I too am a chemist: physical organic chemist, passionate lover of Molecular Orbitals. And have some friends (faculty members at UCLA) who are immunologists/chemists.

Interestingly enough, last year at my undergrad re-union, both guys were adamant about one thing: they would NOT accept female grad students. Or accepting, they moved them out ASAP.

Reason was – they said – was the attitutude of “good enough for government work”. Don said he has regularly despaired when trying to decipher their notebooks: sloppy, illogical, and full of unproven hunches.

From your observation, sounds like you’ve had or know someone who has had the same problems and results.

What do you think…surely there no excuse – maybe – now that we have genomes studied in detail?

Best Regards, OB.

Charlie

Chemists (such as myself) see that as a tautology.

The molecular biology literature is replete with poorly designed experiments (e.g., “we didn’t see it, so it must not be there” – are you sure you would have seen it if it had been there? Positive controls, please!) and conclusions not supported by the data. The standard (as was once patiently explained to me) was that any data that did not contradict a hypothesis supported it. Uh, no.

And to your last point, the gender balance is much closer to 50/50 than in physical sciences.

Biology is currently being taken over by biochemistry, genetics, and math techniques. This is one reason that biologists (speaking in generalities) tend to be on the left. Memorization and soft thinking can be still used (albeit to a lesser and lesser extent) in bio sciences…you can still get an advanced degree in botany, although job prospects in both academia and industry are not that great.

One can observe – although women are more in evidence than when I was younger, but not wiser – that most practitioners (both academia and industry) are still white or Asian-American males. “Others”, including women, are around 15-20%, depending on the specialty area.

And so it goes…

Even the liberals I grew up with in the 1980s thought Ronald Reagan was awesome when he was president. I did, too, at the time. Later, I hated him in hindsight. Later, again, in even more hindsight, I split the difference between my childhood opinion of him and my young adulthood opinion of him.

Every single last person I know who is my age hates Political Correctness and anything associated with it. Hates it. And almost everyone I know is left-of-center to one extent or another. I have radical leftist friends who hate it. I hated it in college, and I hated when I thought of myself as a radical leftist.

It isn’t the worst political idea ever, but it is the most irritating to normal people regardless of their other political views.

Oh, I disagree especially considering how preachy the average “progressive” is. Like Jehova’s Witness, only stinkier.

They attained the desired result. People who can’t make distinctions inevitably see success as cheating and failure as oppression.

Boy, its not for the lack of trying, let me tell you that.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/22/what-is-ur-kidz-lirning-at-linn-benton-community-college/

It seems as if on their way out, boomer acedemia will do their best to leave their impressions on the next generation.