lady problems

california. not relevant.  just nice.

below is a joint blog entry with lee jussim.  the title, pictures, and post-script are mine, the rest is posted on both of our blogs.

joint introduction

recently, two friends and scholars who are working together on scientific integrity stuff had a very sane and civil email discussion about gender representation in the scientific integrity debate and in STEM more generally.  at the end of the discussion, neither had convinced the other but they decided it was still an interesting and informative discussion, and they decided to post it on their blogs for the world to see.  you're welcome, world.

 

you can find simine’s blog here:

 

sometimes i’m wrong

 

and

 

Lee’s here:

 

Rabble Rouser

 

 

Lee Jussim and Simine Vazire

 

3. 1. 15  Lee:

I recently went to a social psychology symposium that I thought was quite good with one partial exception.  The first 3-4min of the talk was on how women have been underrepresented in the scientific integrity/best practices in science discussions so far.  The speaker had good data that was pretty convincing to me that this is true (gender of authors, gender of presenters, etc.).  Almost whenever I hear this sort of thing, without any substantive followup as to how this bears on the substance of the actual arguments, it grates on me.  It comes across (to me) as implying, without explicitly stating or providing a shred of scientific/intellectual justification, that there is something wrong with the arguments to date because the demographic distribution of the people making those arguments does not meet some ideal distribution (the ideal could be "in society" or in "the profession" or "attending SPSP" or whatever).

As I have written before, I strongly support taking active steps to increase diversity in all sorts of contexts.  Also, I thought her actual, scientific perspective brings something important to the table.  Still, the only thing the evidence about gender representation did for me was to elevate the superficial importance of the CYA efforts on diversity -- to increase the appearance of diversity to undercut such (in my view, underhanded and non-substantive) comments. It is hard for me not to see this as political posturing rather than substantive -- at least, she presented nothing substantive about this as if "everyone knows" that an unequal distribution was itself evidence of a problem (if unrepresentative distributions constitute such a case, I have four papers on the lopsided political distribution of social psychologists that she would find appalling assuming she applies the same standard that "underrepresentation is inherent evidence of a problem.")  Most social psychologists will wiggle around this by saying the standard only applies to underrepresentation of groups they care about, not groups they do not care about or do not like.  Which kinda makes social psychologists, IDK, like everyone else in the world.  And which, to me, is classic double standards evidence of how severe the political problems are in the field, but I am now digressing.  

 

3.3.15   Simine:

 

That's interesting that you think the presenter/people are implying that a lack of diversity undermines the arguments/evidence. I would never have thought of that, and I suspect that wasn't the intention at all.  I think it is important to point out these imbalances because they are so difficult to fix and can lead to a lot of disadvantage, and I think scientific integrity is a topic with especially extreme gender imbalance, which is really really troubling because I think (hope) the discussion about scientific integrity is the discussion about the future of our field, and if some groups are systematically underrepresented in that discussion, there is a risk they will be systematically disadvantaged in the new system that the discussion produces.  If anyone says that the lack of representation undermines the quality of the arguments (without presenting any evidence), then I think that is completely wrong.  But I think it is a very good thing that the presenter talked about this.

 

3.3.15   Lee:

 

If it is not relevant to the scientific argument, then the main alternative would seem to be that it is raising the spectre of hostility/discrimination/disadvantage, in this case, without a hint of evidence (other than the distribution inequality itself).  The idea that distributions alone represent discrimination is odd, as can be seen by the gender representation of SPSP.  Put differently, the if "unequal distributions means discrimination/disadvantage" then one would be compelled to conclude that early career men are being subjected to nasty discrimination in social psych.  People who really believe that should be going wild advocating for a massive program to increase the representation of men in the field*.  It is not all that lopsided yet, but the trajectory is headed for massive lopsidedness.  If the trajectory was in the other direction, people would be loudly objecting.  How do I know?  That SPSP talk would be a good place to start as anecdotal evidence...

I really do not like disputing anything with you, Simine, because I hold your views in such high regard.  At the same time, I also do not like these sorts of implicit importation of agendas without evidence, and the double standards (in context of the distribution of SPSP) they imply.  Is there really a shred of evidence that women are being rejected at higher rates for these events?  Dismissed as irrelevant at any higher rate than anyone else? Maybe there is, but it was not presented.  Absent evidence of either scientific relevance or disadvantage/discrimination, I am still left feeling like it was a section of the talk filled with insinuations without evidence, and wondering, what was the point?

 

* Demographic distribution of SPSP.

 

3.4.15   Simine:

First, I want to say that I really really appreciate that we can have an open conversation about this, Lee, and I too very much respect your point of view and have no doubt that we share the same underlying values. And also, I enjoy disagreeing with you because it's rare to find someone I can disagree with and know that they will hear me out and even if we don't end up agreeing, I will be glad we had the conversation. 

I have two reactions to your last email. The first is that you're right, I do think that underrepresentation of a group that has traditionally/historically been disadvantaged is an indirect sign of discrimination. (So it's not imbalance alone, but imbalance that tracks demographics or other lines that are associated with discrimination at the societal level.) I admit this is making some assumptions, but I think they are not crazy assumptions. And this is also why I don't get worked up about imbalances in the other direction - fewer men than women doesn't bother me too much because there have not been many barriers to entry that disproportionally affect men. (Also, the imbalance at the junior level is unlikely to trickle up very fast because of the leaky pipeline for women). So I admit that I do see imbalance/underrepresentation as a sign that there is some (probably unintentional) disadvantage or hardship that disproportionally affects women. I'm not sure I think it's necessarily discrimination, I don't think it has to be, it could be a lot of other small things that are not anyone's fault but still cause women to be at a disadvantage. I could tell you at least a dozen stories from my own experiences, all of which do not involve a 'bad guy', but constitute a disadvantage/obstacle nonetheless, and were, I believe, related to my gender. And I think you know me well enough to know I'm not the kind of person who sees sexism everywhere. (And, just to be clear, I also recognize that I have been extremely lucky in general and have had a lot of opportunities, and that some of those were because of my gender (i.e., affirmative action)). 

My other reaction is that even if I give up on that point, and I agree, for the sake of argument, that imbalance does not provide any evidence of discrimination (or hardship or whatever you want to call it), I still think the imbalance itself is something we should try to fix. This is also related to the fact that women have historically (and still today) been at a disadvantage, so I think it is important to try to help make sure women are included in the most important 'clubs', whether that be informal conversations or formal organizations. If women are not at the table, even if it's for totally benign reasons, this is likely to lead to more disparity in outcomes, and I believe there is likely to be an interactive effect with sexism/discrimination such that a disadvantage, even one that had nothing to do with discrimination, will get compounded if the group being disadvantaged is also a group that suffers from discrimination at the societal level. Again, I am making a lot of assumptions, but I think they are reasonable (based on some empirical evidence, mostly descriptive stats from big surveys, and also from personal experience, which, while it might not be the best source of evidence, is really hard to ignore :)). Also, I think this second point is really important because many times when people are pointing out a dearth of women, they are doing so for this second reason (even if they also agree with the first), and I hope people won't assume that when we talk about gender we do so only because of concerns about overt discrimination. I'm not sure that the insinuations you are seeing are there, and I hope we could separate my first point from my second such that even people who disagree with me about the first would consider the second as a potentially good reason to care about gender (especially when the imbalance is in the women < men direction).

I bet you won't agree with me on many of these points, but I am curious if they at least make sense to you. And hopefully they will help explain why we see things differently. I would love to talk to you about this more sometime, it's really interesting for me to hear your thoughts!

 

3.5.15 Lee:

 

Hey, Simine, while I do not find the inequality of distributions that tracks historical discrimination argument as suggesting ongoing discrimination at all persuasive (absent other independent evidence of ongoing discrimination)*, I actually do agree with and find your second set of points persuasive.  First, when direct evidence is hard to come by, I have no problem admitting anecdotal evidence**. 

Second, disproportions risk creating the appearance of hostility or not being welcome -- and that can become self-fulfilling.  Thus, taking proactive steps to make sure people -- especially people who might be wondering whether people "like them" are welcome*** -- is usually something I do support.

* I recently reviewed a paper for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was essentially an audit-style experiment of faculty hiring in STEM fields.  As an experiment, it was able to hold stuff constant and manipulate stuff.  Women emerged with a 2:1 advantage in hiring.  I'd give the reference, but I cannot do it till it is published, which, as of right now, I cannot be sure that it is.  This stands in stark contrast to the Moss-Racusin/Dovidio study, which was about 1/5 the sample size, and did find modest favoritism for male applicants for a (relatively low grade, at least compared to faculty) lab manager position.

** On anecdotal information.  Here are two true anecdotes.  About 3 years ago, a student of mine submitted a proposal for a small grant from an internal Rutgers source to study how people's politics can lead to biased views of science.  It was rejected on the entirely scientific grounds that the theory and importance was unclear, and there were problems with the method.  When I reviewed the proposal, I saw no such problems, but I did see this:

  “The field of psychology is dominated by liberals (Redding, 2001), and this  political homogeneity can be problematic… In fact, content analysis of all the articles published in American Psychologist during the 1990s revealed that 97% had liberal themes (Redding, 2001). Furthermore, recent research suggests many social psychologists would blatantly discriminate based on politics (Inbar & Lammers, 2012)…”

"Oh, crap," I thought, "of course they rejected it -- it is telling them that this proposed project is on them, and that it proposes to catch them in the act of distorting science with their politics."  Of course, I might have been wrong, those substantive comments might have been completely sincere and bona fide.  How to distinguish the two? Run an anecdotal experiment -- anecdotal, because it is one shot (no random assignment of lots of people to conditions), but still an experiment (change one thing and see what happens!). 

I instructed the student to delete the "offending" paragraph, and replace it with this:
“… Science has a long and checkered history of periodically being used and exploited as a tool to advance nefarious rightwing political agendas (e.g., social Darwinism; Nazi eliminationist practices; Herrnstein & Murray's (1994) claims about genetic bases of race differences in intelligence).”
 
We changed nothing else.  The proposal was funded.  Slamming Nazis, and Herrnstein & Murray, apparently, made the theory clear and cogent, and the methods valid and sound.

Anecdote 2.  A collaborator of mine has been on a roll undoing the field's view of conservatives as incompetent and immoral.  One avenue has been to show that, in areas where others have found cons more biased than libs, if you tweak the methods just a little bit, you get similar levels of bias, and conditions under which libs are more biased than cons.  We had collaborated on a paper that demonstrated the latter (lib bias > con bias).  It said so.  We could not get it published. 

He then had a brilliant stroke of insight.  He reframed the paper, and, though the info is there in the tables and figures, took out all mention of lib bias > con bias from the text. 

That version got published.

These are anecdotes.  In the anthropology and qualitative social science literatures, they are called "lived experience."

 

*** See the references for my paper on a group very unwelcome in the social sciences, and for which there is massive inequality in distribution.

 

3.6.15 Lee:

 

Simine,

That paper I reviewed and referred to as being embargoed was just accepted.  Although no one piece of research is ever definitive on these issues, or, probably, on any issue, I would say it is a must-read for anyone arguing that sexism is a major problem in STEM.  It is also listed in the references. 

To paraphrase and partially quote from the paper:
The 2:1 bias found in favor of hiring women for faculty positions means that it is a propitious time for a woman to be entering STEM fields.

A final note on "disadvantage."  As you know, I am now in Australia for a conference.  There is a pretty famous White guy who could not come because he has two small kids at home.  A former student and ongoing collaborator of mine had a sabbatical.  He wanted to spend it in Europe, with one of his his other collaborators.  He couldn't because he has two small kids at home.  For most of my career, I felt unable to do things like I am doing now (spending a year on sabbatical at Stanford, attending conferences and giving talks all over the world) because of the exact same thing.  My sabbaticals were staybatticals.  I turned down an invitation to Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) early on because of that.  I was not willing to uproot my family to search for jobs all over the country, probably depressing my income compared to those capable of doing such searches.  I always thought of these decisions as "choices" not "disadvantages."  However, if I wanted to use the rhetoric of disadvantage -- applied in this case to social psychologists with and without small children, and with or without strong geographically based family ties --  it would not be difficult.  Years ago Bella DePaulo had a couple of articles about prejudice against single people.  I am on a dissertation committee about prejudice against married people who choose not to have children.
When you carve out all the potential ways we are all "disadvantaged" there are very very few people left over as advantaged. I am not claiming an equivalence between all forms of "disadvantage" -- but I am claiming we have lost our way.  Life's challenges and "disadvantage" are not the same thing, and, of course, those challenges are different for different people.

None of this is a case against proactively seeking diversity, whether for our conference or anything else.  None of this argues against taking people's unique life circumstances into account in trying to accommodate and include them in things valuable and important.  Nor am I denying the existence of bona fide, ongoing discrimination against certain groups.  I do, however, reject the notion that unequal distributions are, by themselves, even suggestive of discrimination.  Of course discrimination can produce unequal distributions, but it can also produce equal distributions (discrimination against a group that is in fact more highly qualified can produce an equal distribution*) and unequal distributions can result from many processes other than ongoing discrimination in the present. 

Lee

P.S. Simine -- perhaps we should consider publishing an edited version of this back n forth?  It is one of the few sane & civil discussions** of these issues I have ever seen, and the idea that we can disagree on some of these issues respectfully is probably something that is worth somehow making public...?

* Admissions of Asian students to college has long been below what would be predicted on the basis of their SAT scores.  So, even though Asian students get degrees at much higher levels than any other group, including Whites, this discrepancy between achievement and admission rates sure smells like bias to me. 

** Plus, like you taught Funder, you have taught me to love footnotes.

 

Recommended Readings For Anyone Interested in Any of These Issues

DePaulo, B. M., & Morris, W. L. (2006).  The unrecognized prejudice and discrimination against singles.  Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 251-254.

Duarte, J. L., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., & Tetlock, P. (In press).  Political diversity will improve social and personality psychological science.  Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Jussim, L. (2012).  Liberal privilege in academic psychology and the social sciences: Commentary on Inbar & Lammers (2012).  Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 504-507.

Moss-Racusin, C. et al (2012).  Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 16474-16479.

Williams, W. M., & Ceci, S. J. (In press).  National hiring experiments reveal 2-to-1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

END EMAIL CONVERSATION

 

postscript by simine (on simine's blog only):

i've been wanting to blog about the underrepresentation of women in the scientific integrity discussion for a while.  i hesitated because i couldn't figure out exactly what i wanted to say.  at the same time that lee and i were having this discussion, i heard someone on npr quote roxane gay: "i'd rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all".  that helped me decide to post this - i don't have any answers, but i think it's an important enough topic to try to fumble through the discussion anyway. 

i hope more people will join in the scientific integrity discussion.  don't wait for someone to anoint you an expert on scientific integrity. none of us are.  all of us say some stupid shit sometimes.*  join us.

or, in the words of the inimitable ani difranco:

you don't have to be a supermodel

to do the animal thing

you don't have to be a supergenius

to open your face up and sing

*have you read facebook?

 
supergenius.

Comments

[Carol]

Great, important discussion. One thing confuses me. Dr. Jussim's arguments seem to suggest that the answer to whether bias exists is a straightforward "yes or no," based on people's intentional actions.

A post by Dr. Sanjay Srivastava does a great job of explaining the nuances of what I mean:
https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/does-the-replication-debate-have-a-diversity-problem/

[Josh E.]

Introductory Note: I attempted to post this at RabbleRouser's blog, but it appears he has turned off comments on the post. My comment is below.
---
Although I respect the phlegmatic approach both of you took to this discussion, I must disagree with Dr. Vazire's acceptance of your comments, Dr. Jussim.

You do make two good points: 1) There is insufficient research into the harm done to women by their underrepresentation; and 2) there is an unequal Liberal representation in academia.

Otherwise, these comments are rife with false equivalencies and dated defenses of majority privilege. False equivalence example---The presentation of point 2 in parallel with point 1. This would only be annoying if it did not also undermine Dr. Vazire's evidence for a systematic disenfranchisement of women in social psychology (i.e., the "leaky pipeline," etc.) and reinforce the efforts of those who would suggest there is no problem. The former is unintentionally damaging, and the latter is insidious.

We don't know what we don't know, so we have great difficulty assessing the impact of gender discrimination before we have stable equality. The best we can do is highlight gaps that are apparent. The Stanford Prison Experiment is an example. Would women behave the same way in that situation? It was a women (his graduate student) who told Zimbardo he had to stop the study, despite her direct and inferior professional position. Perhaps women would have followed orders but not elaborated their role. We don't know how gender might have affected it because women were excluded.

Dr. Jussim, with the gentle tone of someone who is only a little farther down this path, I urge that you educate yourself how enfranchised privilege entrenches itself before you say or do something that causes you professional harm. It is no one's responsibility but your own to do so. At the very least, your present lack of self-awareness is serving to reify the gender bias still present in the field, and as you know, lack of knowledge is not a defense.

There is an article on WeeklySift that describes this artfully. It is titled "The Distress of the Privileged." Perhaps a careful read of this explanation could change the way you view these issues. Best, Josh

[Lee Jussim]

I cannot help but point out that the two commentaries you have so far received, Simine, have clearly interpreted the mere bringing up of a numerical disparity as evidence of discrimination and bias.

Apparently, I am not alone in interpreting that as a strong, if unarticulated, implication of the argument.

I note two things here: 1. Nowhere did I say anything declaring all bias to be intentional, and I am clueless as to how anyone could get there from my posts; and 2. The implied threat in the second comment, "I urge you to educate yourself ... before you do something that causes you professional harm" and the explicit insult, "At the very least, your present lack of self-awareness..." is exactly the type of comment that creates exactly the type of anti-scientific political climate that serves to stifle dissent.

Fortunately, I have gotten so much histrionic blowback for making eminently empirically justified claims for so long, that, basically, for me, it is water off a duck's back -- but it
is EXACTLY the type of discourse that creates exactly the type of chilly climate in social psychology that serves to suppress reasonable discussion and even scientific research that contests narratives of oppression.

This is exactly the type of comment Ledgerwood et al complain about in the next post on your site, Simine, when referring to "Nut up or shut up."

Interestingly, in that next post, Ledgerwood et al explicitly declare that they have made no claims about discrimination. And yet, your comment-makers are clearly interpreting that line of argument as exactly such evidence.

Two last things: I note that your two commenters show an appalling obliviousness to the data. The future of social psychology is about 2:1 women:men. Just look at the table, from undergrads and early career and associate professors.

If a 2:1 male:female ratio in the scientific integrity discussions constitutes any evidence of anything pernicious (call it what you will, bias, discrimination, "actions that alienate women," etc.), then what do you all make of the 2:1 female:male ratio among the future of the field?

If such a 2:1 female:male difference constitutes anti-female sexism, what, then, I ask of all your readers, would constitute evidence of pro-female favoritism? 75% women? 90% 99.999%? Or is the hypothesis of sexism not disconfirmable? If there is no data that could disconfirm it, then it is nondisconfirmable. If it is not disconfirmable, then it is not a scientific claim.

If there is data that could disconfirm the anti-female sexism hypothesis, I ask those of you who believe it applies to either the scientific integrity discussion in particular or the field of social psychology more generally: Could you articulate what that data would be?

I note here that the person suggesting that I "educate myself" provided no resources or references. I won't make the same mistake, and request that anyone interested in thoughtfully addressing these issues first read the following papers:

2011 Ceci, SJ, & Williams, W. (2011). Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 3157-3162.

2015 Duarte, J. L., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., & Tetlock, P. Political diversity will improve social and personality psychological science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in press.

2012 Jussim, L. Liberal privilege in academic psychology and the social sciences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 504-507.

2015 Winegard, B., Winegard, B., & Geary, D. C. Too paranoid to see progress: Social psychology is probably liberal but it doesn't believe in progress. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in press.

Best,

Lee Jussim

P.S. Despite the tone of the comments, I would not want you to take them down (not that you would have anyway). I like having them there as a written record.

[Carol]

Hi Dr. Jussim,

I (first commenter) did not actually suggest that a numerical disparity is clear evidence of any phenomenon. Rather, the post I linked to, like the new guest post on this blog, suggests that diversity is inherently valuable. And, since there is a lack of diversity, it is worth exploring why this might be the case. Input from women and minorities explains ways they feel disenfranchised. Do you have a problem with working toward creating more inclusive environments? I guess I'm confused. Is your argument simply that "numerical disparity [is not inherently] evidence of discrimination and bias"? I doubt anyone would disagree with that.

[Lee Jussim]

Hey, Carol, I kinda feel like I had my say, and it is not really appropriate for me to dominate the conversation over here on Simine's blog. However, if you want to contact me on my blogsite, where I addressed these same issues:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser
I'd be happy to respond.

Sorry it has taken so long (I had a family emergency which was sorta draining, and which could be viewed as politically as this entire conversation -- but I will hold off doing that here).

I have no idea why the other respondent here was unable to post his comment on my site. I most certainly did not turn comments off -- I love comments.

I just logged in to my site from a different email and had no trouble posting a comment (the "test" comment, which now comes second) and I will leave up for a couple of days then take down.

Hope to hear from you soon (over there). Just repost your entire comment here, and anything else you would like to add. And please be patient, I will reply, but it may take a few days or a week, depending on whatever else is going on.

[Josh E.]

Dr. Jussim,

Note: I posted this some time ago, but it never appeared.

I (the second commentor) also would like to follow-up about your response. The basic problem is that your discussion---whether you mean for it to be or not---is advocacy to reinforce deep biases that function at all levels of society, more from your elaboration than from your basic assertion. If you had read the source I referred you to (which you apparently missed), you would have a better understanding of my reaction to your entire discussion---and the reason for my caution to you about your professional reputation. Your discussion suggests that you do not understand the concept of "privileged distress" or you would understand that I was not submitting you to "histrionic blowback" (incidentally, an explicitly sexist phrase that you should avoid). I was attempting to help you understand that you were viewing this issue through a biased lens that ignored the influence of power and control dynamics on society. The intimation that we only want to apply this to groups "we care about" indicates poor understanding of the nature of societal marginalization and accompanying discrimination. That bias in your thinking can harm you professionally, especially when you take up topics like this. What you perceived as insult was not. Like the rest of us, you do not know what you do not know until you learn it. At the very least, it would be good for you to understand how your arguments parallel those of people who would like to maintain discriminatory practices. (See "The Distress of the Privileged" and the reference on injunctification below.)

Moving on, and to be direct, it is poor scientific practice to decontextualize data. You are suggesting that a number disparity alone (a single data point) does not indicate discrimination. While strictly true (though I would argue that decontextualized data is worthless), this is gross reductionism, and a theoretical point with little practical use except as a component of the argument to maintain the status quo. You are correct in only the strictest possible condition of your assertion. Moreover, you again are overly reductionistic in reviewing the membership of SPSP, ignoring the "leaky pipeline" trend that Dr. Vazire raised. A numerical disparity is, itself, one of the strongest indicators of discrimination in the context of a socially robust power differential. When disparities grow more pronounced in contact with a system (as illustrated in this and the new blog post), the numbers become evidence of institutional discrimination. (Discrimination arises from prejudice, which does not have to be intentional.)

In response to your disconnect between data and context (i.e., your assertion that the gender disparity in social science is not sufficient evidence alone), good information was provided to you to indicate that, like the society that psychology is embedded in, women are experiencing disparities suggestive of discrimination. The sum of this data is that the disparities are broad and more prominent at levels closer to power in the field. I will reiterate that such data are strongly indicative of institutionalized discrimination. Your anecdotes about career limitations due to family are (a) not generalizable and (b) a false equivalence. There is extensive research about the unequal burden professional women carry in family duties. Much work still needs to be done to establish the specific causes of the discrimination in social psychology, but the unwelcoming aspects of the sciences for women are widely known. Poor parenting support, maternity leave policies, hiring practices, and implicitly held beliefs about their professional capacity (see Moss-Racusin for an example), aside from gender aggressions, have provided historically powerful barriers to career success for women, also depriving early career women of same-gender science mentors (another disparity). Your blog post questioned the use of intentional measures to reduce disparities (your discussion of "disadvantage"). With all due respect, that attitude instantiates the discrimination. Your struggle, whatever it is, is entirely different from theirs. Failing to embrace reasonable accommodations for such phenomena is discrimination. Unintended discrimination is still discrimination.

I'll finish with this, choosing to ignore your overtly aggressive negative comments such as "appalling obliviousness." Appeals for the inevitability of a women-led field are also true and entirely irrelevant to the current gender bias on display. They serve only to provide women hope that, one day, their colleagues will no longer be able to frustrate them out of their profession through unintentional marginalization and insensitivity to their well-established disadvantages. It is up to each of us to make sure we are not contributing to the problem now.

Best,
Dr. Josh E.

PS--In my first post, I provided a good example of how this bias could lead us to question existing research (Zimbardo's study), which you failed to respond to. That's unfortunate since it is a direct response to your initial concern. Also, Haidt has published a lot on the bias towards conservatives in academia. No need to provide anecdotes.

Reference:

Haidt: http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/postpartisan.html

Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Peach, J. M., Laurin, K., Friesen, J., Zanna, M. P., & Spencer, S. J. (2009). Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to see the way things are as the way they should be. Journal of personality and social psychology, 97(3), 421.

Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(41), 16474-16479.

[Lee Jussim]

It has taken me a while, but there is so much confusion and/or distortion about gaps, including those by your commenters Carol and Josh, that I have decided to take this on as a multi-blog entry effort. The first has been posted here:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201603/what-explains-racial-gender-and-other-group-based-gaps

Here's hoping your commenters visit that one, and respond to the question at the end.

Lee