What do you believe in?

 As this Christmastime like no other rolls around I find myself mulling on the nature of belief.

I believe in science. But my belief in science is no less built on faith than other people’s religious beliefs. I know very little about it, beyond a couple of GCSEs, some populist books and newspaper articles, and what Professor Brian Cox says whilst standing in picturesque locations.

Religious faith rests on believing in something that, by its very nature, can’t be proven one way or the other.

Science is all about trying to understand the world by coming up with theories and then trying to prove them. That’s great for scientists, but for those of us who don’t understand what they’re talking about, we just have to take their word for it.

Some things in the world you learn from experience. You learn that when you drop an apple it will fall to the floor and if someone drops an apple on your head, it hurts. You go to school to learn why it happens: it's not magic, it's gravity. 

What happens when apples fall (in case you weren't sure).
Photo by Grey World via Flickr Creative Commons. 

I know if I press the switch on the wall it will make an electricity connection from a cable that feeds into my house, and lo there will be light. I’m pretty hazy on how it is. I’ve learnt that it works, but as for my understanding of the science, well it might as well be magic.

Believing in the virus

And so to today. I believe that we’re in a pandemic. Not everyone does. My belief is based on the news articles that I compulsively consume from organisations I trust.

My first-hand evidence for being in a pandemic is slim: the presence of face masks, the non-availability of toilet roll and pasta for part of this year, and the restrictions on shops and other businesses, the closure of the theatre where I work. There’s a bunch of causes that could have led to this.

I also believe that there is a vaccine which will hopefully bring us out of the pandemic, although those who know say it won’t bring an end to the virus. I know what a vaccine does and how it’s supposed to work, but how you can actually do that – make something that you can inject into our arms that will magically stop us getting sick from a particular disease – seems miraculous.

The first vaccine was administered by Edward Jenner when he figured out that having cowpox would prevent you from getting the much more serious smallpox. He took the gunk out of a cowpox blister in someone’s arm and injected it into the arm of the person he wanted to vaccinate. Lovely. The process is quite a lot more technical these days. Still, I wouldn’t say no to that if the alternative was getting smallpox – a hideous disease for which the best case scenario is disfiguring facial scarring. This isn’t ancient history - the last person died of smallpox a few weeks before I was born, in Birmingham.

My extensive liberal arts education may not have given me the ability to understand electric lights, viruses, vaccination, but it has taught me to check my sources.

The web is an incredible invention allowing people to disseminate information and opinion across the globe at the touch of a button. It has allowed us to have contact with friends and family, and for many of us to continue doing our jobs whilst locked out of our offices. But it’s also full of shit. The freedom to distribute your opinions so widely means people claim authority and manage to get their unsubstantiated claims in front of an audience.

Edna’s opinion that electricity pylons give you influenza might once have been limited to her immediate family, neighbours and those she ran into at the bus stop, but today she can dress them up to look much more plausible and chuck them out on Facebook. If she’s a bit more adept she can make a meme, to help spread them far and wide, like the cheerful one I made above. 

Look before you believe

There are so many conspiracy theories around: there isn’t a pandemic - it’s a plot to take away our freedoms; it’s a plot devised by pharmaceutical companies; death rates are being inflated to manipulate us; Covid-19 doesn’t actually exist; that one about the 5G networks. And those who have poured their personal wealth into funding vaccine research aren’t really doing it for altruistic reasons.

Whatever Bill Gates’ corporate ethics were, he’s no longer in charge of Microsoft. His day to day job now is mostly curing malaria and climate change, so discrediting the vaccine on the grounds of his involvement is ridiculous. Given the direction of his philanthropic projects in the last few years it was extremely likely that he was going to support a vaccine. Dolly Parton has also put huge amounts of money into vaccine development – do we think there’s going to be a mysterious surge in country music downloads on Spotify once it’s rolled out?

Believe things will get better

If you’re going to have blind faith in something, let it be something that helps yourself or others. Maybe I'll make more of an effort to try and understand this science stuff, since I believe in it so much. 

Believe in stars and stables and barns and babies if you like; believe in doctors and nurses who are working themselves into the ground to help people recover from Covid. Believe in facemasks, vitamin D and extreme handwashing. Believe in the genius of scientists who in just 12 months can go from discovering a new virus to making a vaccine for it. Believe that one day we won't be afraid to step outside our own front doors - that things will get better than they are now.

Anyway, I have another kind of mulling to do now, and Dolly Parton has a new Christmas album out. Joy to the world. 

The beauty of science

Being female and a little bit vain, from time to time I wander into shops selling things that purport to make me look younger, prettier and generally more alluring.

But when I'm browsing the shiny shiny bottles, trying to decide how much cash I can justifiably part with, and wondering if I'm too old for glitter (never), a shop assistant invariably pounces on my indecision.

She's just doing her job - trying to sell stuff - and I'm fine with that. Actually I could do with some help deciding which of these bottles is going to make me most attractive for least money.

But then she (it's always she) tries to blind me with science. And what had been a nice outing to pick up some moisturiser in my lunch hour makes me really wound up.

Here is some sciency sales patter to which I have recently been subjected:

• 'It has irridescent particles'
• 'It contains essential oils'
• 'It's made from stem cells'

Now, I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure that what's coming out of her mouth is utter drivel.

I'm not saying that shop assistants aren't capable of understanding science. I'm sure that's not true. As it happens, my grasp of science is appalling. But the sales people are being fed a load of meaningless lines and buzzwords about science and encouraged to come out with them to confuse us into thinking that their product is really great, not just because it smells nice, but because it's got stem cells in it - and that has to be good right?

Now the science bit - stem cell research

Stem cell research is really complicated. I tried to get my head round it for this blog. I failed. (Who'd have thought stem cell science was so hard that a former arts student couldn't master it in an evening?)

According to 'internationally acclaimed plastic surgeon and skincare expert Dr Marko Lens', "stem cells are pluripotent cells with high self-renewal capacity and multi-lineage differentiation ability." So that clears that up then.

In terms of humans and animals I think this sort of means they're the Doctor Who of the cell world. I know what I mean.

However, apparently (I added the word 'apparently' to remind you that I don't know what I'm talking about) the stem cells used in skincare are actually plant stem cells. Which apparently (again) means they are just some cells from the stem of a plant. Different use of the word stem. See what they did there?

So basically they suck a load of stuff out of, say, a dandelion stalk, and then try to make out that it's going to rejuvenate your skin because it's made from stem cells, and we all know that they're amazing. Except it's not those stem cells, it's just a bit of dead plant. Science bit over.

Skincare is a feminist issue

Women are being exploited. We are being blinded and confused with hokey science used to persuade us to spend money on these products.

I'm not saying we shouldn't buy them, but come on rude, nasty girls, we need to stop listening to this crap.

Next time someone tries to sell you a pot of moisturiser on the grounds that it contains 64 essential oils, 12 stem cells and a particle in a pear tree, call them out on it. Ask them, "what exactly do you mean by that?" Ask them what kind of stem cells. The chances are your grasp of science is no worse than theirs.

Confused scientists

In researching this blog I found an article about a proper scientist who tried and failed to understand skincare advertising science. It's really good. You can read it here: 'Baffled by the beauty adverts: so is a Nobel prizewinner'.

Is it cos we is thick?

This week's Guardian Women's Blog asked the question, 'why are there so few female maths professors in UK universities?' It reports that only 6% of UK maths professors are women.

This is, according to the blog, the worst gender imbalance of the university subjects. I don't know what the figures are for the sciences, but I'm guessing they're not far off.

At university I once attended my boyfriend's computer science lecture. A woman! In computer science (I think they were amazed both that a woman might come to one of the lectures, and also that one of their compatriots had managed to find one). Of course I didn't understand a word of it, I'm not bright enough.

Female professions

There are many industries which are heavily skewed towards one or the other gender. I work in the arts, which is much more heavily populated by women than men.

My previous job, for a support charity, was even more imbalanced. In our entire head office at one point we had just one man (he was, of course, the boss). And there are many more female than male teachers at all levels, but at primary male teachers are extremely rare.

My husband works in the computer games industry, in which the numbers of women are gradually increasing, but are still very low. He once told me that the word for 'woman' in their office was 'receptionist', another area of work that is dominated by women.

Here is a picture of two beautiful receptionists, as decorative as the flowers which seem to be quietly consuming one of them...

Evan Bench, Paris via Wikimedia Commons

Are we too stupid?

Here are some reasons why there might be so few women pursuing scientific study and careers:

1. We are not clever enough - we don't have the intellectual capacity to grasp the rigours of science
2. We don't want to - there is something in the female brain that predisposes us to the arts
3. Social conditioning - society makes us believe we are not suited to scientific studies
4. Intimidation - we might not want to take a university course or pursue a career in an area dominated by men

There are many more reasons why this might happen, and each of these could be broken into a proper argument, after all, what is 'clever'?. For the purpose of this blog, I am making wide generalisations. I am an ex-journalist.

Science v arts

Of course, no one really knows why it happens. I hope and believe that it is not our intellectual prowess  preventing us from pursuing maths and science after age 18. I suspect that it is partly social conditioning, but maybe not entirely.

Maybe there is something in the idea that women prefer more people-centred subjects - if you study an arts subject you will spend much of your time thinking about people. In the case of my subject, English literature, it is about understanding humanity and their stories. We grapple with difficult philosophical questions, which require rigorous academic thought and understanding, but these are essentially people-centred questions. That doesn't mean they are necessarily less complex.

Maths and science on the other hand, are much more abstract subjects. With the exception of biology, they have little connection to our personal, social and emotional stories.

Women - stay away from science!

All this is just speculation. I don't have a clue why, in an age of equal education and opportunity, there are so few women pursuing scientific careers. And even if we are just naturally inclined that way, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing these things.

Women represent 50% of the world's population, so to disqualify ourselves from the sciences would represent a massive loss of potentially brilliant researchers, professors, doctors and teachers, who could bring invaluable skills, experiences and a different gender perspective to these areas.

The gender imbalance, whyever it exists, is all the more reason to encourage girls and women that the sciences are a viable area of study and work for them, in which we have as much right and chance as men to succeed.