Take a group of seventh graders and ask them to draw pictures of and describe scientists: as you might expect, you get a bunch of pictures of lab coats and adjectives like “dorky”. Take those same seventh graders and introduce them to some real scientists, and the descriptions change.
OK, if I had been one of the scientists they might still use the word “dorky”, but in general, it’s true that meeting scientists will almost always change people’s perceptions of them.
Sir Oolius makes a good point: some of these cartoons of scientists suggest we ought to be rioting. I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of calling for a jihad against 7th graders, though.
I think scientists are sexy… Then again, I have a fetish for wrinkly brains.
I’m not a scientist (unless you consider computer science to be science), nor do I play one on TV. But I am a contra dancer. I recall a dance north of Chicago where one of my fellow dancers was a Fermilab physicist, who wore a T-Shirt celebrating the discovery of the top quark. To my way of thinking, that was cool, not dorky. Most seventh graders would probably dismiss any of my opinions as hopelessly retro, but I offer this one anyway.
Those drawings and statements came from seventh graders?!
Still trying to make the rest of us feel miserable about the future, eh, PZ?
Ashley wrote (before the visit): “First she is someone who other people can count on to be right.”
I like these ones too. Especially the one with all the rats:
http://ali.apple.com/ali_media/Users/1000024/files/others/Draw_Scientists.pdf
1. This is what happens when you jettison the humanities (art, particularly here, and music).
2. I wonder often where the stereotypical “nerd” came from – when I was in grade school/high school the brightest, highest achievers (today’s “nerds”) were the best looking, had the coolest cars/clothes/gadgets, and the best-looking dates. Not a single one had a pocket-protector, nor did the have glasses held together with tape (usually the dumber kids broke their glasses and had to tape them together).
3. All the real scientists I know are really great folks – fun, smart (of course), artistic and very, very “with it”(they STILL don’t sport pocket-protectors)…sort of like grown-up, mature versions of the “nerds” of my youth.
I especially like the girls who drew scientists as men before and as women after they went to FermiLab. It really is important to get kids to interact with real scientists early and often. I am fortunate to live in a college town and have a lot of friends working in the sciences. My kids, when I have them, will get such exposure.
who wore a T-Shirt celebrating the discovery of the top quark. To my way of thinking, that was cool, not dorky.
Anecdote: I work in an engineering/CS environment. A few years ago, one of my co-workers was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of particle tracks on it (souvenir of a student job he’d once had at an accelerator lab). I remarked, “That’s a really geeky shirt!”. He beamed and replied: “Why thank you!!”.
Some of us like being, um, a little out of the mainstream ;-).
There is no reason to think there was any before-and-after change in minds of the children– only in what they were ordered and coached to do. The before is as much a product of that as the after.
Visual communication doesn’t take place except through stereotype. What else were they supposed to draw but a white male with glasses in a lab coat with beakers? Would an elderly Asian woman with one leg and a cleft pallette wearing a tutu and a pith helmet serve as a more effective logo or mascot for scientists? The whole excercise was flawed. Do they not see that the children were being asked to create a logo or mascot?
The after drawings are accurate depictions of real people, but they could just as easily communicate any other career, because career is not predominantly a visual attribute. The parameters of the first assignment are to blame for the cartoons that they produced, because telling the kids to try to communicate “all scientists” through a cartoon is telling them to make “all scientists” a visual thing and get across an abstract concept instead of a specific person.
I just had to call attention to the scientists depicted here.
I am. What, was that a rhetorical question? Never mind. Point taken.
The public in general, not just seventh-graders, could probably benefit from taking a trip to a lab or the field to see for themselves what scientists really do. The less people know what scientists do, the more vulnerable they are to pseudoscientific con men like creationists. On the other hand, if they knew what real science looks like, they might start to get suspicious when it’s pointed out that the Discovery Institute people do nothing other than sit around all day and put out press releases.
My favorite “After” comment shows that some of them still don’t have quite the right idea:
I wish…
C’mon guys, let’s face it. Deep down we know that THIS is what all scientists are like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Simp_frink.png
In all, I think the exercise of taking students out to see scientists at work (and meet them) is an important part of their development, socialogically speaking. You realize that the before images are drawn from TV-induced stereotypes. However, I think the effect of reality may go a lot deeper. While, yes, some may have been coached, I think students would generally walk away from that experience knowing a bit more about scientists as people.
It isn’t a very important scientific lesson, but it is an important lesson in helping foster a healthy respect for scientists and their work. The stereotypes that students hold are likely to be carried with them into adulthood (=voterhood) and influence the way they think about the way science is presented in the media and by public figures. Meeting scientists and talking to them and seeing what they really do from day to day is quite an experience. I did it on my own accord when I was in high school and it really changed my perspective on science — eventually driving me to do it for a career!
Are Dancers Genetically Different Than The Rest Of Us?
At least science can explore the genetic basis of dorkiness.
It all sounded a bit contrived to me. I also noticed that some of the “before” comments weren’t as stereotyped as one might have expected, and the one “after” picture of a scientist holding up the world Atlas-style seemed to show the opposite effect. Which scientist did THAT kid talk to?
Matt, you said:
“Visual communication doesn’t take place except through stereotype. What else were they supposed to draw but a white male with glasses in a lab coat with beakers?”
I agree with most of what you said, but the point is that the lab coat and beakers would indicate someone was a scientist alone, surely? A drawing of a woman or an Asian man in a lab coat with beakers would convey the stereotype “scientist” as well as a white male.
You are correct that they had to use stereotypes, but the stereotyping comes from the equipment the “scientists” are pictured with rather than their actual physical attributes (because of course not all scientists work with beakers while wearing a lab coat).
More mundane than the holding up the world picture, but to which I had a similar reaction: my friend’s daughter brought home a picture she drew of a scientist, and she had drawn a black woman (in lab coat and glasses, but still…)! The others there (who were all science undergrads) were all just as surprised.
Scientists, don’t wait for the kids to come to you, get out there and visit classrooms! If you need help knowing how to do this or what to do once you get there, check out CIRES’ Rescipe (Resources for Scientists in Partnership with Education).
One way for kids to meet real scientists is through school science fairs. I’ve even volunteered at two myself – alas, this year I didn’t have time to do so.
I have learned from this that being a scientist means having a goatee.
I think it’s funny that about half the students drew the same guy with the goatee in the after pictures. I guess he made an impression.
“Those drawings and statements came from seventh graders?!
Still trying to make the rest of us feel miserable about the future, eh, PZ?” Posted by: Caledonian
I guess I shouldn’t show you the drawings made by my college students then, eh?
The Draw A Scientist task has a long, long history in science education. The stereotype is seen across ages, socio-economic groups, and cultures. Ask adults to draw a scientist and you’ll get the same pseudo-Einstein in a lab with test tubes, bunsen burners, and/or a dead thing to dissect.
The statistics are interesting. Of the 31 before/after drawings, here’s how they break down by percentage depictions of men, people with glasses, people with labcoats, and presence of scientific “apparatus”, given as before/after splits. Naturally, there is some degree of error in these figures, as 7th graders’ drawing skills require a certain degree of interpretation as to gender and clothing identity. I did my best.
Men: 84 / 71
Glasses: 77 / 13
Labcoats: 94 / 0
Apparatus: 55 / 29
The percentage of women portrayed almost doubled. The perception of scientists as needing corrective vision plummeted. The Myth of the Labcoat was dispelled entirely, and the perception that scientists are defined by their equipment dropped substantially.
I’m really blown away by the labcoat thing. Not only hadn’t I expected almost unanimous presence of labcoats in the before pictures, but I’m stunned that not a single labcoat remained in the after pictures. What, have labcoats been banned entirely from Fermilab?
Matt Arnold has a very good point. If someone asked me to draw an artist, I’d draw a bearded white male in a smock and beret – because that’s a generally recognised stereotype, even though I know it’s not true (the only artist I know well is a very well-dressed young woman).
Friends of mine who are teachers do say that their pupils are genuinely surprised when the scientist visiting their class is young or female, though. I suspect some of these prejudices are real, but there must be a better way to measure them.
I just like the fact that most of the ‘before’ scientists have the same hairstyle – bald with the tufts over each ear.
In fact, the only person I know with that hairstyle is a phys-ed teacher.
Nothin’ wrong with a full beard.
Or luxuriant flowing hair
Visual communication doesn’t take place except through stereotype. What else were they supposed to draw but a white male with glasses in a lab coat with beakers? Would an elderly Asian woman with one leg and a cleft pallette wearing a tutu and a pith helmet serve as a more effective logo or mascot for scientists? The whole excercise was flawed. Do they not see that the children were being asked to create a logo or mascot?
Matt, I think you are taking things a bit too seriusly. This wasn’t a precise experiment designed to show how kids view scientists before and after you meet them. Also did you miss the writings? It wasn’t about visiual communication alone. A lof of incorrect stereotypes were apparant in the “before” writings. While some of the “after” writings had incorrect stereotypes as well I think most kids managed to find out for themselves that scientists aren’t a class of human beings that are totally different from the rest. A lot of the kids point out after they went to fermilab that the “anyone can become a scientist”. I think that is very encouraging. It is good that the kids realise that if they take an interest and study they can become scientists and that they’d enjoy working in science. So once again, I think you need to relax.
As a Fermilab scientist let me chime in. I suspect that while High Energy Physics doesn’t have a 50% ratio male/female, it does tend to be fairly high. Fermilab’s ratio also tends to be pushed up by the high proportion of visting scientists from foreign countries which, in my opinion, have a ratio closer to parity than the US. I also suspect that these kids were introduced to a, let’s say, non-random selection of the scientists at the lab.
About the “labcoat thing” … I’m pretty sure that they haven’t been banned. But, well, frankly for what we do here at the lab 95+% of the personnel have no reason to need one and those that do probably take them off ASAP to avoid the dorky look. I think I’ve seen someone in one 2-3 times a year over the course of the 20 years I’ve been associated with the lab. On the other hand I have to admit to having worn a Zippy suit — one of those integral paper outfits, you know like the canonical radiation or chem hazard worker. Not because I was dealing with either of those hazards, though they do exist here at the lab, but rather because crawling around on the floors under some of the detectors in some of the buildings can be pretty dirty business. There were paper lab coats available as an alternative, but what would be the point of keeping your shirt clean and ending up with filthy pants.
In terms of the equipment, the test tube and beakers (not much need of those here at the lab) were replaced by computers in some cases. But then again that is the most common tool for most of us in the field so that’s a fair change. The other “tool of the trade”, the detectors themselves, are generally too large a scale (10’s of meters in size) for kids to make the association or attempt to draw them.
Frankly I’m not suprised by the outcome. I suspect that the program was designed to do just what it did — break stereotypes — and various factors were tweaked to enhance/accomplish that (high proportion of women or those with outside interests, no labcoats or test tubes, etc.). Not that I think it’s bad to do so.
Ashlee says, “[a scientist is] just like a normal person.”
HA!
My favorite “Before” (as an admittedly biased graduate student at Yale) was “My scientist also mixes chemicals together. He also teaches at Yale University. He teaches students how to take apart DNA.”
Although to be completely honest, I rather see myself as a combination of the before & after impressions – I do, after all, “take apart DNA” on occasion.
I’m surprised by the change in glasses frequencies. The after pictures have a (much) lower proportion of glasses-wearers than the general population!
(And yes, reading when young really *does* make you likely to need glasses, although this is less true in recent years as undercorrection has become the norm for children. I wish they’d known this twenty years ago…)