Jessica Wade: evaluation

Transcript context

…Now, you’re on Twitter, but my anecdotal impression is that social media, in general, have swung some of the bias back toward men, who, for whatever reasons, are more likely to be vocal on social media in terms of celebrity and science. Do you agree, disagree? I think social media has been extraordinarily powerful for connecting people from groups where they are marginalized. People from historically excluded backgrounds coming together — potentially, they’re the one Black physicist in their institution, but they can come on social media and find a whole bunch of other Black physicists and get that confidence and that voice to be able to go out, give that amazing presentation, get that big research funding, and start doing their own thing. Whilst I’m sure you’ve got the kind of cult of ego and these professors with their super labs and their lack of actual basic support for PhD students — and Twitter perpetuates that ego — actually, the magical parts of it, the magical parts of any of these social media, for me, is uniting people who before didn’t feel like they had a voice and saying, “There’s actually this amazing neuroscientist. If you go to Canada, you can meet and connect with them.” People are changing their research fields. They’re changing their institutions where they work, and they’re really getting more opportunity. After the unjust murder of George Floyd, there was a huge outcry and support from the Black academic community to come together and to do more to support Black researchers. There were these movements set up: Black in Chemistry, Black in Physics, Black in Neuro. They’ve galvanized a completely different change and approach to funding scientific research scholarships that have been made available. That’s happened within the last few years just because people came together on social media. So yes, there’s the egomaniacs, but then there’s also this kind of beautiful stuff happening as well, and I hope that that continues. How will artificial intelligence affect gender participation gaps?…

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