The First What the Function? episode of the Brain Scoop, and the Confidence Gap

Scooping up the wrong brain

I just watched the The Brain Scoop “What the Function?” video with Destin from Smarter Every Day, and my reaction was along the lines of the very similar but swearier phrase that that is playing off. I was disappointed, and a bit confused.  

I love these videos and I love that Emily Graslie is getting out there making her name as a young, female science communicator with genuine knowledge and enthusiasm. I sympathised about, and wanted somehow to help with, the “Where my ladies at?” edition, which talks about the ongoing abusive comments and discussion of her appearance that she has to put up with as a woman, and rues the fact that there aren’t more women (and girls) out there doing these videos about science and engineering and getting watched. I agree, that would be great – and when there are, it will be because of people like her. 

And so I was disappointed that the most recent Brain Scoop video was mostly given over to letting a male guest, outside his field of expertise, bluster through guesses with corrections and hints from the more knowledgeable ladies, and then explain basic stuff they already knew! It seemed to be deliberately reinforcing the idea that “guys can come in and solve problems without knowing that much”. 

One of the issues with women participating and stepping up to do things like this seems to be, as discussed a lot recently because of things like the Kay & Shipman “Confidence Gap” article, an unwillingness to take risks in the absence of absolute 100% knowledge/qualifications, to a much greater extent than men. Another way to look at this is that (some) men are suffering from a “Confidence Glut” that can cause harm and isn’t necessarily something to hold up as a goal for everyone else. To quote a great piece from Soraya Chemaly: “Men assume they are so great BECAUSE WE KEEP TELLING THEM THEY ARE. [caps in original]”  

And that’s exactly what Emily was doing in this video with Destin – encouraging a non-expert, and to me gratingly arrogant, guy to come in and boost his already pretty high confidence. It felt irresponsible – like, I don’t know, encouraging an already somewhat drunk friend to have another large glass of wine because it’s fun at the moment, though it could ruin everyone’s night later (in this analogy, there’s a couple of girls down the end of the table who have been waiting patiently for a small glass of wine and who’d be really excellent company - but they’re being ignored and shouted over). 

What makes this worse is that it’s perpetuating the idea that guys will be celebrated for being confident even if they’re wrong. Despite the fact that Destin was more often wrong than not, the corrections and information were so encouragingly and mildly given (which is good!) that this is not how people – including likely Destin himself - will perceive or remember it. The fact that he seemed not to really listen to the women, but rather just used their help by incorporating what they'd said into his own near-monologue, I think made him a particularly bad example for this. Indeed, the Youtube comments are full of people saying how awesome and smart he is and how maybe he can solve a genuine unknown problem if they put it in front of him (presumably by looking at something while on video for a couple of minutes  that others have been studying for years, and also being an engineer. and, obviously, possessing the right sort of genitalia). 

I did a science PhD in a fruitfully multidisciplinary department (which included engineers) and am all for cross-fertilisation of ideas and much collaboration, I’m not saying people can’t contribute by coming at something with fresh eyes and different expertise. However a common response to this video seems to be “look how smart this dude is, the way he can come in like that without any specific learning” and that doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the series: The strength of the other videos in The Brain Scoop, for me, is that they have been all about celebrating the men and women who devote their lives to corners of science that are fascinating but fairly obscure for the rest of us.  

It would have been so much more effective to have this cross-disciplinary "guess the function" game with a member of a group of people whose ability to be smart, contributing non-experts seems to need both internal and external  boosting – women (or any other non-white-male group). This would have been a great, great opportunity to find female engineers (or architects, or physicists, anyone with insight into biological structures) to take part. I suspect that they would be harder to recruit (ie just asking for volunteers, as the tumblr is doing, probably will get answers skewed towards guys), and more likely to show some humility. They may also need more encouragement initially – but that’s just more of a chance to impart information and have real discussions! 

I’m confident Emily and everyone involved with The Brain Scoop is very aware of trying to look for women to do this sort of thing, and I know Smarter Every Day has a lot of reach, so obviously this seemed like a suitable episode to put out there to kick it off. However my response was one of dismay that they were taking a step backwards like this, not helped by my dislike for this sort of arrogant dudeness from Destin (which not everyone shares, I get that, but I'm not alone, another friend found it unwatchable too.). Seeing an overconfident guy reductively guess at things he doesn’t know much about - well, hey, that’s something I can see any time in any media, or in real life! If there is a real desire to change the situation described in “Where My Ladies At?” about the very few women out there doing science-related videos, then it seems clear that this in part depends on addressing the confidence gap. And you don’t close that gap and get a wider range of voices out there by bolstering the “men can be overconfident and wrong and still know they'll seem awesome” status quo. 

So anyway, the rest of The Brain Scoop is awesome and everyone should check it out, and thanks to anyone involved that reads this for your otherwise great work!