A Letter to Discover Magazine
Discover:
I was very disappointed to see that you convened a panel on women in science and engineering and included no experts on the issue from the appropriate fields ("Bridging the Gap", Discover, Jan/Feb 2011). Where was the representation from psychology, anthropology, or sociology? There is excellent science being done to study this issue in these fields. You should have had the scientists doing this work on your panel. It's fine for your magazine to prefer the natural sciences, but if you're going to cover psychological and social issues, you should include people from the social sciences. Just because someone is a woman and a scientist does not make her an expert on women in science any more than a weightlifter is an expert on muscle function.
--
JimDavies
Institute of Cognitive Science
Carleton University
http://www.jimdavies.org/
I was very disappointed to see that you convened a panel on women in science and engineering and included no experts on the issue from the appropriate fields ("Bridging the Gap", Discover, Jan/Feb 2011). Where was the representation from psychology, anthropology, or sociology? There is excellent science being done to study this issue in these fields. You should have had the scientists doing this work on your panel. It's fine for your magazine to prefer the natural sciences, but if you're going to cover psychological and social issues, you should include people from the social sciences. Just because someone is a woman and a scientist does not make her an expert on women in science any more than a weightlifter is an expert on muscle function.
--
JimDavies
Institute of Cognitive Science
Carleton University
http://www.jimdavies.org/
Comments