
As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men - seagullz
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/eaas9899
======
Mon29Oct
This has been observed since Scandinavian countries pushed very female-
friendly work laws, only to have differences in gender preferences more marked
than ever. The book _The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox_ submits two pieces of
explanation to it, which are that 1/ One of the reforms was to offer sumptuous
parent leave, encouraging parents to distance themselves from work for a
significant duration, but which made the mothers gain less experience than the
fathers who usually don't take the leave and 2/ Those reforms incurred strong
taxes and diminished spending power, more especially making child care less
affordable, again distancing mothers from work.

~~~
Someone1234
It is worth noting that Nima Sanandaji, the author of that and many similar
books, is a proponent of small state, free markets, low tax, self
determination and responsibility.

In other words, he is a libertarian type, that doesn't support the welfare
state, and by extension doesn't support requiring employers to offer maternity
and paternity leave.

He has also argued that Scandinavia is doing well due to the free markets, in
spite of its social policy, in his book Scandinavian Unexceptionalism.

PS - Just trying to give some context. "Nordic Gender Equality Paradox" isn't
an apolitical academic study, it is a book trying to push a certain political
agenda.

~~~
clord
I downvote you because the research withstands your attempted ad hominem
attack. If the result is good we should not cast dispersion just because the
researcher has a particular bias.

In fact those times when your ideology does not line up with scientific
results are precisely when you should sit up and take notice that perhaps your
ideology is failing you.

~~~
Someone1234
I wasn't commenting on academic research, I was commenting on the book The
Nordic Gender Equality Paradox by Nima Sanandaji. Which is what the comment I
was responding to was about.

You downvoted because you either didn't read the comment I responded to or
didn't read my own in the context for which it was given.

Nima Sanandaji isn't a researcher and doesn't product academic, scientific, or
sociological research. He's a political commentator who writes books and
produces opinion pieces for political think-tanks.

------
triodan
I think this phenomenon was known a while back as the gender equality
paradox[0]. It's always nice to see more data on the topic.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-
equality_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox)

~~~
tarkin2
It's not much of a paradox surely.

Those countries introduced equality systems because the imbalance.

Now of course those same countries with the imbalance have those introduced
systems.

~~~
0x445442
Ah but why would those differences become greater _after_ the introduction of
the equality systems? That's the paradox.

~~~
KirinDave
What's curious to me about this stance is no one questions if the measures
taken, when coupled to there outcomes, don't suggest failed policies.

"Well we made policies and they didn't do what we expected, therefore women
are making choices!" seems to me (with an American bias perhaps) to be a
failure in the design or implementation of the policies, rather than
immediately blaming women.

I'm surprised how credulously people engage these policies

~~~
Majestic121
I agree with your skepticism, but it's important not to fall back on the other
end : i.e., "I know there's no difference between men and women therefore the
policies are wrong !"

Second, I don't think anyone is blaming women here. Choosing (or being
pressured by the environment) to have more 'gendered' (whatever that means)
career path is not necessarily a bad thing.

It can become a bad thing if it hinders opportunity, but not before

~~~
KirinDave
> I agree with your skepticism, but it's important not to fall back on the
> other end : i.e., "I know there's no difference between men and women
> therefore the policies are wrong !"

An awful lot of women have negative things to say about that situation, so
maybe I should just quote them?

I don't think I am falling back on the "other side" here. I'm pointing out
that the effectiveness of these measures seems quite low according to the
data. It's odd to assume that the entire effect is therefore determined
uniquely by "women's choice." Is there evidence of that?

It's one thing to say, "Keep an open mind." It's another to hedge off what's
at least an equally likely scenario from discussion at all, which with the
flood of downvotes I'm getting certainly seems like what's happening to me

~~~
0x445442
> It's odd to assume that the entire effect is therefore determined uniquely
> by "women's choice." Is there evidence of that?

I don't think anyone is claiming choice is the "entire effect" but I do think
there is evidence that choice is the overwhelming effect. Let me ask this, do
the women you know complain about an under-representation of women working at
Discount Tire or in the field of Underwater Welding?

In America, during WWII a large number of women went into these types of
occupations because of war time necessity and they showed they could perform
the required duties just fine. But after the war most returned to traditional
domestic roles. Are you saying that was not, by and large, their choice?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
It wasn’t their choice. Most women wanted to keep their jobs after the war and
were refused rehire.[1] I would argue that the history of female employment
demographics is highly complex and has a multitude of factors, with each
factor constituting of many sub-factors. The study in this thread provides an
excellent evidence of one behavior, but the amount of heuristics that feed
into this behavior is up for massive debate and question, many of which are
politically unattractive on both sides, resulting in dissatisfaction of any
academic research into any one influencing factor and also any research into a
holistic heuristic evaluation... by focusing on this example, you may be over-
simplifying the behavior the study is representing.

[1][http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/7027/](http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/7027/)

------
kace91
I wonder how it adjusts for culturally pushed gender differences. Women could
have the same opportunities as men but be expected to have different tastes,
be subjected to different experiences growing up, etc. which could affect
their choices in latter life.

~~~
js8
I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological
or cultural. (Well, I understand it if we assume they are being dishonest, so
assuming that something is not biological allows them to claim that it can be
changed to whatever they think is morally superior. The debate whether being
gay is cultural is a good example.)

If I am given a true freedom to choose, to decide according to my preferences,
what does it matter what is the reason for these preferences? What does it
matter, how did I acquire my tastes? They are MY tastes.

~~~
ramblerman
Because if it is purely cultural then aiming for 50/50 gender parity across
all industries is a reasonable goal.

If it is not, it is a 'terrible', 'terrible' idea to approach gender equality
from that angle.

~~~
apatters
Why would 50/50 gender parity across all industries ever be a desirable goal?
Coal mining is male dominated -- should we push more women into becoming coal
miners?

~~~
ramblerman
> Why would 50/50 gender parity across all industries ever be a desirable
> goal?

If women and men "are indeed biologically identical in their job preferences"
you could argue a good measure for real equality of opportunity would be 50/50
parity across industries. Because given a fair shake everyone would be evenly
distributed across all industries (since we have the same preferences).

~~~
njharman
"job preferences" is not the same as job aptitude.

In a free market system people are going to be pushed into the jobs for which
they have the most aptitude (or out of the workforce if their aptitude is too
low/lower than machines) regardless of their preferences.

------
PeterisP
Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are incompatible as long as
the source groups differ in any meaningful way, even "just" in preferences,
which is a very big factor in choice of profession. In order to get equality
of outcomes, you would need to enforce inequality of opportunities.

~~~
ekianjo
Why would you want equality of outcomes anyway? It goes against individual
Freedom. As long as opportunities are as equal as they can be, the rest is
just the reflection of what individuals want to focus on and achieve. Equality
of outcomes will force some people to do what they dont want to, which is
undesirable on many levels.

~~~
YinglingLight
>Why would you want equality of outcomes anyway? It goes against individual
Freedom.

"An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that
liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of
morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to
speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see
people change their opinions.

....If your aim is to persuade, you have to speak the language of the other.
Talking about fairness to a conservative, or morality to a liberal, fails at
the starting gate. The other side just can’t hear what you are saying."

[http://blog.dilbert.com/2017/02/15/how-to-persuade-the-
other...](http://blog.dilbert.com/2017/02/15/how-to-persuade-the-other-party/)

~~~
ekianjo
Yes, but words have no meaning at this stage, because "fairness" means
completely different things depending on who you talk to. It's very ambiguous,
because the value systems are completely different. For example, you could
make a case that "redistributing wealth is fair", yes also claim that "owning
the reward of your hard work is fair" and they kind of go against each others.

------
atoav
The question is: What follows from that difference?

Should a society treat a subset of the population different (in a positive or
negative way) because on average they act different, because they have a
different story to tell, because they had a different place throughout history
and society?

Isn't planfully treating a subset of the population different reproducing that
difference?

Isn't not treating a subset of the population different against justice in a
historical sense?

Should we treat different what seems different to us? Should we ignore the
difference, essentially becoming ignorant to what lead to the difference?

Hard questions. A better approach might be to look at the individual. If you
presume things about people because of traits they had no control about, you
are probably a better person if you keep this presumtions to yourself, even if
parts of these seem to match at times. In the end, often these differences
don't really matter that much, especially a Nerd community should realize
this: a nerd from a never heard of minority might be much closer to you in
spirit, than most of your neighbourhood with traits matching yours.

The thing is, presumtions can (and often will) get in the way of seeing the
complexity of the individual that is on the other side. If you are not in a
war zone where ignoring presumtions ("this looks like the enemy") will get you
killed, you can usually afford that luxury.

------
grenoire
This follows a series of validation studies (incl. e.g.
[http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719))
from this year especially. The results seem to consistently show the same
'paradoxical' outcome. J. Peterson came to my campus last week and I think he
mentioned this one specific study, and also noted several other ones, which
brought the one I linked to my attention. It really isn't the only one, and
it's good to see that it's getting a stronger foothold by the day.

~~~
faceplanted
Is Jordan Peterson any better in person than he seems in his book? I read it
after a friend recommended it and he seemed completely insufferable and
possibly mildly autistic based on what seemed like a real lack of
understanding of the internal lives of others.

Lots of people seem to like him, but I can't bring myself to watch him speak
in person since everything I see just traversing the internet is framed as him
"destroying liberals" in some fashion, which just affirms the insufferable
idea.

~~~
grenoire
Peterson in person is Peterson in his lectures, see comments below. Make up
your mind yourself, and try to understand why people like and hate him both
ways. He's a pretty compassionate guy as far as I can tell, he just can't
tolerate people who aren't willing to have proper discourse with him.

~~~
dekken_
> he just can't tolerate people who aren't willing to have proper discourse
> with him

why would anyone? if it's not a discussion it's a battle of ideologies and
someone (them/they) have to win

~~~
tome
I suspect, by "why would anyone", you were referring to him tolerating rather
than people having proper discourse.

~~~
dekken_
Why would anyone tolerate not having proper discourse.

In full.

------
Tomminn
The strongest correlations seem related to the wealth of the country.

One reading of this finding is that more effort is directed toward gender
performance in rich countries.

This could be due to a number of factors. I wouldn't discount the difference
in the quantity of media consumed by both countries.

~~~
taneq
That's what spun me out when I first traveled in Asia. Backpacking through
Thailand there was (as far as I could see) pretty equal representation in
almost all different job roles, from street vendors to travel agents to IT.
(Come to think of it, tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers were universally male,
though...)

After years of being told that all women loved tech and only shied away from
it because it was full of horrible misogynistic neckbeards, and that the only
solution to the problem of fewer women in tech than men was to remove any
slight negative experience they may have (note that these messages weren't
all, or even mostly, coming from women!), it was strange to see so many
accomplished, professional women in a culture that gave women no special
treatment whatsoever.

~~~
aleeds
Consider that "women dealing with horrible misogynistic neckbeards" and "women
that get no special treatment" are in fact, compatible.

For women every day, those negative experiences are the difference from men
that keep them from being in the industry.

~~~
naasking
> For women every day, those negative experiences are the difference from men
> that keep them from being in the industry.

That's conjecture that isn't supported by any evidence. And in fact, there's
considerable evidence that women don't choose STEM for far more fundamental
reasons.

The very existence of the gender equality paradox, and the fact that women
have achieved gender parity in fields _they actually care about_ but which
were arguably _even more sexist_ , like medicine and law, and did it without
people fawning over whether they are having "negative experiences", completely
undermines your narrative.

------
dandare
Can someone with an access to the article provide more information on the
direction in which the "willingness to take risks, patience, altruism,
positive and negative reciprocity, and trust" is associated with gender?

~~~
Kaveren
> "Women tended to be more prosocial and less negatively reciprocal than men,
> with differences in standard deviations of 0.106 for altruism (P < 0.0001),
> 0.064 for trust (P < 0.0001), 0.055 for positive reciprocity (P < 0.0001),
> and 0.129 for negative reciprocity (P < 0.0001). Turning to nonsocial
> preferences, women were less risk-taking by 0.168 standard deviations (P <
> 0.0001) and less patient by 0.050 standard deviations (P < 0.0001) (26). The
> observed differences in preferences set the stage for our analysis."[0]

The context of this quote and the tables are provided by the other commenter.

[0] "(26)" in the quote refers to a footnote.

 _Edit: Fixed hyphen space in quote._

~~~
amanaplanacanal
Those seem like such small differences. It's interesting that they lead to
such large outcomes.

~~~
gowld
It's what you'll find in non-linear systems. For example: Preferring to not be
an extreme minority leads to extreme segregation, since local attempts to
resolve the problem make it globally worse:

[https://www.wired.com/2014/12/empzeal-parable-
polygons/](https://www.wired.com/2014/12/empzeal-parable-polygons/)

[https://ncase.me/polygons/](https://ncase.me/polygons/)

------
lgleason
This, along with the study in the UK on preferences of kids based on
testosterone levels is why we will probably not ever have equal representation
of women in engineering. It has nothing to do with discrimination, or a
woman's ability to do the job etc., it's about how hormones etc. affect ones
preferences.

------
throw2016
Here is an interesting discussion and debate between 2 experts in the field on
sex differences.

Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender [1] reports even something as
simple as telling girls before a maths test that this is a test in which girls
have done well results in dramatically higher scores suggesting the field is
still in its infancy and fundamental questions about gender roles and culture
remain.

Simon Baron-Cohen is also well known in the field for his work on autism and
stands on the ‘essentialist’ side of gender differences and as readers will
note in his review [2] of Cordelia Fine’s book and the ensuing 3 part debate
[3] [4] [5] with her that there are far too many important new questions
raised and many that remain unresolved.

Everything from past studies, preconceptions, cultural bias, data, methodology
to conclusions remain in question leaving very little room to draw any kind of
conclusions.

In light of this perhaps its best to leave the field of sex differences to
experts who continue to study but do not have the answers or data to draw any
conclusions.

[1]
[https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/batt...](https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/battle-
sex-differences)

[2]
[https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/book...](https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/book-
reviews)

[3]
[http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-12/forum](http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-12/forum)

[4]
[http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-1/letter...](http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-1/letters)

[5]
[http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-2/letter...](http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-2/letters)

~~~
naasking
> Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender [1] reports even something as
> simple as telling girls before a maths test that this is a test in which
> girls have done well results in dramatically higher scores suggesting the
> field is still in its infancy and fundamental questions about gender roles
> and culture remain.

This is called stereotype bias, and it's recently been debunked because
replications have almost all failed.

------
xster
I'm curious about the social psychological effects at play here since it's
more or less presenting the same content as James Damore (first paragraph page
5) to more or less the same audience.

What made one presentation more palatable than the other.

------
ddingus
This seems like non-news to me.

Really, what we are discussing here is lowering of inhibition. As we see
equality better represented out there, women should feel less inhibited, in
terms of role compliance to get opportunity, and with that, should be
expressing themselves through work, as they would any other thing they are
doing.

~~~
ramblerman
You are doing a disservice by sweeping this under the rug as common sense.

We live in a political climate where people are looking at the tech industry
and especially FANG companies with a microscope and unless they see 50/50
representation they feel there must be inequality at work.

James Damore was fired for highlighting this very fact.

~~~
ddingus
Oh I do not think so. People vary considerably, and gender is a part of that.

What I did not do was declare all people of a given gender different in some
immutable way.

Women and men overlap. What we are seeing is more of the feminime presented,
and that is womens contribution as inhibition is reduced.

There are guys who operate that way, and they are not common. There are women
who operate quite masculine too. Both not so common.

Over time, again as inhibition is reduced, people will present more as who
they are, with greater role freedom, and that is a very good thing.

The workplace will be more vibrant as people are represented in all their
shades.

That too is a good thing.

I am not judging people, the genders, etc... others have, and the pushback on
that is understandable.

The goal here is those who can do the work, desire to do it, should be doing
it. Ideally, they present as who thay are and everyone works together with
mutual consideration, respect, etc...

None of that is controversial.

------
sureaboutthis
Is this the first time someone figured out that women are different than men?

~~~
neolefty
But how much of that difference is nature vs nurture, and how much variation
is there?

The more egalitarian society becomes, the easier it is to see what is
intrinsic and what is imposed. We still have some progress to make before
we'll get a completely clean signal.

------
gammateam
Which is a good thing right?

What are the goals here? the top level responses I see are using this as an
opportunity to talk about why experience is lacking, or as if this is an
ironic outcome showing how its all a waste of time to get to the same result
of the domesticated housewife.

I think at this point, focusing exclusively on the highest selective evolution
of "merit" and skill is the flaw. If we are trying to grow the economic pie
and cater to the most people, then hiring/career growth practices based on
"the best" at the theoretical best academic or refined practice will have
diminishing returns for companies. And this isn't saying that there is no
circumstance where women or some other subgroup would be able to conform to
the strict merit based regime in proportional numbers as incumbent groups. It
is saying that the barking up this tree is flawed to begin with, if you can
address a greater market by having a variety of views of the market.

Now that we have participation in the workforce, it would be more productive
addressing how goods and resources are appropriated amongst people that help
in any way, how incentives are aligned with the growth of the effort.

~~~
manfredo
This summarized my view as well. If you plot the share of women's majors over
time, computing's decline coincides with an increase in medical and law school
enrollment. If, say, a woman wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but knew society
wouldn't respect women in these roles and chose computing instead, was that a
good thing? I'd say no.

I like to joke with people, there is an extremely simple way of solving the
gender gap in tech: universities can just mandate that a certain percentage of
women major in computing related fields. Just select 30% of women by lottery
and forbid them to choose a major other than computing related ones. Of
course, most reasonable people are against such a measure.

~~~
gammateam
I'm all for facetious humor but this is a bad joke for this thread

~~~
manfredo
Perhaps "joke" is the wrong term, it's more of a thought exercise. The point
is to illustrate the fact that equal representation at the expense of agency
is not a good thing - which absolutely is relevant to the discussions going on
in this thread.

------
knorker
Woah there, you can't say that! That's what Damore got fired for!

~~~
probably_wrong
Stealing from myself from an old comment [1]: there is a difference between
what Damore _intended_ to say (assuming the best case) and what his memo
_actually_ said. He might have wanted to say "women tend like other things",
but his memo ended up saying "women are incapable of doing this thing".

He may have had good intentions, but in writing the difference matters. A
similar result is seen when authors argue that widely assumed interpretations
of their literary characters are not what they intended. That, I believe, is
what got him fired.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758)

~~~
jki275
I just went back and read Damore's memo, and that idea does not appear
anywhere in it.

I'm curious how you tortured that out of his words.

~~~
probably_wrong
I don't want to copy-paste from myself, so I would suggest checking the
comment I linked, or even better, the article where I commented.

~~~
jki275
It's still not in what he wrote. Perhaps you see it there, but it's not. In
fact, it's the opposite of what he wrote.

------
pluma
There's a fairly simple explanation: in egalitarian societies femininity is
socially acceptable even in "traditionally male" occupations. So women don't
need to act "masculine" to make progress in those jobs. When it's socially
acceptable for a CEO to be a mother and a woman, more women will feel
comfortable pursuing a family in addition (rather than in exclusion) to a
career.

There's another fairly simple explanation: "equal opportunity" is not the same
as "non-sexist". Without knowing how "gender-egalitarian"-ness is measured
(it's suspicious that it uses the phrase "more developed") it's impossible to
tell what the societal attitudes actually look like. But it's entirely
possible that the countries with the most egalitarian laws still have strict
gender roles that are socially reinforced.

So either way the lesson isn't "feminism is wrong" or "equal opportunity is
meaningless": either equal opportunity allows women to succeed without
abandoning their gender role, or egalitarianism masks the harm of socially
reinforced gender roles, or maybe even both.

Much like "if climate change is wrong", even if "gender disparity is innate
and egalitarianism doesn't eliminate the differences" (or whatever one might
construe the paper's outcome to mean), the worst case outcome of social
justice is that we've made the world a nicer place and "butch" women, "girly"
men and non-binary folk face less resistance. Or, y'know, maybe we're right
and the changes actually eliminate injustice and help everyone.

That said, it's telling that Jordan Peterson and James Damore are mentioned in
these HN comments as if they were legitimate authorities (not to mention
actual "NPC" throwaways as if this were reddit) and nobody bats an eye. So
maybe to those people social progress is bad.

~~~
busterarm
> When it's socially acceptable for a CEO to be a mother and a woman, more
> women will feel comfortable pursuing a family in addition (rather than in
> exclusion) to a career.

Unfortunately this is probably going to be an unpopular thing to say, but I've
seen how much work goes into both being a CEO and being a full-time parent up
close.

(With the caveat of: in the work culture here in the US...) Running a business
that employs a significant number of people and having daily, hands-on parent
interaction with your child are mutually exclusive. It doesn't matter if you
are a mother or a father.

If you want to change this fact, you'll need to start implementing controls on
working hours & days like Germany did. You also have to do that knowing that
crunch time is one of the competitive market advantages that the US offers.

~~~
pluma
> With the caveat of: in the work culture here in the US

That's the point, though. The work culture in the US is actively hostile
towards employees. Sick days usually seem to count towards your vacation days
and expecting mothers and young parents barely get any additional time off.

As a counter-example, some businesses outside the US have "part-time" CEOs,
sometimes with two people sharing the position if a full-time position is
unavoidable.

This is why I said that "egalitarian" policies make the world a nicer place: a
lot of policies necessary to make work culture more egalitarian also improve
work culture for everyone else too, like reducing the number of working hours
and increasing social welfare (i.e. paid time off for parents, actual paid
medical leave instead of "sick days", etc).

------
magicalist
aka the more women differ from men, the more they have equal opportunities.

But it's weird, where are all the correlation/causation and "soft science"
comments? I guess it's still early.

~~~
pluma
Correlation equals causation if you like the implications. Soft science is
hard science if it helps you justify your biases.

Same reason people flock to a failed "psychologist" who tells them to clean
their room and live like lobsters (except, y'know, he doesn't actually
understand lobsters either). Same reason some random Xoogler kid misquoting
cherry-picked "facts" is defended by HN commenters. Same reason a throwaway
troll comment remains unflagged and undeleted for hours.

But hey, as long as we all pretend to be anarcho-capitalists, we can still
claim we're revolutionaries.

------
jernfrost
I am highly sceptical to this study. Does anyone have a list of what they
measured as differences and how they did it?

The reason I am a sceptic is because as a Scandinavian I notice easily how
much more macho men are in less gender equal societies and how much more
feminine the women are.

I don’t think it is an accident that the world’s top female boxer is Norwegian
rather than say Italian.

I do there is something to the equality paradox but I suspect it is more
complex than this research suggests.

60% of published papers in life sciences turns out to be rubbish. So
statistically speaking one should have a natural scepticism to any bold
claims.

~~~
tralarpa
> 60% of published papers in life sciences turns out to be rubbish

Research in life science:

\- Very difficult to conduct repeatable experiments of sufficient size

\- Lot of pressure because of lack of funding (e.g. hard to get money through
projects with industry like engineers)

\- Done by people with problems with logical thinking

\- Done by people who apply methods (data analysis, statistics,...) without
understanding them

The perfect combination...

I welcome all downvotes.

~~~
Majestic121
> \- Very difficult to conduct repeatable experiments of sufficient size

Fair point

> \- Lot of pressure because of lack of funding (e.g. hard to get money
> through projects with industry like engineers)

Fair point

> \- Done by people with problems with logical thinking

What ?

> \- Done by people who apply methods (data analysis, statistics,...) without
> understanding them

What ?

> I welcome all downvotes.

Asking for downvotes is the best way to make your message looks like it's
coming from an edgy teenager. If you actually want to make your message go
through, I would recommend refraining from doing so, even if you think/know
you're going against the crowd.

~~~
tralarpa
I don't say those people are stupid. But if you look at the publications it's
very obvious that they are not trained in the same way as other scientists.
The jumping to conclusions, the application of methods without knowing their
constraints, the lack of imagination when exploiting a problem (i.e. asking
questions like "Are there other theories that could explain our results").

I have been in several situations where those people were explaining to me one
of their research problems (in a friendly chat) and then I ask a question
("What about...?") that appears logical to me and they stare at me and reply
"Why didn't you tell us you are working in this field, too?".

> If you actually want to make your message go through

What message? Go through what/where?

