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