her being reinstated as Director. I’m not an RI member, and I can see that there might be arguments on both sides about why things have gone wrong there and how much she might be, or not be, to blame. The RI issue isn’t why the article had me running round my office in ill temper. It’s not even that (a) the article referred to her lace up boots and her false eye lashes or that (b) she wore those to an interview. I don’t care what she wears, though I would dispute her suggestion that scientists are expected to ‘be dowdy’. Imagine, perhaps, a middle ground between being ‘dowdy’ and wearing miniskirts. Maybe some of us can be found there. I didn’t quite see why her divorce was brought up (boxer shorts in bin bags and all). That didn’t make me actually leave my chair in horror, although Richard Dawkins has been divorced twice, and I haven’t seen the exciting details about these often recounted. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places. I even managed to get past the horrible clichés - ‘scientific siren’, ‘sexy scientist’ – keenly asserting that Greenfield does not stomp round in tweed, stroking her wiry chin and rummaging through her grey mop of hair for lost test-tubes (or whatever else dowdy is supposed to connote. I quite like the sound of it now). What drove me to actual distraction was “Her work has been quite feminine”. Susan Greenfield is a pharmacologist – how is that feminine? Ah, it turns out that they mean: “she has received most publicity for her views on the effects of computer games on young brains. It’s Facebook and Grand Theft Auto rather than physics and the Large Hadron Collider”. Well, first she doesn’t research the effects of computer games or social networking on brains; second, there is little or no evidence that such harm occurs, indeed, that there might be positive effects of these things (she just gives her opinion on the topic); third, how on earth would researching Facebook be feminine and researching physics masculine? Seriously? These are truly scary things for journalists to be writing in the 21st century about science. However, Susan Greenfield doesn’t seem to be doing much to clarify the issue in the article. Having earlier stated: “I came from the arts, but I love the way that science is absolutely ruthless, saying ‘Where is the evidence, prove it’.” She later says: “With science, data is everything. You define yourself and your values not by your salary or glamour but by the fact that you are the expert in this area and you can trump someone else. It’s a very male mindset, it’s very competitive.” So, science is great when it is evidence based and it’s ruthless, but it’s not great when it’s data based and competitive. And apparently that’s, um, pretty male. She says it’s hard to get girls to go into science, because girls “want to know about relationships”. Well even if that’s true, then psychology is a science, and a popular one, in which relationships can be studied. Science isn’t defined by the area of study, it’s defined by how you approach your study to that that area. I must declare an interest: I am a woman, I am a scientist, I am a professor. Being a scientist is the best job in the world – I still can’t entirely believe that I get to do this for a living. I like it that we get scientists in the media, and I like it even more if we get a good discussion of good science in the media. In my experience, most people are fascinated by science, and a high profile for science means more potential scientists, and that’s good for us all. It pains me therefore that the UK’s best known female scientist is not known for her science, and for this I blame the media for continuing to let her repeat opinions that seem to be basically untrue as much as I think she is wrong to repeat them (and it does seem clear that she gives opinions on these rather than researching them or following the literature). I read the Times interview and I feel like everybody concerned with it is setting the cause of women in science back about 15 years. There are clear issues about the numbers of women in science, and I think we all (men and women) need to bear in mind the data showing that both men and women tend to undervalue contributions made by women. Virginia Valian has written a lot about this, there’s a video of her here. The role of women in science is not best served by female scientists making wild generalisations about what interests men and women about science (or not) (e.g. that girls “want to know about relationships”), and it’s not best served by us continuing to accept silly media canards about what women in science should and shouldn’t look like. These things matter. Yaka-wow!1 1Amusingly, this neologism quoted directly from the Times article is actually a poor transcription of Greenfield’s ‘Yuck and Wow’ idea that children’s experiences with computers centre around immediate experience of pleasure and displeasure. Time for The Times to do its homework! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Speaking out >
Why does Susan Greenfield matter?posted 15 Apr 2010 09:16 by SCL Laboratory [ updated 14 Sep 2010 08:52 ] |
Affiliations   |