Tag: science

Mailvox: women in science

It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what is going to happen if you put a selection of intelligent, not very attractive women in amongst the biggest collection of gamma males in the known universe:

I’m a STEM worker, at a research lab. Lots of females have come through here. Increasingly more over the years. I have to say that most of them are coasters. Let’s face it, I’m dealing with a LOT of socially challenged men here. This is NERD CENTRAL.

The girls are VERY adept at getting the guys to do the heavy lifting for them. And, they are even more adept at establishing social networks beyond the ken of anything your standard issue STEM male could possibly comprehend.

This has led to some very interesting situations.

But, on the whole, the women in my 17-year history with this lab have caused FAR more problems than they have solved.

Of course, there is the odd exception, when you find a female scientist or engineer who is an absolute treasure. They DO exist.

But they represent a very small percentage of the women coming through here. And the chaos caused by all the other women makes one wonder if they are worth it.

Sad to say. VERY sad to say. C’mon we WANT HOT SEXY BABES WORKING HERE! WE ARE A LEGION OF GEEKS!

First, these women are naturally going to be inclined to make up for lost time in enjoying their high relative SMV for the first time in their lives. Second, it’s going to be the cheerleader/geek homework scenario writ large. Third, women are going to take over and rule the administration and HR, and promptly steer the organizations in the direction that happens to be of interest to them, which may or may not have anything to do with either a) science, or, b) the nominal purpose of the organization.

And it will happen every single time. No amount of education or professional training trumps the socio-sexual hierarchy.

The primary contribution any woman can make for science is to stay completely out of it. No matter how good she is, no matter how smart she is, she cannot possibly compensate for the complete devastation and distraction she is going to leave in her wake over the course of her career among the socially and sexually hapless gammas who might have otherwise happily spent decades slaving away in the laboratories.

Science is hard, Barbie

Actually, it’s not, but it’s still too hard for women and minorities. Just ask an overeducated SJW:

College science classes are hostile to women and minorities because they use the scientific method, which assumes people can find reliable truths about the natural world through careful and sustained experimentation, concludes a recent dissertation by a doctoral candidate at the University of North Dakota.

Laura Parson, a student in the university’s education department, reviewed eight science class syllabi at a “Midwest public university” and said she discovered in them a hidden hostility to women and minorities:

Initial exploration of the STEM syllabi in this study did not reveal overt references to gender, such as through the use of gendered pronouns. However, upon deeper review, language used in the syllabi reflects institutionalized STEM teaching practices and views about knowledge that are inherently discriminatory to women and minorities by promoting a view of knowledge as static and unchanging, a view of teaching that promotes the idea of a passive student, and by promoting a chilly climate that marginalizes women.

Even though the course syllabi contained no “gendered assumptions” about students or other overtly discriminatory implications, Parson writes, they display prejudice against women and minorities because they refuse to entertain the possibility that “scientific knowledge is subjective.”

Throughout her dissertation, Parson assumes and asserts that women and minorities are uniquely challenged by the idea that science can provide objective information about the natural world. This is an unfair assumption, she says, because the concept of objectivity is too hard for women and minorities to understand. “[N]otions of absolute truth and a single reality” are “masculine,” she says, referring to poststructuralist feminist theory.

Instead of promoting the idea that knowledge is constructed by the student and dynamic, subject to change as it would in a more feminist view of knowledge, the syllabi reinforce the larger male-dominant view of knowledge as one that students acquire and use make [sic] the correct decision.

These SJWs would be useless on a chain gang. They are literally worse than useless for any intellectual work. This is why the Alt-Right is not only right, it is absolutely necessary for preserving the West. Conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians alike have no answer for these people.

FFS, how in the names of Earth and Gor do you think you’re ever going to reason with these people?

Scientistry vs scientody

The profession is structurally incentivized to fold, spindle, and neutralize the scientific method:

There’s no shortage of warnings from the scientific community that science as we know it is being drastically affected by the commercial and institutional pressure to publish papers in high-profile journals – and now a new simulation shows that deteroriation actually happening.

To draw attention to the way good scientists are pressured into publishing bad science (read: sensational and surprising results), researchers in the US developed a computer model to simulate what happens when scientists compete for academic prestige and jobs.

In the model, devised by researchers at the University of California, Merced, all the simulated lab groups they put in these scenarios were honest – they didn’t intentionally cheat or fudge results.

But they received greater rewards if they published ‘novel’ findings – as happens in the real world. They also had to expend greater effort to be rigorous in their methods – which would improve the quality of their research, but lower their academic output.

“The result: Over time, effort decreased to its minimum value, and the rate of false discoveries skyrocketed,” lead researcher Paul Smaldino explains in The Conversation.

And what’s more, the model suggests that the ‘bad’ (if you will) scientists who take shortcuts in relation to the incentives on offer will end up passing on their methods to the next generation of scientists who work in their lab, creating in effect an evolutionary conundrum that the study authors call “the natural selection of bad science”.

“As long as the incentives are in place that reward publishing novel, surprising results, often and in high-visibility journals above other, more nuanced aspects of science, shoddy practices that maximise one’s ability to do so will run rampant,” Smaldino told Hannah Devlin at The Guardian.

This isn’t even remotely a surprise. Scientists are people and people respond to economic incentives. To claim that scientists are “trained”, so they won’t be tempted to put a thumb on the scale is absurd; accountants are trained to do math correctly too and that doesn’t seem to stop a few of them from somehow failing to make the numbers add up right from time to time.

And keep in mind this doesn’t even account for the known quantity of dishonest scientists. The model was created to determine the extent of the effects the perverse incentives are expected to have on honest scientists.

I know some people think it is bizarre that I distinguish between science and science, and even give the three different aspects three funny names, but how do you expect to fix a conflict of this sort if you can’t even distinguish between the two parties, let alone determine how one influences the other? Clarity in articulation is the first step in clear thinking.

Best of Gab

Stickwick gets my vote today for this response to a Nature request:

“Are you a working scientist who plans to vote for Donald Trump? We want to talk to you.”

About what, fast-tracking the fiery death of your career? If Nature is surprised by a lack of response, they should read Scott Adams.

Putting it on the line

Thanks to you all, we already hit our goal and I am running the Color Run in a tutu. With only 36 hours to go, Spacebunny has decided to throw down in case the original goal is doubled.

If we get to $10k by Saturday night I’ll run in a bikini and tutu….. it’s for a great cause.

There is more information about the event on her page, but to summarize, she is raising funds for a prospective cure for Crohn’s Disease that is in the testing stage.  And yes, I will post the pictures here.

Observation is not conspiracy

There is room for a lot of discussion and debate concerning what actually happened 15 years ago in New York City. But there is no room to argue that the collapse of WTC7 was anything but a controlled demolition, despite Sillon Bono’s attempt to argue otherwise.

I discussed the way the towers collapsed with other people at the time who also had considerable “understanding in structural mechanics” and everybody agreed that at least the twin towers didn’t look “uncharacteristic”.

I haven’t heard any video or collection of witness say anything about hearing explosives going off when the WTC7 went down.

You can believe what you want, I’m not telling you to do otherwise, show me links where the explosions can be heard.

As I said, from the angles where it was filmed the WTC7 building collapse “looks” like an intentional controlled demolition.

“Looks” it is not the same as “it was”.

We all have a hunch that the entire 9/11 is nowhere near clear, but to make assertions like a building was purposely demolished using explosives in just a few hours of preparation is a bit too much.

Controlled demolition of a building that size requires a hell of lot of preparation, and (((very loud explosives))).

First, the National Institute of Standards and Technology already implicitly admitted that WTC7 was demolisehed in their report which describes how the building collapse featured 2.25 seconds of freefall with no internal structural resistance.

Free fall acceleration for approximately 8 stories or 32.0m (105 ft). Free fall acceleration means that there was no resistance encountered while the top of the building when through the space where 8 floors of reinforced concrete stood just seconds before. We are talking about a building with had 58 perimeter columns and 25 core columns. And yet, 8 floors of that somehow disappeared almost instantly. If you read the full report, you will see that NIST does admit this, but never recognizes the implications of this fact. In fact, under a separate section entitled “HYPOTHETICAL BLAST SCENARIOS” NIST specifically excludes any controlled demolition based on the completely wrong assumptions that no blasts were heard (they were, of course). 

Second, there were plenty of explosions reported. You can even hear them yourself on the various videos from the day. You can hear the firemen talk about them. If you haven’t heard them, or heard the testimony of eyewitnesses talking about them., you obviously haven’t even gone to the trouble of a single Google search for them.

There. there is no doubt about what happened to WTC-7 whatsoever. It was intentionally demolished with preset explosives.

CRAIG BARTMER NYPD: “I walked around it (Building 7). I saw a hole. I didn’t see a hole bad enough to knock a building down, though. Yeah there was definitely fire in the building, but I didn’t hear any… I didn’t hear any creaking, or… I didn’t hear any indication that it was going to come down. And all of a sudden the radios exploded and everyone started screaming ‘get away, get away, get away from it!’… It was at that moment… I looked up, and it was nothing I would ever imagine seeing in my life. The thing started pealing in on itself… Somebody grabbed my shoulder and I started running, and the shit’s hitting the ground behind me, and the whole time you’re hearing “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.” I think I know an explosion when I hear it…”

In addition to hearing the sound of the explosions, you can also hear firefighters and police telling each other to move back because the building is going to be blown. This was live on CNN. It’s one thing to be skeptical, it is another to deny a) eyewitnesses, b) video evidence, c) physics, and d) logic.

Keep them off the coal

The old challenge for parents used to be keeping their girls off the stripper pole. Now the more pressing challenge is to keep them from burning coal, before they end up as STD-infested single mothers with no paternal support in the best case scenario, or, in the worst case scenario, eaten by alligators.

Drexel was last captured on video on April 25, 2009, leaving the Blue Water Hotel in Myrtle Beach, where she was staying against her parents’ permission. A different inmate serving time at Georgetown County Jail told officials he was informed Da’Shaun Taylor picked Drexel up in Myrtle Beach and transported her to McClellanville.

Munoz said the FBI believes Taylor “showed her off, introduced her to some other friend that were there…they ended up tricking her out with some of their friends, offering her to them and getting a human trafficking situation.”

As the media spotlight grew ever brighter on the desperate efforts to find Drexel, the girl was “murdered and disposed of,” Munoz said.

Given the recent study that reported only two percent of black fathers of mixed race children with white mothers support their children, it would be interesting and informative to work out whether a coal-burning woman’s odds are higher with regards to a) getting married, having children, and being supported by her black husband or b) getting raped and murdered.

They’re both obviously very low. It would be unfair to fail to recognize that the vast majority of black men are simply not going to support a white woman under any circumstances. Or rape and murder one, for that matter. I’m just interested in learning which scenario represents the lower probability.

I should probably note that the aforementioned study was published by an African-American scientist. Please don’t question it, as that would be terribly raciss and I would hate to be forced to disavow any of the commenters here.

On the plus side, the short-lived romance of Da’Shaun and Brittanee does provide a useful answer to parents whose daughters demand to know “what is the worst that could happen?”

Gang-raped, tricked out, shot in the head, and fed to alligators, my dear.

Biology is a social construct

Pity these poor genetic scientists. Someone needs to inform them that race and ethnicity do not exist, and that gender is a social construct. Obviously there is no way that this so-called test can possibly work; they might as well claim to test for unicorn and leprechaun hair.

The crime-busting tools of science fiction are becoming a reality. A new forensic test can detect the ethnicity and gender of someone using nothing but a single hair, and in less than two minutes no less, according to a new study.

The study, published in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, details how a new tool designed by scientists has shown a 100 percent success rate in identifying gender and ethnicity using a strand of hair.

This test reportedly trumps DNA testing currently used by law enforcement – which traditionally relies on blood to determine factors like gender and ethnicity. According to a Queen’s University press release, the new test and tool also works in a fraction of the time of standard blood testing, getting highly accurate results in about 85 seconds.

According to the study, the test takes an unusual approach to DNA testing, in which a single hair is ground up and then burnt. The foul smelling vapor consequently produced is then analyzed to produce a DNA analysis that reportedly has had a 100 percent success rate.

“Our analysis process is very robust and can be used universally,” co-author Lily Huang said in a recent statement. According to Huang, the incredibly fast test can distinguish between East Asians, Caucasians and South Asians, to name a few ethnicities, and is even accurate when analyzing hair that has been dyed.

Advances in genetic science terrifies the Left and the equalitarian “Right” alike. This response was particularly amusing:

Jon Matthews ‏@mrmatthewsjbhs
it was a graduate student’s experiment that tested 13 hairs.  Groundbreaking! #altreich or #altright? 

Equalitarians make Flat Earthers and haruspices look scientifically advanced by comparison.

A tutu per tutti

Seriously, what is wrong with you people? I mean, sure, I’ve got the legs for it, but there is clearly something wrong with anyone who is willing to pay to see me in a tutu.


And now it is going to happen. It’s all your fault!


Also, thank you. I wrote this a few days ago, but I suppose this is the right time to post it. Note that it was made possible, in part, by the same research team whose work you are supporting through the Color Run.

So, Ender played his first game with his new team. He had no idea where he would be playing, or even if he would be playing at all, since they have four goalies to divide among the two teams. The situation is in flux, as the presumed first team starter was dreadful in the first friendly, and lost his position to the first team number two. There was even speculation that he’d be sent down to the second team, which might well end up in Ender replacing him as the second team starter.

But when they suited up, the coach went with only one goalie, the club number three, who is surprisingly mobile despite being huge. I mean, we’re talking 6’2″, 280 at a minimum. Ender was dressed for the field, and assumed that he’d probably go in as either a defender or a wing, as those are the two field positions he’s played before.

Now, keep in mind that I was his coach for the first four years of his soccer career and I’ve seen nearly every game he’s ever played. He’s a mediocre goalie and a slightly above average defender, which is why his insistence on playing goalie has always been a mystery to me. Decent size, good discipline, good awareness, below-average ball control, average speed, good toughness. Not a star player, not necessarily even a starter, but a solid and reliable player you can trust to come off the bench and hold his own without hurting the team. He’s scored precisely one goal in his entire career, putting a pass from a corner kick into the upper right corner from just outside the left corner of the box.

He’s also the youngest player on the men’s team by at least a year. I still don’t understand why he’s not eligible for a junior team, but the ways of the national sports bureaucracy are byzantine and impenetrable. He also hasn’t played on the field for more than two years; even in the practices in which he was able to take part for a while, he was playing in the nets.

The game started off reasonably well, but it soon became clear that the team has a fundamental problem. They have a fair number of skill players, and two with serious cannons attached to their legs, but they have no natural scorers. Despite generally controlling the game and creating multiple scoring chances, they were down 2-0 as their designated striker put the ball over the net, to the right of the net, and to the left of the net on three successive one-on-ones with the goalie. Forget the net, he couldn’t even hit the keeper! He’s a good player with good speed, but he simply cannot handle the pressure that being in scoring position places upon the player.

It was a friendly, so the substitutions were not limited. Ender was the third man in, and to my surprise, the coach put him in at striker. He didn’t do much at first, and clearly didn’t know what to do or where to go, except when his team was attacking. But when the midfield was in possession and brought the ball over the center line, his positioning was reliably excellent, which paid off after about 10 minutes when the other striker beat the left defender and fired over a knee-high cross that Ender redirected effortlessly into the net. 1-2. The team was totally fired up, redoubled their attack, and about five minutes later, Ender took a pass on the left side and returned the favor, sending a nice low cross to the other striker which he promptly put in the back of the net. 2-2. Fifteen minutes of playing striker and he’d already racked up one goal and one assist… talk about a flying start!

I was standing next to the coach, who nodded approvingly and mentioned how well Ender was playing. His expression, when I told him that it was the first time Ender had played up front, was downright comical. I’m not entirely sure that he believed me.

Unfortunately, the other team was very good and had two third-league players who promptly responded by carving up our defense to make it 3-2 at halftime. In the second half, Ender had a good chance that caught him wrong-footed, as well as a perfect cross that the striker somehow managed to whiff on in front of an empty net, after which he moved back to the wing, and then defense when one of the defenders got hurt. He played nearly the second half and was competent in all three positions. They lost 5-3, but everyone felt pretty positive about how the team had hung in there against what was observably a better team.

And despite the loss, I have to say that it was about as close to a perfect evening as one can hope to see in this world.

The Tutu Threat

No, that’s not a forthcoming book from Simon Hawke, it is what Spacebunny has promised she will make me do if we are able to hit her $5k for 5k target for research for the Crohn’s MAP vaccine as part of the Color Run in which we are participating next month.

Personally, I thought it was bad enough to have to be dragged out of bed at some obscenely early hour and then forced to embark upon some hellish modern Trail of Tears while people yell at you, and apparently, dye you like an Easter Egg somehow; apparently they were inspired by Cersei’s walk of shame from A Game of Thrones or something.

I tried to point out that running a 5k is something I have done precisely once in my life, and that perhaps a 100-meter sprint for charity might be more in order, but I was outvoted as my treacherous spawn sided with her. Then Spacebunny promised that if the $5k for 5k was raised, both of us would not only run the race, but do so in tutus as well. And that she would post the pictures on Twitter. And that I would post them here.

So, if you are either a) interested in supporting scientific research that may bring an end to the ongoing torture that is Crohn’s Disease or b) looking to have a pretty good laugh at my expense, you can do so by supporting Spacebunny’s Color Run Page at Justgiving. I have spoken with several members of the research team, it is a lean and efficient organization, and the funds will not be wasted.

Prof. Hermon-Taylor, together with Dr. Tim Bull and other members of the team at St George’s University of London and scientists at the Jenner Institute University of Oxford, developed a modern DNA vaccine against MAP, which is the bacteria suspected of being the primary catalyst for Crohn’s Disease. Developing this vaccine took 10 years and cost around £850,000, much of it donated by the families of Crohn’s patients, without whom this new vaccine would not exist.

The Crohn’s MAP Vaccine is a modern, therapeutic vaccine against MAP. Preliminary studies in animals have shown it is safe and effective. Now a trial in humans is needed to take the vaccine from lab to clinic. If effective, the vaccine will not only protect people from developing Crohn’s Disease, but will also serve as an effective cure for those already suffering from it.

The money will go to helping pay for the human trial of the vaccine which has already been developed.