more on Transgendered Professor Stirs Debate Over Women in Science

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Aleecia M. McDonald" <aleecia () aleecia com>
Date: July 16, 2006 11:09:31 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Transgendered Professor Stirs Debate Over  
Women in Science

Hi Professor Farber,

I read a different story about Ben Barres. Both are summaries of work  
I have not read. The WSJ version leads with the anecdote about his  
work being better than his "sister's." It also contains a comment  
that was news to me: "Although more men than women in the U.S. score  
in the stratosphere on math tests, there is no such difference in  
Japan, and in Iceland the situation is flipped, with more women than  
men scoring at the very top." See http://online.wsj.com/public/ 
article/SB115274744775305134- 
XdSchQ2Rdi04R6vbm6fXfW9SXY8_20070713.html?mod=blogs for the full text.

This discussion reminds me of another recent article about a woman  
Nobel laureate in Germany. The question lingers, does Ben Barres make  
good chocolate cakes?


Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/science/04conv.html? 
ei=5070&en=6a56a4c8dcae9f90&ex=1153195200&pagewanted=print
July 4, 2006
A Conversation With Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Solving a Mystery of Life, Then Tackling a Real-Life Problem
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

If a list were made of the great biologists of the past 100 years,  
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard would certainly be on it.

In the 1980's, she and Eric F. Wieschaus solved one of the central  
mysteries of life: how the genes in a fertilized egg direct the  
formation of an embryo. For their discovery, Dr. Nüsslein-Volhard,  
Dr. Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis received the 1995 Nobel Prize in  
Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Nüsslein-Volhard was just the 10th woman  
to win a Nobel Prize in one of the sciences.

Now 63, she directs the Max Planck Institute for Developmental  
Biology in Tübingen, Germany. In her off-hours, she works to improve  
the status of women in science.

With her own money and a $100,000 award from Unesco-L'Oréal's Women  
in Science Program, she has organized the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard  
Foundation, which offers grants to young female scientists for baby  
sitters and household help.

Dr. Nüsslein-Volhard was in New York last month to talk about her  
Kales Press book "Coming to Life: How Genes Drive Development."

Q. Grants for baby sitters and housecleaners? Is this the kind of  
foundation a male Nobel Prize winner could have thought of?

A. No one thought of it! (Laughs) Not even non-Nobel prize winners!

I am often asked why there is discrimination against women in  
science. And I have given it some thought. With prejudicial  
attitudes, you can't really do much. You can point out when people  
discriminate and ask them not to. At the Max Planck Institute, we  
made a little pamphlet telling the men when they do it, because they  
often don't know.

In German science, we have a special problem. We lose talented women  
at the time they get pregnant. Some of it occurs because they are  
encouraged — by their husbands, bosses and the government — to take  
long maternity leaves.

Germanic thinking has it that children can only be properly brought  
up if the actual mother is cleaning and picking up. Many stop their  
research for two or three years. Later, these young women find it  
difficult to get back. They drop out.

Q. And how does a $400-a-month grant plug a brain drain?

A. We try to find the gifted ones, where it would be a real pity if  
they dropped out. We say: use these funds to buy yourself time away  
from household matters. We still expect they'll work full-time and  
get day care for the kids. This is meant to ease the extra workload  
they have because of children.

Q. Did you experience gender bias when you were a student?

A. I didn't have children. But when I finished my doctoral thesis, it  
was published and I was only listed as the second author. The boss at  
the laboratory where I worked said: "Let this man be first author. He  
started the project and has family, and he needs his career."

I had done almost all the work. And yet, I agreed! I could still  
foam: I get so angry about it.

Q. Did you foam last year when Lawrence Summers, then the president  
of Harvard, suggested that women were less likely to have "an  
intrinsic aptitude" for scientific careers?

A. He missed the point. In mathematics and science, there is no  
difference in the intelligence of men and women. The difference in  
genes between men and women is simply the Y chromosome, which has  
nothing to do with intelligence.

What troubles me is that some might think: "Well, if the president of  
Harvard says this, it must be true. He's just being attacked because  
he said something politically incorrect." What Summers said was  
scientifically incorrect.

Q. When you made your Nobel discovery, was there a moment when you  
felt: "Aha, I have changed what humans know about nature?"

A. At the time we did the experiments, Eric Wieschaus and I knew the  
work was important. Nonetheless, one always struggles with whether  
the experiment is right.

Q. Can you describe your Nobel experiments in lay terms?

A. We first bred a large number of fruit fly families where just one  
gene was absent. If an embryo did not develop a head or a gut, we  
could then say, "This gene is important for the shape of a head or a  
gut." In our first published paper, we described 20 or so "control  
genes" affecting the subdivision of the embryo's body into regions.  
Using what were then newly developed technologies, we and others then  
isolated the genes.

We figured out what they did biochemically and how they interacted.

The sum was: We developed a detailed understanding of how an embryo's  
shape is determined by genes. We found many of these genes were  
similar to those implicated in human genetic diseases. This was not  
anticipated by us but was important for the Nobel Prize, I think.

Q. Your country is being led by a Ph.D. physicist. Do you think  
Chancellor Angela Merkel's election has improved the status of German  
women in science?

A. It might be of influence. I am happy that she is there because she  
understands science outside of ideology. In the Green Party and among  
some in the Socialist Party, there are people who are anti-science.  
They are against genetically modified foods and atomic energy. She  
sees through it, and maybe this will help.

Another thing, we have since 1990 this Embryo Protection Law, which  
says that eggs are human beings from the time of fertilization. Cells  
in a Petri dish are considered the same as a full human!

Q. Is Germany's embryo-protection law a reaction to the pseudo- 
science of the Nazi period when physicians performed experiments on  
concentration camp prisoners?

A. It's probably the reason why German research laws are so  
restrictive — just to be on the "safe" side. If the people don't  
understand stem cells or gene diagnosis, they say, "Let's make laws  
that make it impossible that something bad can happen."

Q. You were born in 1942. Did you ever speak with your parents about  
their activities in the Nazi years?

A. Nearly everyone in my age group had those conversations with their  
teachers — though often the parents would not speak about it. In my  
family, we talked. They were not heroes, but it was O.K. They were  
not in the Nazi Party. My grandfather was dismissed from his job  
because he was not in the party. Also, he hid Jews. And one aunt was  
put in a concentration camp.

One of my colleagues is a nephew of Dietrich Bonhoeffer [the anti- 
Hitler resistance leader]. What we observed, with consternation, is  
the way people tried to live normal lives.

When you read letters between my mother and father while he was at  
the front, it's about where to get food and knitting a pullover for  
"Little Janni." After the war, my mother was in a group of women with  
Emmi Bonhoeffer [Bonhoeffer's sister-in-law].

They helped refugees from Auschwitz give testimony against those who  
ran the concentration camps. My mother told us there were things from  
that time she felt awful about and she had to do some good.

Q. It's often said that artistic work and scientific inquiry are  
similar. Do you find it so?

A. Yes and no. It is certainly a creative act to understand phenomena  
in nature. But after some time, scientific discoveries no longer  
depend on the personality of the scientist. Whoever discovered the  
double helix, it is true. It doesn't matter whether Watson and Crick  
discovered it, or Rosalind Franklin. Yet, no matter how much time  
passes, Mozart is still Mozart.

Q. Every article I've read about you mentions that you bake an  
incredible chocolate cake. Why is that?

A. It's true! They want to make sure "she's still a woman." There is  
terrible prejudice against women who are successful. If she's  
beautiful, she must be stupid. And if a woman is smart, she must be  
ugly — or nasty. I think it makes some people feel better to learn I  
bake good chocolate cake.



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