[geofft]

> In my opinion the most important thing here is to ensure as much equality of opportunity as reasonably possible. And this is an effort that should never relent.

Cool, so you agree that a scientist who attacks his colleagues imperils equality of opportunity, then?

[rjf72]

Well intentioned ideologies do not inherently produce a non-negative outcome. Negative outcomes are very much a possibility, particularly when views are flawed. And so at some point any ideology that is not extremely well supported by data should be challenged, even if that ideology is the nicest most well intentioned one in the world. Google's recent pay study is one little microcosm that demonstrates this. Under fire for the widely perceived belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males, Google engaged in substantial data crunching and analysis to correct any inequities. It turns out they were underpaying their male employees.

Why might this be? We already answered this. There is a widely held belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males. This may be true in some instances, but it's certainly nothing like a universal truth. But you can see even on these forums that many Google employees do treat it as something approaching a universal truth, many even refusing to belief it was false following Google's analyses. And so when a manager has discretionary funds to distribute, whom is he going to prefer? People, generally, want to do the right thing. And so in the pursuit of equality, you end up creating inequality. These sort of paradoxical outcomes are not uncommon.

Declaring that a view is not well supported by evidence, even when that view is nice, is not 'attacking'.

[geofft]

I don't think you responded to anything I said. From the article: "He also showed cartoons deriding women campaigning for equality in science"

Doesn't that impair equality of opportunity?

[rjf72]

I was stating that stating 'good things' are wrong, when there is reason to believe they are, is not then "attacking" those things. As for the cartoon, when the media references something without showing it it's often wise to check it out for yourself. You'll find their description is often horribly biased. Here [1] are his slides, in full.

The cartoon "deriding women campaigning for equality in science" is 5th from the bottom. It shows women at a 'major/career fair' choosing to join gender studies instead of STEM fields. It then shows those same individuals later complaining about a lack of women in STEM. I would not consider this in any way whatsoever impairing equality of opportunity. Far from it, it demonstrates an extremely important point about utilizing the opportunities that you have.

The only other cartoon he had was of one woman telling another who was bringing in a volcano to a science fair that "science is male dominated! they'll never accept you, you'll be harassed!" The slide then asks whether the purpose of this rhetoric is to get more women into STEM or to try to indoctrinate individuals into an ideology.

[1] - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...

[geofft]

BTW, this is factually incorrect:

> Under fire for the widely perceived belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males, Google engaged in substantial data crunching and analysis to correct any inequities. It turns out they were underpaying their male employees.

I encourage you to reread the Google post.