YouSaid · the spoken record

Jessica Wade

lines on the record: 73
first: 2023-04-05
most recent: 2023-04-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Saying we need more academic people to start contributing their time to editing this. You know what it's like working in a university, getting people to want to teach and not just do their research all the time. Actually, we need to focus on this public service act of giving people access to knowledge. But we really need to start rectifying some of these content gaps about the Global South, about emerging science, fixing pages about climate so that we provide non-partisan information to lots of people, but also on kind of detailing the contributions of women to all aspects of society. I focus on science and engineering, but there are women doing awesome things in casting, in movies, in writing, and I think we need to start telling their stories too.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perfect, right? I think it's a perfect vision. It's a perfect idea. You know, from working in universities, we have so much access to knowledge, largely taxpayer-funded access to knowledge, that people don't have. So we do have this responsibility to take that information and give it to them. Unfortunately, Wikipedia does have huge gaps in its content because of the types of people who edit it. So because you've got a relatively small group of people who edit Wikipedia a lot, do this huge public service in creating content, the majority of them are men, the majority of them are from the Northern Hemisphere. They're mainly men from North America. You have certain gaps in the type of content that's on there, particularly in biographies of women, anything to do with kind of current sciences is quite badly written about on Wikipedia because lots of academics don't see it as a good time investment. I would work on improving those content gaps. I'd work on really”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Wikipedia is a phenomenal project. I think, you know, it started more than 20 years ago at the beginning of the internet, this democratized platform for sharing information and knowledge. It's kind of a beautiful idea now. I can't imagine Wikipedia working if you started it on this form of the internet. It requires a huge input of kind of public service from volunteers every single page on Wikipedia is written by a volunteer, an expert in a particular thing, someone who's fascinated by a part of history or a topic. And I really love it and it enables and it helps so much of society, teachers, politicians, academics, parents, everyone, home assistants.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that in no way maps into professions? They're larger and taller and they can run faster. Okay. I think that, you know, the size difference is probably the one. You know, I don't want to force anyone to study physics and engineering. I don't want to force any man to do psychology and drama if he doesn't want. But I do want a world where we stop telling people that they are because of their gender, they have some opportunity or some other opportunity. And we just get to a point where we're actually giving people the training and the support they need to go out and take on the challenges that the world is facing. And we get away from that kind of conversation. Yeah, I don't find it very useful at all.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's biological. I think it's because of the way you were taught and introduced at school or the passions and enthusiasms, even of your parents, right? If you sit around your kitchen table every night and you're like, oh, mom, I've got like physics and maths at home work and your mom's like, I've always hated physics and maths, then you, as a young woman, is like, oh, well, my mom hates it, so I'm going to hate it. Whereas boys, because they're always taught that these are subjects that will give you huge opportunity and are really excited and, you know, all these successful men are going on to do them, they just do them anyway. So I think that you see it as being a preference because of the way that society and family has really centered around this fact that girls don't study subjects like physics and engineering, whereas if you gave them all the same opportunity, if we had amazing teachers in schools, if parents were a little less biased about the subjects they do and don't find exciting, I think you'd just see that go. In the UK, we have mandatory high school studying of chemistry.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We should think of it as resulting from preference as a result of what society's nurtured them to think they are interested in, right? So because society can't.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, complete one. But I think having them at all is an indictment of those statements, right? Because it's almost like those ridiculous entrance exams that you used to go to medical school here or graduate school in America, that if you're privileged and surrounded by people who'll help you pass those exams, you get it in. So if you're surrounded by people in your institution who can write your EDI statement, then it doesn't mean that you care remotely about it. It just means you've got someone else to write it for you.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could make it worse. You could use it in quite an effective way, I suppose. And this is entirely in my head at the moment. So I don't know if it could be at all useful, but potentially in allocating scientific funding so that it's less biased. Because at the moment you have bias about nationality, gender, institution. But if you ask an AI to learn from what has been a successful proposal before and what's gone on to actually impact the world, and then use that and try to get it to assess science funding and who should get what, maybe it could be useful unless biased there, but again, it depends on the data that we're feeding it.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, if the person who's evaluating it at the other side can't really tell the difference between the two, then someone who doesn't care very much and can just run this through an AI enabled language model can get the position when I can't. So I think in that sense, it might make it really challenging to differentiate who's actually passionate and who isn't. But it could, I mean, honestly, right now I can't think of any useful way that it will help it. Potentially.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Suppose it could affect it well. I guess it depends with all of these things, the data that the artificial intelligence is going to be trained on. And you've seen it with ChatGPT, I suppose, and I'm sure you've had a few conversations at university about how that's going to change the way we have to set exams and get a lot more creative because these AI tools can now pass exams that you write. I think if you give the data in the correct way, potentially it could give relevant advice. I've seen it kind of hilariously. Some American scientific funding is now requiring EDI statement. I don't know if you do yet. An equity, diversity, and inclusivity statement on a research proposal. And you can sit down as someone like me who really cares about this a lot and really harrow over how to articulate yourself in the word limit, right? And really think about all of the stuff that you've done and the stuff that you're super passionate about. Or you can just ask ChatGPT to write you an EDI statement.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The black academic community to come together and to do more to support black researchers. There was these movements set up, which were kind of black in chemistry, black in physics, black in neuro, and they galvanized a complete different change and approach to funding scientific research, you know, scholarships that have been made available. And that's happened within the last few years just because people came together on social media. So, yeah, there's the Echomaniacs, but then there's also this kind of beautiful stuff happening as well. And I hope that that continues.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think social media has been extraordinarily powerful for connecting people from groups where they are marginalized. People from historically exceeded 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. So 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 medias for me is uniting people who before didn't feel like they had a voice and saying there's actually this amazing neuroscientist there. If you go to Canada you can meet and connect with them. People 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”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's really interesting. I wonder if it's still the same today, I wonder if people still in that commercial bookmark world would still celebrate and see the achievements of women scientists or the achievements of women and take them as seriously as the achievements of men. I still get the feeling, despite you having a huge amount more writing and popular opinion around the need for more women scientists or the work of women scientists or the history of women scientists, it's still a very specific type of person who'll go into a bookshop and by that, you know, not every man who's quite biased or opinionated on these issues will go and buy that fantastic history of women's scientist book, even if they exist. So I think book sellers and bookmarketers can do quite a lot of magic in that space, but we have to make sure it's being read and exciting everyone.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“UK, US. I think probably, I don't know, it's such a big question. I think that if you look at the support women get throughout their careers in academia, the opportunities they get to build their own big research groups while simultaneously taking on caring responsibilities because women still disproportionately get that in society. It is really challenging to succeed and be a really successful professor if you're trying to do all of that other stuff as well, probably in financial sectors, in private sectors, you might get more flexible opportunities to return to work.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think probably it's pretty bad across all sectors. I would say access to education and opportunities in education is obviously massively varied worldwide, but very challenging for women in particular parts of the world to access even basic education.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to kind of become more like a man. You know, here's 10 fantastic steps on how to give a great presentation, like, you know, the power stance stuff. That's not particularly helpful, right? But actually giving people that opportunity, that funding, that space and that support, that is really helpful.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say unproductive ways to encourage women in science, which happen a lot, is constantly telling women in science there aren't any women in science. Constantly we're told, oh, there's only 8% women engineers, so come and be a woman engineer. I don't think that's a particularly useful way. I think the way to do it is to make sure everyone has the same educational opportunities, you know, make sure we have fantastic physics and maths teachers in our high schools and all our high schools, not just the expensive high schools. Make sure they're getting the same kind of career advice and kind of research opportunity. There's quite a lot of evidence that shows that particularly people from historically excluded groups feel more like becoming a scientist if they're introduced to the world of research and see those chances that they could have. And then we're giving people the same support throughout their career, you know, the same access to lab space, the same kind of access to scientific funding, mentorship thing like that. That's really useful and productive. Telling women that they're different or telling women that they”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another fantastic question. I think probably the stereotypes about what it takes to be kind of a great scientist or a great athlete or something like that, you know, that hard work, that commitment, that dedication, that enthusiasm, that curiosity. I'm fine with those kind of things. I don't want people to be stereotyped by their gender or their ethnicity or their physical ability. I want everyone to have the same opportunity and then to just be able to work out exactly what it is that they love and how they're going to make the world better.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And look at a general population without taking into account what society is doing, of course, you're going to see these quite vast results at the end. And then, you know, you've already made your conclusion. So I find those stereotypes not particularly useful. I'm very happy there are lots of women in astronomy. I wish we used those stereotypes about men as well, though.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think those kind of stereotypes aren't very useful. I think it's looking at the way that society has trained women to be, you know, the words that they're told, the advice that they're given from a really young age, the way that they're taught in school, the kind of support they get from their parents and teachers to pursue different subjects. And that associates particular personality traits with them that men probably have and do have just an equal measure, but because of the way that society nurtures and kind of cultures us, we're pushed into these kind of fields. So undoubtedly you might see more women in astronomy because of what society's done, but it's not a biological reason for that. It's just a societal one. I don't even think you have to look back to the 90s. I think you probably still find quite a few academics publishing on this now. But if you design a scientific study destined that you want to be able to show that there's some biological difference between men and women's abilities, you'll be able to design the study in such a way that you show that because you're so biased in the design of doing it. And if you go out and ask people,”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and yeah, that ability to be able to access it and do it. And the way that you're taught at school and what you're taught at school, you know, in the early 1900s, I can speak for the UK, but I'm sure it's common around the world. Women were taught science in a really big way, a much bigger way than they're taught now in chemical sciences and physical sciences, because men were learning Latin and Greek because that was recognized as important. And then society realized women getting really good at these things that could potentially have huge implications pushed the women out and push the men back in. And you had this really big disconnect between what women wanted to do and could do and then what they were allowed to do by society's perspective.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dark sky environment without the bright lights of a city and do it alongside your quite successful husband or father so after astronomy women got quite big in crystallography so there were a few absolutely incredible women crystallographers throughout the 1900s Dorothy Hodgkin, Kathleen Nonsdale, Rosalind Franklin, people who really made that science possible and that was because they were provided entry into that and the way that they were taught at school facilitated doing that kind of research. I found it fascinating they were allowed but only if only we'd had more you can imagine what could have happened.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's such a hard question and a fascinating one. I think probably when you look back at who was allowed to be a scientist in the past, at which type of women were allowed to be a scientist, you were probably quite wealthy and you either had a husband who was a scientist or a father who was a scientist. And you were probably allowed to interact with science at home, potentially in things like polishing the lenses that you might use on a telescope or something like that. Caroline Herschel was quite big on polishing the lenses that Herschel used to be able to go out and look at and identify comets was so successful in identifying these comets that she wanted to publish herself really struggled as a woman to be allowed to do that at kind of the end of the 1800s, beginning of the 1900s. And I think actually it was just that possibility to be able to access and do that science from home, to be able to set up in your beautiful.”
2023-04-05 · Conversations with Tyler · Jessica Wade on Chiral Materials, Open Knowledge, and Representation in STEM · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source