Unconscious Bias in Science 

A quick note to say we've temporarily unlisted this video as this event is going to be broadcast on BBC radio next month. It'll be back up on our channel from May, after the broadcast. Thanks for watching!

Turtle Von Nurtle lol, then by that logic, whenever someone says fuck trump, or they say that they disagree with him, he should keep up his act of being just plain wrong.

mmm... sluuurpp.

"The thing is, if someone says blacks are more violent, because of statistics, he is right and we shouldn't dismiss it - may it be that he's a white supremacist or not - facts are facts." Indeed, it is factual. But let's not forget that more than a century ago scientists also proved with facts and experiments that black slaves were inintelligent- thus less humans than said scientists. I guess, to an extent, they were right, but they were also culturally constrained in their thinking (and i suppose were not really cognizant of that). "Moving on to your female point, "Women are not more emotional than men" this is absolutely false. If we look into their hormones, we will see that men are more aggressive, while women are more emotional. If this hurts your feelings, who cares? You can't reject facts simply because of emotions. Refute it - sure - but dismiss it because your emotions might get hurt is not a valid reason." Coevolution has a play in this. For example, the drosophila male, being competitive in sex (i.e. polygamous), literally poisons the female that has to develop anti-toxin in order to give birth to her offspring. Fine... but can this biological feature be altered ? Yes it can... Turns out that after 40 generations of forced monogamous breeding the male stopped producing his toxin, and the female stopped producing her antitoxin. (Source: R. Sapolsky, Monkeyluv: And Other Lessons in Our Lives as Animals) Another example of intrinsic biological gender difference is the Guugu Yimithirr tribe. They have a language that very frequently indicates geocentric position. Women in this tribe don't have the common brain spatial dissimilarity with men- as often reported by popular science or brain studies. (more on this : www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4466779/) More aggressive, sure, and I concur with the facts. But can we socially and culturally derail this ? Hell yes... And it will foster new different facts.

It's well thought out. Cross cultural realities aside, we live in a new and socially dynamic world.

It seems that to have a thought is to have a bias..? This argument with word clouds is useless because the word bias doesn't work in this context, it's like using math the describe the emotions of an apple. if a word cloud for a banana was done and yellow was a key word is that an indicator of bias or fact?

@Sandcastle, yes they are, the hormones that control the behaviour are different in Males and Females, actually, all the hormone levels are different between Males and Females and that has a big effect on how one reacts to situations or even thinks or feels in general

I can tell you haven't watched the video i'm referencing as you would know that it was someone covering sargons channel whilst he was away and thus it was not Sargon speaking also why are you so butt hurt over this video that you would spam reply to almost everyone

how can an opinion based on emotion and not facts be true. how narcissistic of you.

you must be rather stupid if you don't know the difference between your own opinion and an evidence based fact

The term Conspiracy theorist was created by the CIA in order for people like you to have a knee-jerk reaction towards conspiratorial content. What's wrong with questioning the media? Or the government? People mindlessly believe the media & politicians without thinking for themselves, which is irrational.

sandcastle, i think you misunderstand his argument i would go through it but it is rather complex and requires an in-depth knowledge of history and politics

Good for you, because I do experience what she describes. I once got the question "so, don't you think programming is hard? as a girl I mean?"

Sorry to hear that. Inside of the field would you say it's better or worse than in the general public? How often do you get this kind of question- I'm wondering how common it is.

So, I am a bioinformatician, which basically means I am a programmer specifically for biology (DNA/protein) related topics. Maybe these things are different for people in bioinformatics than people in regular IT, because our field is more focussed on research and biological meaning. I don't really get insulting comments from respectable coworkers who work in the same field, because they are intelligent enough to realize that it is completely normal for a female to do such work. The worst I get is a stupid sexist joke every now and then, practically always from guys in their 50's. But however unfunny and unnecessary they are, I know they are not honestly meant in a bad way. When it comes to the general public however, there are a lot of people who are not understanding at all. All sexist or surprised comments I have gotten were made by people who were not professionals themselves in bioinformatics/other sciences. I'd say 1 in 4 guys I meet outside work lifts an eyebrow when I tell them about my profession. The worst are people who know a little bit about it (for instance, people who saw a documentary once), because they feel like they know everything, and they are so enthousiastic about telling me how my profession works on behalf of me.

From your experience it sounds like the problem is worse for older people, and people outside of the field. This makes intuitive sense to me, although I don't have any hard data to back this up of refute it. Thank you for sharing.

I think it's hard to measure, and also, I guess social studies prefer to show a story instead of numbers. I'd prefer to see the numbers too though, I googled it for a little bit but then I realized "wait a minute why am I wasting my time on this I need to get back to work", so yea.. that's what I'll do now >.

Firstly, no one treats girls as bad at anything. Secondly, exams and tests are nowadays more biased towards women describing things than computation, and logical thinking, yet they are still whining about something artificial. Thirdly, men can speak about their emotions as well, if they want to. If they don't let them be. Fourthly, there is no bias that boys are being suicidal. Statistics show that men tend to kill themselves more often, than women. Fifthly there is no bias towards girls in science or business. Sixthly, you can't fix the problem, that is no problem in your eyes, because there is no problem at all.

what are you trying to say? I don't get it.

the trouble is no one treats girls as bad as science, and it's not implied at least it hasn't been since the 70s but this sort oof thing doen't change overnight, what we're talking about is a shift in zeitgeist, and well in terms of archetypal roles and Norms you're asking for too much in such a short time.

It seems that to have a thought is to have a bias..? This argument with word clouds is useless because the word bias doesn't work in this context, it's like using math the describe the emotions of an apple. if a word cloud for a banana was done and yellow was a key word is that an indicator of bias or fact?

It seems that to have a thought is to have a bias..? This argument with word clouds is useless because the word bias doesn't work in this context, it's like using math the describe the emotions of an apple. if a word cloud for a banana was done and yellow was a key word is that an indicator of bias or fact?

Riddle doesn't demonstrate much, you hear "father" "son" and "he" the other option is completely removed from your mind for the most part.

Interesting point, had not thought of that. Although I would have thought that sitting and thinking about it I would have considered that it was the sons mother. Was it my bias that stopped me or as you say, a trick of language to preload the bias.

do you consider sociology as science? or astrology?

well thx to psycology and sociology now we have gender studies as "science" b.s.

Spoken like someone who has truly no idea how vast a field psychology is. That being said, a big part of the field of psychology as taught in many countries most definitely is a science. From a purely methodological and statistical standpoint you can not disregard many of the findings, especially if you trust pharmacological or medical research you almost have to trust at least some of the psychological research. (although this interpretation of IAT is definitley not one of them, as are many findings in social psychology) www.researchgate.net/profile/Dirk_Wentura/publication/8557456_Underlying_Processes_in_the_Implicit_Association_Test_Dissociating_Salience_From_Associations/links/0c96052ebdd5ccba3d000000.pdf

Psychology isn't science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability. Happiness research is a great example of why psychology isn't science. How exactly should "happiness" be defined? The meaning of that word differs from person to person and especially between cultures. What makes Americans happy doesn't necessarily make Chinese people happy. How does one measure happiness? Psychologists can't use a ruler or a microscope, so they invent an arbitrary scale. Today, personally, I'm feeling about a 3.7 out of 5. How about you? The failure to meet the first two requirements of scientific rigor (clear terminology and quantifiability) makes it almost impossible for happiness research to meet the other three. How can an experiment be consistently reproducible or provide any useful predictions if the basic terms are vague and unquantifiable? And when exactly has there ever been a reliable prediction made about human behavior? Making useful predictions is a vital part of the scientific process, but psychology has a dismal record in this regard. Just ask a foreign policy or intelligence analyst. To be fair, not all psychology research is equally wishy-washy. Some research is far more scientifically rigorous. And the field often yields interesting and important insights. But to claim it is "science" is inaccurate. Actually, it's worse than that. It's an attempt to redefine science. Science, redefined, is no longer the empirical analysis of the natural world; instead, it is any topic that sprinkles a few numbers around. This is dangerous because, under such a loose definition, anything can qualify as science. And when anything qualifies as science, science can no longer claim to have a unique grasp on secular truth. That's why scientists dismiss psychologists. They're rightfully defending their intellectual turf. articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-pscyhology-science-20120713 Thanks to people who think like you now we have gender studies degrees and feminist science. Thanks for ruining the sciences.

Well, I agree with you, that the claim, that psychology as a whole is science is wrong (although I even stated that within my comment). But, what you are saying is equally wrong and for the same reason: Psychology is to heterogeneous for such a statement, be it for or against your notion, to be accurate. Can you partially agree with that? Furthermore, if you test all the nature scientific fields today against these requirements, you would find, that you would have to dismiss quite a few more sciences as being vague or not scientifically sound. And you are definitely overgeneralizing from your example. Do you think all psychology does is define happiness or related concepts? If you were actually interested in psychology and not just in proofing that you are right and I am wrong, you would give yourself a chance to be surprised by how many scientific approaches to psychology there are. This question "And when exactly has there ever been a reliable prediction made about human behavior?" plus the last two sentences make it quite a bit harder to take you seriously. I don't mean this in a condescending way, but, how much do you actually know about psychology? How about the concept of intelligence, clinical psychology or cognitive psychology? Would you say that those concepts/fields and their respective research doesn't qualify as science? Also, something would very much interest me: What would be the consequences/implications if, in fact, psychology was implicitly not a science? Are you saying that everybody today is not doing their research right or are the question that are being asked not worth asking? What would you have psychologists and researches all around the world do? Edit: Upon rereading your comment, I get the feeling, that you are overall somewhat contradicting yourself. I'm not trying to insult you here. If you want me to elaborate where I see contradictions, let me know.