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March 15, 2016 - Skeptoid
16:23
Skeptoid #510: Student Questions: Multiple Intelligences and the Gender Pay Gap

Skeptoid answers another round of questions sent in by students all around the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Student Questions on Pay Gap 00:07:46
Topics for Skeptoid episodes aren't just chosen by me.
They are, more often than not, chosen by you, the listeners, and sent in.
And in my personal favorite episodes, they are sent in by students who ask questions about things they've heard in pop culture, to which I give the full Skeptoid treatment.
Today we've got four student questions for you.
Four ways that we can all be just a little bit smarter.
Student questions are up next on Skeptoid.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.
You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that.
I'm doing something else now.
I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed.
On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them.
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No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's HyperFixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Student Questions, Multiple Intelligences, and the Gender Pay Gap.
Once again, we turn our skeptical eye on to questions sent in by students all around the world.
Today we're going to hear from some youthful scholars on Gardner's multiple intelligences, on the gender pay gap, on evil corporations funding their evil, corrupt plans of global domination, and on some schemes designed to extract money from college students by flattering them with hollow accolades.
Let's start by going into modern psychometry.
Hi, my name's Megan.
I'm currently a student at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, working on my Master's of Arts in Teaching.
And I have a question about some research that I've been seeing floating around on Facebook and the internet about these educational theories that I've been learning about a lot in my classes, such as Gardner's multiple intelligences and this idea of learning styles.
And I was wondering if you could tell me whether these ideas are actually valid and what research is currently out there that either proves or disproves these ideas.
I think this is a great question because it gets to the heart of what's good science or scientific, or what is bad science or unscientific.
We tend to say that ideas supported by a good body of evidence are good science, and ideas not supported by evidence are unscientific.
Similarly, claims that are falsifiable can become good science.
Claims that are not falsifiable can't really be tested and are usually considered unscientific.
Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences lands in this ground.
The theory states that measuring a person's intelligence with a single IQ number can't encompass the complexities of every individual person's spectrum of abilities and aptitudes.
So Gardner broke it down into eight and possibly more basic areas of abilities and posited that we all have varying aptitudes in each.
If you're really good at math but bad at conversation, isn't it more appropriate to say you have high logical mathematical intelligence but perhaps lower interpersonal intelligence, which are two of Gardner's areas, than to simply be represented by a single IQ number.
Learning styles are Gardner's related idea of different ways to learn.
We might be good at some ways and bad at others, as opposed to marking everyone as a good learner or a bad learner.
Howard Gardner is no crank.
He's a Harvard professor and very much in the mainstream of psychology.
A lot of people find Gardner's proposal compelling, logical, and quite likely true.
Unfortunately, it probably fails the common criteria for what we consider good science.
It's hard to falsify, and as a relatively new idea, he published it in 1983, it doesn't have much research or empirical evidence behind it.
Think of it as the string theory of psychometry, provocative yet hard to fit into our current models.
It's premature to say it's either proven or disproven, and I don't think anyone would hold it against you if you researched in this area, or even became a cheerleader for it, or an opponent of it.
String theorists have to live in this same academic twilight zone every day.
Hey, Brian, I was wondering if you could turn your skeptical eye to a question I can't find the answer for.
Is there a wage gap between men and women?
You always hear the popular, women make 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes, but is that because they have different career paths?
Or is that for the same job?
Thanks.
Really enjoy the show.
There's good news and bad news.
The bad news is the gender pay gap is very real.
The good news is it has been dropping fast for decades.
There's good news and bad news for those trying to understand it.
The good news is it's measurable and can be studied.
The average working female in the United States earns 78% of what the average working male makes.
The bad news is the reasons why are devilishly complex.
The focus of this question obviously is gender discrimination.
And data shows that that unquestionably plays a part, albeit a smaller part than some might realize.
The pay gap is still mostly driven by choices of college major and occupation.
Maternal leave and shortened hours for working mothers are a very big chunk.
Studies by the United States Department of Labor looking into the discrepancy attempt to control for these variables and when they do, it turns out that about a 6% pay gap remains.
Studies show that gap is driven by a number of factors.
First, gender discrimination.
Employers still pay men more than women for reasons ranging from a good old boy's network to belief that women are less valuable.
In addition, data shows men negotiate for raises more often and more aggressively than women.
Why?
One reason has been uncovered by observational studies finding that women tend to place less value on salary than men.
And even stepping back to choices of college major and occupation, these may be conscious choices made by women, but they're still heavily influenced by cultural factors.
And that, too, is fundamentally driven by a deeply rooted history of discriminatory societal norms.
There are arguments against the existence of the pay gap.
For example, the assertion that you cannot find a single company anywhere that has a policy of paying men and women differently for the same job.
Well, in developed non-Muslim countries, this is probably true.
But it addresses only a single segment of the employment world, jobs where the pay is carved in stone and there are no raises or negotiated salaries.
That's not the reality of many career-type jobs.
So, yes, the pay gap is real, and though we can expect it to continue narrowing, don't expect to see it disappear anytime soon.
Debunking Corporate Pay Myths 00:08:33
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Hi, Brian.
I'm Taylor Bennett, a philosophy undergraduate from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
I've heard that large corporations fund dubious research into dangerous industrial chemicals to convince government regulators of their safety.
Are the claims of widespread corruption in chemical science true?
This is the kind of idea that makes a wonderful soundbite, but unfortunately for those engaged in the spreading of fun internet memes, reality is a lot more nuanced than this.
It's just as invalid to say people engaged in business are corrupt, as it is to say, there is no corruption in the business world.
With that said, I think widespread corruption is an exaggeration, though no doubt companies of all kinds in all industries, both small and large, try to push the bounds of what they can get away with every day.
I think that's probably one of the few single-sentence summaries you could give that's likely to be true.
But looking specifically at industrial chemicals, including everything from rocket fuel to organic pesticides, to sofa cushions, to all-natural herbal body washes, these people all have to deal with the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.
Be assured that the safeguards in place are both thorough and myriad.
I've consulted for companies engaged in this process, and it's a serious grind.
Say your company discharges wastewater.
The EPA has extensive rules and tests your wastewater rigorously.
I don't care how corrupt you try to be, you're not going to get away with anything for long.
As far as corporations funding dubious research goes, I think that requires a false premise that the EPA simply rubber stamps companies and products based on self-reported, self-performed research, perhaps with some underhanded payola.
Well, the EPA doesn't work that way.
It's never been a case of, hey, self-report whatever you want and off you go.
Fines are steep and regulation is everywhere.
As a rule, I try to avoid making generalizations about entire industries or companies.
Employers and employees in businesses of all sizes are real human people.
Most are good.
Some are sleazy.
There's never been a company that thinks and functions as a single-minded, monolithic entity.
It's fashionable to throw around the word corporation as if it is synonymous with evil entity.
But just like your corner coffee shop, all companies are real human people doing what people do.
Hi, Brian.
This is Xander.
I'm a sophomore at Southwest High School in Minnesota.
Today I got a letter saying I was invited to a Congress of Future Science and Technology Leaders.
It also says that the cost to attend is $1,000.
Do you think that this is legit?
Well, legit can mean many things.
You're not the only one to receive this letter lately, and you're not the only one to question its integrity.
There was recently an article in the Los Angeles Times by a reporter whose son received the same letter from the same company.
Right away, I smelled a rat.
It smacked of the many who's who companies that charge people a fee to add their name to some arbitrary list and then charge them another fee to buy a book containing that list.
It has no value and signifies nothing other than you fell for a pointless sales pitch.
This particular company and others just like it are a step up from that, but not a large step.
My father was a director of admissions for the University of California for 20 years and we talked about these subjects a lot.
What you have are many, many companies selling summer programs like this to prospective students, often with impressive sounding names like Academy or Congress, with the hint that attending their program will improve the students' chances of getting into a university.
There are some summer programs that do have admissions value.
Those are usually run by universities.
Programs produced by private companies, such as this one, generally have no value for college admissions at all.
Students fall for the sales pitch.
They and their families spend a huge amount of money to attend.
The student lists it on their college application.
And then admissions officers, like my father, look at it, shake their heads sadly, and really wish private companies would get out of the business of trying to separate students from their money.
College money never goes far enough as it is.
If you went, you'd probably have a good time.
There may even be some speakers there that you recognize.
But do not expect it to improve your college admission chances.
My personal advice would be to go online and find those same speakers' talks on YouTube, enjoy for free, and save that precious tuition money for when you'll really need it.
That's it for this week's student questions.
Students, please keep those questions coming in.
Just come to skeptoid.com, click on answering student questions.
It's really super simple.
You can do it with your smartphone, the voice memo feature, and you email it to me.
Takes you five minutes.
And we'll do it on the show.
Skeptoid.com, answering student questions.
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I'm Brian Dunning from skeptoid.com.
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