Letter: Women in science
When I came across the expressions ‘this antipathy among women for science’
and later ‘persuading women to take science seriously’ in your editorial
of 10 February, I had the sickening feeling that you have still got the
whole thing back-to-front. The ‘antipathy of science for women’ is what
is currently built into the power structure of science and is constantly
experienced by women scientists as a discouraging aspect of our working
lives.
Some examples from my own institute over the past 20 years: the consistent
failure to appoint women to permanent research leader posts either after
their PhD studies here or as open candidates; continuing redundancies among
women in middle-level jobs, and their replacement by younger and cheaper
workers on short-term contracts; total absence of women heads of departments
or sections; devaluation of assistants’ jobs (mainly done by women) by management,
since assistant scientific officers are no longer entitled to be considered
for promotion unless their post itself is regraded.
In other respects, such as the provision of child-care for working mothers
in science, women seem to get a better deal in many other countries: in
the US (better salaries which enable them to afford it); in Latin countries
(extended-family support); in the developing world (cheap domestic help);
and in Nordic countries (job flexibility, so that a group of parents, including
fathers, each working a four-day week, can look after their collection of
children in rotation).
In the circumstances, would it be sensible to recommend a career in
British science to a daughter or granddaughter? Personally, I would not
do so until the last of the National Service-influenced 1950s generation
of men, now so prevalent on promotion and selection boards, leave the scene
and take their misogynist attitudes with them (‘I didn’t have several years
off in mid-career to raise a family, so you can’t possibly be considered
a serious scientist if you did,’ is the hidden message we get from these
guys).
As a rather brutal retraining measure, perhaps the Equal Opportunities
Commission should have automatic access to tape recordings of all job interviews
in science and the discussions which follow? Or should members of interviewing
panels be formally screened for sexist bias? These suggestions will probably
sound exaggerated to any male scientist with sufficient lack of imagination.
Some signs are optimistic: young women disillusioned with their contract
jobs here have rapidly obtained better employment in industry, for example.
In the 1990s women have the opportunity to demand fair and equal treatment
and a genuine integration into the structure of the scientific establishment.
This must come if women are to be convinced that science is at last taking
us seriously.
Lesley Currah AFRC Institute of Horticultural Research Wellesbourne,
Warwickshire
Letter: Sense of direction
Feedback’s item of 20 January about the use of Japanese satellite dishes
as navigation aids takes me back to the RAF in the mid-1950s. A radio failure
in our single-seaters in thick weather would deprive us of our main navigation
aid. We would then look out for H-type television aerials, which all pointed
at Alexandra Palace in North London.
A quick reference to the compass would give us a radial bearing from
Alexandra Palace on the map. It was then a simple matter to set a course
to intercept some prominent feature, usually a river, road or railway, and
map-read our way back to base.
Such activities in these days of airspace congestion and tight air-traffic
control would probably earn a jail sentence!
F. G. Grisley Barry, Glamorgan
Letter: Sharp criticism
In ‘Taking on the experts’ (Forum, 3 February), Ralph Estling showed
an amateur’s knowledge of history. St Paul was not crucified but wisely
accepted execution by the sword, his right as a Roman citizen. The gory
details are expertly recounted in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church.
J. L. Palmer Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset
Letter: Research goes west
The yearly exodus of 1000 British scientists to the US is distressing,
particularly for the forthcoming few years as the number of college leavers
decreases (‘Home thoughts from abroad’, by Kevin Davies, 10 February). As
a ‘new-blood’ lecturer in science in an orthopaedic department, I am despondent
to see senior research staff being weaned away to greener pastures – though
until now this has seemed to me to be a natural progression of staff, from
undifferentiated research student through research assistant to research
fellow; thence away to a proper job with tenure and a reasonable salary
to reward those years of training.
But it is these postdoctoral fellows whom we must cultivate as team
leaders and field managers. There seems no convenient system of permanent
appointment for such people. The situation may not be wholly irretrievable,
as my own post suggests, and the exodus of experienced workers may be halted
if a number of semi-tenured research appointments could be made, to relieve
senior staff of their annual contracts with grant-giving bodies.
This cycle of contract after contract leads to insecure appointments
and people are just not committed to the long-term future of the teams which
they lead. I welcome the support of British scientists working abroad, but
I don’t expect them back in the current climate.
George Kernohan The Queen’s University of Belfast
Letter: Sense of romance
Nicholas Russell’s article on the need for more romance in science education
(Forum, 27 January) provides what is probably the wrong answer to what is
certainly the wrong question. A romantic treatment may or may not induce
a child to like science, but the real question is, will that make it a scientist?
The National Curriculum in science offers the chance of introducing more
children earlier to experimental science. Whether it will do so in practice
depends on many additional factors such as time, staff, staff training and
facilities, over all of which hangs a question mark, principally concerning
finance. I believe that children make decisions about what they will do
with their adult lives much earlier than when they are about to leave school,
and that if we wish to produce more scientists we have to influence children
long before then.
I am a governor at a state school catering for eight- to 12-year-olds
and have recently been privileged to visit the school during a practical
science lesson. The children were carrying out experiments related to temperature,
the weather and heat. They all seemed to enjoy the experiments, and when
I asked them about their favourite subject, all the children I talked to
named science, or even science and maths. I then asked them what job they
intended to do, and the answers came back: nursing, hairdressing, secretary,
police . . . What a depressing litany; what a poverty of imagination! The
fact is that most children do not see science as a career. Until they do
so, there will always be a shortage of scientists and engineers. I do not
decry popular science programmes, which are often superb, but they are not
aimed at children of the right age if we wish to persuade them to become
scientists. Popularisers such as Patrick Moore or David Bellamy may, I suspect,
do more harm than good in this respect. A bit of eccentricity may well sell
a television programme, but not alas a career. Who wants to be a professional
eccentric? Children want to conform, and if the norm projected at them is
not acceptable, they won’t identify with it, even if they enjoy the programmes.
The universities also aim at the wrong target. Many universities encourage
school students to visit them, and provide lectures and so on. However,
the aim of these projects is generally to attract students already committed
to higher education and to prevent them attending some other rival institution.
Science can be exciting, creative and romantic in its own right. Surely
we can devise some way of presenting science and scientific activity to
young children which might persuade more of them that being a scientist
can be more rewarding than hairdressing, typing, or even finance?
G. J. Leigh University of Sussex
Letter: Abductions
Andrew Clifford’s review of Abductions by Edith Fiore (3 February) makes
light of a phenomenon that should perhaps be taken rather more seriously.
In New York last year I had the opportunity to interview three self-professed
‘UFO-abductees’. These were women who under hypnosis (conducted by Budd
Hopkins, the author of Intruders) had told tales of being taken into a space
ship and being the victim of cruel genetic experiments. In each case I found
prima facie evidence that the woman had in fact been repeatedly abused as
a young girl – not by an extra-terrestrial but by a stepfather or other
relative.
I would suggest that in many cases the ‘abductees’ are using a currently
available (and acceptable) myth as a cover for terrible memories of real
childhood events. Indeed the UFO scenario – with its faceless aliens who
callously treat the victim’s body as an experimental object – appears to
provide a peculiarly effective metaphor for sexual abuse.
I hold no brief for Edith Fiore. None the less, if through her own belief
in UFOs she is enabling abuse victims to give voice to previously repressed
fears, her work may be genuinely therapeutic. She would not be the first
who by encouraging a belief in nonsense has helped people to make sense
of their experience.
Nicholas Humphrey Ashwell, Hertfordshire
Letter: Use of jargon
I note with despair that someone is actually interested in promoting
inappropriate and obscure language (‘Expanding words, expanding minds’,
by Duncan Langford, Forum, 3 February). As an educationalist in an age of
initiatives, reports, statements, statutory and non-statutory guidance notes
and so on, I am constantly reminded that it is almost always inappropriate
to use ‘specialist’ or contrived words in place of plain English.
Some examples taken from documents or people talking about the science
curriculum: modularisation, unitisation, marginalisation, radicalisation,
hybridisation, additionalities, modularities, atomisation! Surely some of
these amount to plain misuse of words? And how about issues ‘haemorrhaging’,
or curricula having a ‘spinal core’? Teachers have to decide whether they
can cope with being ‘facilitators’, ‘deliverers’, ‘counsellors’, ‘classroom
managers’ and ‘reflectors’! Personally, I refuse to ‘flag up’ or ‘float’
ideas, discuss ‘up-front’ issues or indeed ‘run with’ issues. I’m not too
keen on ‘taking things on board’ (why can’t I just think about them?) and
I was recently asked if I had the ‘time resource’ for something (he meant
did I have the time). I prefer to ‘end’ sessions rather than ‘operate a
guillotine’ (too messy) and I don’t like to think of ‘knowledge shrinkage’
but rather ‘forgetting’.
‘Plenary cross-fertilisation’ (plenary – unlimited) when referring to
a conference activity sounds exhausting if not illegal. I tend to ‘not mind
one way or the other’ rather than be ‘agnostic about an issue’ and I deny
ever having indulged in a ‘buzz-support’ – it was ‘group work’! I’ve never
met ‘occupationally unfocused clients’ but I have met pupils who haven’t
decided what they want to do yet.
Two of the worst I have ever heard come from a director of education:
’tissue rejection in attempts to transplant resources’, while discussing
difficulties encountered when asking teachers to share materials they had
prepared themselves; and ‘a stimulus, organisms, event-type mechanism’,
while talking about local management of schools.
I do not think it is always appropriate to remove specialist terms or
phrases from their contexts, especially when it is done in an attempt to
impress or because you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Perhaps Langford is unaware of the abuse ‘specialist’ words receive
in the ‘nonspecialist’ world, but I would argue that they do not always
expand the language, but obscure it.
Barbara Tomlins Burnham, Buckinghamshire
Letter: Hong Kong's push
Readers who are unfamiliar with Hong Kong may be misled by the figures
for entry to tertiary education quoted by Michael Cross (‘Hong Kong’s steeplechase
handicap’, 13 January). These refer only to institutions in Hong Kong itself.
Directly comparable figures for Birmingham or Manchester might well be even
smaller. Very many Hong Kong school-leavers receive tertiary education elsewhere.
Official figures for the US in 1988 exceeded 10 000 while Canadian sources
report more than 4000. Many more complete their secondary education abroad.
Were these included in the calculation, Hong Kong might well fall into the
same range as Taiwan and Singapore.
Unless potential students can be persuaded – or forced – to remain in
Hong Kong the proposed tertiary expansion will be an embarrassing waste
of resources. Its most probable effect will be to strip from the teacher-training
colleges the few reasonably well qualified candidates they are now able
to attract. It might be supposed that those responsible for the planned
expansion would know this but experience does not rule out the contrary.
Only a short while ago the chief spokesman for government categorically
stated that there was no ‘brain-drain’ problem in Hong Kong. Now it is accepted
as of crisis proportions. The alternative is that ‘1995’ is code for ‘post-1997’
when permission to study abroad may be restricted.
G McClelland Department of Education University of Hong Kong