The MIT Discrimination Report: "Junk Science"?

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In response to the much-publicized MIT
Report confessing/alleging systemic discrimination
in its Science Faculty, Patricia Hausman and
I have produced a paper analyzing productivity
of the male and female scientists in the Biology
Department there. The data we present shed
some additional light on claims of discrimination.

The article is discussed in today's Chronicle
of Higher Education, and is available for downloading
in Adobe Acrobat PDF from from

http://www.iwf.org


James H. Steiger
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
Voice and Fax; (604)-822-2706
EMAIL: steiger  @  unixg.ubc.ca

I wonder (skeptically) as to the element of coincidence that Jim's article
(which I have not yet had time to read)  was released the week after the
presidents of nine top US research met at MIT.  They agreed that
gender-based inequities penalizing women exist, that more data is needed
and pledging proactive work (see Science, 2 Feb 2001, vol 291, p. 806 &/or
K. Zernike, "9 Universities Will Address Sex Inequities," The New York
Times 31 January 2001.)


Margaret E. Kosal
Department of Chemistry
School of Chemical Sciences
University of Illinois
600 S. Mathews Ave. 38-6
Urbana IL  61801

phone: 217.333.1532
fax: 217.333.2685
email: nerdgirl  @  s.scs.uiuc.edu

I have a question - is this 'Independent Women's Forum ' a vehicle for the
Republican Party or some caucus of it? Its membership and vocal anti-Clinton
bias (not to mention its essentialist, biological-determinist stance) seem
to indicate so. Does anyone know?

Cheers,
Jenea

_______________________
j. l. t a l l e n t i r e
PhD student, History
University of British Columbia
Canada
jltallen  @  interchange.ubc.ca

An article about IWF in the oct/nov 2000 issue of Ms. states that
the media savvy IWF's "biggest bankroller has been Richard Mellon
Scaife. He supports the usual conservative organizations like
_American Spectator_ magazine, the Heritage Foundation, the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Cato Institute, and
Pepperdine University. He spent 4 years and millions of dollars on
a massive investigation looking for dirt on the Clintons..........Other
big supporters are the John M. Olin Foundation, the Jaquelin Hume
Foundation, and the Bradley Foundation; all are major donors to
other conservative groups as well (65)."

Rebecca

Rebecca Tolley-Stokes
Non-print media cataloger
Sherrod Library
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, TN
423.439.4365
fax)423.439.4410
tolleyst  @  etsu.edu

The Institute for Demcracy Studies has published a briefing paper on the
 anti-feminist movement that talks all about the strategies, funding and
 relationships among  these groups, and specifically address the Independent
 Women's Forum.
The Institute's URL is www.institutefordemocracy.org
Mary Rose McCarthy
University at Buffalo

James Steiger recently posted to this listserv the web site
http://www.iwf.org of a paper written with Patricia Hausman entitled
"Confession Without Guilt?" which he described as "a paper analyzing
productivity of the male and female scientists in the
BiologyDepartment" at MIT that purports t "shed some additional
light on claims of discrimination". The paper claims to use a
standard of scientific scrutiny and evidence that the authors find
lacking in the MIT report http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html .
In the title and throughout the paper, the authors use the words
"confessing" and "confession" to describe MIT's action in issuing
the now-famous MIT report on discrimination against women faculty at
MIT.  This is an interesting word-choice for a "scientific" paper -
other words, like "acknowledge" or "admit" that are less
emotionally-laden might seem more appropriate in a purely scientific
paper.  However, it's not a purely scientific paper. At the very
least, it would need to be peer-reviewed, and I saw no indication
that this paper had been so reviewed.  In addition, the introduction
to the paper, rather than presenting a summary of "hard" data or
major conclusions, is a polemical section that relies on anecdotal
evidence and quotes taken out of context to make a case that the MIT
report is in error.

The Hausman/Steiger paper cites, in the preface, a paper by Judith
Kleinfeld that criticized the MIT study as being non-scientific and
non-evidence based.  Hausman/Steiger fault the MIT report for
presenting "no evidence" that disparities exist.  I have noted
previously on this listserv that a major problem with Kleinfeld's
report is that it criticizes the MIT report as being scientifically
flawed although she herself was not privy to the data on which the
report was based.  I noted that this is in itself bad science - one
cannot draw conclusions about the quality of data without having
looked at the data - and I also noted that MIT has no obligation to
make public the data on which it based an institutional policy
decision.  Individual scientists have a responsibility to make
public data gathered in the course of scientific investigations
supported by public funds - but salary and other data that MIT
presumably based its conclusions and actions upon, do not fit in
that category.

The Hausman/Steiger report claims to do what MIT did not - give to
the public "hard" data on biology faculty at MIT so that the public
can determine whether or not discrimination exists.  They analyze
number of publications, number of citations, and number of citations
per paper by gender. They also look at federal grant dollars
obtained by gender.  They claim to show "compelling" differences in
productivity, influence, and grant funding between senior male and
female faculty.  (My personal interpretation of their data, speaking
as a scientist, is that they show some differences, the meaning of
which is subject to debate, that are less than "compelling".) Their
conclusion is that male faculty at MIT who got more resources most
likely deserved them because they are more productive and that the
males "need" these resources to "honor the terms of their research
grants."

As fascinating as the data Hausman/Steiger have collected are, they
prove little. Several logical fallacies are implicit in their
conclusions, namely:
1.  Resources were/are allocated to MIT faculty after the fact, as a
reward for high numbers of publications, citations, and federal
grant dollars obtained.
2.  Males who had more resources than females on the biology faculty
at MIT must have been those who had more publications, citations,
and federal grant dollars.
3.  Distribution of resources at the beginning of a career or during
a career has little or no impact on the productivity of a career as
determined by publications, citations, and federal grant dollars
obtained.

For point number 2 above, there is simply no way to know if this is
true or false without accompanying data on salary, lab space, and
other resources.  This is precisely the data MIT has not released
because of privacy issues. Hausman/Steiger's report, therefore, just
like Kleinfeld's, can shed no real light on whether the MIT report
and actions were based on "scientifically flawed" reasoning or
interpretation of data.

For numbers 1 and 3 above:
Resource allocation occurs at the beginning of and during a career,
and can profoundly affect career productivity on exactly the
measures Hausman/Steiger use. Resource allocation is often done,
particularly at the beginning of a career, on expectations of
success and also depends on how aggressive and successful one is at
demanding, and getting, more space, equipment, start-up funds,
graduate students, and so on. Getting more at the start helps one
take off faster and go further quicker, of course. Hausman/Steiger
seem to assume that a philosophy of "them what has, gets" is
perfectly appropriate for scientific resource allocation.  If you've
already been able to hog up a bunch of resources and parlay that
into productivity and enhanced visibility, why then surely you
deserve whatever else might be handed out in the future. A
capitalistic model is one possibility for science - it may or may
not be the best or most productive model.  However, it does not
inevitably follow that the scientist who is best at obtaining
resources is the scientist who is best (or could be best) at
obtaining useful scientific results.  Obtaining resources is to a
large extent a political game one must play to be able to do
science.  It requires a set of skills that, many scientists will
tell you, are sometimes in conflict with, or at least get in the way
of, development of scientific skills.

It's possible that this is what is really bothering Hausman,
Steiger, and their colleagues at IWF.  They seem to have a naive
conception of science as something holy existing beyond the realm of
politics and not subject to influence by human emotion, behavior,
and prejudice. This may be true for the data one gets out of a
particular experiment - but it certainly does not apply to the
conditions that allow the experiment to be done.  The wailing and
hand-wringing going on about the scientific flaws and lack of data
grow out of a staunch, if misguided, belief in the objectivity of
scientific endeavors - which are, after all, only carried out by
human beings - and the immunity of scientific endeavors to politics
and human influence.  It's possible that the male biology faculty at
MIT have been better at the skill sets that yield lots of resources
in the scientific arena.  This doesn't mean they were necessarily
better or more deserving scientists.  It also doesn't rule out the
possibility that demanding and getting resources, has, in the past,
at least at MIT, been aided and abetted by posession of a penis.

Dr. Suzanne E. Franks
Director, Women in Engineering and Science Program
125 Seaton Hall - Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS  66506-2905
email sefranks  @  ksu.edu
phone 785-532-3395
fax 785-532-3349