Daniel J. Flynn

    A study that charged the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with gender bias is itself now being hit with charges of bias. 
    “A Study on the Status of Women Faculty of Science at MIT,” made public this past March, charged pervasive discrimination against women professors at the Cambridge, Massachusetts school known for its elite programs in mathematics and the hard sciences. MIT’s administration surprised many observers by accepting the study’s findings, admitting guilt, and making financial concessions to the complainants. 
    Judith Kleinfeld, a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska, in a counter-study entitled, “MIT Tarnishes Its Reputation with Gender Junk Science,” maintains that the March report amounts to little more than “a political manifesto masquerading as science, an ideological tract draped in the robes of MIT’s international prestige.” Among the flaws in the report, according to Kleinfeld’s study, are that “senior women at MIT were judge and jury of their own complaints,” an assumption that majorities of males in certain fields is tantamount to sexism, and the fact that MIT won’t release its data for review. 
    Several MIT professors contacted by Campus Report who served on the MIT Committee on the Status of Women, which put the report together, declined the opportunity to rebut Kleinfeld’s contentions or answer any questions. 

Gender Discrimination or Gender Feminism at MIT? 
    Upon its release in March, “A Study on the Status of Women Faculty of Science at MIT” received front-page coverage in the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and scores of other publications. An MIT spokesman called the report an “international news story” which “rocketed around the world.” Its chief author was invited to the White House and praised by the President and First Lady. In academia, the study’s impact was immediate. In addition to MIT paying off female professors, UCLA, the Harvard Medical School, Cal Tech, and the University of Arizona are among the schools that are undertaking, or plan to conduct, similar studies.
    Central to the Committee’s report is the idea that male faculty in the sciences should be discriminated against—receive lower salaries, have a harder time getting a job, etc.—because women in such fields are few in number. “Given the tiny number of women faculty and the fact that they are essentially irreplaceable,” the 13-page report complains, “one would have assumed that all tenured women would be treated exceptionally well—pampered, overpaid, indulged.”  The study alleges and laments that this is not the case. 
    “The only evidence which the MIT Committee on the Status of Women provides as proof of gender discrimination is the remarkably low number of women on the Science faculty,” notes Judith Kleinfeld’s counter-report. 
    Although the number of women in such fields has increased in recent years, the change has not been rapid enough, according to the MIT study. The fact that women constitute a very small percentage of individuals going into such fields—Kleinfeld points out that in 1997 women received 14% of the doctorates in physics, 16% in engineering, and 30% in chemistry—is scarcely mentioned as a reason to explain the imbalance. The committee also makes light of the fact that MIT is no different from other similar institutions such as Cal Tech and Harvard in awarding spots to women, opining that it’s not good enough “to be as bad as these unenlightened institutions.” 
    While the report shies away from offering specific change recommendations, it states that MIT must continue to monitor the situation “until women faculty routinely occupy positions of academic power.” Adding that to “remain on top academically we must seek out and nurture the best talent available, and half of that is female.” 

Accusers as Judge, Jury, and Executioner 
    Prior to embarking on the study, the women who would later dominate the committee asserted that females in the sciences at MIT felt the brunt of “gender related inequities,” “discriminatory attitudes,” and “unequal treatment.” It was not surprising, then, when their study merely confirmed their previously held beliefs. 
    A chief criticism of “A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT” is that its conclusions were made prior to partaking in any investigation. The very people who lodged complaints of gender discrimination against MIT made up the ranks of the committee assessing gender bias at the school. Such a process of accusers sitting in judgement of their own charges, critics point out, is rigged from the get-go. 
    Nancy Hopkins, for instance, whose complaints sparked the creation of the commission, sat as the chairman of that body. Of the nine members on the committee, six were senior women faculty members in the sciences who stood to gain from any finding of sex discrimination. 
    And gain they did. Kleinfeld notes that the women who passed judgement on supposed gender discrimination profited handsomely from their findings through boosts in salaries, ballooning research budgets, and more spacious labs in which to work. Professor Hopkins, who initially chaired the committee, received a 20% raise, an endowed chair, and three times the laboratory space, among other perks as a result of the study. She can now boast of a 5000 square-foot research facility, more than twenty graduate student assistants, and support of $2.5 million a year. Even the dean of MIT’s School of Science, Robert Birgeneau, who accepted the study at face value, benefited by being appointed president of the University of Toronto. The prestigious Canadian school specifically cited his role in the study as evidence of his fitness for the position. 
    Such a process is similar to corporate tobacco executives assessing the health risks of cigarette smoking or a plaintiff being allowed to sit in judgement on the validity of his own charges. This bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland style investigation, in which the verdict is handed down prior to any examination of the evidence, is a prime reason given as to why MIT should have been more cautious in accepting the study’s findings. To this day, however, MIT officials refuse to acknowledge a conflict of interest among those that sat on the committee. 

Top Secret
    “Together, they looked at the cold, hard facts about disparities in everything from lab space to annual salary,” President Clinton beamed about the MIT committee. “They sought to make things right, and they told the whole public the truth about it, which is a rare thing.” Yet many are now questioning whether the report did in fact tell the whole truth. 
    Critics find it unusual that a study put together by scientists at perhaps the most prestigious institution of science in the world would commit one of the gravest sins a scientist can commit: secrecy. The data on which the report is based is almost entirely hidden. The “disparities” that President Clinton referred to in “lab space” and “annual salary” cannot be checked for accuracy because the committee refuses to release the data.
    Instead of data, the “Study on the Status of Women in Science at MIT” asserts that “gender discrimination turns out to take many forms and many of these are not simple to recognize.” “Once you get it,” the report authors assure readers, discrimination “is obvious.” Evidence, according to the report, includes one woman explaining how she feels “invisible,” and another confessing, “I was unhappy at MIT for more than a decade.” 
    Academics that Campus Report contacted agreed that hiding data is very unusual for studies that purport to be scientific. “When a study group refuses to release its data, it has something to hide,” points out Dr. Kenneth Campbell, a former Associate Professor of Economics at Gallaudet University and current Accuracy in Academia board member. He points out that research, whether in “education, economics, psychology, or any other field,” is “very suspicious” when data is not open to inspection. 
    An MIT spokesman, also named Ken Campbell, defended the secrecy by stating that the information included in the report “was collected on the basis of total confidentiality. We’re not going to violate that.” The report was secret, he says, because, “It deals with salaries and salaries here are private.” Yet no one is asking for information on individual salaries. What is being requested is aggregate data on salaries and information on such seemingly non-private matters as square-footage for office space. 
    MIT’s Campbell initially praised the report as “scientific,” and “a data driven study.” Later the school spokesman would change his mind and complain that it was unfair to hold the report to the same standards of a scientific study because “It’s a personnel study, it’s not a scientific study.” 
    MIT’s Campbell vouches for the credibility of the study despite the secrecy of its data by stating, “You wouldn’t take this kind of action, particularly at MIT, unless the data were behind you.” When confronted with the fact that people can only take the word of the study’s authors on faith, Campbell responded, “Too bad.”

Confidential Source: No Gender Discrimination Found
    Perhaps one of the reasons MIT refuses to release its data is that the information the study group collected does not support the conclusions made. A source at MIT close to the study revealed as much when he told Mrs. Kleinfeld on the condition of anonymity that no gender discrimination was found by the committee. 
    Kleinfeld’s source made clear that the women on the committee were “serious scientists” and “not the product of any relaxation of standards,” however, he says their investigation didn’t turn up anything substantive.
    “Heroic efforts were made to get statistics but a lot of this information was hard to gather, like who had what spece,” the confidential source explained. “There was insufficient data from any of these sources to determine anything in particular.”
    Even the hurt feelings that are touted by the study as proof of gender discrimination belie a more complicated reality. The study inspected only six departments, a small fraction of academic fields at MIT. Senior women professors in only three of these six departments viewed gender discrimination as a serious problem. Junior staff, the report admits, do not see gender discrimination in their fields as a problem. “Thus the universal problem of gender discrimination at MIT comes down to the subjective perceptions of a small and unrepresentative group,” Kleinfeld asserted, “the senior women in just three of the six departments at MIT’s School of Science.” 
    “Gender discrimination may or may not exist at MIT or at other universities,” Kleinfeld concludes. “But this study proves nothing and does not illustrate the kind of science for which MIT is justly famed. It is junk science.”