TED Community » Renee Hlozek

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Science communication - allowing science to open the minds of young people. The power of science to enthral as well as to educate. I'm passionate about Africa.

Talk to me about

Our universe, how it started, how it evolves with time and how it will end! Astronomy, telescopes, discovery. Africa, science education and science policy. Education in prisons.

People don't know that I'm good at

I love to sing and bake - sometimes at the same time!

Comments

• TEDCred score: +4.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Will making rockstars out of women in science get more girls interested in science/technology/engineering/math (i.e. STEM) fields?

  Apr 12 2013: hi Cecilia
  
  I agree that one shouldn't be prescriptive - I loved dolls, but I also loved things that go - and microscopes! I was lucky enough to have a family that encouraged me, but I think some girls do grow up with people not buying them "boy-like" toys, so in that sense, we should try to give both boys and girls the same messages, that science is fun and interesting!
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: Will making rockstars out of women in science get more girls interested in science/technology/engineering/math (i.e. STEM) fields?

  Apr 11 2013: One issue which has been on my mind recently is that of blogging. I have a blog where I discuss science, but I haven't blogged about women in science specifically. This is an important issue, but rather than only being upset about the many challenges in women in science (which are often what blogs focus on) I think making positives, (aka your "rock stars") is really good - because it focuses on changing the conversation too, rather than solely focusing on the challenges/issues we know are there.
  
  It might be fun to start a "Female Scientist of the Week" entry/blog space - to highlight women in different fields, and of different levels. Why not profile students all the way up the ladder, and postdocs and faculty etc.?
• +2

  A reply on Conversation: Will making rockstars out of women in science get more girls interested in science/technology/engineering/math (i.e. STEM) fields?

  Apr 11 2013: hi Greg
  
  One problem is actually that there are many more women entering STEM fields, but not staying in them. If they were just not interested, you might imagine that across the board at school there might be no women (there might of course be other causes, but let's take that one for now).
  But the fact that there are fewer and fewer women relative to men as you go higher up in academia (Masters degrees, PhDs faculty etc) - makes me think that one cause could be a lack of role models.
  So we should look at how to keep women in STEM fields, and personally for me this is where role models can be an important tool.
  I think there are many other factors at play of course, including making the STEM environments attractive to stay in, but this is a topic for another discussion perhaps!
• +3

  A reply on Conversation: Will making rockstars out of women in science get more girls interested in science/technology/engineering/math (i.e. STEM) fields?

  Apr 11 2013: hi Pnina
  
  Thanks for your comment. There is a very interesting book linked to your xkcd comic, called "The Marie Curie Complex", which you may enjoy - it focuses on many different women in science and how the "Be the best" mentality of trying to pick out role models often polarises things. There are many men in science, and so by definition there are many 'good but not Noble laureate' men in science too. Sometimes focusing on the Nobel laureate women can create a huge gap, since there are fewer 'good but not Nobel laureate' women in history.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Will making rockstars out of women in science get more girls interested in science/technology/engineering/math (i.e. STEM) fields?

  Apr 11 2013: hi Hindi
  
  Thanks for this conversation. As a women in STEM, I agree that having visible role models does make a difference - I didn't have that many contemporary female role models when I started my career. This is better now, but there is more to do!
  
  As you highlighted I think one must strike a delicate balance between "making rock stars" and sexualising. We only need to look at the recent Science: It's a girl thing! video to see an example of where it goes wrong.
  
  I try to give lots of science talks to school children so that they get exposed to women in science early, and to discuss my path to science and research wherever I can. A fellow TED STEM woman and I, Lucianne Walkowicz also have a discussion about inclusion and equity within our university - but how might one go about increasing this, or making it happen on a larger scale?
  
  What "rock-star" qualities will you emphasise, and at what cost? Do you think this should happen on a 'per-person' basis or are you thinking of something collective, like STEM twitter lists etc., which may go some of the way? Do you think it is more important to see a large number of women in STEM, or concentrate on a few specific people? I'm intrigued to hear more...
• +2

  A reply on Conversation: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk

  Mar 20 2013: Steve - I'm not sure you are understanding me. In testing for variation in the constants of the physical laws in our universe, we are *explicitly* testing for the fact that the laws of physics within this universe are fixed (or not). Different constants would mean that the laws behave completely differently. In day to day calculations I may assume they are fixed, until I find strong evidence to the contrary!
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk

  Mar 20 2013: Frank and Noah: what I was saying is that there is an evolving model that currently fits the data, that we seek to refine, adjust and understand. Hence it becomes the 'assumed' model - that is tested, prodded, questioned daily. Do we rewrite the history books every day? No. I stand by my point - until there is compelling evidence by more than one source, and there currently isn't, then the theory remains in use. That isn't Science Delusion. It is the scientific method.
  When you say "I come up with dark matter to make theories of the big bang fit and then pass it off as brainwashing" - that is just wrong. I have data that is fit by a component that interacts mainly gravitationally. Do I just rest on that? No. That is why there are countless number of experiments looking to find and detect dark matter, so that we can characterise it and understand it. Perhaps you are not happy with the fact that there are many questions that remain. It can sometimes be frustrating, but I see them as new opportunities to challenge myself and the community. Are there scientists that don't like the idea of dark matter and that seek to explain it with something else - like a variation in Newton's laws? Yes. And they are free to do so. But every one of those theories needs to stand up to the wealth of independent data from different groups all over the world - and we are constantly testing our models, whether they include dark matter or not.
• +4

  A reply on Conversation: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk

  Mar 20 2013: What I'm saying, Steve, is that in asking the theoretical questions about how likely the physical laws are in our universe we are explicitly allowing for different physical laws in other universes - so yes, we challenge these type of assumptions. As I stated before, we also test for changes in the laws in our own universe (for example is gravity changing with time or in space, and the paper I referenced to earlier as two examples). Just because in general the assumption is that these are fixed (as I said, because we don't have strong evidence to the contrary) doesn't actually mean that this is dogma - scientific papers are written all the time about challenging just these assumptions.
• +4

  A reply on Conversation: The debate about Graham Hancock's talk

  Mar 20 2013: Steve - I was commenting on Hancock's talk and its contents. I will look up the references you suggest, and will read the study posted by Noah with interest. And yes, then I will evaluate to the best of my ability whether or not what Hancock says is supported by evidence. So thanks for the suggestions.
  However, I think the comment stands that he used mainly anecdotal evidence in his talk. Now I understand that this builds the narrative of the piece, fair enough, but in that context (of Big Pharma versus alternative medical practices) I think it was worth discussing.
  
  And no, I don't assume pseudoscience to be "pretty much everything that I don't know about."
• +3

  A comment on Conversation: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake's talk

  Mar 20 2013: Steve, while I appreciate your suggestion to get a reasonable handle on the issues Sheldrake is discussing, his explicit comments on the issue of the speed of light warrant the comment I made. But if you want, let's stick to "The underlying dogma is that the ultimate laws of physics are, well, ultimate, and fixed." In fact, models of eternal inflation predict many universes with slightly different physical constants, some of which may create a world like ours and some of which may not. Much effort is being made to pose (and then address) the questions of "how likely is the universe in which we find ourselves (and by definition our physical laws)?." This is a tricky question to ask as we need to phrase it in concrete statistical language in order to be able to begin to answer it. Similar questions are being asked by researchers all over the world. Rather than shy away from dogma, we are constantly trying to tackle it head on and test our understanding, and so Sheldrake's comment (both the one I adressed previously and the one you highlighted) are in my mind are unfair.