Posted on 04/21/2017 10:37:08 AM PDT by rlmorel
March For Science
The non-partisan March for Science celebrates the discovery, understanding, and sharing of scientific knowledge as crucial to the success, health, and safety of the human race. Thousands are expected to participate in Boston and across the country, with the main event happening on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Reading the "About Us" part of the web site, I saw this:
Science based on diversity: Diversity Statement
"We are committed to making science accessible to everyone and encouraging people from diverse backgrounds and experiences to pursue science careers. Diverse science teams outperform homogeneous teams and produce broader, more creative, and stronger work. We believe that regardless of past practices, science should never be used to disenfranchise or marginalize groups of people. Rather, all persons have the right to pursue and enjoy the fruits of science regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion or lack thereof, political affiliation, or socioeconomic status. Science belongs to all people, and should be done for all people.
Diverse representation through our speakers and volunteers is only part of our commitment to intersectional inclusion. We want to also use the moment to discuss the existing systemic problems underlying academia, cultural norms, and scientific institutions with relation to science. It is important to address the reasons why there is a lack of diversity in the first place and develop holistic solutions for fixing systems that result in inequality.
To this end we employ a range of outreach volunteers who have two goals: ensure that people, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion or lack thereof, political affiliation, or socioeconomic status are welcome at our event and to work as messengers to bring the public’s concerns to the organizers. We see outreach as a dialogue and recognize that often our role is not to speak but rather to step aside and listen.
We also welcome discussions and academic research on ways to improve access to participation in and benefitting from science. Our speakers and action items that will be released after the event will reflect this concern."
Anecdotally, someone whom I went to school with was whip-smart, and yet completely discounted by the school because of their race. Fast-forward 20 years later, went to med school and is an excellent doctor.
But I could have easily seen things turning out differently if they’d remained in the same school. Point being, school authorities do disregard talent for racial reasons, and this should be accounted for to keep talent from going to waste.
I think there are...there is a nationwide thing tomorrow, all these being run by the same people (at least for this organization)
It stinks to high heaven of Soros to me.
I disagree. Science is science, not racial relations, gender relations, or anything else.
If someone can use the scientific method to formulate a hypothesis, create a way to test it, and observe the results, what difference on earth does it make whether a person is a man woman, homosexual, transgender, asian, black, white, purple, or anything else?
If constructs are put into place to steer less qualified people into certain fields at the expense of more qualified people to make a workforce, college, or any other endeavor more “diverse”, how does that make science better?
If a paint manufacturer is going to adjust their hiring processes to employ people based more on their gender or skin color instead of their resume or qualifications, how is that difference in anatomy or race going to produce better paint?
Why is it important that a mathematician have a different skin pigmentation to solve a problem? Why should a hypothesis be viewed any differently because someone has a penis versus breasts and a vagina? Does having different anatomy somehow make it more valuable or valid?
People should be accepted, graded, hired, and paid on the basis of merit, not on the basis of their skin pigmentation, country of birth, or physical anatomic equipment. To conduct affairs on the basis of those things over merit is to promote mediocrity.
I’m not for steering LESS qualified people to the sciences. I am against that.
But we do want to make sure that sufficiently talented people who might be IGNORED due to their ethnicity, are not ignored. The point is not to let qualified, intelligent people have their talents go to waste, Good Will Hunting style.
That is an anecdote, not a fact.
If you are a woman or a minority today, educational institutions and industry bend over backwards to provide opportunities (financial and otherwise) that are not available to equally qualified people who might be white, male, or both.
This has been going on for decades, yet it is continually trumpeted that women are underrepresented in the STEM fields.
This is not a shot a women (as an example). Women have nothing holding them back intellectually, yet they still don’t enter those fields in the same numbers as men, despite thousands of programs, grants, organizations, and efforts to address this ‘problem’.
Why do you think that is?
Problem is that minorities are often held back at the high school level (from my experience with friends who have biracial kids), so they’re less likely to have the resume to get into good universities in the first place. The assistance mostly comes too late.
LOL, please...I know what you are saying, but not “Good Will Hunting”!
I enjoyed the movie as entertainment, but not in this context!
I understand and can hear arguments on the socioeconomic factors with respect to what you say, but not the race and gender related factors.
I accept that you reject steering less qualified people into various fields, but it is undeniable that actually does happen under the guise of increasing ‘diversity’. (I have a hard time even typing the words without the quotes)
I’ll check in on the thread later.
So they’re held back just because someone can do it or is there another reason?
There are socioeconomic factors — read: rich vs poor schools, which also apply to poor whites.
But people also assume certain things when they see a certain physical appearance or hear a certain accent. Don’t assume that people aren’t also judged on physical appearance and habitus.
Assumption that they’re not smart due to physical appearance or even accent means they don’t get into the “right” classes to get into the “right” program at university, things go down hill from there.
I don’t assume that at all. But that can’t be legislated out of human beings any more than bullying can be legislated out of human existence.
Artificially trying to fix that problem with pulleys and levers causes more damage than the actual issue, which is the case with most liberal solutions, IMO.
My daughter is finishing her PhD in Chemistry, the main obstacles she encountered were others in her female social peer group looking at her like she is a freak. Comments from males in her peer group ranged from enthusiastic intellectual “high fives” to a low of “That’s cool!”. All and I mean all of the negativity she encountered came from other college gals her age!
Not pulleys and levers. Just make sure to raise people’s awareness as to how to look for talent. Make sure parents know their kids’ potential. Make sure kids know their own potential.
Same old, same old. Your real and imagined “challenges” don’t matter in math, chemistry, physics, and so on...and most of the “challenges” are imagined or self-inflicted. As for the myth of the missing “talented and intelligent” people, what people choose to do with themselves is their business. It is a fact, however, that our leftist run universities and other organizations do all that they can to affirmative action into science and engineering the usual suspects, who tend not to be able to do what’s necessary. Nice left talking point post, but the reality of “diversity” is Patrick Chavis, not another Jonas Salk.
Now you’re just making things up. I attended Ivies and every last one of them had lower standards for “people of color”, with the exception of Asians. If you’re “held back” in high school it isn’t because you’re black or Hispanic. It’s because you don’t perform.
There is much less of a problem of projects losing the talent of smart people of “diverse” background, than projects being forced to hire untalented and unintelligent people solely to meet diversity requirements.
When they have to “check” Bill Nye the Science guy due to complaints because he is a white man and take him down a literal notch by adding two female non-white co-chairs, yes, it is utterly political.
Colleges are currently discriminating against conservative students, researchers and faculty. The only diversity that is important is ideological, and that is the one type they cannot tolerate.
The big review paper on the lack of political diversity in social psychology
http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/
Survey shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/liberal-majority-on-campus-yes-were-biased/
Historically black colleges are complaining about affirmative action to Ivy League schools promoting students beyond their competency. You end up with ethnic and women’s studies majors from Ivy League schools instead of physicists and doctors from HBCUs.
The Calculus courses and thermodynamics tend to weed people out. But I agree that this is based on ability, not demographics, beyond IQ’s correlation to gender and race.
Ironically, that is a subject that is highly taboo to research, as is alternative explanations for climate change than “all human’s fault”, better nuclear technology and genetic engineering.
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