JISCMail - CCP4BB Archives

Gosh Emmanual, your email is one amazing example of what the problem is, every single paragraph - thanks for putting that one out!

My last email for this subject, I promise. Thanks a lot for the off-list feedbacks!

Bärbel

Bärbel Blaum, PhD

Inthera Bioscience AG

Einsiedlerstrasse 34

CH-8820 Waedenswil

Switzerland

E-Mail: [log in to unmask]

Phone: +41 43 477 94 72--

Von: CCP4 bulletin board <[log in to unmask]> im Auftrag von Emmanuel Saridakis <[log in to unmask]>
Antworten an: Emmanuel Saridakis <[log in to unmask]>
Datum: Donnerstag, 6. Februar 2020 um 11:16
An: <[log in to unmask]>
Betreff: Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020

Dear All,

To strike a more positive note, crystallography (esp. macromolecular) has always had a very high representation of women at top levels: Kathleen Lonsdale, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Rosalind Franklin and Ada Yonath are the most famous names that immediately come to mind, but there are many more highly distinguished ones like Elena Conti, Naomi Chayen, Elspeth Garman, Petra Fromme and scores more. There seems to be no "glass ceiling" for women in crystallography so I believe it is one of very few scientific fields where gender balance discussions and constraints are irrelevant.

This might be due to Bragg son, who apparently was a champion of women in Science. If this is indeed the case, that would provide strong support to the argument that underrepresenation of women in Science (and elsewhere) is due to historical reasons that can be easily overturned, rather than to any biological predetermination. Crystallography after all is a field which is heavy on maths, space visualisation and high-tech instrumentation, which people would traditionally more readily associate with males.

Let me finish with a famous quote by author William Golding: "I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men. They are far superior and always have been."

Emmanuel

Dr. Emmanuel Saridakis
Principal Researcher
Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
National Centre for Scientific Research "DEMOKRITOS"
15310 Athens
GREECE

email: [log in to unmask]

From: "Bärbel Blaum" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "CCP4BB" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, 6 February, 2020 11:30:36
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020

Dear all,

yes, there are more male computational crystallographers than females – the question we can ask ourselves here is: Do we think there is some biological reason for this? Obviously there isn’t. So things are wrong as they stand. Are we, nevertheless, ok with this current state of affairs? We are not talking some minor issue here – if half of the population is under-represented, that is a giant intellectual loss (actually for *all* professions that lack diversity, childcare included, and of course the loss is not just on the intellectual level).

If you think you have been lucky to work in a place where there is no bias against women it just means you are lucky in not being one. If you care to know, simply try and put the other side’s shoes on. Start asking your female colleagues, friends, partners, students about their experience, moments they witnessed were they felt overlooked or deliberately excluded, treated in sexist ways, you name it. You will be surprised.

Then think about the moments, institutions, relationships that have been instrumental in your own careers. University meetings and important talks routinely held and given in the evenings. Conferences with no childcare. Many male researchers only being able to work as much as they do because some female is looking after the house and the kids. Babies being colored-coded by gender, mummys at home and daddys at work. Girls being told it’s ok to be bad at math. You must be joking if you wonder where all the female scientists are! We all grow up and are educated in a world that is heavily biased in terms of which roles which gender adopts - how are we supposed to not think that this reflects some form of “natural” order? There are plenty of other groups that grow up systematically underestimating their potentials, just compare students from academic homes with those from working class backgrounds. And there is plenty of research on the subject.

The question is if you care to notice this bias, discrimination, lack of equal opportunities, and if you care to do something about it - of course we all have other things to attend to. But if teaching is part of our job description then we have to think about how to be good teachers, and that does not stop at how to explain Fourier transforms or python. The reason I suggested a meeting by a female group of scientists as only organizers and speakers is because as long as we have these male-dominated environments at workshops and meetings the respective younger generation will be presented with this order as being the natural way things work *because we taught them so*. If we want these younger guys to get things right in ways we did not we have to create alternative perspectives and come up with new forms of community work.

Bärbel

Bärbel Blaum, PhD

Inthera Bioscience AG

Einsiedlerstrasse 34

CH-8820 Waedenswil

Switzerland

E-Mail: [log in to unmask]

Phone: +41 43 477 94 72--

Von: CCP4 bulletin board <[log in to unmask]> im Auftrag von Susan Lea <[log in to unmask]>
Antworten an: Susan Lea <[log in to unmask]>
Datum: Donnerstag, 6. Februar 2020 um 02:21
An: <[log in to unmask]>
Betreff: Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020

Perhaps some of the respondents to this question should real Angela Saini’s Inferior before commenting in public

Susan

Sent from my iPhone

On 5 Feb 2020, at 19:18, Robert Nicholls <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

As a Caucasian male I hesitate to post; I know that there are a lot of people who are sensitive to this subject, so feel that I'm treading on eggshells in responding... Nevertheless I feel obliged to respond, having a certain amount of insight into the topic in the context of these workshops.

Personally I don't find posts such as this - which simply incite (positive) discrimination - to be very constructive.

From speaking to organisers and being involved in committees over numerous years I know that gender bias is always very much at the forefront of the organisers' minds when deciding whom to invite. Especially where funding requirements and committees are involved, the issue of gender bias is always raised with a heavy hand. Consequently, in modern times whenever there is a gender bias in our field it is not a result of naivety or discriminative cliqueness, but rather necessity due to the availability of appropriate tutors (as correctly indicated by Rasmus). And as Andrew points out, organising these workshops takes a lot of effort, and as such it is inappropriate to treat the organisers with undue disrespect.

Ultimately, the objective is to teach the topics intended to be covered in the workshop. For sure, there are a number of very good females who are appropriate for teaching on these courses, despite being in the relative minority. I know a number of the females who are very able to tutor on such courses, and by personal communication I also know why some of them might not be able to attend this particular one this year. As Eleanor has pointed out, sometimes life gets in the way.

There is a very good gender balance of participants in these workshops, as is indicative of the demographic of practicing structural biologists wishing to utilise these software tools. But clearly the gender balance of tutors is heavily in favour of males - this represents the difference in gender ratios of people engaging with practical structural biology versus computational methods development.

I understand the argument that it is good for female tutors to be present as role models in such workshops, but it is worth noting that the people attending these workshops do not intend to become methods developers - they simply want to know how to best use the tools available. Consequently there is a qualitative difference between tutors and participants. Therefore, there is limited capability for the participants to see the tutors as role models in this context.

I feel that the junior vs senior argument isn't at all relevant. More senior developers will of course be generally preferred - it is necessary for individuals with sufficient experience to be available to help in these workshops (again as indicated by Rasmus). But I have seen many junior software developers sent to teach at CCP4 workshops (irrespective of gender). Indeed, it is necessary for junior developers to gain such experience in order to grow. This is very necessary in order to meet the demands of an expanding and evolving community.

From a purely statistical point of view it seems reasonable to me for the gender bias of tutors in such workshops to realistically reflect the demographic of crystallographic software developers. Consequently, I feel that the real problem lies in the proportion of females who want to become methods developers. My personal experience is that there is absolutely no discrimination whatsoever when interviewing or encouraging potential scientists to enter the field. Perhaps I have been fortunate enough to not be exposed to an environment where there is any such discrimination.

For me, the real problem lies in the proportion of females who are interested in a career in computational methods development; I believe this issue stems back to the proportion of females who choose theoretical/computational degrees at undergraduate level. I do not know how to encourage more females to engage with the field at earlier stages in their career - perhaps this is a problem for those teaching in universities to attempt to address. Fortunately I have seen a rise in the number of females interested in computational methods development in recent years (particularly in bioinformatics), which is very encouraging - perhaps this represents changing times...

Ultimately, positive discrimination is nevertheless discrimination. And as such is unethical, and should not be supported by a conscientious scientific community. I would prefer to see a system whereby gender, race and creed are not seen as a factor when deciding who should be chosen for a particular role. Personal merit should be the only consideration.

If this results in a gender bias then the problem should be addressed at the source, not downstream. A very vague scientific analogy would be: attempting to correct for an experimental error, versus trying to improve the experiment so that the error is not such an issue.

I feel that this is a very prevalent problem in our community at present. I quote from a relevant post advertisement: "Female scientists are particularly encouraged to apply". I feel that this additional qualification should be irrelevant. Furthermore I feel that, if anything, such clarifications only serve to exacerbate sexual discrimination - this demeans the commendable efforts that have been made over the past century to ensure unconditional equality amongst humanity, let alone within science.

Until there is a natural balance of individuals wishing to enter computational methods development, it seems that at present we as a community have to choose between one evil or another: accepting that there will be a gender imbalance, versus enforcing an unnatural positive discrimination in order to balance the gender ratio.

Tim suggests that females capable and willing to teach in such workshops should contact CCP4 in order to offer their services. No doubt such offers would be gladly appreciated, and might avoid such public challenges being made in future. It should be noted that many of the tutors who agree to attending these workshops do so for reasonably altruistic purposes, often in detriment to their work-life balance.

With best regards,
Rob

Dr Rob Nicholls
Senior Investigator Scientist
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Francis Crick Avenue
Cambridge Biomedical Campus
Cambridge CB2 0QH

On 5 Feb 2020, at 21:30, Crissy Lynette Tarver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

A similar workshop is taught annually here at SSRL. I was a tutor for the hands-on workshop in 2019, and I found an even gender distribution among the speakers/tutors. Even though not all of the females were developers of crystallographic software, they are expert users and instructors. Here is a link to the online program for anyone interested:

https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/rapidata/rapidata-2019/schedule.html

Crissy L Tarver
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Structural Biology
Stanford University School of Medicine
From: CCP4 bulletin board <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Eleanor Dodson <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2020 12:26:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020

Hmmm - interesting discussion but no-one has stated the obvious. There were at least fifteen years of my life (ang Guy's) when we were just TOO busy to contemplate travelling so far, even if invited. Mixing family responsibilities with any effective working meant we did not stray far away from home. That must rule out many younger people - we should all be grateful for those who are willing and able to teach.
I hope the organisers recruit as many local tutors as they can, and that there is no "gender bias" there.
Good luck to everyone involved.
Eleanor

On Wed, 5 Feb 2020 at 20:04, Newman, Janet (Manufacturing, Parkville) <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi all,

Interesting discussion, and personally, I think Rasmus has hit the nail on the head. Here is a challenge to the CCP4bb - can we make a list 10 female developers of crystallographic software who would be appropriate invitees as instructors to this course? (I can only think of 4)

Cheers, Janet

Janet Newman
Principal Scientist / Director, Collaborative Crystallisation Centre (C3)
CSIRO Material Science and Engineering
343 Royal Parade
Parkville. VIC. 3052
Australia
Tel +613 9662 7326
Email [log in to unmask]

From: CCP4 bulletin board <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Rasmus Fogh <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 6, 2020 6:26 AM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in South America 2020

Hi,

People may have missed that this particular meeting is not about
presenting ideas or research results. The meeting is billed as a
"Hands-on workshop with lectures, practical tutorials and plenty of time
for problems-solving with X-ray diffraction data", for people who are
already beyond the basics and actively doing crystallography.
Participants are encouraged to come with their own, likely quite
difficult, data, and the tutors are expected to not only present
strategies and programs for data processing, refinement and model
building at master level, but provide in-depth individual explanations,
deal with quirks of the various programs, and do immediate problem
solving on projects they have never seen before. This requires tutors
with both a detailed understanding of the software and extensive
experience in using it, and the tutors on the speaker list are generally
top developers from the groups that actually develop the software.
Collectively the tutors have to cover all aspects of the field. A
further limit is that such workshops (though not this particular one)
are often held at synchrotrons, which adds the requirement of setting up
and running actual experiments for people, without prior knowledge of
their projects. Understandably the limited group of people who have
developed experience in this kind of activity tend to reappear at
workshop after workshop.

Crystallography as a discipline is certainly full of highly qualified
women, but the scope for asking "more junior women" to teach these
particular workshops - or in general for broadening the base of tutors -
is limited by the fact that the pool of people with the qualifications
and experience to teach such courses at a high level is truly tiny.

Yours,

Rasmus Fogh

On 05/02/2020 18:21, Diana Tomchick wrote:
> Then ask more “junior women.” This isn’t rocket science, after alll.
>
> Diana
>
> ******************************
> Diana R. Tomchick
> Department of Biophysics, Rm. ND10.214A
> University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
> 5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
> Dallas, TX 75061 USA
> 214-645-6383 (office)
>
>> On Feb 5, 2020, at 12:09 PM, Goldman, Adrian
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> EXTERNAL MAIL
>>
>> Phoebe and all,
>>
>> What I heard recently (I have no idea whether it applies in this
>> particular case…) is that organisers of conferences/meetings often
>> have considerable difficulty getting women speakers in the first place
>> - apparently 85% of the XYs asked say “yes” and only 50% (less?) of
>> the XXs. Presumably not to GRCs, or to keynote a major international
>> symposium - but ? Precisely for this kind of event. I was told this is
>> because the senior women get asked more often, as there are (qv) fewer
>> of them, and so there is meeting-attendance-burnout.
>>
>> Adrian
>>
>>> On 5 Feb 2020, at 18:00, Phoebe A. Rice <[log in to unmask]
>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>>
>>> While there is some truth to that argument, the problem is that it is
>>> harder to achieve an international reputation in the first place
>>> while being routinely overlooked.
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>> Phoebe A. Rice
>>> Dept. of Biochem & Mol. Biol. and
>>> Committee on Microbiology
>>> https://voices.uchicago.edu/phoebericelab/
>>> *From:*CCP4 bulletin board <[log in to unmask]
>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Andrew Leslie
>>> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>> *Reply-To:*Andrew Leslie <[log in to unmask]
>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>> *Date:*Wednesday, February 5, 2020 at 11:56 AM
>>> *To:*"[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>"
>>> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>> *Subject:*Re: [ccp4bb] Macromolecular Crystallography workshop in
>>> South America 2020
>>> Dear All,
>>> In fairness to the organisers, I would like to point
>>> out that there is nothing that is “lazy” about organising these
>>> workshops. It involves a considerable effort both in arranging the
>>> course, the venue and especially in attracting funds to support the
>>> workshop (it is important to note that CCP4 does not supply all the
>>> funds). In addition, it is unfair to single out this particular
>>> workshop for criticism, as I believe it has long been the case that
>>> these workshops have not had a good gender balance in terms of the
>>> tutors. It is also important to realise that the gender imbalance
>>> does NOT extend to choice of the students, where as far as I am aware
>>> the gender balance is always very good.
>>> One difficulty the organisers face is that funding will typically
>>> depend on having tutors with an international reputation in the areas
>>> in which they are teaching, ideally having been involved in
>>> developing the software that is being used. Unfortunately, this
>>> inevitably leads to gender bias.
>>> While I would agree that this is an issue that is worthy of being
>>> raised, and I feel sure that this point will be taken on board by
>>> future organisers, it is also important to realise the practical
>>> difficulties that organisers face and the considerable effort that is
>>> involved in running these workshops.
>>> Regards,
>>> Andrew Leslie
>>>> On 5 Feb 2020, at 00:30, Alejandro Buschiazzo <[log in to unmask]
>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> We are pleased to announce the 8^th South American Macromolecular
>>>> Crystallography School:
>>>>
>>>> *Macromolecular Crystallography School 2020 *
>>>> *"Structural Biology to enhance high impact research in health and
>>>> disease”*
>>>> To be held at the Institut Pasteur de Montevideo (Uruguay)
>>>> - September 9-19, 2020
>>>>
>>>> *http://pasteur.uy/novedades/mx2020/*
>>>>
>>>> *The application deadline is July 9, 2020. *For further inquiries :
>>>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Main Topics:
>>>>>
>>>>> ·data processing;
>>>>>
>>>>> ·phasing and structure determination;
>>>>>
>>>>> ·model refinement and validation;
>>>>>
>>>>> ·introduction to crystallography + cryo-electron microscopy integration
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Confirmed speakers and tutors (so far... a few more will join the
>>>> crew):
>>>>
>>>> Alejandro Buschiazzo (InstitutPasteurdeMontevideo, Uruguay)
>>>> Paul Emsley (Laboratory of Molecular Biology MRC, Cambridge, UK)
>>>> Rafael Junqueira Borges (Instituto de Biociências UNESP, Botucatu,
>>>> Brazil)
>>>> Ronan Keegan (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab - CCP4, Didcot, UK)
>>>> Eugene Krissinel (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab - CCP4, Didcot, UK)
>>>> Joāo Muniz (Instituto deFisica de São Carlos, Brazil)
>>>> Garib Murshudov (Laboratory of Molecular Biology MRC, Cambridge, UK)
>>>> Colin Palmer (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab - CCP-EM, Didcot, UK)
>>>> James Parkhurst (Diamond Light Source, Didcot, UK)
>>>> Randy Read (University of Cambridge, UK)
>>>> Kyle Stevenson (STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab - CCP4, Didcot, UK)
>>>> Clemens Vonrhein (Global Phasing Ltd, Cambridge, UK)
>>>>
>>>> *Please find the application form and further contact information at
>>>> http://pasteur.uy/novedades/mx2020/*
>>>> (this www site will be updated regularly, so stay tuned!)
>>>>
>>>> This Workshop is supported by the Collaborative Computational
>>>> Project Nº4 (CCP4, UK) & Science and Technology Facilities Council
>>>> (UK); the Centro de Biologia Estructural del Mercosur (CeBEM); and
>>>> the Programa Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnologia para el
>>>> Desarrollo (CYTED) through de MICROBES consortium.
>>>>
>>>> Organizers:
>>>> Alejandro Buschiazzo, PhD. Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Uruguay
>>>> Kyle Stevenson, DPhil. CCP4, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,
>>>> United Kingdom
>>>> Richard Garratt, PhD. Instituto de Fisica de Sao Carlos, USP, Brazil
>>>>
>>>> Applicants:
>>>> 25 students will be selected, prioritizing advanced PhD, postdocs
>>>> and young researchers. The Course will provide financial support
>>>> covering registration fees, and for the case of those students
>>>> coming from abroad, all local expenses (lodging, per diem and local
>>>> transportation). Look in the www site for details on application
>>>> procedures.
>>>>
>>>> *The application deadline is July 9, 2020.*
>>>>
>>>> Please address further inquiries to: [log in to unmask]
>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>>>
>>>> Looking forward to hosting you in Montevideo!
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link:
>>>> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
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>>>
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link:
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>>
>> CAUTION: This email originated from outside UTSW. Please be cautious
>> of links or attachments, and validate the sender's email address
>> before replying.
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> UTSouthwestern
>
> Medical Center
>
> The future of medicine, today.
>
>
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--
Rasmus H. Fogh Tel.: +44 (0)1223 353033
Global Phasing Ltd., Fax.: +44 (0)1223 366889
Sheraton House,
Castle Park,
Cambridge CB3 0AX
United Kingdom

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