How Diversity Helps us Get the Right Answers

[Applause]

thank you it’s a pleasure to be here

with you today i’m here today to talk

about diversity in science

and why diversity makes science not just

fairer

but better this past year we’ve all been

grappling with issues

of the challenge of diversity equity and

inclusion

and in science in particular we faced

profound challenges

now before talking about the difficulty

i think it is worth looking back

to acknowledge that in many professions

and institutions

we’ve made enormous progress the

advancement of women in professional

fields provides some historical examples

and context

if we look at medicine in the 19th

century in the united states

there were actually separate medical

colleges for women

so america practiced a kind of apartheid

a separate and unequal

medical education for women and this was

justified

allegedly scientifically on the basis

that women were simply unable to

withstand the physical rigors

of a tough medical education

if we look at law we see a similar

pattern

law schools didn’t have separate law

schools for women

they just generally excluded them for

most of the 19th and early 20th century

women were excluded from

most top law schools or if they were

included

they were marginalized everyone is

familiar with the career of

ruth bader ginsburg who made it all the

way to the u.s supreme court

this photograph shows ruth bader

ginsburg with her harvard law review

group

in 1957-58 ginsburg was one of only two

women in that group and you can see in

this photograph

that they are literally marginalized the

women are physically put

at the margins of the photograph

now that was in the 1950s today things

are much better

women now make up more than 50 percent

of the students in top law schools

across the country

and the same is true in medical schools

as well

if we look at politics we also see a

pattern of really tremendous

progress in the 19th century there were

no women

in the u.s congress and in the 20th

century the first woman elected to

congress was representative jeanette

rankin

who for most of her career was the only

woman to serve in the house of

representatives

the situation in the senate was not much

better for most of the

early 20th century there was only one or

two women in the senate

and typically they were appointed upon

the death of either their husband or

their father

hattie carraway was the first woman

appointed in such a way to actually run

in her own in her own regard and when

she

did run after having been initially

elected

people criticized her tremendously the

expectation was that she was supposed to

simply step down

and so she said the time has passed when

a woman should be placed in a position

and kept there only while someone else

is being groomed for the job

jeanette rankin looking back on her

career said if i had my life to do over

i would do it all again but this time i

would be nastier

if we look at the big picture of

congress we see a huge change starting

around the 1990s

where suddenly there’s an enormous

increase in the representation of women

and we can see this in these photographs

here the upper photographs is

lyndon baines johnson with the 90th

congress you can see it’s all men

almost entirely in black and gray suits

but when we get to the 116th congress

now we have many women bringing not just

their talents and diversity

but much more colorful and fun clothing

as well

now today few people would openly argue

against diversity

in political representation but there’s

still a lot of resistance to

purposefully expanding diversity in

science

the two main arguments that are

generally used to support diversity and

inclusion in the scientific workplace

are fairness and talent people

acknowledge that it’s simply not fair to

exclude talented people from opportunity

and it’s grossly unfair to subject them

to harassment

discrimination or a hostile workplace

if we exclude people on the basis of

race gender or other demographic

criteria we also lose talent and so

science suffers

and in my experience those two arguments

are generally broadly accepted

but these arguments sit in tension with

something else going on

many people in science do argue against

purposeful diversity

because of what they call their

commitment to excellence

most scientists believe that science is

a meritocracy

that the best man wins but unfortunately

this is generally literally true

the best man wins but that might not be

the best person

they see the goal of inclusion and

diversity therefore intention

or at odds with the goal of excellence

they perceive a tension between attempts

to make science more inclusive

and the necessity of maintaining the

highest intellectual standards

and for many people in science the

latter trumps

the former this is reflected in reports

like this one

pursuing excellence on a foundation of

an inclusion that was issued by my own

university harvard

which is clearly trying to reassure the

harvard community

that we can pursue inclusion without

sacrificing excellence

in other words acknowledging this idea

that there’s a tension

between the two but i want to argue

today that this framing has the problem

backwards

that it’s not just that we can pursue

diversity

without sacrificing excellence it’s that

we cannot have scientific excellence

without diversity so how do i support

that claim

well first let’s talk about the goal of

science

what is the goal of science the answer

to find out truths about the natural

world

how do scientists do that well not the

scientific method

as i’ve argued in my books and in my

previous ted talk

there is no one scientific method

but what all scientists have in common

is that they collect evidence

in the field in the laboratory in

clinical trials

through animal studies by building

models

and then this evidence is vetted

all scientific disciplines have

processes for vetting claims

in workshops conferences informal

colleague review

formal peer review the continued

evaluation of work in practice

and sometimes where necessary retraction

scientific claims are subject to tough

critical scrutiny

you have to be thick-skinned to be a

scientist the process is not always fun

but it is essential for two reasons the

process of critical vetting

weeds out faulty or unsupported claims

and through discussion and criticism

claims are modified and knowledge

emerges

knowledge is established the philosopher

of science helen longnell calls this

transformative interrogation

interrogation because it’s tough but

transformative

because what survives is typically not

the same as what was at the starting

point

scientists adjust their claims in light

of critical scrutiny

sometimes they go back and collect more

or different data

sometimes they conclude that the

original idea was no good

and they have to start all over again

what we call

scientific facts are claims that have

withstood this scrutiny

so how does that bring us to diversity

well to understand why diversity is

crucial for the success of this

scientific process

we have to say something about

objectivity

now many people think that science works

because scientists are objective

and certainly it’s true that all good

scientists try as much as possible to be

objective

we can say that objectivity is what

philosophers call

a regulative ideal something that we

aspire to

now most people think of objectivity as

a characteristic that inheres in the

individual

so we might say things like i am

objective

she is not objective or a good scientist

is objective typical definitions of

objectivity

insist that it’s based on observation

but not influenced by emotions or

prejudices

so for example one popular definition

judgment based on observable phenomena

and uninfluenced by emotions or personal

prejudices

objectivity is associated with empirical

observation

as opposed to feelings emotions or other

thought processes

but various scholars say not so fast

because the opposite of objectivity

isn’t bias

it’s subjectivity and we are all

subjective

because all perception is subjective

so we could make the distinction and

many people do between objective facts

and subjective opinions

so this slide gives two examples here’s

an objective fact

the force awakens is the highest

grossing star wars movie

here’s a subjective opinion the empire

strikes back

is the best star wars movie or consider

this one

these are oranges i love oranges

the problem is that the standard

distinction between an object of fact

and a subjective opinion breaks down

when we

look closely at the problem of

perception so consider this slide

three people all look at the exact same

object they all

see it with their eyes in the same way

nobody’s color blind

and yet their perceptions of this object

are very different and all three of

these perceptions

including that you could make money by

cutting down the tree and selling it

they’re all right but they’re different

different people can look at the same

thing

and have different perceptions of it

here’s another perhaps clear example

let’s go back to those oranges are we

really sure they’re oranges

how do we know they’re not tangerines or

clementines

or plastic fruit or how about this one

is it a six or is it a nine

what all this adds up to is that people

necessarily see things in different ways

it doesn’t mean they’re bad or good or

that one person is objective and the

other is biased

it just means that we’re human beings

so let’s take the famous example of the

six blindfolded people and the elephant

in this classic metaphor we we

understand the metaphor to tell us that

if we relied on only one report

we’d get a very wrong impression of what

this thing is

at best we would have a true but partial

account

but now imagine that the blindfolds are

taken off

and even if the people were not

blindfolded if they were

all looking from the same angle what we

would obtain would be a partial

perspective so we might see the front of

the elephant

but not the back we wouldn’t know how

long the creature was we wouldn’t know

whether or not it had a tail

and this then explains why it’s crucial

why diversity is crucial to see the

whole picture

of the natural world to find out the

truth

about the natural world because

scientists are humans

who invariably and inevitably bring

their own values

preferences bias and prior experiences

into their work

so the best available way to correct for

that is by having diverse scientists

who can assure them that problems are

examined from a range of different and

appropriate perspectives

we all have different experiences but in

science the goal is not to end up with

your truth

and my truth but to end up with truth

and so a diverse community isn’t just

politically correct

it’s more likely to generate scientific

claims that are actually correct

and isn’t that what we want

[Applause]

you