I spot checked those scientists, at least two were pretty clearly in the all-day Anti-SJW culture-war on twitter lifestyles. One was promoting Vox Day, the dude who doesn’t think women should have the right to vote (because they vote for authoritarians…).
Not exactly a random sample of experts. The second one seemed totally normal FWIW, and perhaps coincidentally his claims were far less reaching and more consdiered.
I read it, nothing novel. It’s the same sort of crap that always comes up when this sort of thing is debated.
Here’s the bottom line. In regards to this, the science doesn’t matter. Scientifically matching individuals to ideal careers isn’t the issue here. The issue is fighting discrimination and stereotyping and bias. Those are real problems, and to fight them we have to teach people to never assume based on race/sex/whatever that someone might be inferior at something. Even if the science says that the probabilities are that they might be.
You go girl.
I work in the operating theatre of one of the largest teaching Hospital’s in Ireland.
General surgeons have almost no patient contact. Specialist surgeons (e.g. scoliosis or cardiothoracic) might have more simply because they will be performing repeated surgery on the same patient, but in general a surgeon or his reg will briefly meet the patient before the operation and briefly again in his/her general rounds after. In my experience, they don’t engage in any meaningful way with the patient either.
The gender balance of consultants is roughly 60/40 but is 16:2 in general/neuro/(1)opthalmic/cardiac/(1)plastic surgery. There are more female NCHDs than male in the latest changeover, but the surgical NCHD gender ratios are still just as bad with there not being even a single female general surgical NCHD.
By all means though, do tell people who have actually worked in Hospitals that some dude on the internet knows better.
I don’t think you know magnet’s background…or mine.
I don’t really care, he’s using whatever personal experience he has (even if that’s just ideological fantasies) to state that someone who has worked in a Hospital is emphatically wrong, and that because his experience differs from others that they too must be wrong.
Did you notice in my post that I talked specifically about the hospital I work in, and I wasn’t moronic enough to assume that that experience applies to every Hospital in the world? That should be fairly basic, but it eludes magnet in his rush to decry that his is the one and only Gospel.
Magnet is not coming from a position of ideological fantasies, and you’re being incredibly rude.
It’s not rude to say
Whoever wrote this article doesn’t understand medicine.
Wow. Then he’s really not being honest. Any physician should know that surgeons talk to patients all the time, and need the personal skills to handle very difficult conversations.
?
I assumed he didn’t actually work in Medicine because his posts show a terrifying lack of understanding that “my subjective experience of what is true is not the objective truth”.
That he works in medicine and has that opinion is quite disturbing. There is a difference between saying “I disagree, in my experience …” and “You are wrong because of my experience. Furthermore, you are being dishonest because your stated experience doesn’t match mine and thus can’t be true”.
Well, it’s true that I have no personal experience of how surgeons work in Ireland.
But in the United States, surgeons have a tremendous amount of patient contact. They will meet the patient one or more times before the operation, and will generally follow with all their patients in clinic after they operate. It is not unusual to follow postsurgical patients in clinic for years. It is not unusual for a surgeon to regularly see a patient who has not been operated upon and is not currently planning surgery, merely in order to keep the possibility open for the future. For example, a patient with glioblastoma. Or subdural hematoma. Or normal-pressure hydrocephalus.
In the United States, surgeons treat “surgical problems”. Treatment often, but not always, includes surgery. But regardless of whether they operate, they have a long-term responsibility to follow the patient until the problem is resolved. Patients with NPH, subdural hematomas, and glioblastomas may not want surgery (yet). They may never get surgery. But they are still under the care of a neurosurgeon. No neurologist will take over their treatment.
This is not a subjective opinion, it is objectively how surgeons work in the US. If you fear I am a biased observer, feel free to confirm for yourself by calling any American surgeon and asking him or her when patients are seen in clinic.
My point stands: the writer of that article doesn’t know what he is talking about or he is intentionally misleading his readers. Or perhaps he lives in Ireland, where apparently surgical practice is completely different.
Andrew, my cardiologist, and John, my gastroenterologist have plenty of personal contact with me. You are forgetting they have consultancies, especially when most do private work via Bupa/Irish equivalent etc
“science doesn’t matter”. Yes, clearly.
Even if that were true in regards to this (I am ambivalent), my issue here is firing a person for writing up an article that has no rudeness or insults inside it, its crime being that it presents different perspective, eventhough that perspective is, at its core, “treat people as individuals”.
It just reminds me of what my parents told me about the communist days, “you either toed the idological line or you didn’t get to study/get a good job”. But I suppose this is normal in US ?(or maybe it always has been) in which case carry on.
Here is an interview with the guy:
I think even the folks who believe in that, also believe that you should measure on the individual. They just think that when you do this, you are going to get a skewed demographic.
What they have issue with is unskewing a demographic that they feel is supposed to be skewed.
It’s hard to argue with the author on his main point – in science and technology conservatism is a minority ideology.
Conservatives don’t make it into those type of institutions in the same quantity as liberals. Sure, we see some conservatives, as much as 20%. But on average conservatives have less interest in those fields. I’m not saying they don’t have the aptitude if they wanted to work in these fields. But the strengths of the conservative mind aren’t a good fit for the types of work done in science and technology.
I want to be crystal clear here. I am in no possible way saying all conservatives don’t like science and technology, or all conservatives have psychological characteristics that make them less likely to advance in science and technology. Conservatives in these fields here do great work. I am speaking only of differences in the distributions. I would never judge any individual based on statistics!
Does the average conservative have a place in science and technology? Absolutely! Here at Google we have started to use waterfall-strongman programming methodologies as we know the conservative mind is attracted to authoritarian structures. This will allow for some more conservatives to leverage their strengths. But in the long term, we can’t fight the statistics and can’t turn every science and technology job into the type of work conservatives are best suited for.
So, the growth of a censorship and offence taking culture, and the increasing demonisation of free speech now leads to…
That’s now two virulently homophobic organisations who are now claiming offence about a Pride march. No doubt emboldened and empowered by the Left setting precedent when various sub groups banned drag queens and the Star of David from their own events.
At the end of the day the infrastructure and legislation/policies created can be used by anyone.
Clearly, surgeons do talk to patients and, I think radiologist also talk to patients also. Talking/listening is predominately what psychiatrist do but it is a very low percentage of what Anaesthesiology do on daily basis. The Slate Star author should have been more careful when he said that surgeons don’t talk to patients. However, I’d be will to bet that you if mapped the percentage of time a given specialist spends talking to patients/parents vs doing other stuff, that female dominated specialist would be higher in the talking domain.
I don’t think his error really weakens his case that much.
Overall, I find it really sad how badly this Google Memo was distorted. Part of which is I think people seem to be unwilling to even spend the time to read points of view that they are told by others they won’t like. I saw at least a dozen example on Facebook of people who weighed in on the memo without have read it.
I’ve met with my retinal surgeon about 7 or 8 times, I would say.
Subtle, and bravo.
If you replace the references to gender in the manifesto with references to race, you may see it as a bit darker.
Sure, and I mean, if I replaced pizza toppings with races when I said I fucking hate mushrooms, that would get pretty dark too.
Race isn’t gender and gender isn’t race. There’s plenty of grounds to disagree/support/hate/be confused by what this guy’s saying about gender. But he’s not saying it about race, and to just wonder “…but what if he was” doesn’t strike me as particularly fruitful.
Gender is not the same thing as race. False analogies 101.
Besides, I haven’t studied the science and psychology behind any of this. I do not know if the stuff in the memo is right or not and make no claim on that. Just that him getting fired for it is something I find shitty. Particularly when it only happened after someone leaked it. He says he published it a month ago.