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Wednesday, November 20, 2019
LANL Advancing Gender Equality
Los Alamos National Laboratory Commits To Advancing Gender Equality In Nuclear Policy
If women had run Rocky Flats or Hanford, they wouldn't be the toxic wastelands they are today. Let's face it, us guys can't seem to get our beer cans in the trash or our dirty clothes in the hamper, or keep our plutonium out of the air ducts.
"If women had run Rocky Flats or Hanford, they wouldn't be the toxic wastelands they are today. Let's face it, us guys can't seem to get our beer cans in the trash or our dirty clothes in the hamper, or keep our plutonium out of the air ducts.
11/21/2019 8:08 PM"
Good point however why would women want men in their bathroom.
OK, lets make "gender equality" in hiring very sensitive national security people the main concern. What a joke. How about merit, experience,and expertise??
How do you define merit? Do you want a bunch of wanna be professors at NNSA labs that want do research? I think not. There is no way to judge merit, expertise or experience. They have no meaning and if you say they do than are not relevant.
Ok joking aside, how does merit mean anything at the current labs? At LANL it is non stop hiring and merit has nothing to do with it.
The idea of communism is liberating it creates collective spirit to build a better world. Well at least that is what young people are saying. Communism is making a big comeback with our younger folks, so maybe the "fifth" experiment will work.
How in the world did communism get mixed up with gender equality? Only in the blogosphere could such obtuse reasoning be possible! Might as well carry on -- by such logic, gender inequality equates to fascism, and should be rooted out as an existential threat to democracy!
The issue of diversity goals versus merit is the topic. "Communism" is just a word that pushes some people's auto-replay button to trigger their canned response. Populating a highly important scientific and technical nuclear weapon organization based on gender diversity rather than merit is a huge national security mistake.
The problem I sense here is the notion that women could not possibly be as good as men. (The last 2 posts definitely imply that.) I acknowledge that LANL has not always had the best and brightest women but the same can definitely be said of the men at LANL. So long as women are seen as just unqualified diversity hires, they won’t be the best and brightest. Why would truly talented women want to work in that atmosphere? For LANL it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The way LANL has gotten many of their best women is by hiring couples. As 2 jobs are difficult to find at high skill levels at the same place, this is where LANL’s size can work to its advantage and make it possible to bring in 2 really good people. Unfortunately the woman will quickly find that she will be suspected of being just a diversity hire or a beneficiary of nepotism. I can’t really see such an organization achieving a real measure of gender equality until the idea that women are just as smart as men takes hold. Not lip service, the actual knowledge that there are women who can do whatever job as well as or better than men and I don’t just mean admin jobs.
I agree with what you are saying, however what motivation does LANL have in hiring the best and brightest and what possible metric could be used? The metrics used in academics and industry are simply not used at LANL. We cannot hire excellence in academics because these are wanna be professors who will want to dedicate some portion of their time to academic or cutting edge research and LANL is simply no longer interested in this and sees no value in it. They cannot hire people who could be excellence in industry because the people want to make products and and have an impact. LANL has no interests in work for others, and think any sort tech it needs can simply be done elsewhere. So what we have left is that LANL simply hires willy-nilly and whatever which leads to the bizarre random distribution of skill sets that lab has which range from outstanding to absolutely bottom of the barrel. As long as money is coming and people are hired to dissipate the money than everything is fine. LANL has been a decline for some time it is now known in the outside that this not a place to go if you are a top talent.
The bigger point is that no one is going to say to some women that they where hired just for diversity or nepotism because they cannot point to why or how ANYONE is actually hired at the labs. It is just random. Money opens up and you hire warm bodies, that is how it works. The only qualification to get hired is if there is money. Groups can go through long time searches and interview people and choose the 2 best people out of 10 people. Other groups just hire the four random people who happen to there at the time. The group that hires the 4 random people will always ALWAYS be seen as more successful than the group that hired to 2 top people.
Advocating for merit-based rather than gender-based hiring in a national security organization is not in any way suggesting "the notion that women could not possibly be as good as men." It is suggesting that gender DOESN'T MATTER. Just as skin color shouldn't matter (MLK). We need the BEST people, not the most diverse. If you think that women are somehow prevented by some system from BECOMING the best, then that is a different issue.
5:11 understands the way to eliminate gender, race, and other forms of bias. It is axiomatic. Unfortunately many in the LGBTQ community would rather pound their petty drums instead of advancing society. Their loss.
Man it’s the same old, same old. No one is saying hiring shouldn’t be MERIT based. The point is to try harder to find qualified women. AND when you find an equally or better qualified women that she be hired instead of just going with the man because that is your comfort zone. All this crap about merit hiring INSTEAD of hiring more women is making the assumption that the women would be less qualified. That is NOT what it means to want to bring in more women. It means that you make a small effort to find qualified women and if they don’t measure up they don’t get hired. The attitude of many on this blog is obviously to believe that any women was just hired for diversity and not merit. Makes for a great atmosphere for women. You are lucky any smart capable women are willing to work around some of you. They have to prove themselves every day when the stupid son of a manager or employee is just fine with you.
BTW if you do manage to hire qualified women they will probably be smarter than you. Yes they can be hard to find because they had to be really smart to get through all the gender bias in grad school and many better places want to hire them.
If someone is "hard to find" it is because they have not made any impression or reputation based on merit.
12/05/2019 6:25 PM
Yes the argument is bit off. It something is hard to find you will probably not have much of it. Just saying.
By the way is any evidence for gender bias in graduate school? Just saying there are more men in certain STEM fields than women is not evidence since there could be many other reasons.
You have to go back to high school where "science" begins to lose female enthusiasts. By senior year, few females are pointed at STEM bachelor's degrees. By that age, the urge (and urging) towards motherhood is strong, and argues against 6 - 8 years of post-high school education with little to no income and not much likelihood of marriage.
1:56 PM yes. And thank you for your thoughtful comment and question. There is still plenty of bias in STEM and that isn’t even considering the sexual harassment. But mostly women are turned off/away as undergraduates or earlier—mysteriously lower grades for the same answer on a test, hostility if they ask a question, surprise from faculty if they excel, actual lowering of grades to get them to quit... It isn’t always conscious bias, but it is surprisingly common even today. Things like someone saying “ If someone is "hard to find" it is because they have not made any impression or reputation based on merit,” a ridiculous statement that would never be made about men. If I said it is hard to find geniuses no one would say they were hard to find because they haven’t made an impression etc. A little test for the reader: when I wrote “genius” did you think of a man or woman or perhaps have a gender neutral idea of who that might be? It makes me sad that so many smart people never get a chance in school etc. because they are poor or the wrong type etc. We need the best and brightest and there never enough of them.
Do you have any evidence for your assertions? It just sounds like bunch on random and rather confused claims lacking any merit or data whatsoever.
"It makes me sad that so many smart people never get a chance in school etc. because they are poor or the wrong type etc. "
What is the wrong type? Even kids that grow up poor can do well in school and yes many can go on to be very successful. Is there any actually evidence that there are all these people that "never get a chance in school".
"But mostly women are turned off/away as undergraduates or earlier—mysteriously lower grades for the same answer on a test, hostility if they ask a question, surprise from faculty if they excel, actual lowering of grades to get them to quit..."
This sounds like pure BS. Especially in science or math where grading is based much more on objective measures. Where do you come with this stuff.
The rest of the post makes little sense and is utterly convoluted.
I went to an HBC where many students came from inner city high schools that had almost no math and science education. Are you saying a poor black kid who did not get any education in high school has the same chance in college as a rich, privileged white person who got an excellent education and any help they needed? Are you saying that none of these poor kids could possibly be as smart as a rich white person?
I was at an HBC because at a previous university a professor came to me and warned me that the physics faculty spoke openly of their determination to never graduate a woman. He told me that I needed to leave before they forced a woman as talented as me out of the field. Are you saying that when my white male friend gave the same answer on a test that I did and got full credit and I got zero points, that was fair? Do you think MAYBE that might be discouraging? This happened again and again and my female friends just quit when it happened to them. I transferred as the honest professor had advised. I went from the HBC to what is arguably the world’s best grad school and my career has been enormously successful, but it was hard to have to transfer as an undergrad because the science faculty were dinosaurs (all but one).
There aren’t many women and minorities in science. That is a fact and means it is hard to find qualified women and minorities to apply for jobs. From your position of white male privilege are these facts something that makes no sense to you? Is what I saw as a woman in physics happening around me BS or are you just too privileged to have any idea what might have happened to other students or didn’t you actually go to college? Even a multiple choice test can be graded unfairly. Are you JUST a women-hating troll or really that ignorant?
Is this real? I suspect that you may not be who you claim. A couple of points.
" Are you saying a poor black kid who did not get any education in high school has the same chance in college as a rich, privileged white person who got an excellent education and any help they needed? Are you saying that none of these poor kids could possibly be as smart as a rich white person? "
This is the problem with the concept of "white privilege" What about the poor white, and asians kids that also went to inner city school. Why exclude them? Also if you familiar with graduate school and use the privilege card based on family income or eduction you would have noticed plenty of minorities who came from families of professors, wealthy business people ect. I have no problem with your point that if you are poor and go schools that are lacking than yes these people will have some disadvantages however this is really based on class not race. As bizarre as it seems the one thing SJW types and academics will never touch is class, because one you do it really destroys the race narrative. I can understand class privilege but "white" privilege is as they say a bit problematic. Does one have Asian privilege, coastal privilege, NYC privilege, Jewish privilege. How about Hispanics, what about Syrains, what about people with mental illness and so on.
"university a professor came to me and warned me that the physics faculty spoke openly of their determination to never graduate a woman."
This sounds fake to me. This would mean that there is some university is out there that has never graduated a women in physics?
"Are you saying that when my white male friend gave the same answer on a test that I did and got full credit and I got zero points, that was fair? Do you think MAYBE that might be discouraging? This happened again and again and my female friends just quit when it happened to them."
Again this sounds fake. Either you have not remwebvered things correctly or are being dishonest. I have never heard of anything like this nor know anyone who has.
"Is what I saw as a woman in physics happening around me BS or are you just too privileged to have any idea what might have happened to other students"
My first guess is BS, but is possible that you remember things a "bit" different from how it actually was. I am not sure what you mean by "my privilege". I simply do not understand these "privilege" arguments. From what I can tell they are code words that is justification for bigotry, so it is rather ugly. In another time words like privilege would have been replaced with Jewish.
Well this discussion has picked up some interest in this dismal blog. Seems like the same boring cast of characters who try so hard to make sure no one wants to work at LLNL or LANL.
33 comments:
If women had run Rocky Flats or Hanford, they wouldn't be the toxic wastelands they are today. Let's face it, us guys can't seem to get our beer cans in the trash or our dirty clothes in the hamper, or keep our plutonium out of the air ducts.
"If women had run Rocky Flats or Hanford, they wouldn't be the toxic wastelands they are today. Let's face it, us guys can't seem to get our beer cans in the trash or our dirty clothes in the hamper, or keep our plutonium out of the air ducts.
11/21/2019 8:08 PM"
Good point however why would women want men in their bathroom.
OK, lets make "gender equality" in hiring very sensitive national security people the main concern. What a joke. How about merit, experience,and expertise??
"How about merit, experience,and expertise??"
How do you define merit? Do you want a bunch of wanna be professors at NNSA labs that want do research? I think not. There is no way to judge merit, expertise or experience. They have no meaning and if you say they do than are not relevant.
Ok joking aside, how does merit mean anything at the current labs? At LANL it is non stop hiring and merit has nothing to do with it.
In science, "merit" means what it always has. if you don't know what that is, do a little research (hah!).
Don’t confuse Communists with discussions of “merit”. Merit destroyed their last four experiments.
11/24/2019 9:15 AM
Yeah, point taken. I just thought "confusing" him was better than screaming at him, which is what I felt like.
The idea of communism is liberating it creates collective spirit to build a better world. Well at least that is what young people are saying. Communism is making a big comeback with our younger folks, so maybe the "fifth" experiment will work.
Communism work? Not likely. Just more mass killing.
How in the world did communism get mixed up with gender equality? Only in the blogosphere could such obtuse reasoning be possible! Might as well carry on -- by such logic, gender inequality equates to fascism, and should be rooted out as an existential threat to democracy!
The issue of diversity goals versus merit is the topic. "Communism" is just a word that pushes some people's auto-replay button to trigger their canned response. Populating a highly important scientific and technical nuclear weapon organization based on gender diversity rather than merit is a huge national security mistake.
Thank you 11/29/2019 2:41 PM!
Your contribution is the most intelligent and relevant I have seen in a while!
The problem I sense here is the notion that women could not possibly be as good as men. (The last 2 posts definitely imply that.) I acknowledge that LANL has not always had the best and brightest women but the same can definitely be said of the men at LANL. So long as women are seen as just unqualified diversity hires, they won’t be the best and brightest. Why would truly talented women want to work in that atmosphere? For LANL it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The way LANL has gotten many of their best women is by hiring couples. As 2 jobs are difficult to find at high skill levels at the same place, this is where LANL’s size can work to its advantage and make it possible to bring in 2 really good people. Unfortunately the woman will quickly find that she will be suspected of being just a diversity hire or a beneficiary of nepotism. I can’t really see such an organization achieving a real measure of gender equality until the idea that women are just as smart as men takes hold. Not lip service, the actual knowledge that there are women who can do whatever job as well as or better than men and I don’t just mean admin jobs.
"11/30/2019 11:02 PM"
I agree with what you are saying, however what motivation does LANL have in hiring the best and brightest and what possible metric could be used? The metrics used in academics and industry are simply not used at LANL. We cannot hire excellence in academics because these are wanna be professors who will want to dedicate some portion of their time to academic or cutting edge research and LANL is simply no longer interested in this and sees no value in it. They cannot hire people who could be excellence in industry because the people want to make products and and have an impact. LANL has no interests in work for others, and think any sort tech it needs can simply be done elsewhere. So what we have left is that LANL simply hires willy-nilly and whatever which leads to the bizarre random distribution of skill sets that lab has which range from outstanding to absolutely bottom of the barrel. As long as money is coming and people are hired to dissipate the money than everything is fine. LANL has been a decline for some time it is now known in the outside that this not a place to go if you are a top talent.
The bigger point is that no one is going to say to some women that they where hired just for diversity or nepotism because they cannot point to why or how ANYONE is actually hired at the labs. It is just random. Money opens up and you hire warm bodies, that is how it works. The only qualification to get hired is if there is money. Groups can go through long time searches and interview people and choose the 2 best people out of 10 people. Other groups just hire the four random people who happen to there at the time. The group that hires the 4 random people will always ALWAYS be seen as more successful than the group that hired to 2 top people.
Advocating for merit-based rather than gender-based hiring in a national security organization is not in any way suggesting "the notion that women could not possibly be as good as men." It is suggesting that gender DOESN'T MATTER. Just as skin color shouldn't matter (MLK). We need the BEST people, not the most diverse. If you think that women are somehow prevented by some system from BECOMING the best, then that is a different issue.
5:11 understands the way to eliminate gender, race, and other forms of bias. It is axiomatic. Unfortunately many in the LGBTQ community would rather pound their petty drums instead of advancing society. Their loss.
Man it’s the same old, same old. No one is saying hiring shouldn’t be MERIT based. The point is to try harder to find qualified women. AND when you find an equally or better qualified women that she be hired instead of just going with the man because that is your comfort zone. All this crap about merit hiring INSTEAD of hiring more women is making the assumption that the women would be less qualified. That is NOT what it means to want to bring in more women. It means that you make a small effort to find qualified women and if they don’t measure up they don’t get hired. The attitude of many on this blog is obviously to believe that any women was just hired for diversity and not merit. Makes for a great atmosphere for women. You are lucky any smart capable women are willing to work around some of you. They have to prove themselves every day when the stupid son of a manager or employee is just fine with you.
BTW if you do manage to hire qualified women they will probably be smarter than you. Yes they can be hard to find because they had to be really smart to get through all the gender bias in grad school and many better places want to hire them.
There was a time when line managers had Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action thoroughly integrated into their daily decisions.
12/05/2019 11:08 AM
If someone is "hard to find" it is because they have not made any impression or reputation based on merit.
If someone is "hard to find" it is because they have not made any impression or reputation based on merit.
12/05/2019 6:25 PM
Yes the argument is bit off. It something is hard to find you will probably not have much of it.
Just saying.
By the way is any evidence for gender bias in graduate school? Just saying there are more men in certain STEM fields than women is not evidence since there could be many other reasons.
You have to go back to high school where "science" begins to lose female enthusiasts. By senior year, few females are pointed at STEM bachelor's degrees. By that age, the urge (and urging) towards motherhood is strong, and argues against 6 - 8 years of post-high school education with little to no income and not much likelihood of marriage.
1:56 PM yes. And thank you for your thoughtful comment and question. There is still plenty of bias in STEM and that isn’t even considering the sexual harassment. But mostly women are turned off/away as undergraduates or earlier—mysteriously lower grades for the same answer on a test, hostility if they ask a question, surprise from faculty if they excel, actual lowering of grades to get them to quit... It isn’t always conscious bias, but it is surprisingly common even today. Things like someone saying “ If someone is "hard to find" it is because they have not made any impression or reputation based on merit,” a ridiculous statement that would never be made about men. If I said it is hard to find geniuses no one would say they were hard to find because they haven’t made an impression etc. A little test for the reader: when I wrote “genius” did you think of a man or woman or perhaps have a gender neutral idea of who that might be? It makes me sad that so many smart people never get a chance in school etc. because they are poor or the wrong type etc. We need the best and brightest and there never enough of them.
You know the attitude toward women on this blog is bad enough without these actual trolls!
We need the best and brightest and there never enough of them.
12/07/2019 8:23 AM
Way to try to recover after playing the "women are victims" card.
and the social pendulum swings on.... Seems to be hard to find balance these days.
12/07/2019 8:23 AM
Do you have any evidence for your assertions? It just sounds like bunch on random and rather confused claims lacking any merit or data whatsoever.
"It makes me sad that so many smart people never get a chance in school etc. because they are poor or the wrong type etc. "
What is the wrong type? Even kids that grow up poor can do well in school and yes many can go on to be very successful. Is there any actually evidence that there are all these people that "never get a chance in school".
"But mostly women are turned off/away as undergraduates or earlier—mysteriously lower grades for the same answer on a test, hostility if they ask a question, surprise from faculty if they excel, actual lowering of grades to get them to quit..."
This sounds like pure BS. Especially in science or math where grading is based much more on objective measures. Where do you come with this stuff.
The rest of the post makes little sense and is utterly convoluted.
I went to an HBC where many students came from inner city high schools that had almost no math and science education. Are you saying a poor black kid who did not get any education in high school has the same chance in college as a rich, privileged white person who got an excellent education and any help they needed? Are you saying that none of these poor kids could possibly be as smart as a rich white person?
I was at an HBC because at a previous university a professor came to me and warned me that the physics faculty spoke openly of their determination to never graduate a woman. He told me that I needed to leave before they forced a woman as talented as me out of the field. Are you saying that when my white male friend gave the same answer on a test that I did and got full credit and I got zero points, that was fair? Do you think MAYBE that might be discouraging? This happened again and again and my female friends just quit when it happened to them. I transferred as the honest professor had advised. I went from the HBC to what is arguably the world’s best grad school and my career has been enormously successful, but it was hard to have to transfer as an undergrad because the science faculty were dinosaurs (all but one).
There aren’t many women and minorities in science. That is a fact and means it is hard to find qualified women and minorities to apply for jobs. From your position of white male privilege are these facts something that makes no sense to you? Is what I saw as a woman in physics happening around me BS or are you just too privileged to have any idea what might have happened to other students or didn’t you actually go to college? Even a multiple choice test can be graded unfairly. Are you JUST a women-hating troll or really that ignorant?
"12/09/2019 10:41 AM"
I think you are troll and just making this up to make minority and women scientists look bad. You are fake, try again.
12/09/2019 10:41 AM
Your personal experience governs your entire understanding (misunderstanding) of the issue. That isn't very scientific of you.
12/09/2019 10:41 AM
Is this real? I suspect that you may not be who you claim. A couple of points.
" Are you saying a poor black kid who did not get any education in high school has the same chance in college as a rich, privileged white person who got an excellent education and any help they needed? Are you saying that none of these poor kids could possibly be as smart as a rich white person? "
This is the problem with the concept of "white privilege" What about the poor white, and asians kids that also went to inner city school. Why exclude them? Also if you familiar with graduate school and use the privilege card based on family income or eduction you would have noticed plenty of minorities who came from families of professors, wealthy business people ect. I have no problem with your point that if you are poor and go schools that are lacking than yes these people will have some disadvantages however this is really based on class not race. As bizarre as it seems the one thing SJW types and academics will never touch is class, because one you do it really destroys the race narrative. I can understand class privilege but "white" privilege is as they say a bit problematic. Does one have Asian privilege, coastal privilege, NYC privilege, Jewish privilege. How about Hispanics, what about Syrains, what about people with mental illness and so on.
"university a professor came to me and warned me that the physics faculty spoke openly of their determination to never graduate a woman."
This sounds fake to me. This would mean that there is some university is out there that has never graduated a women in physics?
"Are you saying that when my white male friend gave the same answer on a test that I did and got full credit and I got zero points, that was fair? Do you think MAYBE that might be discouraging? This happened again and again and my female friends just quit when it happened to them."
Again this sounds fake. Either you have not remwebvered things correctly or are being dishonest. I have never heard of anything like this nor know anyone who has.
"Is what I saw as a woman in physics happening around me BS or are you just too privileged to have any idea what might have happened to other students"
My first guess is BS, but is possible that you remember things a "bit" different from how it actually was. I am not sure what you mean by "my privilege". I simply do not understand these "privilege" arguments. From what I can tell they are code words that is justification for bigotry, so it is rather ugly. In another time words like privilege would have been replaced with Jewish.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
There was a time when line managers had Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action thoroughly integrated into their daily decisions.
12/05/2019 2:56 PM
Rephrased: "There was a time when line managers had Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action thoroughly pounded into their thick WASP skulls."
A few learned.
12/09/2019 5:38 PM
Good dissection of 12/09/2019 10:41 AM's post. It smelled fishy to me too.
Well this discussion has picked up some interest in this dismal blog. Seems like the same boring cast of characters who try so hard to make sure no one wants to work at LLNL or LANL.
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