The "Coming of Age" Science Moment | StarTalk

It wasn't until I was later in high school that I had my first biology tutor who sort of gave me the confidence that I could be a scientist. I was a tutor because you're acting, correct? Right. So I was on the show Blossom from the...

Oh, you were awesome! I was lost on the show Block Work. Block? Yeah, that clear, correct? Once I met this woman who was my biology tutor, that was sort of my real kind of coming out party of believing that I could be a scientist.

I didn't even have the skill set because I had been paying attention all the previous years in math and science, but really just doing what I needed to to get by. I didn't really understand the beauty of science and math and that whole world until I was later into high school. Then obviously pursuing it in college was, you know, it was a party.

So this saddens me. You know why? Not your story. The perfect, I've heard that before. Know that if that single person, right, made a life difference to you, right? How many people are missing that single person who cannot like just...

I mean, I can. I’m sure we could all run the stats on it. Many girls, right? It is the first answer. Good. That's the first name, and that's because of a historical difference in the representation of women in these fields, and probably a cultural bias on the part of teachers and instructors and even administration.

How much intellectual capital lay untapped in this world? Do you want a number? Documented? Numbers? I want numbers first; give me numbers. Don't just say it. I don't have them. I think it's a weight. This is Startalk; they don't leave you numberless.

When? If we can put numbers in this situation, you have the number, I have the power. I shouldn't have doubted you nor a second. No, I'll have the power to give you the numbers. I have the power to get someone to give you them. Oh, that's how I work.

I grab Howard to listen to those numbers. So, Mona, can I get some numbers, please? All right, everyone, this is Mona Lobby. She's a data journalist. Did you even know that thing existed? Mona, you got some numbers for us to bring some of this into focus?

I do. I wanted to try and answer my aim's question as directly as possible, so I wanted to find out how many female scientists America is missing. The number that I came to is 80,000 missing, meaning they might have been scientists but some force prevented that from happening.

Exactly, okay, exactly. And I just took biologists, chemists, and a category called other natural scientists, and I worked out how many women you would need to just get to a 50/50 gender split. And that's when I got eighty thousand.

So what do you say? Eighty thousand? It's just eighty thousand in those professions? Exactly. You're leaving out engineering and physics and mathematics and all the rest of this.

Yeah, okay, but presumably equal access, equal opportunity doesn't require equal outcome. So that missing number presumes that if everything were even then everything would be even, right? But we know that we don't have equal access.

Right. My am touched on it in the clip, and it's really, really relevant. So I also looked at some of the cultural barriers that stop women from going into the sciences. Now we know that statistically women are less likely to be hired by science faculty, they're less likely to be asked to perform mathematical tasks, and they're less likely to have their academic papers deemed of high quality.

And I know that last bit because of research by a female scientist called Emma Pearson. Now, what Emma did was she looked at nine hundred and thirty-eight thousand three hundred and one academic scientific papers, and she found that the average male scientist publishes forty-five percent more papers than the average female scientist.

So you're saying we're messed up? That's what you're saying? That's how to be messed up. Numeric? In numbers, numbers are showing how messed up you are. That's right.