Harvard Course Will Apply ‘Feminist Methodologies’ to Scientific Research
“How have feminism and gender theory influenced the practice of science?”
So now we’re going to start infusing the sciences with identity politics. What could go wrong?
Campus Reform reports:
Course applies ‘feminist methodologies’ to scientific research
Harvard University is offering a course next semester designed to teach students how “feminism” and “gender theory” benefit the practice of science.
“Transforming Scientific Knowledge: Science and Feminism” is a four-credit sophomore-level class taught by Professor Heather Shattuck-Heidorn, and is offered through the school’s Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality department.
“How have feminism and gender theory influenced the practice of science? What are feminist methodologies, and how do they shape research agendas in fields such as genetics, human biology, biotechnology, and medicine?” the course description asks, explaining that “We will explore how working scientists use gender analysis to shape research choices, frame hypotheses, and re-imagine the structure of scientific inquiry.”
“Feminist research methodologies,” as the course description suggests, refers to research strategies developed by feminist academics in their efforts to address the limits of traditional research in studying women’s experiences.
Nancy Naples, one of the leading scholars of feminist research methodologies, points out that traditional research tends to reinforce the status-quo.
In a seminal article, she worries that “if researchers fail to explore how their personal, professional, and structural positions frame social scientific investigations, researchers inevitably reproduce dominant gender, race, and class biases.”
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Comments
It sounds moronic. Science should be based on fact and nothing else. How feminism and gender theory effect quantum physics or String Theory reminds me how scientists in the Middle Ages had to have their work approved by the church. When a school with Harvard’s reputation goes back to the Middle Ages we are in trouble.
“What are feminist methodologies …?”
As near as I can tell, they include name calling, man-shaming, fake statistics and demands for more money.
Sounds exactly like modern science. cf. climate change “research”
My initial thought was that this is utter nonsense, but this amended statement might have some validity: ““We will explore how working scientists[‘ gender biases could] shape research choices, frame hypotheses, and re-imagine the structure of scientific inquiry.”” But I don’t see how this could be a 4 credit class.
Still smells like BS…this will devolve to if we don’t like the way a study comes out, we will simply restructure the study or not ask these questions any more. Avoidance is not the progress catalyst of scientific inquiry.
Every Graduate student should be required to read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he details how these revolutions are gender neutral, but politically driven.
While research in fields like psychology might be affected by gender bias, most of science is really gender-neutral. That is why so many immigrants fill our grad schools in the sciences–if you get the right answer no one cares what you look like.
Over 30 years ago academic feminists claimed they were going to create a feminist mathematics but nothing came of it….because math is math.