1 March 2011
BBC News – Brian Cox: Science is not ‘dominated by old men’
Posted by Dan Satterfield
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Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
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I love your blog and I enjoyed watching this interview, but I think that the headline is misleading.
As a woman under 30 who is a scientist, I am always in the minority when at a work meeting or at a conference. That’s not to say that the only people I work with are old men, but the vast majority are and I have experienced this in multiple fields. The other women I know who are scientists and engineers have similar stories and frustrations that come from working in a male-dominated field.
Think of what we have in Huntsville — there are often stories of NASA’s aging workforce. And the scientists and engineers who have worked for NASA since Apollo are of course incredibly smart, knowledgeable, and useful and I’m not suggesting we devalue them. But they are, in fact, old men.
I’m all for encouraging kids (and particularly girls) to take up science — but there’s no need to lie about it. We can’t fix problems without identifying them and admitting they exist.
I agree 100%. I think the spirit of his comments was to encourage more young women to consider science as a career. I can tell you that in meteorology the same lopsided ratio exists.
Yes, I generally thought his comments were excellent. The headline took one line that was not ideally worded (perhaps “not all scientists are old men” or “science doesn’t have to be dominated by old men” would have been better), and is actually demonstrably false, and made it the take home message. This is an example of one of the many problems with science reporting.
I was relieved to read your response. I had been saving this video in my RSS feed for 3 weeks waiting for an opportunity to watch it. Seeing that headline left without commentary was worrisome.