Article Roundup

A pair of articles I found interesting today - one interesting and one just plain bizarre. First, the interesting:

A New Frontier for Title IX: Science (New York Times) John Tierney explores a new arena for potential Title IX implementation: the sciences. It seems that NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other organizations are inquiring into scientific labs that receive governmental research funding to determine whether there's a gender disparity (caused by sexism/gender bias) to be remedied by Title IX by gender quotas or some other action.

Tierney does a decent job throughout the article exploring the various potential reasons for gender disparity in the sciences (and why they may or may not be bias-based), though he by no means advocates one or any of the theories outlined. The part where he gets a bit iffy for my tastes, though, is in his concluding paragraph:

Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive science and engineering departments in America are busy filling out new federal paperwork. The agencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist. How is this good for scientists of either sex?

Sure, we should focus our efforts on making new and important scientific discoveries, but to imply that the fulfillment of those endeavors justifies turning a blind eye to gender imbalance in the sciences is crazy. You can't take the humanity out of the sciences, lest we all start viewing each other as soulless robots working on an assembly line towards bigger and better things.

One of Tierney's major theses seems to be: maybe women are as good at science as men and just choose to do something else more often than men do? While that could be true, I'd rather give the issue a fair shake and look into things a bit more closely. I think it's worth the time and effort (and yes, paperwork). Regardless, it'll be interesting to see results of the inquiries. Stay tuned, faithful(?) reader.

Addendum: I just realized that, shockingly, there's no mention anywhere in Tierney's article about those ever-infamous comments by former Harvard president, Lawrence Summers, about the innate abilities of men and women in the sciences. Bold.

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And now, the plain bizzare:

Last tenant 'found decapitated' (BBC NEWS, tipped off by reddit.com)

A sad headline, but the article starts out on a fairly straightforward note:

"A man who was found with his head severed by a chainsaw was fighting to stay in a block of 70 flats in Hampshire cleared for redevelopment."

Simple enough. What made me really scratch my head, though, was the following conclusion from the coroner's office:

"As far as we know nobody else was involved. There's nothing suspicious about the death."

Um, what? I asked around to see if anyone could come up with a plausible way to cleanly behead oneself by chainsaw, and the handful of people I asked all seemed to think of the same solution: fix the chainsaw into a horizontal position and then fall onto it. Touche. Though you have to imagine that the circumstances surrounding the poor gentleman's death might have merited further inquiry?