1) There are lots of brilliant people in the field, but it is also the degree that dumb people who want a science degree or are "pre-med" get. It tremendously lowers the value of my undergrad degree. If you look at high-paying jobs (finance, investing, etc), you'll often find people who say they occasionally hire in a bright scientist who wants to switch industries. They typically hire physics and chemistry majors and are much less likely to hire someone with a biology degree.
2)The computational biologists/bioinformaticians/etc in this field are pretty variable in their CS skills and a good deal of the top performers leave the field because pay is really, really terrible. (ie my compensationv is 65K, high COL area, MS required, 1 year of direct experience under my belt, plus an additional 4 years of experience in the wider biotech industry - trust me I think my life is a joke too).
While I think it's ridiculous for women to have to dress a certain way, we also have to understand that sex sells and it's not illegal to use sexualized images to sell products.
News is a product like any other. If the way anchors look and dress are correlated with the number of viewers and the station's bottom line, what are we supposed to do in a capitalist society? Pretend there is no value in aesthetics or provocative imagery?
I bet if programmers dressing provocatively was positively correlated with increased profits, we'd see some low-key encouragement on programmer attire.
I still think it's bullshit for women, but I can see a case for wanting sexy people in front of a camera. If looks didn't factor into anchors careers in any way whatsoever (for both men and women), I am willing to bet over half of current news anchors would never have become anchors in the first place.
However, I do think if stations want their anchors to be glorified models then they need to be upfront about it from the get-go so all people are aware of the requirements and stipulations of the careers/jobs they are pursuing.
I did a masters an Johns Hopkins and completed it all online. It's a similar style program where you can do it all online, on campus, or as a combination.
Still cost me slightly over 40k even though Innever stepped foot on campus.
It's a total rip-off, but only in the sense that I couldn't get a decent paying job without a masters (work in biotech).
The scientific articles I read don't use that phrase because they actually cite the studies for their assertions, which makes the phrase "backed by studies" redundant. Also, these articles rarely tackle a subject in which "backed by studies" is either use as a rhetorical device or sufficiently accurate. What does "backed" actually mean -- to either scientists or laypersons?
If you believe that scientific studies should be accorded authority upon citation, then why not share their respect for nuance and accuracy? For example, in the section in which Damore describes "Personality differences" as being biological traits, including neuroticism and "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things", he links to this meta study:
You've probably read that study so I'll sum it up for the convenience of others. From the abstract:
> Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender-egalitarian societies than in gender-inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences.
The meta analysis finds that 3 studies -- 2 of which are authored by this metastudy's author -- have reported a "very large" difference between men and women in "People-Things orientation". And that 4 studies (1 of which is authored by the meta-author) find a "small" to "moderate" gap in neuroticism.
Skipping down to the concluding section, titled "Where Do We Go from Here?", the main headings are:
- Some methodological suggestions
- More cross-cultural research is needed
- More research should investigate changes in gender differences over time
- The need to move beyond the ‘Big Five’
- The need to test explicit models that include predictions about men’s and women’s mean trait levels and men’s and women’s trait variability
The tl;dr is: it's complicated, and we need more research. Which is exactly what you'd expect a responsible scientist to assert given that there were 3 meta-studies relevant to "people-things orientation) that he could find and only 1 of those wasn't his own. Nowhere does the study's author make the claim that this trait is caused by biology. The strongest claim from the author is him citing his previous study and another study which have both considered the possibility, absent an obvious cultural influence:
> To answer ‘why’ questions, it helps also to consider ‘when’ and ‘where’ questions – e.g., how consistent are gender differences over time and across cultures? Gender differences that vary over historical time and across cultures point to the importance of social–environmental and cultural factors as causes of gender differences (Eagly & Wood, 1999). In contrast, gender differences that are stable over time and across cultures suggest the influence of biologic factors (Lippa, 2005; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974).
So a conclusion that argues that:
- More research is needed
- More explicit behavior models are needed.
- Testing such models "may very well yield ‘messy’ results – e.g., results that show both biologic and social–environmental factors contributing to gender differences, to varying degrees for different traits, and varying kinds of interactions between biologic and social–environmental factors."
-- obligates us to describe Damore's claim -- "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things" and neuroticism are biologically based -- as being "backed up by studies", and leave it at that?
Bullshit.
edit: accidentally wrote "Damon" instead of "Damore" in one reference
Please leave personal attacks out of this. I've done the courtesy of reading Damore's memo and citing and quoting from his linked references. Don't reduce my interest in discussion to having an "extreme axe to grind", which is somewhat ironic since I'm in the demographic that Damore's memo purports to advocate for.
I've long had this thought about charity itself, it seems that a lot of charity is propping up bits and pieces of capitalism so we don't look at the root causes of why we "need" charity in the first place.
On one hand it's great that children around the US can have life saving surgery because so many donated to their cause, on the other hand would we all be better off donating to a lobbying cause for single-payer healthcare?
If we could get that passed, every child in the US could have life saving surgery if needed and it wouldn't be a matter of whether or not their community is charitable enough.
1) There are lots of brilliant people in the field, but it is also the degree that dumb people who want a science degree or are "pre-med" get. It tremendously lowers the value of my undergrad degree. If you look at high-paying jobs (finance, investing, etc), you'll often find people who say they occasionally hire in a bright scientist who wants to switch industries. They typically hire physics and chemistry majors and are much less likely to hire someone with a biology degree.
2)The computational biologists/bioinformaticians/etc in this field are pretty variable in their CS skills and a good deal of the top performers leave the field because pay is really, really terrible. (ie my compensationv is 65K, high COL area, MS required, 1 year of direct experience under my belt, plus an additional 4 years of experience in the wider biotech industry - trust me I think my life is a joke too).