By Larry Summers' logic, maybe Dr. Barres just became a better scientist after (s)he started recieving hormone treatments. (As an aside, when speaking in the past tense, are you supposed to switch pronouns when talking about transgendered people? This is a good argument for gender-neutral pronouns.)

I'm guessing Dr. Barres is a fairly unique case. There are few people who can have the benefit of both a male and female perspective. I wonder how colleagues who know he used to be a woman treat him - do you think their attitudes would change according to his outward gender or would they still stick to their prior biases?

The comment that Ben Barres was a better scientist than his "sister" is very telling, I think.

that's a wild story... and i can't believe it was put out by forbes, of all places... really, that "sister" quote is a straight trip...

thanks for the truly thought-provoking article...

So in a related note, I once read a study about how the importance of letters of reccommendation were ranked by admissions committees to graduate schools (medical, law, science, etc.).

Using the same three letters and changing the names of the professors that signed them from male, to female, to gender neutral made and immense difference in how they were ranked by the admissions committees.

Every single time, no matter what the school, the ranking of importance went male name, gender neutral, female name. Regardless of what name was assigned to what letter. Interesting isn't it?

I read the essay in Nature. This is depressing, but not suprising.

Buglover - when I applied to grad school, I was careful to only have one of my three recommendations come from a woman. I went to a woman's college, and I thought it would look bad otherwise.

Sometimes I get tired of being a woman in science. And I'm one of the fortunate. I have a supportive advisor (male, of course), a wonderful work environment, and great opportunities. But articles like this still get me down.

Exactly the same for me DT....

Buglover, do you have a link to the study? I know a similar study that changes the name on a scholarly paper, but it's from the 1980s.

Yes, please if anybody has links to those studies I'd definitely like them.

Also, in a thread not too long ago there was an argument about innate'ness and some of the trolls had talked about male/female inventions. Somebody pointed out a few things credited to men may have actually been the works/ideas of a woman/women who were his/their wife. I've been trying to fidn that thread forever because I can't remember the specific names. Driving me crazy.

Yes, please if anybody has links to those studies I'd definitely like them.

Also, in a thread not too long ago there was an argument about innate'ness and some of the trolls had talked about male/female inventions. Somebody pointed out a few things credited to men may have actually been the works/ideas of a woman/women who were his/their wife. I've been trying to fidn that thread forever because I can't remember the specific names. Driving me crazy.

I'm sorry I don't have the link, I read the study five or six years ago.

In terms of inventions by women... there is a really good book about women nobel prize winners

"Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles and Momentous Discoveries" by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne. Which discusses how many of the early Nobel Prizes were given to men was actually for the work of women (often their wives). It is really well referenced and a fun read.

speaking of, there was an interesting interview with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard (1995 Nobel) in the NYT last week about gender discrimination in science. She's started a fund to help female scientists pay for daycare and household help.

The article also included her chocolate cake recipe (I don't know about the politics of this -- I don't think I've ever seen a male scientist give a cake recipe in an interview before, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/science/04conv.html?ex=1152936000&en=b32604b95c97e2f1&ei=5070

Okay I didn't find the exact article but I found one that is similiar.

"Three hundred college students (150 female, 150 male) were asked to evaluate an academic article that was written by either a male, a female, or an author with a sexually ambiguous name. The results indicated that ratings of the articles were differentially perceived and evaluated according to the name of the author. An article written by a male was valued more positively than if the author was not male."

http://www.springerlink.com/(c1pz2ceuxvre2b45yd4yie55)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,10,18;journal,245,326;linkingpublicationresults,1:101600,1

Buglover, this is very similar to the study I was talking about, although it talks about college students and not professors. It suffers from the same problem - age - although less so, simply because college students are younger than professors.

When I brought up the study about the professors in a debate about Summers' remarks, my opponent said that the people in the survey would have grown up in the 1950s and hence hold more sexist values than younger people; hence a study about people who grew up in the 1960s and 70s is more valuable.

I highly recommend reading the actual nature article if you haven't already, some really powerful and thought provoking stuff. I've seen Dr. Barres talk, and he's absolutely brilliant.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7099/full/442133a.html

I especially liked his take on the claim that women are too emotional.

"Mansfield and others claim that women are more emotional than men. There is absolutely no science to support this contention. On the contrary, it is men that commit the most violent crimes in anger — for example, 25 times more murders than women. The only hysteria that exceeded MIT professor Nancy Hopkins' (well-founded) outrage after Larry Summers' comments was the shockingly vicious news coverage by male reporters and commentators. Hopkins also received hundreds of hateful and even pornographic messages, nearly all from men, that were all highly emotional."

even those two guys (i have just revealed my utter lack of scientific knowledge--all the relevant names are escaping me) who "discovered" DNA got most of their research and conclusions from a female scientist, who they refused to credit.

The male scientists' names were Crick and Watson; the female scientist was Rosalind Franklin. Here's a good article on Franklin and her contributions. Watson wrote, in The Double Helix, of his "realizing years too late the struggles that the intelligent woman faces to be accepted by a scientific world that often regards women as mere diversions to serious thinking."

Cheers,

TH

DT,

Can you please clarify what you mean by saying that your supportive advisor is “male, of course�, because my very supportive advisor is female. I find that offensive actually, but maybe I am getting it wrong.

I have had my share of dealing with sexism during my graduate career (in a very male dominated field) and I know other women who have had similar experiences, the kind of stuff that at best wastes a couple of your years and at worst ruins an entire career. However, about that study on recommendation letters, I really would like to know how reliable it is.

On another note, my experience with a lot of men, peers or supervisors is that they always have to be right and even if they don’t know what they are talking about they have to keep bullshitting they will never ever admit they are wrong or that they don’t know and they are a lot of times condescending. That's why I prefer working with women. Plus I think women are better capable of being role models for other woman.

Sojourner - Sorry, the "of course" refered to "of course, my advisor is a guy" not "of course, a supportive advisor is male." The latter would be totally offensive, but isn't what I meant. You get A LOT of credit for asking me to clarify.

I've never worked for a women. I had a female boss one summer, but I was really working for her (male) postdoc.

There are one or two female role models in my field, a few more at my institution, and none who are in my field and at my institution.

I heard Watson give a talk two years ago to about three hundred people. During the first twenty minutes, while giving a history of his work, he discussed how pretty or ugly each of his female graduate students were and which ones had hooked up with professors.

He also said that women had blown out of proportion the whole "stealing data from Rosalind" thing and that everyone needed to calm down. He said that it was true the data came from Rosalind but she would never had made the discovery if left to her own devices.

I walked out at that point, so I don't know what other brilliant insights he had to share with people.

default respect rather than default objectification must be incredible.

women still have to work ten, fifty, a thousand times as hard to earn the respect given to men as a reward for a sufficiently deep voice.

On the contrary, it is men that commit the most violent crimes in anger — for example, 25 times more murders than women.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Report says that of all American murders in which the gender of the perpetrator is known, 90% are committed by men and 10% are committed by women.

Dr. Barres came to my university to speak a couple years ago (invited by my dept). the first thing anyone said when discussing the upcoming seminar was "oh he had a sex change". Even worse, the rumor going around is that he decided to become male because of perceived sexism in science. (this is said mostly as a joke) utterly ridiculous. but it worries me that this article, coming for him, with this insane rumor, will not be taken seriously.

James Watson is pretty much a sexist asshole. The main subject of The Double Helix is his trying to secure dinner invitations to houses where he might meet women.