Search results for scientists

When I approached my undergraduate mentors about graduate school in 1996, they warned me that many people who earn PhDs never get jobs in academia.  This is sometimes deliberate, as their are jobs outside of academia for some degree-holders to get, but it’s also sometimes a grave disappointment.  My mentors emphasized the extent of the risk (and frankly scared me quite a lot), but how bad was it?  And is it worse today?

The Atlantic‘s Jordan Weissmann put together the data.  The leftmost bars on his figure show that, on average, under a quarter of PhDs landed a full-time job at a college or university in 1991.  That number had dropped to less than 20% by 2011.  The numbers, however, vary significantly by field:

See here for more details.

The looming question, of course, is what percentage of PhDs want a full-time academic job, something that certainly varies by field.  In other words, there aren’t a boatload of bitter engineers bad-mouthing the academy while slinging lattes at Starbucks.  Here’s a hint at an answer: A study published in 1999 found that 53% of all new PhDs said they wanted to become professors.  Ten years later, just over half were tenured (54%) and a handful more were tenure-track (7%); a third weren’t in academia at all.

On the one hand, I think these numbers are really depressing. Five to ten years is a long time to train for a career only to discover that, for whatever reason, you won’t be employed in the area of your expertise.  But I have two “on the other hands.”

On one other hand, I wonder how these numbers compare to other occupations?  We accept that certain occupations are highly competitive and include a lot of dumb luck and failure.  Modeling and acting are obvious examples, there are certainly others.  I know someone who’s spent their lifetime trying to become an astronaut.  Where does academia fall in the spectrum of risky job endeavors?

On a second other hand, I’d love to see some research on what happens to academics — especially in the humanities and social sciences — when they don’t get a job in academia or are denied tenure after getting there.  Within academia, this is often framed as THE END OF YOUR LIFE.  But maybe it’s often okay or pretty good.  Honestly, I don’t know.

Interesting and useful data, to be sure, but far from the whole story.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

“We don’t know how the results were obtained. The post-doc who did all the work has since left to start a bakery” reads a tweet with the #overlyhonestmethods hashtag. The hashtag is being used for scientists to discuss the elements of their methodology that do not get discussed in “proper” scientific papers.

In response to this series of tweets, others have been reassuring readers that #overlyhonestmethods is a “‘joke” hashtag, and should not be construed to reflect the actual state of scientific work. Why? What’s the big deal?

Part of it is about the ways in which we like to consider science. The societal discourse is that science (particularly lab science) represents a “pure” form of knowledge, unbiased by human perceptions, relationships, and pragmatism.

In some ways, that may be true (if I mix Flourine and Francium, for example, the result is likely to be explosive whether I believe it to be or not), but that does not mean science isn’t shaped by social, cultural, and institutional forces.

For example, the choice of what to research is highly political. During wartime, scientific research is devoted to things that may aid the war effort, from weaponry, to vehicles, to food preservation. Political priorities in certain regions, likewise, direct research dollars into forestry management instead of ecological preservation. The scientists who do this research direct their efforts in this way because that is the research they can get funded.

#Overlyhonestmethods is, among other things, exposing the very real social nature of scientific research, pointing out that scientists may time their experiments so as to avoid being the lab on evenings and weekends. Or that it is sometimes difficult to know how certain results were obtained because people leave the profession and can’t tell you.

These concerns — about recording knowledge, and people’s quality of life at work — exist in every other profession, but in most cases we don’t need to discuss those statements as a “joke.” This is because most other professions do not make the claim of presenting absolute truth. In telling the “unpublished” stories of scientific research, #overlyhonestmethods makes it obvious that scientists are people who face constraints — personal, relational, practical, and institutional — potentially shaking the trust people put in science to offer “the” Truth.

Anastasia Kulpa teaches Sociology at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Her research interests include the sociology of post-secondary classrooms and cultural vehicles for transmitting ideology (class, music, television, etc).

Gwen and I ran our favorite posts from 2012 over the last six days.  Just in case you missed them, here’s our best of 2012!

Social Theory

• Stairs and the New York City Habitus
• “Too Much Mother Love”: Proving the Necessity of Nurture (pictured)

Parenting

• How do We Define Family?
• Gender and the Dual Career Academic Couple
• When Intensive Mothering Meets Special Needs (pictured)

Race and Ethnicity

• How Census Data Collection Changed Race in America
• Watermelon: Symbolizing the Supposed Simplicity of Slaves
• Racialized Representations of Evolution (pictured)

Transnational Politics and Neocolonialism

• Is the Sky Blue?
• The Politics of “Discovery”: The Case of the Lesula (pictured)
• IKEA Erases Women for Saudia Arabian Audience: Balancing Feminism and Cultural Sensitivity

Class

• Who Benefits from a Rise in the Stock Market? (pictured)
• Class Privilege and Parental Leave

Gender and Sexual Orientation

• Women and Exclusion from Long Distance Running (pictured)
• “I Fancy the Lead Singer”: Bands, Fans, and Gender
• Gaydar Study Calibration
• Gender and Biased Perceptions: Scientists Rate Job Applicants

Health and Body Weight

• Evidence: Fat People Can Be as Healthy as Thin People (pictured)

History and Vintage Stuff

• The “Sworn Virgins” of Albania: Social Rules and Accommodations
• Male Affection in Vintage Photos (pictured)
• The Manly Origins of Cheerleading
• Child Labor and the Social Construction of Childhood

Media

• The Bachelor Pad: Myth and Reality (pictured)
• Myths and the Media: A Case Study of the “Boomerang Generation”

See also, last year’s highlights:

• The Mental Burden of a Lower Class Background
• Of What are We Capable? Human Echolocation
• A Thoughtful Response to the “Asians in the Library” Rant
• Formula for a Successful American Movie
• Gender, Obentos, and the State in Japan
• Babies Learn How to Have a Conversation
• In Defiance of Title IX: Colleges Report Male Athletes as Women
• Art and Attribution: What is an Artist?
• How to Make an Art: By Hennessey Youngman
• The Innovation Trap: How the iPhone Isn’t Saving America
• Change Blindness
• Cultural Differences in Cognitive Perception
• Luxury and the Consumption of Labor
• Are Game Show Audiences Trustworthy
• Gender, Sexualization, and Rolling Stone
• Best Comic Ever: The Scientific Process
• Cousin Marriage
• The Hidden Beneficiaries of Federal Programs
• A Critique of Capitalism by G.A. Cohen
• What Makes a Body Obscene?

And a Happy New Year to everyone!!!

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2012.

We often hear that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, a word that erases the 50 million-plus inhabitants of the continent that were already here when his boat arrived. A person can’t discover something that another person already knows about.  In the American telling of the story, however, the indigenous population don’t count as people. They’re knowledge isn’t real.

This dismissal of knowledge-of-a-thing until the “right” people know about it is a common tendency, and another example was sent in by Jordan G. last week.  CNN, ABC, CBS, and the Los Angeles Times, among other news outlets, reported that a new species of monkey was “discovered.”

So where did they find this monkey?  Tied to a post in a Congolese village; it was a pet.  

So someone knew about these monkeys.  It just wasn’t the right kind of person.  In this case, the right kind of person was a (bonafide) scientist (with credentials and institutional privileges not un-related to living in the West).

Now I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter that a trained scientist encountered the monkey and established it as a unique and previously undocumented species.  The team did a lot of work to establish this.  As the Times, which otherwise does a fine job on the story, explains:

Convinced the species was novel, team leader John Hart began an exhaustive three-year study to describe the monkey, and to differentiate it from its nearest neighbor, the owl face monkey. The study included geneticists and biological anthropologists, who helped confirm that the monkey was different from the owl face, though the two share a common genetic ancestor.

In other words, something significant happened because those scientists happened upon this monkey.  But to say that they “discovered” it is to mischaracterize what occurred. The scientists write that it was “previously undescribed,” which is far more accurate. Their language also doesn’t erase the consciousness of the people of the Congo, where this monkey is “endemic.”   In fact, they recommend the short-hand name “lesula,” “as it is the vernacular name used [by people who’ve known about it, probably for generations] over most of its known range.”  In doing so, they acknowledge the species’ relationship to a population of human beings, making them visible and significant.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Ms. and the Huffington Post.

I loathe to weigh in on the “war on men” conversation, but… alas.

While one can use both logic and data to poke gaping holes in Suzanne Venker’s argument that women need to surrender to their femininity and let men think that they’re in charge if they ever want to get married, I just want to point out one thing — one endlessly repeated thing — that she gets very, very wrong.

Venker claims that there has “been an explosion of brain research” that proves that men and women have different brains.  This research, she claims, shows that men are loners who like to hunt and build things and women are nurturers who like to talk and take care of people.

This false on two fronts.

First, she’s wrong about the brain research.  The books and articles claiming that there are “pink” and “blue” brains are not consistent with existing research.  (They are out there because people can make a lot of money by confirming other people’s biases.)

What does the research say?

It’s true that scientists have documented a number of small, average sex differences in brain anatomy, composition, and function, as well as differences in size and tissue ratios.  (Other differences — such as the size of the corpus callosum and lateralization, whether one sex uses one side of their brain more than the other — have proven to be wrong.)

So, scientists do find some differences, but they have largely failed to link these to differences in men’s and women’s observed emotions, cognition,  or behavior.  That is, we’ve found some differences, but we have no proof that they translate into anything. Moreover, new research suggests that differences we observe may be designed not to create differences between men and women, but to reduce them.  The brain may have two strategies for achieving the same outcome or one difference may compensate for another.  (For more, see Brain Gender by Melissa Hines.)

That’s one reason why Venker is wrong.

The second reason is even more damning.  Most of the research attempting to explain gender difference assumes that there differences to explain.   In fact, meta-analyses aimed at summarizing the literature on human sex differences and similarities in traits, personality, cognitive abilities, sexuality, temperament, and motor skills offer better evidence for similarity than difference.  On the vast majority of traits, men and women overlap tremendously.

Janet Hyde, a pioneer in this area, did a meta-analysis of meta-analyses that combined the results of 7,084 separate studies. She found evidence for a large or very large difference on 8% of characteristics and evidence for medium-sized differences on 15%.  She found evidence for small differences on another 48%.  What does a small difference look like?  Here’s an example of a mid-range small difference (for self-esteem):

For the final 30% of characteristics, she found no evidence gender difference.  So, on 78% of characteristics, she found teensy differences or none at all.  Wow, “opposite sexes” indeed.

The truth is, men aren’t loners and women aren’t talkers. Venker assumes the stereotypes and counts on her readers to agree that they are true, but the data doesn’t back her up.

Two excellent books summarize the debates over gender and neuroscience.  Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender is great for a beginner. She’s funny and you’ll learn a lot. Rebecca Jordan-Young’s Brain Storm is great for someone who wants and intermediate to advanced introduction to these issues.  Her book is downright brilliant.  I highly recommend both.

———————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College.  Feel free to take a look at her forthcoming article, “The New Science of Sex Difference.”  You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

SocImages News:

• This month we had the fun of being quoted in news articles on getting girls to embrace science (Voice of America), Sweden’s gender-neutral toy catalog (Wall Street Journal), hook up culture (yes, again) (Brown Daily Herald), and dollhouses (Daily Mail).  The latter involved us getting the word “heteronomativity” into the second sentence of a Daily Mail article!
• The Daily Mail coverage was prompted by our counterintuitive post suggesting that the toy in question can be a feminist gift, which also appeared at Jezebel.
• BoingBoing featured Gwen’s post about different and unequal boy and girl toy laptops.
• Finally, we got a few nice link-tos. One from The Atlantic in a piece about why people don’t vote, another from AdWeek about gendered toys, and a third from The Guardian in an article about Gwen Stefani wearing stereotypical “Indian” garb.

Upcoming Lectures and Appearances: 

I’ll be visiting Akron in April and I’d love to schedule a meet up!

• University of Akron (Apr. 19): “Anatomy of an Outrage: Female Genital Cutting and the Politics of Acculturation”

I’ll also be giving my hook up culture talk at the college where I collected my data.  So, if you’re in the L.A. area, feel free to drop in for the lecture:

• Occidental College (Jan. 31): “‘The Night Overall Wasn’t Bad’: Occidental Students on Hooking Up”

Newest Pinterest Page:

Gwen put together a new Pinterest page with products that have been feminized to make them acceptable for women, Feminizing the Masculine in Marketing.  Here’s a screenshot:

In other Pinterest news, @sayitaintsho tweeted this in response to us pinning the images from our post about make-up toys for infants.  We aim to please, Shohini!

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff:

Finally, this is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.  I’m on Facebook and most of the team is on Twitter: @lisadwade, @gwensharpnv, @familyunequal, @carolineheldman, @jaylivingston, and @wendyphd.

In Other News…

On Nov. 11th of this month our Facebook page hit 20,000 fans.  Then it went back down to 19,999, then it went back to 20,000, and we’ve continued growing ever since.  Hello to all of our friends on Facebook!

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Over at his blog, Made in America, Claude Fischer discusses data showing that the percentage of (White) Americans who say that they will vote for a qualified Black president has been rising since the 1950s. Today it sits at about 96%.

Fischer rightly observes that it’s difficult to know exactly what to make of this information. The trend likely reflects a combination of a real decrease in prejudice and a rising appreciation for the fact that it’s unpopular to admit that you wouldn’t vote for a Black person, even on a survey.

Still, assuming for the moment that it represents real attitudinal change, Fischer asks, is “the glass 96 percent full or is it 4 percent empty?”  Given our two-party partisan political system, elections are frequently decided by margins this narrow.  Obama won with just 53% of the popular vote in 2008.  Political scientists estimate that there was a 5 point racial penalty (that is, if he had been White, he would likely have won 58% of the vote).

Tomorrow is election day and it’s difficult to know if race will play more or less of a role than it did in the last election.  On the one hand, most people who were worried that Obama would be a racially radical President now know that he is not (some people will never be convinced) and others may have become more used to seeing an African American face in the White House.  On the other hand, racial progress usually incites a backlash.  That face in such a venerated position of power may have aggravated people who are now actively racist instead of complacently so.

Finally, as Fischer observes, we have absolutely no data on the penalty Romney will pay for being Mormon.

Happy election day eve, America. May we all end tomorrow with a strong beverage of consolation or celebration.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

SocImages News

Paul Frank, creator of fashion icon Julius the Monkey, emailed us.  He wanted to let us know that he opposed the monkey’s appearance in a Native American-inspired fashion event that we used as an example of cultural appropriation.  The post and the follow up can be found here.

My unusually strong argument about Chris Brown’s battered woman tattoo (in which I drew extensively from Amanda Marcotte) was reposted at Jezebel and received a great deal of attention and debate.

Gwen was quoted at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish talking about awareness of beneficiaries’ awareness of their use of government programs.

I was quoted in the Deseret News in a story about the challenges faced by families in the age of the internet.

SocImages posts also appeared at Ms., Jezebel, and Racialicious this month:

• Racialicious, Nature, Nurture, and the Pro Athlete
• Jezebel, The Weight Watchers Life Trajectory
• Jezebel, Gender, Power, and Chris Brown’s Battered Woman Tattoo
• Ms., We Like You A Lot, Ms. Scientist, But We’d Rather Hire the Guy

Upcoming Lectures and Appearances

I had a fabulous time at Indiana State University this month and I’m looking forward to upcoming talks in California and Boston:

• California State University – Northridge (Oct. 8): “Female Genital ‘Mutilation’ in the American Imagination”
• Western Political Science Association (Hollywood, CA, Mar. 28-30): panels on “Public Intellectualism” and the “Twenty-First Century Sex Wars”
• Harvard University (Women’s Week, Mar. 8-14): “A Feminist Defense of Friendship”

New Intern

Please welcome Laura Bertocci, our new SocImages intern.  Laura is a senior History major at Occidental College currently writing her thesis on the American media coverage of the Chilean dictatorship in 1973, inspired by her recent semester abroad in Valparaíso, Chile. She has worked at her hometown’s branch of Patch.com, LA politics blog The City Maven, Forbes Magazine, and Gannett Government Media in every role from reporter to editor to photographer, and plans on pursuing journalism after graduation.

Most Popular Posts

Speaking of Laura, she collected this set of our most popular posts from September:

• Gender, Power, and Chris Brown’s Battered Woman Tattoo
• Confirmation Bias and the iPhone 5
• Mitt Romney and the 47% Meme
• Hidden Beneficiaries of Federal Programs
• Words: The Democratic and Republican Conventions
• Sad White Babies with Mean Feminist Mommies
• The “Sworn Virgins” of Albania: Social Rules and Accommodations
• Gender and Biased Perceptions: Scientists Rate Job Applicants

Newest Pinterest Page

Gwen put together a new Pinterest page featuring a collection of a SocImages audience favorite: Pointlessly Gendered Products.  See all of our boards here.

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff

This is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.  Lisa is on Facebook and most of the team is on Twitter: @lisadwade, @gwensharpnv, @familyunequal, @carolineheldman, @jaylivingston, and @wendyphd.

In Other News…

Wow, who’s that with the Bluth Company stair car!?