Science Professors Show Gender Bias; Only Science Professors Shocked

The headline in the New York Times yesterday read, "Bias Persists for Women of Science, a Study Finds." * I think calling that an understatement would be an understatement.

The article refers to the tediously-named article "Science Faculty's Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study itself was elegantly simple. The organizers sent one-page descriptions of potential job candidates to university professors in the sciences and asked them to assess the candidates for apparent competence, hireability, and potential for mentorship, as well as recommend a starting salary. Some professors received descriptions of male candidates, and others received descriptions of female candidates.

The catch? Every single job candidate was identical except for gender. Word-for-word, the female applicants were identical to their male candidates, except that the name "Jennifer" replaced the name "John".

The results are striking. Male professors rated female applicants as 17% less competent, 21% less hireable, and 16% less desirable for mentorship than male applicants, with a recommended salary 11% lower. Female professors were even harsher, rating the female applicants 19% less competent, 27% less hireable, and 17% less desirable for mentorship, with 15% lower recommended salaries.

Wait ... what?

Space Leadership Act: Innovative Government or Constitutional Minefield?

This week, five members of the House of Representatives introduced a bill that is being called the "Space Leadership Act". The proposal has gotten a lot of press this week, but some basic highlights of the bill include:

• a ten-year tenure for NASA Administrators
• an eleven-member Board of Directors whose duties would involve nominating Administrator candidates and proposing the NASA budget
• a quadrennial review of all NASA programs
• "for cause" removal of Board members and Administrators.

The five Republican authors of the bill claim that the measure will reduce politicization of NASA and provide for long-term stability and predictability in NASA programs. (It is worth noting that at least one Democrat is apparently prepared to cosponsor the bill.)  It should come as no surprise that all of the five representatives proposing the bill come from Texas (John Culberson, 7th District; Pete Olson, 22nd District; Lamar Smith, 21st District), Florida (Bill Posey, 15th District), and Virginia (Frank Wolf, 10th District).

Current NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke this week, and, although he didn't address the bill directly, it was obvious from his remarks that he was defensive of the current structure:

“Such talk undermines our nation’s goals at a very critical time. . . The truth is we have an ambitious series of deep space destinations we plan to explore and we are hard at work exploring the hardware and the technologies to get us there.”

It is easy to argue that NASA reform is necessary: over-budget and underfunded programs are frequently in the news, and the Administration's recent challenges have given it a lackluster reputation at best. However, this bill raises a lot of potential problems.

"Hello World! It's Me, the Internet!"

Big news today for the Internet -- and for the lobbying world. A group of organizations from the "Internet infrastructure industry" announced a new policy advocacy organization, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition.  i2, as they are calling themselves, claim to "support[] those who build the nuts and bolts of the Internet". They don't define exactly what those "nuts and bolts" are, but their members list includes software-as-service, remote hosting, and spectrum organizations.

An informal browsing of their members seems to indicate that most are related to cloud computing or other remote services. I question whether this is really representative of the "Internet infrastructure" without network owners and ISPs. Regardless of what they call themselves, though, i2 has stated that they believe in a robust and growing Internet environment to encourage innovation.

The most interesting part of i2's site is the explanation of their policy positions. Most of their positions are not particularly surprising for businesses relying on the Internet for their business models. I'd like to highlight a few interesting implications of their positions, though.

Is Not Even Space Safe ... from Fake Nigerian Princes?

So, I really don't even know what to say about this, except for the fact that I couldn't help but laugh:

Won’t you help a poor Nigerian astronaut who just wants to come home from space?

In reality, this type of scam, known as a "Nigerian 419 scam", is a huge deal on the Internet. It's a modern-day version of the classic Spanish Prisoner scam, an advance fee confidence fraud where the con convinces the mark to send him money on a promise that he will be repaid at a premium later. We laugh at 419 scams (in at least two episodes of The Office, Michael Scott has revealed that he is a continuing victim to them), but in reality they are very effective.

50 Years Ago, We Aimed for the Moon

Today is the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's famous "Moon Speech". On September 12, 1962, Kennedy spoke at Rice University in Houston, Texas, to explain the goal of getting to the moon. During the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had launched a hollowed out ICBM shell into space as the U.S. watched. The most well-known segment from his speech is this:

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

This kind of challenge, he said, would push the United States to be better, to be stronger, and to advance the cause of peace over the shadow of war. Space would be won for peaceful nations, and it would be a place for peace and knowledge.