From "She Was the Only Woman in a Photo of 38 Scientists, and Now She’s Been Identified" (NYT), about what happened after this tweet went up:
Hey Twitter I'm on a mission:— Candace Jean Andersen (@mycandacejean) March 9, 2018
The woman in this photo was an attendee at a 1971 International Conference on Biology of Whales.
She is the only woman, & the only one captioned "not identified" in the article I found the photo in. All the men are named.
Can you help me know her? pic.twitter.com/MifZvdRXRr
(It's strangely hard to fit my usual tags onto this story.)
ADDED: This story brings up a painful memory. Years ago, I gave a talk at a law school (which I won't name). I was the only speaker, and afterwards, they brought in a photographer to memorialize the event, and I was standing with a group of law professors who'd come up to chat and to thank me. I happened to be standing at one end of a group of perhaps 5 persons, and I could tell that the photographer was framing the shot to exclude me.
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75 comments:
Would you consider putting more about this story up? Its a NYT link and I don't want to use the click.
Wallowing in self-pithy helps no one.
I'll bet she was the only non-virgin in the photo.
Speaking of tags, your doggie tag lost a letter last night.
You don't have a "crowdsourcing" tag? Now's the time. That's one of the beneficial powers of the WWW, the ability for people from distant places to contribute their part to solving a problem, in this case the ID of someone photographed long ago. It's great, because there is probably someone out there, maybe more than one, who can actually supply the answer and the context.
How strange that the woman was there, in the group, and yet not identified along with the men in attendance.
On Sunday, Sheila said her full name is Sheila Minor Huff. She is a retired, 71-year-old grandmother of five who belly dances, volunteers at her church and lives in Virginia.
That's all you need to know, Maybee.
During the gay worship hysteria of the 90s, my work product was commonly stolen from me by my supervisors and represented to management as the work of a gay co-worker.
I introduced the concept of building an in-house video/audio production facility to one of my employers in the mid-90s. I wrote the proposals, priced the products, bought the equipment, supervised its installation and taught everybody how to make it work. I created, essentially, an in-house radio and TV network accessible via the company intranet.
All the credit went to my gay co-worker. The gay worship was so intense that it was thought impossible that a hetero guy could have managed the creation of such an arts oriented project. Only gay men could have the sensibility to do that. That was received wisdom during the early years of multimedia.
The gay guy was promoted based on copping my work product as his.
About this time, I copped a "fuck you" attitude to all of the quota complainers. Fuck you, quota complainers.
Oh, goody! Let's start dredging up decades-old grist for the outrage mill.
"The photo, with her brown face half obscured by the people around her, is a perfect metaphor for the larger issue of history’s failure to record the work of women scientists, particularly women scientists of color."
Isn't it up to her to stand where she can be seen? That sentence makes it look like everyone tried to stand in front of her. Others in the picture somehow figured out how to get between the people in front of them. Maybe she's just shy.
She was only a technician. That probably explains why she was not named. Where the other people just technicians too.
I'm assuming since the NYT doesn't tell us if any of the men were technicians too, that the black female was the only technician included in the photo.
Probably to show how liberal and open minded they are.
I've never checked whether my name was in conference group photos.
It's the women's workplace issues committee effect. Women aren't serious about science but about being in science.
Biology ought to have had lots of women, though. Organic chemistry, pre-med, and failure tracks after pre-med.
All day permanent outrage. That fucking Trump.
1971? Wouldn't she have been the one to write down all the names for the person who wrote the photo caption?
Perhaps like "How Many Donkeys?: An Arabic Counting Tale" she just forgot to include herself.
Blogger rhhardin said...
I've never checked whether my name was in conference group photos.
Me either.
Maybe she didn't like how she looked in the picture and left her name off for later plausible deniability?
The 1971 version of untagging yourself from a FB photo.
Sheila said her full name is Sheila Minor Huff.
Minor Huff seems like an apt name for the writer of the piece.
Althouse, the putative feminist, couldn’t even manage to work the woman’s name into her blog post.
“Here’s a working scientist, contributing alongside her colleagues, and she’s not even given the professional courtesy of having her name recorded at a scientific conference,” Ms. Shetterly said on Sunday.
It was the 1971 International Conference on Biology of Whales.
Look at the men. Expectedly, you see scientists, albeit men, mostly from countries where whales and more importantly whaling had been traditional industries. Namely, Russian, Japanese and Northern European.
If anything, it's a compliment to the US that a young, aspiring woman of color (who at that stage of her career was still a "museum technician") was a party to the US delegation and was included in the group shot. Clearly, she wasn't a marquee delegate at that stage of her career.
Dr. Wilson remembered. He told Ms. Allen that the woman had worked as a museum technician, and her name was Sheila.
“Sheila was working at the museum in the Division of Mammals when I first started there in September 1971,” Dr. Wilson said, adding that she was “an excellent technician.”
If the photo was shot by a non-US attendee, it's easy to understand why the person might not have known her name.
Talking about looking for the evil in what was good about the US!
To every non-principal, who was never afforded full recognition, this is not for you. Your life and work do not matter to the monotonically divergent who languish in [color] diversity, and construct congruences ("="), for political leverage and profit.
So was she omitted because she was:
black
Woman
Technician (not a scientist)
It's a grievance triple play!
Now if she had been a white woman technician, or a black woman scientist, or some other combination it would have been OK. But she had 3, not 2 but 3, strikes against her and could not be named.
Or maybe they just forgot and nobody knew who she was.
I always make sure my name and website, changeover.com, are included in any conference pics. I'm a publicity whore. The main reason I participate in these things is for the publicity. (Money helps but the publicity is usually the more valuable of the 2)
John Henry
Blogger mockturtle said...
"Oh, goody! Let's start dredging up decades-old grist for the outrage mill."
Decades old grist? How about centuries old grist? Did you know Thomas Jefferson had slaves? Did you know Ben Franklin had a number of affairs?
I visited Japan, I don't remember if it was in the 80's, 90's, or when exactly. I was taken by my host to a sushi restaurant and given what I thought was a piece of raw fish on rice. My host, Kenji, smirked and said that you just ate whale. It was then that I realized that people are no good, and will betray you. I drive a made-in-Japan inexpensive car, and I would probably drive a Mercedes if I felt like it. Elie Wiesel often said that he didn't believe in the collective guilt of the German people for the Holocaust. In the 30's, it was hard to find a German who didn't support Hitler. What about collective guilt for Global Warming? Most every adult in the U.S. drives a motor vehicle. Most gay people get it right - they don't reproduce. They should have less collective guilt than most. Until I see mass suicides by the people who voted for Trump, my lack of faith in humanity will remain unchanged. Sorry Elie, humans collectively suck.
Anyone can play scientist in their own basement, but scientists and technicians generally have different roles in the professional world.
No result for me on Google Scholar. I always figured that you would have to be published to be a "working scientist" but I can't keep up with what we are doing to the language, and I have missed people on Google Scholar before.
Here's another one about "HIdden Figures"
The biographical text follows the lives of Human Computers such as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three mathematicians (known as "human computers"
Are people who do calculations "mathematicians"? Is your spreadsheet a "mathematician"? If the hero on the move Hidden Figures really did come up with the idea of using Euler's Method, then wow! So I checked.
Rudy Horne, a mathematician at Morehouse College in Atlanta, was the math advisor to the movie, and it was he who suggested Euler's Method for the key blackboard scene.
“[Director Theodore Melfi] really liked that concept,” Horne said in an interview with NPR station KGOU. “I didn't expect him to, but he actually put that into the script.”
The scene focuses on how to get John Glenn's capsule back to Earth, and Horne says NASA had derived a set of differential equations in the late 1950s to describe the re-entry.
Euler's Method is one way to solve the equations, Horne said, which is why he proposed it for the film.
"The work for solving these coupled differential equations was done by the whole team of researchers at NASA and possibly in part by Katherine Johnson," Horne wrote in an email to Inside Science.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/exploring-math-hidden-figures
This is what happens when nobody who knows anything about math or science writes news stories, and movies, which is especially rich coming from people who always preach about how they "believe in science!"
You could certainly make the case that absent discrimination, Katherine Johnson might have been a scientist, rather than a human calculator, same with Sheila Minor Huff, but this is faith based fantasy stuff.
But still, those of us who still hold out hope of getting laid occasionally don’t press the point too hard, so to speak.
Gee. And my life has been so much more fulfilling due to that Conference on the Biology of Whales in 1971.
"You don't have a "crowdsourcing" tag?"
No. I have "crowdfunding."
I hate having to make new tags. If I don't have one yet, unless it's something new or something I know I can go back and add retroactively (which I'm willing to do), I think it's tag clutter. I regret all the old tags that only have one or two posts.
Ageism. She's maybe the youngest person in the photo?
I have a couple of such conference photos from Gordon Conferences in the 1990s . There is no name key, so all of us are lost to obscurity.
The complainer is probably thinking about the famous Solvay Conference photo which included Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. The names were added later by historians. Tough if she was both obscured and half obscure.
For decades, my HS alumni magazine has identified people only in photos that include the headmistress, which is a goodly percentage. Reunion photos: no ID, ever. My donations: never.
A good, heart lifting article, Sheila seems like a great person.
She was 25 when included in the picture. She was working full time and working on her Master’s degree. Did she have it yet or not? Maybe she was just a highly admired technician who was graciously asked to pose with the group of scientists at a conference. Maybe all the rest of the identified persons were listed on the conferee attendance info, maybe she was not. Maybe prejudice kept her name off the list of those in the photo. Can’t judge at this time. Let’s not judge, let’s appreciate her for who she is. And go forward.
It was certainly a breaching of etiquette to leave her name out. Probably just a fluke. No use in blubbering over it after all this time.
I could tell that the photographer was framing the shot to exclude me
Why? Was it personal? A male photographer, slighted. A female chauvinist, who marginalizes the competition.
I hope my last comment was not sounding harsh. At least not on porpoise.
tim in vermont: Are people who do calculations "mathematicians"? Is your spreadsheet a "mathematician"? If the hero on the move Hidden Figures really did come up with the idea of using Euler's Method, then wow! So I checked.[...]
This is what happens when nobody who knows anything about math or science writes news stories, and movies, which is especially rich coming from people who always preach about how they "believe in science!"
And it's not as if you even have to know anything about the actual math and science - you just have to know a bit about the history of math and science, which one would think all those non-scientists who "fucking love SCIENCE!" would take the trouble to read about.
Anybody with a glancing familiarity with the history of, say, 19th and 20th century astronomy, knows what "human computers" did, that a fair number of them were women, and that the phrase didn't mean "soo-per math jeen-yus", which is apparently what people who get their knowledge of the history of science from twitter seem to think it meant.
and I could tell that the photographer was framing the shot to exclude me.
Another Althouse hot button. A guy would have been amused by being excluded.
Just another example of why feminism is an ideology for idiots. Science is ultimately about truth, not The Truth beloved by religions, but the only kind of truth there is — tentative and conditional. Personalities are irrelevant. Scientific truth reveals itself to anyone, one doesn't need to be a somebody. Science is like god in that it is no respecter of persons.
People don't take me seriously all the time. I don't care. I'm busy elsewhere.
Until I see mass suicides by the people who voted for Trump, my lack of faith in humanity will remain unchanged.
Shouldn't those who believe strongest in Global Warming be the ones committing suicide?
I've found, if you always do something you like doing, people will take advantage of it because it's good stuff, and half of those will be hostile (because mostly you're not paying attention to hierarchy), and half of them will be welcoming and eager to give you credit even if you don't want it.
It doesn't matter which half you're working in. It's stuff you like doing.
It's a guy thing.
Are people who do calculations "mathematicians"?
When I was a junior engineer at Douglas AC in 1959, my job was "Mathematician I."
I was using a Marchant calculator much of the time.
We would use it to check programs by running the equations with dummy data.
The rest of the time I was programming an IBM 650 and several programmable printers.
and I could tell that the photographer was framing the shot to exclude me.
Could have been worse. Poor Ann-Margaret.
LOCKHART
All right ...Ann-Margret and entourage are due here next week. I want someone to be there on the airfield and stick with her for a couple of days. Uh, Rafterman, you take it.
RAFTERMAN
Aye-aye, sir.
LOCKHART
Get me some good low-angle stuff. Don't make it too obvious, but I want to see fur and early morning dew.
"history’s failure to record the work of women scientists, particularly women scientists of color."
History itself is bad. Particularly bad.
What did history record about the 1971 International Conference on Biology of Whales? I feel as though I might have missed some important whale lore.
Trumpit
My God, it must be horrible being you. I am so sorry.
International Conference of X means expenses paid junket. It comes out of the department budget and you get to travel.
If you need to list a publication you can list your talk. Underlings may accompany the pressure-to-talk speaker, if there are funds.
Just how it works, not how it should work. I don't know that anything could be actually accomplished at a conference anyway. I've never seen it happen.
I replied "I don't travel" to the last several invitations. The telecommuter attitude.
Nothing like some Trumpit dystopic visions to start the week.
Althouse,
Did you see the resultant photo you felt you were being framed out of?
Where science happens is in emails, if anybody asks.
Oh, goody! Let's start dredging up decades-old grist for the outrage mill.
Hey, 1971 was only 47 years ago.
The hockey stick scandal in global warming is a good example of science in emails.
The only problem was that the science they were doing was a science of getting a specific answer rather than a science of curiosity. But it was all technical talk, as it typically is.
From the article, "My curiosity nagged at me" -- That's sexist!
the photographer could be gay and just gravitate towards subjects closer to his preferences
"Can you help me know her?"
Seriously, who speaks like this about a face in a decades-old photograph, or about anyone for that matter?
Althouse's personal photo story reminds me of something that has happened to me on quite a few occasions.
My last name is Italian, but relatively rare in the US, and many people assume it is Hispanic in origin. Although I received my last name from my very Italian father, I inherited my mother's fair-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed, northern European looks.
I speak often at professional conferences, and I've lost count of the times that I've shown up at a conference, introduced myself to the session chair or conference organizer, and been greeted by a momentary look of disappointment or confusion, often accompanied by awkward stammering along the lines of, "Oh! I thought you were...Umm, sorry, never mind. Hey, it's really great to meet you!"
One time, I stepped on stage to make sure that my materials were ready, and the session moderator tried to escort me off stage because "the speaker will be here any moment."
"history’s failure to record the work of women scientists, particularly women scientists of color"
History has actually done a pretty good job of recording the work of the female "scientists" who got Larry Summers fired. I am more concerned about dogs and horses. History has failed almost entirely to record the important scientific work of dogs and horses, particularly small dogs and female horses.
It's really pretty funny, in a sick kind of way. Poor Larry was explaining his theory about a biological phenomenon, and the "woman scientist" said that it made her physically sick to have to listen to him. He should have said "See?".
When I was a junior engineer at Douglas AC in 1959, my job was "Mathematician I."
So I wonder how they distinguish people who use other people's math to do calculations from people who apply math to create novel solutions to problems, or people who create new math?
It's like calling the person who writes HTML and Javascript a "Computer Scientist" Even "engineer" is a stretch. Obviously the purpose is to make inconvenient thoughts hard to think because the language is now been destroyed, and even if you can still think them, you can't express them, and you will be dead soon enough.
Wait, isn't Althouse always frowning on projecting our own thoughts/motivations onto others? How can she tell what the photographer was or wasn't trying to frame? Need some more context please.
Here's what I would ask: for those who think unjust sex and gender discrimination are everywhere and are baked into every aspect of our lives, try to see the progress that has been made, and try to see people as individuals in all their glory and imperfections.
And for those who say 'That was a long time ago, those things are petty, things are better, get over it', I would ask you to try and see what it was that people were reacting to. If you think it's a mere holding on to victimization, then understand that the troubles and struggles were quite real and perhaps modern overcorrections are a normal human response. And understand that it is possible that some of those past struggles persist, even if they have been lessened.
I say this here because I am the son of a scientist and doctor who told me of a myriad of corrosive 'small' issues very much like the one in this post. Being excluded from photographs, not being able to be seen as the authority figure she was, not being addressed respectfully, not being able to get the check at a dinner she was giving for her subordinates. The issues were not only real but their pettiness affected the larger abilities of women such as my mother to push through the very real barriers that were in her way. To give you an idea (if you have read this far), when you read the beginning of first sentence of this paragraph, did you have a tiny internal gendering of the words 'scientist' and 'doctor'? And then did you switch when the words 'mother' and 'she' were used? Now imagine those questions 40 years ago.
My mother went on to become the first woman to be dean of a medical school in the US, and while she died a long time ago, I am confident that if she were still alive she would react to this story with a knowing, wistful smile and then she would get back to work.
With the identification of the woman, you can be sure a note was sent to all the writers in the NYTimes Obit Department to put her on the watch list for her death.
"Why? Was it personal? A male photographer, slighted. A female chauvinist, who marginalizes the competition."
I believe that the person standing in the middle was a tallish white man in a suit, the photographer assumed that was the speaker, and in an effort to get the best shot of the speaker, closed in on him and the seemingly unnecessary person didn't need to be included. That's why I infer prejudice.
Now, part of the problem might have been that other professors were (unwittingly) showing deference to that man. Maybe that's why he ended up in the middle and their demeanor expressed their recognition of him as the alpha character, even though I was the speaker. No one succeeded in getting me, the invited speaker, into the middle, and I'm not the kind of person who struggles against social/physical forces like that. I retreat to the periphery and observe and analyze. That's why I'm a blogger now.
Is her name really "Minor Huff"? If so, someone might be trolling the NYTimes.
recognition of him as the alpha character
So, it wasn't about sex or color. It was that he was, and you weren't, a principal in that particular or related context.
I'm not the kind of person who struggles against social/physical forces like that
There is sure to be another focus in another group picture. It wasn't personal, and it wasn't diversity.
I knew a woman, several years later, whose doctoral dissertation was on whales. She never completed her dissertation, remaining one of the ABD (all but dissertation). She was caught cheating on her grad student husband, so she struck out on both her Ph.D. and her marriage. Her ex did get his doctorate.
Re the “Added”: why are you baiting us?
Is her name really "Minor Huff"? If so, someone might be trolling the NYTimes.
No, it's Major Snit.
The null hypothesis is that "color" (e.g. race, sex) diversity was not a determinative factor.
Shiela Jones Biological Research Technician, according to the thread.
Her ex did get his doctorate.
Which probably explains why she cheated.
You've come a long way, Baby
If you think it's a mere holding on to victimization, then understand that the troubles and struggles were quite real and perhaps modern overcorrections are a normal human response.
I think this would read better in the original German.
It is a joke, but it is illustrative of what happens when one group is allowed to overreact to past grievances.
Since we're asking people to try and see things, I'd ask that we include the seeing that past discrimination of women came with an amount of chivalry and respect that also placed women in higher esteem and respect in many parts of society. This meant that while discrimination was real, it tended not to move too far in that direction lest it violate other social norms.
There is no such offsetting force in the current "overcorrection", and thus no limit to how far society might overcorrect.
She wasn't identified because she left in a "Huff"
haha.
My experience is the opposite of Althouse's one. They ALWAYS want a good looking chick in the group photo - even if she all she did was get the coffee and dounuts.
BTW, I just heard a local radio guy saying the Dems will impeach Trump if they get 2018 because Mueller is going to find TRump guilty of crimes.
The Left is bat shit crazy.
BTW, I just heard a local radio guy saying the Dems will impeach Trump if they get 2018 because Mueller is going to find TRump guilty of crimes.
I think Mueller's plan is to keep the investigation open past the midterms to (a) boost Dem turnout, and (b) get a House more likely to take his flimsy charges seriously.
I don't know that he's going to be able to do that, however.
"Marc Lowenstein said...
"My mother went on to become the first woman to be dean of a medical school in the US . . "
According to Wikipedia, Ann Preston, who died in 1872, was the first female dean of an American medical school. How old are you, anyway?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Preston
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