Francis Collins, MD, PhD, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has made a statement about "manels." Not Manel, the Indie pop band from Barcelona, Spain, whose third album was Atletes, baixin de l'escenari , which translates to Athletes, get off the stage. To my knowledge, neither Collins nor the NIH has an official position about Manel's blended pop and folk sound. Instead, Collins' statement was about "manels," which is short for all-male panels.
Here's what Collins said in a statement entitled “Time to End the Manel Tradition”:
Starting now, when I consider speaking invitations, I will expect a level playing field, where scientists of all backgrounds are evaluated fairly for speaking opportunities. If that attention to inclusiveness is not evident in the agenda, I will decline to take part. I challenge other scientific leaders across the biomedical enterprise to do the same.
By the way, Collins is an accomplished musician himself. Here's a picture of him at our D.C. Science Writers Association (DCSWA) Holiday Party in which his band, The Affordable Rock’n’Roll Act (ARRA), played a delightful set of songs, including him singing "don't know much about a science book":
The ARRA didn't play any Manel songs. But I digress.
Collins' statement is a step towards ending the B.S. that has existed in the scientific community. In this case, B.S. also stands for "barring science," because anything that prevents natural diversity will inhibit real science from occurring. True scientists should be well aware of the benefits of diversity. Whether it is the microbiome, the gene pool, forests, farming, the economy, brainstorming sessions, or stuffed animal collections, greater diversity makes things stronger and more effective. If you want to advance science, you need to have diversity of thought and abilities.
Yet, women are often missing from scientific panels, committees, and talks, even though they comprise half the general population. Racial minorities such as Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans can be non-existent. And even though many Asian Americans may be students in scientific fields and occupy entry-level scientific positions, very few of them make it to higher-level and leadership positions in science. The compositions of many scientific committees and panels just don't match the compositions of the general population and student populations in universities, medical schools, and other professional and graduate programs in the sciences.
These are huge missed opportunities to advance science. By making it harder for women and minorities to advance, scientific communities are preventing them from fulfilling their potential to make important contributions to science. Society is missing out on tremendous pools of scientific talent.
Moreover, a continuing risk in the scientific community is dogma. No, dogma is not some type of dog karma. And not Dogbert, which was a character on Dilbert. Scientific dogma is the establishment of principles that go unchallenged even if they may not be correct. This is more likely to occur when people come from the same backgrounds, have the same set of experiences, and just keep agreeing with each other.
Additionally, much of science is about studying phenomena that may affect or may be affected by women and various minorities. How can you make assessments about women or minorities and their health, for example, without having them be part of or even leading the assessing? That's would be trying to win a football game without including any actual football players.
Then there's this:
Wow. This is the ultimate example of gender #bias in medicine--a panel discussing breastfeeding has no women! #NoMoreManels @LillianErdahlMD @WomenSurgeons @JulieSilverMD @choo_ek https://t.co/RqdBPjhdyN
— Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD (@arghavan_salles) August 7, 2018
Wonder if the first question to the panel was, "imagine that you could actually breastfeed, what then do you think should be the appropriate policies?"
Therefore, if you are putting together a committee, a panel, or a lineup of speakers, try the following:
- Pay attention to the composition of your committee or panel and make it diverse. Remember, diversity should include diversity of personalities and backgrounds as well.
- Don't just invite whom everyone else invites. You are no longer in high school. You don't have to always worship the popular kids. Unless you are looking for someone with very specialized and relatively rare expertise, consider new possibilities. You may be pleasantly surprised.
- Beware of lineages. I've seen committees and panels that initially seem to have diversity but upon a closer look all members actually had the same adviser in graduate school or ultimately came from the same lab or institution. Such committees and panels are not really that diverse and can only represent one school of thought.
- Focus on abilities and not titles or awards. The people who have the titles and the awards aren't necessarily the most talented and may not even have done the work. Many research groups, Centers, and Departments will have unsung heroes: the people who have made substantial contributions but did not get the credit that they deserve. These often are women and minorities. For example, walk around the labs at many academic institutions and big tech companies and compare the diversity that you see with the diversity among the leadership of those places. See a difference?
- Avoid stereotyping and preconceived notions. Everyone has preconceived notions, so try to recognize your own biases and actively shake them off like dandruff. People are frequently not who they appear to be. They can really pleasantly surprise you if you give them the chance.
- Get someone willing to stir things up. Scientific panels and committees should be like movies. Who would want to watch a movie where you already know the ending and the plot is completely predictable? Some of the best panels can be like verbal UFC or sumo matches, as long as members are appropriately professional and respectful and don't use the words "ginormous" and "cray cray." Science is about challenging each other and pushing boundaries.
- Use new databases and sources to find new people. Stop relying on just whom you or your inner circle already know. Branch out and get to know more people. This doesn't mean jumping on Craigslist and writing "looking for someone who's into poop," when trying to recruit for a panel on fecal transplants. You may get some weird bleep back. There are numerous other avenues to find experts. For example, I have mentioned previously in Forbes about expert databases being maintained by 500 Women in Science and 500 Women in Medicine. Sherry Pagoto, PhD, Professor of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut and Director of the UConn Center for mHealth and Social Media, added, "Do a Pubmed/SCOPUS search on the topic to find the full array of people who study it. Then Google them to learn more about what they do."
- Look beyond race and gender. Don't select someone just to check off some boxes. Do not refer to the committee or panel member by just his or her gender or minority status. He or she is much more than "the Black woman" or "the Asian guy" on the panel.
- Get to know more people and live and breathe diversity yourself. Look at your friends and those with whom you regularly associate. Are they all just like you or are they truly diverse? Is the planning committee for the meeting actually diverse? You can't really bring true diversity unless you fully embrace it. If you wait until selecting a panel or committee to consider diversity, you just won't do it right. Plus, it's fun getting to know a broader range of people.
- Don't just keep choosing the same minority or woman. There was a Twitter hashtag #StarringJohnCho that joked that actor John Cho would be in all Hollywood movies that needed an Asian American guy. Although Cho is an excellent actor and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle remains an underrated movie, this hashtag and the accompanying memes played on the fact that there are so few Asian American male actors in Hollywood. True diversity means getting more than just a few representatives of each sociodemographic group to be on committees and panels.
Here's an example of a Tweet with the #StarringJohnCho hashtag:
What if Sarah and Joseph Rogers had adopted an Asian child and named him Steve? See the result. #StarringJohnCho pic.twitter.com/pnyyEtjCGz
— William Yu (@its_willyu) May 9, 2016
Collins' announcement is a good step in the right direction, but more is necessary. Scientific leadership needs to become way more diverse. Science needs it. Diversity leads to progress and success. After all, all good scientists know that if a forest just had one type of tree, your colon just had one type of bacteria, and all of farming just produced nothing but potatoes, the forest, your colon, and all of us would be in deep doo-doo. If you don't understand the value of and appreciate diversity then maybe, just maybe, you aren't a very good scientist.
