Author Archives: admin

“Stereotype threat”, women, and math tests.

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Regular commenter Blair was kind enough to bring to my attention an article from The Globe and Mail, reporting research done at the University of British Columbia, that illustrates how what we think we know can have a real impact on what we can do:

Over three years, researchers gave 135 women tests similar to those used for graduate school entrance exams. Each woman was expected to perform a challenging math section, but not before reading an essay that dealt with gender difference in math.
Of the four essays, one argued there was no difference, one argued the difference was genetic and a third argued the difference stemmed from the way girls were taught in elementary school.
The fourth essay covered the subject of women in art; it has long been held by researchers that simply reminding a woman of her gender will negatively impact her test performance.

Any guesses as to the outcomes?

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“Science” kits that teach stereotypes.

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It’s the time of year when the mailbox starts filling up with catalogues. At the Free-Ride house, many of these are catalogues featuring “educational” toys and games. Now, some of these toys and games are actually pretty cool. Others, to my mind, are worse than mere wastes of money.
For your consideration, three “science” kits targeted at girls:

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Friday Sprog Blogging: “Our kids are dumb!”

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Of course, we don’t really think the sprogs are dumb. Sometimes they just remind us that some of the things their parents find intuitive are not intuitive to them.
Dr. Free-Ride: (arriving home after an evening seminar) How were the kids tonight.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: They were fine. But, we had a conversation about boiling and … our kids are dumb!

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Write some letters to save the Tripoli six.

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As Revere notes, the trial of the Tripoli six is scheduled to resume on October 31. This means the time for serious action is now.
As Mike Dunford points out,

If you want to do something more than just get mad, if you want to try to change things, you will need to do more than read blog articles and post comments. You need to write people. You need to call people. You need to send faxes and emails.

Honest to goodness, a letter on paper, in an envelope, addressed and stamped to get to its destination, is going to signal that this really matters to you in a way that emails will not — because you took the trouble to do something that was labor-intensive. Writing an original letter (rather than using a form letter) will further increase the chances that your plea will be taken seriously.
So I’m asking you to do something hard. But I’m also going to provide you some help in doing it.

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Friday Sprog Blogging: trying to understand Pokemon.

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Pictured above: Not anything to do with Pokemon, but rather an imagined scene from Okami, in which, as far as I can gather, a solar-powered wolf battles a garlic bulb.
Dr. Free-Ride: Can you explain some stuff about Pokemon to me?
Elder offspring: Sure! How much time do you have?
Dr. Free-Ride: Look, I don’t want to get into the issues of which ones are best in a battle or anything like that. I’m just trying to understand what kind of critter they’re supposed to be.
Elder offspring: OK, we’ll talk about battles another day.
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah … we’ll do that.

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My (unhinged) plan for improving science journalism and the market for it.

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I’m blaming the folks at Three Bulls! for the post that incited this one. Indeed, I started my descent into what is clearly a delusional plan in a comment there.
The short version: Pinko Punko was disturbed at how very little actual communication of content was involved in a presumably science-centered media frenzy. The “journalists” in question neither sought actual informative content from scientists (let alone striving to understand that content), nor passed on anything like it to their viewers. To those of us who expect journalism to communicate actual content (or at least try to), this is disturbing.
Hoping that perhaps, from this brush with media frenzy, Pinko Punko could offer a more precise diagnosis of the problem, I asked:

Is it a supply-side problem — primarily, one of incompetent science journalists, or of journalists who think they understand more science than they actually do? If so, could this be the answer to our oversupply of science Ph.D.s (i.e., send them to the press conferences and the newsrooms)?
Is it a demand-side problem — with the public unable to get the least bit interested about science (at least when there’s a good Congressional sex scandal or a celebrity behaving badly), or interested but without the requisite understanding of the most basic details of science to really “get” the scientific findings they might be interested in?
Do the people on the supply end misjudge the interest or intelligence of the people on the demand end?
Can we lay this all at the feet of people who use print, audio, and video news to sell ads?

The diagnosis? Probably all of these are at work. That means it’s time for a cunning plan (which in its present form involves no turnips but possibly a little mind control). Here is a slight elaboration on the manifesto I posted at Three Bulls!

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