<p>There's a fascinating perspective in this week's Nature on discrimination in science. It focuses mainly on gender discrimination, but there is some mention of racial discrimination as well as discrimination due to sexual orientation.</p>
<p>It was written by Ben Barres, a neurobiologist at Stanford who was an undergraduate at MIT. He graduated in 1976 in course 7, although when he was at MIT he was a female named Barbara -- he went through gender-reassignment surgery nine years ago. He is, therefore, possibly the only person to have experienced elite science as both a man and as a woman. (Note: I totally interviewed with him at Stanford, and he's awesome. We talked about undergraduate life at MIT for the entire interview.)</p>
<p>I put the PDF in my Athena locker for those who don't have access to Nature: Barres</a> paper</p>
<p>Some great quotes:
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Despite powerful social factors that discourage women from studying maths and science from a very young age, there is little evidence that gender differences in maths abilities exist, are innate or are even relevant to the lack of advancement of women in science.
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By far, the main difference that I have noticed [since surgery] is that people who dont know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect: I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.
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Shortly after I changed sex, a faculty member was heard to say "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sisters."
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Studies reveal that in many selection processes, the bar is unconsciously raised so high for women and minority candidates that few emerge as winners. For instance, one study found that women applying for a research grant needed to be 2.5 times more productive than men in order to be considered equally competent.
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