The MeToo movement began in October 2017 after allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein were reported in the New York Times. On October 15th, actress Alyssa Milano wrote on Twitter: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”
By the middle of October the following year, the movement had – in the words of the New York Times – “brought down” no less than 201 powerful men. That is to say, 201 men in prominent positions (e.g., politicians, CEOs, actors) had lost their jobs due to allegations of sexual harassment that were prompted by MeToo.
It would be fair to say that some of the men “brought down” by MeToo deserved their comeuppance, whereas others were treated very unfairly, such as Aziz Ansari. While the overall merits of the movement can be debated, one effect it had was to make men in prominent more wary about being accused of sexual harassment.
This must be a good thing, right? While false accusations of sexual harassment are clearly bad, it’s surely good that powerful men are more sensitive of the need to avoid inappropriate behaviour towards? Not necessarily.
In a recent preprint, the economist Marina Gertsberg highlights one unintended consequence of the MeToo movement: senior male academics became more reluctant to collaborate with junior female colleagues, thereby potentially harming the latter’s career prospects. (There is a good summary of the paper at Cremieux Recueil‘s Substack.)
Gertsberg obtained data on collaborations involving female academic economists who had a tenure-track position when the MeToo movement began. (In an academic context, a collaboration is just when two or more academics write a paper together.) For control purposes, she also obtained data for male academic economists in the same circumstances.
What did Gertsberg find? Compared to the pre-MeToo era (2015–2017), the women in her sample had fewer total collaborations in the post-MeToo era (2018–2020), and this fall was largely explained by few collaborations with male colleagues – especially senior male colleagues at the same university.
Interestingly, the men in her sample did not have fewer total collaborations in the post-MeToo era: although they did have fewer collaborations with female colleagues, they made up for this by having more collaborations with male colleagues. So the “MeToo effect” that Gertsberg observed may have harmed young women’s career prospects without harming young men’s.
She also found that the decline in women’s collaborations was greater at universities with ambiguous sexual harassment policies, which supports her interpretation that senior male academics became more reluctant to have one-on-one collaborations with junior female colleagues.
The study was restricted to one relatively narrow domain: academic economics. But it’s likely that similar dynamics have played out in other contexts where men and women have to cooperate. While preventing sexual harassment is obviously important, movements that go too far – such as by encouraging a presumption of guilt – can end up having harmful intended consequences.
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In summary, the Drake equation variables are such that it produces whatever outcome you wish it to. On the one hand there are/have been an infinite number of civilisations in the Universe (let alone our Galaxy with a ‘mere’ 100bn stars), on the other, we are alone. To think this all came about because in 1950, Fermi asked Teller and others the innocent question: “Where is everybody?”
Why would we expect to be able to detect life on other planets? Spectra of CO2 and other gasses in atmospheres as the planets pass in front of their suns (relative to us)? Do we see any pattern in the detected composition of exo-planet atmospheres? Say, the older it is the more (or less) CO2? Are there other passive signals we should be looking for? Can we monitor exo-planets’ atmospheres and watch them change as their inhabitants trash their planets (or clean up afterwards)?
For detecting intelligent life, I understand we’re scanning for directed or stray radio signals. Directed radio would include the publicity stunt mentioned in yesterday’s DS. Stray radio signals are another matter. We (mankind) have distinctly reduced the raw power we pump into broadcast TV signals (for example much TV is now delivered over fibre optic or copper cable) and increased the use of low-power local radio signals (cellular phones and WiFi) – so our stray radio emissions (which are wasted energy) have increased and then reduced over just about 100 years. This means there’s a ‘shell’ of radio ‘noise’ expanding away from the Earth at the speed of radio (light) – as this shell passes through an alien solar system it might just be detectable for that brief 100 years or so before fading into the background noise again. If there’s a civilisation based in that solar system it needs to be at a stage when it thinks radio is important and not, say, at a Medieval or smart-phone equivalent or post industrial eco-freak wholemeal sandal wearing stage. Oh, and it needs to be curious enough to wonder ‘Where is everybody?’. Unfortunately, the only aliens we’re likely to be detected by and communicate with are those who still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Good article from nine days ago in Britannica regarding the Fermi paradox and the work of SETI (search for extra terrestrial intelligence) and its exceedingly low volume of work. I was particularly struck by a quote from an American astronomer who said, “considering the vast number of stars, radio frequencies and other signal parameters, deducing if extraterrestrial intelligence exists from the results of small scale SETI projects is like deducing whether fish exist by dipping a glass into the ocean.” A good analogy, I thought.
Scientists are very good at telling us what doesn’t exist and cannot happen only to be disproved at a later point.
Some people would claim the Earth is the only place where evil exists resulting from an ill-advised experiment with creation. It is isolated by an electrical envelope so that it cannot contaminate the other spheres but is maintained to allow higher beings to experience life in the grossest material realm.
Sounds quite far-out but explains why we’re not encountering other life in a way that cannot be used for political leverage.
2.4 children? That’s mean.
It is impossible to accurately model climate into the future. Many of the parameters are not well understood or are unknown altogether. There are so many variables like atmosphere, clouds, oceans, water vapour, etc etc and they are all non-linear. Climate is chaotic as Mckitrick, an expert in statistical analysis states in “Climate Dynamics”. The climate system exists to distribute heat about the globe and is the earths thermostat. IPCC make the mistake of assuming CO2 will add to that because they assume the system is linear. —-A very interesting book on this is “The Essence of Chaos” Edward Lorenz. ——However I don’t want to make the mistake of getting into Punch and Judy scientific arguments, because while we are all arguing about science, the western governments are all getting on with the politics based on their “official science” which is mostly modelling. But as Lorenz and Mckitrick and many others point out, models are not science and are not evidence of anything, no matter what the BBC might tell you on the 6 O’clock News.
Much as I enjoy Steven Tucker’s writing on this occasion I’ll pass. I enjoy a bit of comedy but given the state of the world today this piece is not worth the effort.
I am glad to see someone is discussing the topic with the seriousness it deserves.
Professor Frank seems incapable of seeing anything broader than anthropogenic induced climate change supposedly caused by small changes in Carbon Dioxide . In other words another grubby scientific prostitute or grifter following the current collectivist thing.
What does ‘worse’ mean and how much ? why is everthing seen as temperature rise ? In the 70s when I was at Uni, the bogeyman was the impending ice age. Why are there not a set of graphs with Falling Planetary temperatures . And why might temperature increase be bad ? Why might any life wish to or be forced to live in cities as a civilisation ? Only humans do on this planet and more than 99% of othere life does not. Yet everything uses the resources of the planet including other lifeforms. It has an effect on the planet but does it enhance or degrade it ? The environment is the environment – can it be said to be good or bad and therefore degraded ?
One thing is for sure – Nothing is perfectly stable without continuous change of any kind. Life forms must evolve to deal with change and if the like of Frank could be time travelled into the last glacial era or the cretaceous era he might find it less comfortable that the prent time for which he is suited.
I was watching a video on YouTube about looking at ice core samples to see what the climate was about 1000 years ago. Very briefly they showed a chart of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere about 1000AD and it was about 300ppm. I thought we had had 200ppm in the pre-industrial era (whatever that means) and it is only about 380ppm now!