The NYT had a story yesterday about race and sex diversity in the Earth Sciences. The title: "Earth Sciences Has A Whiteness Problem" with a subheading: "Barely 10 percent of doctoral degrees in the geosciences go to recipients of color. The lack of diversity limits the quality of research, many scientists say." I thought the last sentence especially interesting. How would a different demography improve the science or the quality of the science? Assuming Earth Sciences includes climatology subjects, I thought it might be that more attention to local history would be informative about climate patterns, for example. I read the article because diversity affecting the quality fo the science would be interesting and not something I would come to on my own. Actually, I read it twice because there was, literally, nothing in the article supporting the notion that the 'whiteness problem' had or was affecting the quality of the science. Thinking I might be particularly dense on the topic or blind to it in some way I also read through all 247 comments to see if someone had identified what I missed. No. There was nothing about the quality of the science. The closest was the claim that "earth science classes could be enriched by a greater focus on nonwhite and Indigenous histories and voices, given that 'Indigenous people have a unique connection to the land.'” It is a surprising claim. I do not think it has much to do with Earth Science really, and certainly not a showing that the quality of the science is affected. It is an odd statement on its own. Indigenous people have a unique connection to the land is pretty far from anything like science. It is not remotely credible that Indigenous people have a unique connection to the land because it is not remotely credible that Indigenous people all have the same connection to the land, or any reasonably identifiable set of connections to the land. Even as to people doing the same things with respect to the land, like farming, do not have the same set of connections to the land. Indigenous people does not mean much in this context. No migrations, apparently, until the White people showed up? No discussion of class in the article, except the suggestion that all White people are wealthy.
What is going on at the NYT?
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