If I refuse, people badger me and insist that I tell them how old I am. They try and bait me with, "I'll tell you if you tell me..." as if that is enough to make me reveal some deep dark secret.
My age is not a deep dark secret. It's clear that I'm not 25 nor 45 but that I could be anywhere between the ages of 25 and 45. And for some reason that level of uncertainty kills them.
Why should I care? Why not just tell them how old I am?
Well, why should anyone care how old I am? Does the quality of my science, which has no age, change if I'm 25? 35? or 45?
Apparently it does.
I don't need to state the obvious - but we live in a culture where youth is lifted up high and worshipped like a golden calf. Just look around at the media. Who are featured in advertising? movies? And there is clearly a gender bias here. I don't see many 55 year old women as romantic leads in movies, but how many times can Sean Connery play the young romantic lead? Geez if I were a biologist, I might try and make some connections to reproductive value.
Somehow this emphasis on the young has leaked into the scientific realm. People treat do treat you differently depending on how old they think you are and how it meshes with where they expect you to be in the academic hierarchy given your age. We expect PhD students to be between the ages of 23- 30 years old PhD. A postdoc somewhere between the ages of 30-35 and faculty usually >32 years of age. If people fall outside of these normal age categories, then we get all bent out of shape. Our expectations aren't met and so we make up stories. Ageism is subtle. I have heard friends and colleagues use expressions like, "He's 45 years old and a post-doc - well I guess he isn't interested in a faculty position." "She's too young to be a professor!" or "He's a little old to still be in school?"
Here's an example of age bias in a fellowship programme. UNESCO-L'OREAL has these fellowships for "young" women in life sciences. According to the eligibility criteria, "Candidates must be no more than 35 years old. Thus, applicants born before 1 January 1975 will not be considered under this programme. " I don't understand why the programme has not broadened that criteria to reflect years post PhD. If the programme's intent is to encourage women early in their careers to stay in science, then they need to target women who have recently finished their PhD. The studies all show that this is the crucial phase where women begin to drop like flies. Physical age should have nothing to do with.
Another example. In my field when people refer to hotshot scientists (and by these they mean people who have published many (>30) high impact papers) more often than not they say the words, "young hotshot scientist". Young both in terms of their academic careers, yes, but really they mean their physical age. Because let's face it young is hot. Old is not.
When I first started my PhD one of my supervisors, Asperger's, told me that you can only make your mark as a scientist if you are under 30. After 30 forget it. And just last year a friend, who is now faculty, once said to me that she and a bunch of other young scientist were putting together a working group but that they didn't want anyone over the age of 40 in it. They were interested in only the young cutting edge scientists. Plus people over 40, well they're over 40.
Now I hear that 40 is the new 30. Why do we need to make 40 what we consider "young." Really people in their 40s still have 4 decades of life and work left - they are young.
Then I saw this. The news article, entitled "Brain slows down after 40" refers to a paper in Nature that was interested in investigating the age-dependent gene expression in the human brain. The title as well as the first line of this article are misleading. The first line of the article, reads, "The human brain starts slowing down after the age of 40, according to new scientific research. "
In the abstract of their Nature paper, Lu et al (2004) state that transcriptional proļ¬ling of the human frontal cortex from 30 individuals ranging from 26 to 106 years of age identified a set of genes that showed reduced expression after the age of 40. These genes that had a role in synaptic plasticity, vesicular transport and mitochondrial function. Further they found a set of genes that were upregulated, primarily DNA repair.
In Figure 1a (reproduced below), you observe that consistently reduced expression of a cluster of genes does not start until age 70. This is also true for the genes they suggest are upregulated. What is clear from the figure, and something they point out in their paper, is that there is a lot of variation in expression levels in individuals that are between the ages of 42-71.
So it is misleading to say, as they do in their abstract that "a set of genes that show reduced expression after the age of 40." This leads to the news media writing things like "the human brain starts slowing down after the age of 40, according to new scientific research. " Despite the fact that we are scientists, we're human and most of us while proclaiming analytical skills, don't actually listen or read the news media with much critical thought. So we start to believe what we read. In my opinion, scientists have a responsibility to interpret their findings conservatively, especially if you do "sexy" research. Brazenly making statements that are not supported with strong evidence can lead to cultural memes that are baseless and harmful.
I think that this saying, by Anonymous (who in my opinion must have be over 40), "If you are on the cutting edge, you are holding the knife the wrong way," captures it completely.
I have several other problems with the conclusions of this paper, but frankly, it's late, and well, as I inch towards middle age, my brain is slowing. I get tired easily and my back hurts.
4 comments:
I appreciate this post as I'm often in the same position, older than people expect b/c I didn't go straight into grad school, but productive for my academic age something that isn't always appreciated. The other irritating thing is that all the emphasis on being most productive or groundbreaking when younger comes from patterns in men. For men it appears to be true but women often make their big contributions later in life. Once again, too many people are relying on the wrong measuring stick, particularly when it comes to women.
I'll put in that I appreciate this post as well as someone on the other side of the "acceptable age" distribution. I can't tell you the shit I've gotten for being a 25-year-old PhD. People are either threatened and try to figure out what is wrong with me, or still treat me like a grad student (I can't tell you how many 30-year-old male grad students still try to give me advice...) I avoided my age like the plague while on the job market, and I STILL saw people balk at how young I seemed (advice: if you must be young, at least be tall and male). Youth may be the magic bullet in Hollywood starlets and start-up CEOs, but when push comes to shove nobody wants a 27-year-old professor in their department. In short, yes, ageism is bullshit and the "too young" should all be standing up and fighting against these ridiculous stereotypes and judgements too. Really: since when can a 50-year-old not be precocious or a 23-year-old not be wise?
@Anon1: You make a great point about how women make their big contributions later in life. Perhaps this has something to do with their responsibilities, i.e. kids.
@Anon2: Thanks. My PhD supervisor, General Solution Guru used to complain about similar things. She would come back from these big NSERC meetings with a lot of older white males who would often treat her as "just a grad student". It seems like the combination of gender and age really brought on the patriarchy.
I as well was happy to find your page. I am a "non-traditional" 40+ undergrad who is now applying to grad schools. Can you believe that L'OREAL actually considers themselves a "diversity" employer? They belong to a myriad of diversity initiative employment groups. What a joke. Shame on you L'OREAL. Put your money where your mouth is.
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