Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins The UK’s Institute of Physics (IOP) is calling on the popular press to ditch the term “boffin” when referring to scientists. The 150-year-old organization's survey of 1,000 young people and 1,514 adults found using the term “boffin” to refer to scientists was confusing and heavily gendered. It may even put people off studying …
"more than 10 times the number of respondents thought the term described a man compared with the number who thought it described a woman."
I wonder if they did the same study, and asked with "Scientist" what the results would be?
It's not that the word "Boffin" is a problem, it's just that people expect scientists to be men. And they mostly are, unfortunately.
However, that's a reflection on reality. People expect that because that's what they see.
We might be able to change that, by encouraging more girls to go into STEM subjects.
Although, perhaps we'll never get to 50/50 as men tend to be more interested in things, and women more interested in people. Perhaps, just a gut feeling. Could be wrong.
We would start using the term "boffinx" and that would solve everything, and keep everyone happy, right?
Puffins, inspires the idea of a bunch of penguins goofing off all day,
Or a overdressed braggart.
Ie
Don't worry about them Puffins, they complain a lot while wearing expensive clues but ultimately it's all hot air.
You know penguins are thugs right?
Take a look at adolescent penguin behavior.
It's brutal what they do to entertain themselves at the expense another penguins.
Including but not limited to raping penguin chicks literally to death
"more than 10 times the number of respondents thought the term described a man compared with the number who thought it described a woman."
The terms below are not gendered but I suspect that when you see them you will associate male or female with most of them.
Is the fix to: a) ban the term; b) preferentially recruit until equal numbers of men & women do the jobs; c) accept that men & women gravitate to different jobs ?
Nurse; Fire fighter; Road sweeper; House builder; Shipyard worker; Air plane pilot; Soldier; School dinner person; Train driver; Car mechanic; Office cleaner; Crèche assistant; Electrician; Sound engineer; Nanny.
I do know that people of both do the above jobs, but still ...
The last time I visited the Talyllyn Railway in mid-Wales, both drivers and one of (two) firemen of the locomotives behind which I travelled were young women. As an organisation they have a superbly effective approach to diversity. The physical appearance of their staff does not seem relevant to me.
"The last time I visited the Talyllyn Railway in mid-Wales, both drivers and one of (two) firemen of the locomotives behind which I travelled were young women. As an organisation they have a superbly effective approach to diversity. The physical appearance of their staff does not seem relevant to me."
If we're talking gendered terminology here I think you might need to rethink the word "firemen"
From Wikipedia on the origins of the word "man" -
"In Old English the words wer and wīf were used to refer to "a male" and "a female" respectively, while mann had the primary meaning of "person" or "human" regardless of gender. Both wer and wyf may be used to qualify "man"; for example:
God gesceop ða æt fruman twegen men, wer and wif
(then at the beginning, God created two human beings, man and woman)"
So wer-man was shortened to man, while wyf-man was transformed to woman.
I take your point about some job roles having gender connotations.
I note that the only term in your list which has been mangled* is 'School dinner person'. Presumably because we find it difficult to call a bloke a 'dinner lady'. 'Caterer' probably encompasses most of the role or possibly 'lunchtime assistant'.
What I would take issue with is reading gender into terms like 'chairman' just because it has the 13th, 1st and 14th letter of an alphabet in that order within the term. So does 'human' but it definitely encompasses everybody in my opinion. Yes, I know we can use phrases like 'in the chair' or 'chair of the board' but that brings me back to my (mild) objection to 'dinner person'.
I met someone recently who described themselves as a 'manageress' - I found it jarring but certainly not something to object to in casual conversation. A totally unnecessary extension of the word in my opinion.
*persongled if you like.
I'm related to a psychiatric nurse who does cross fit and is rather big and strong. The cops dropped off one of their patients who'd "gone for a walk", took the handcuffs off, left as soon as they could and the patient saw the nurse as another figure of authority and floored him! I believe Vitamin H was served shortly afterwards...
Madam Chairman, and Chairwoman, if one must, but never just Chair.
One can "sit in the Chair", "Chair a meeting", and "sit on a chair".
It once was a convention to use "he" to cover male and female - a generic person - instead of circumlocution (e.g. he/she, he or she) and grammar-twisting as with "they". If a specific sex is meant, context may resolve ambiguity. For females, we have "she", and "her". When "he" is meant exclusively as male, that can be stated early in the discourse; that's if not bleedin' obvious as when discussing prostate diseases.
I adhere to conventional English usage. He was chooses not to descends into a pit of inelegant prose.
While overal differences between men and women explain SOME of the difference between number of men and number of women in technical jobs (some of which you listed) the current difference is vastly bigger and cannot be explained that way. If it was ONLY down to overal difference in temperament between the groups lots of those jobs should have at worse a 60-40 men-woman split. There is no need to accept that men and women gravitate to different jobs because that is already accepted. The big problem is that a big driver keeping women away from tech jobs isn't biological at all, but cultural. And that culture should probably change because it doesn't benefit anyone.
I think the split is probably more naturally polarised than you think.
While I was studying psychology at university, I was told about a study done in Israel where a group of children were brought up with no reference to their gender. Boys and girls were not influenced in what they wore, who they played with etc.
It was found that in the absence of this influence, boys and girls were actually more likely to choose gender-stereotypical roles than otherwise.
I can't find a link to this study, so treat the above as the anecdote that it is, but I have found this article https://bigthink.com/the-present/gender-equality-paradox/, which links it's sources.
The target here shouldn't be a near-even representation of men and women in a given role, and the lack of such a representation shouldn't necessarily reflect badly on an industry or discipline. What we should have is equal opportunity - if a man or woman wants to pursue a career in an industry that is more typically pursued by the other gender, they should be able to do that without bias. As you say, there are industries at present that have a strong cultural bias for / against a particular gender and that does need to change.
I don't agree...whilst tech can be pretty hostile in general (regardless of gender), it has never been, in my opinion, generally hostile towards women. I am not aware of any machismo in tech. Don't get me wrong, the sheer amount of pale skin and skinny arms might seem macho to some, but it really isn't.
Also, tech generally isn't that physical of a job...so the physical differences between men and women don't matter at all.
What I suspect drives women away from tech is a) socially, it's a really shit profession b) it is full of weirdos (lot's of us can pass as human, but there is a large number of people that just can't, they usually have anime wallpaper and toys on their desks. We can't really escape that). and c) It can be a very solitary profession, which isn't a very attractive proposition for women, they are natural collaborators...even to men (which is why we constantly have shortages of engineers) finally d) it's not very formal which can make it hard to navigate and seem daunting. There is very rarely a clear hierarchy amongst nerds...regardless of job titles...unless the shit hits the fan.
Bottom line, our industry is jam packed with fucking socially awkward weirdos with no filter. We're not sexist, we're just not attractive. Further more, it's not the culture itself that might be putting women off, it's that the culture is pretty deep, has a long history and can seem impenetrable (even to men)...how many professions out there are likely to have a debate in the middle of the day over whether Chief O'Brien technically abandoned his family when he swapped places with himself? How many people even know what that means, and how many people have enough fucks to give to point out the deliberate flaws in that statement?
Now here is the rub, either you're outraged by the first part of the post, in which case, congratulations, you work in an area of the industry that is reasonably enlightened, or you are outraged over the statement about O'Brien...in which case you are the problem.
I think it's not just about encouraging girls into STEM subjects, but there's also still changes in culture that need to be made. While I can't speak for the experiences of women, I've picked up enough through complaints/stories from my (fortunately growing) number of female colleagues about what it's like to work in a highly technical field as a woman. Unfortunately it's still very much a "mens world" and there's still many women changing away to less male dominated fields both during their education and their career.
I think what keeps girls out of STEM subjects is not gendered language, or deliberate discrimination. It is what society expects of them and who influences them.
My daughter is doing engineering. Still not a common choice for a girl. She was the only girl in her A level electronics class, I think she is the only one doing electrical engineering in her year of her degree apprenticeship.
What is different about how her interests were formed is that, because my ex was bone idle, I worked from home from when my daughter was and she was home educated for most of secondary school and a bit of primary, she spent far more time with me than most girls do with their fathers - so she picked up my interests just from talking to me, and playing with me, learning hobbies from me, reading books I suggested, and helping me fix things - all the things boys do with dad.
Yes, she could have picked all that up from a mother, but as long as there are fewer women in engineering and technology there will be fewer who can pass on those interests to their daughters which then means fewer women in engineering and technology.
STEM cannot be lumped together either - lots of girls are now doing science and maths, but not the more practical subjects.
Hmm, the problem there is that the "ette" ending has the primary meaning of "small" and the feminine is a secondary meaning - compare with the masculine ending "et".
So "boffinette" and "boffinet" would be the gendered words for, say, anyone pre-doctorate.
(In case you were wondering, a "(drum) majorette" is a diminutive, female, version of a drum major: the latter manoeuvres a large baton, approximately[1] 2m, to keep the marching and in time and directed - ref. the end credits of "Thunderbirds Are Go!" - whilst the former flings about a small baton. Guess what I think the word "bachelorette" means!)
[1] approximately!
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Vimes. ‘A monarch’s an absolute ruler, right? The head honcho—’
‘Unless he’s a queen,’ said Carrot.
Vimes glared at him, and then nodded.
‘Okay, or the head honchette—’
‘No, that’d only apply if she was a young woman. Queens tend to be older. She’d have to be a … a honcharina? No, that’s for very young princesses. No. Um. A honchesa, I think.’
Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
boffin | ˈbäfən |
noun British informal
a person engaged in scientific or technical research: a computer boffin.
a person with knowledge or a skill considered to be complex, arcane, and difficult: he had a reputation as a tax boffin, a learned lawyer.
Nothing here is gendered or degrading. Neither is calling someone an expert.
Saying that only boffins need apply would be exclusionary. Calling someone a boffin is a complement, albeit cryptic.
I'd say the real problem is sample bias in the survey, the number of experienced professionals that don't have time to talk to people taking surveys tracks with pay rate, competence, and experience.
If we let them redefine this to mean something discriminatory, it will be another sad loss at the hands of the uninformed. It will gain us nothing, and they will just go on to complain about whatever term replaces it.
Indelicately, we did the same for idiots, morons and retards. Inventing new PC words failed, and we just kept adding new euphemisms to the list of "no longer preferred" words.
Sadly, too many seem to look for something to take offense about. Seems the culture wars are more about attention than actually doing something to solve problems. I find the term "inclusive" to be somewhat ambiguous in that it leads to quotas. Such as "we need "X" numbers for this no matter how unqualified they might be." which I've actually seen some years ago whith some companies hiring less than qualified people to fill a quota.
People are strange critters and very tribal to say the least. <sigh>
Disclaimer... I'm old, I'm cranky.... now get off my lawn.
In the face of the evidence presented, I have to agree with the deboffination idea.
The thing is- English is as English does. So if the majority of people are using Boffin in a derogatory or sexist way, then it essentially IS derogatory and sexist, and the OED will have to be updated to accommodate its modern use.
I'm a software developer, not a scientist, but I've seen "Boffin" applied to devs more times than I can count, so let me give a dev's perspective. Our industry is horrendously skewed in favour of males. I'm sure many readers will agree it's pretty depressing. But the workforce is shaped that way, because people are employed from a talent pool that is shaped that way. The talent pool is mainly from universities or previous jobs, both of which suffer from the same problem in the relevant subjects.
(And, yes, the skewed workplace produces a work culture that's downright misogynist)
So real change will have to come-up through culture change in homes, schools, colleges and universities before the workplace starts to look sensible ... it's not a problem you can "Fix" with quotas. Losing the word Boffin will probably have a positive effect on all stages of the system, so I say "Go for it." It definitely won't solve the problem but (given the perception of the word) it's a small step in the right direction.
From the Cambridge English Dictionary:
“a scientist who is considered to know a lot about science and not to be interested in other things:
a technical/computer boffin“
If a person wishes to study the sciences, I bet they know how to look up a word. Just not in OED Online. It costs £100.
...said in UK and Ireland, the formal study of physics struggles to attract girls, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, people of Black Caribbean descent, people with disabilities, and LGBT+ young people into the subject."We need to do absolutely everything we can to break down the barriers young people face and the language used by our media can play a really important role in that," she said.
Absolutely everything? What do you mean? Even educate them?
It seems to me that if STEM subjects are perceived to be difficult or boring then young people may be reacting to a bad rep rather than terms like 'boffin'.
Perhaps if a career in boffinry was seen to be financially rewarding then more might want to pursue such a course.
"Perhaps if a career in boffinry was seen to be financially rewarding then more might want to pursue such a course."
Very much this! My wife has an advanced degree in Biology. She tells people that ask her about the field, to choose a business, finance or administration degree instead.
For a science degree you work just as hard (or more likely much harder) than in business school, but your career options are much more limited, or at least much lower paying. With a science degree, you either have a PhD, or you are "just a technician". As a technician, you will get treated like a second class citizen, and get paid like one. If you work hard, and get a PhD, you will likely spend most of your career chasing soft money grant funding, all the while wondering if you will have a job two months from now when your current grant money runs out. Maybe, if you are "lucky", you can find a teaching job at a university. However, more and more, universities are hiring lecturers at much lower pay, and not hiring professors with a PhD. So, teaching jobs are in short supply.
My wife has a PHD and has done a post-doctoral study here in Australia.
She specialised in Evolutionary Entomology + Ecology.
She left Academia and got an entry level job in the public service in NSW and got paid more than she had in the 4 years of paid research.
She also was not expected to work a 80hr week. She also recommends others do not try to work in boffinry.
If we do not pay people properly, why would we expect them to stay? Incidentally men are more likely (found in western studies) to remain in a job they dislike, this then would mean men would be more likely to remain in these fields which have a poor work-life balance.
Indeed so.
'Boffin' for me is an old, almost defunct term - I haven't heard it being used for many a year
The current terminology is 'Geek' or 'Nerd', I believe.
*deep sigh* ... and there, lower down El Reg's front page "Boffins claim discovery of the first piezoelectric liquid"
Just to prove me wrong.
Of course, different people will have different opinions on these names. For myself, although "boffin" seems a bit old fashioned, it has never had particularly negative associations, which were largely along the lines of "some sort of sciencey type, who we don't really understand, but has done something clever" - and that may have just saved the day in some old war film or 50s scifi movie - and so I would not mind particularly being called a boffin.
On the other hand, I consider "geek" or "nerd" to be essentially terms of insult or abuse, specifically because of how those words were being used when I first heard them. I therefore am not particularly keen on their current widespread usage, but seeing as nowadays - at least in most media output - the implication seems not to be abusive in intent, I see little point in making a big issue of it. And I certainly meet people who say that for them "geek" or "nerd" have never had any negative associations, and who will happily identify as one.
"Geek" and "Nerd" are, of course, derogatory terms, generally used ironically by techies to refer to themselves. When others use them, or even worse when non-techies refer to themselves as "nerds", it's basically a kind of bigotry.
But, as geeks, we understand that human society and psychology is such that they can use these terms and genuinely not think they're doing harm, so we mostly ignore it. Also that we have nicer cars than they do, so there's not much of a power imbalance overall and it's generally not an issue.
Same logic applies to scientists.
But I'm still confused. "Boffin" is gendered? If that's the case then Nerd is too and I"m going to start calling hipsters racist.
Originally, a geek was someone who bit off chicken's heads at the circus sideshow. I suppose that it is only in the last half-century that it expanded to take in those imagined to be longer on tech skills than social skills or grooming.
And the odds are long that any American who speaks of boffins learned it from El Reg.
"Geek" and "Nerd" are, of course, derogatory terms, generally used ironically by techies to refer to themselves. When others use them, or even worse when non-techies refer to themselves as "nerds", it's basically a kind of bigotry.
I've heard both terms being used for and by non-technical people, and in a non-derogatory way, when referring to being very into a particular subject...for example someone describing themselves as being "a bit of a history geek" or "nerding out about post-modernist architecture"
I think there’s a bit of a difference.
A boffin, to me, is someone who actually does science.
A geek or nerd may do science, but it might also refer to someone who just has an intense interest in it, or some other subject, not necessarily scientific, for example you could be a language nerd or a history geek. But I’ve never heard boffin used outside of science.
Geek refers to amateur fanaticism with spastic expression
Nerd refers to a chronic meticulousness and predilection towards deep study as a personal trait.
To refer to a scientist as either within their professional balliwick would be to deny that they are a scientist and to virtually call them a charlatan.
Likewise, it never occurred to me it was gendered. I just assumed it was multi-gender, in the same way as formal terms such as doctor, professor, engineer, or informal terms such as expert, whizz, genius.
Extending the thinking, even terms at the other end of the scale, such as idiot, are gender-neutral.
If I were smart enough to be a boffin, I'd have no problem with being a boffin.
Likewise, I don't interpret it as a gendered term. There's no boffiness, boffinette, or whatever. However I do usually think that boffins are male because, well, because they are. Think about it, it's like Sabine Hossenfelder versus a comically long list of men.
But, there you go, it's so easy these days to moan about a word given connotations that might not necessarily be shared by others (master and slave devices come to mind) in the name of "inclusiveness" than to actually do something to encourage females to consider nerdy subjects and not run in the opposite direction.
Please allow me to point everybody at this video which neatly demonstrates the entire problem.
He means that The Register has used the word "boffin" as a term of endearment for scientists in it's reporting for quite a number of years now.
Edit: I found a link to some of The Register's jargon, dated 2001. I'm sure there are more terms they've used, but I got bored of looking :)
https://www.theregister.com/2001/02/02/the_quick_guide_to_register/
I know that. The bit I am missing is that we should all know that register takes great pride in using tabloids puerilsims.
He should know that, as he has one of those grey shields things against his name. He should also know that anyone with a grey shieldy thing has not just stumbled onto Register.
"while 18-24-year-olds are nearly 80 percent more likely to view it as an insult than a compliment."
Probably due to what is banded about as science at the moment. Things more akin to fad or fashion than intelligent work, and when someone who appears a boffin shows up he gets criticized for the clothes that dont conform to modern over-sensitivities. Example of over-sensitivities is the stupid idea of boffin to be a gendered term. But its all about the feelz isnt it?
I have considerable sympathy for this. Boffin is a term created by the lorded classes to identify and segment the technical classes. In doing so, it means they can be ignored in any decision of strategic importance.
In Germany (and lets face it they have a considerable better record is promoting science in industry), the term Herr Engineer and Herr Professor is used. the terms give equal footing to the management ranks, rather than the UK terms which is designed to conjure up absent minded blokes who see less sunshine than an average Morlock.
It seems to me that it is a classic British device of creating class division and is used to create segmentation and a silo mentality.
I don't know why they're getting so het up about the media. How they relate us (or don't ) is irrelevant. Everyone creates their own gods and demons, none more so than the media. It's how impose order on the world about us. As engineers and scientists we facilitate and enable societies, we have done since the Industrial Revolution. The media on the other hand, is a bourgeious construct, whose sole predication is hegemony. They will always marginalise and/or negate anyone who raises their head above the parapet. It's the only way they can invest themselves with any societal value.
The upper classes like it that we divide ourselves into little camps and argue with each other, because that is energy that might otherwise be directed at them.
We Americans mostly don't understand how much of this kind of thing is actually redirected side effects of class disparity. I mean, we're just starting to see it, but we're also really, really good at advertising, so don't expect it to ever come to anything.
Can't say I've ever considered boffin to have any gender - they're just clever folks who come up with (usually) good ideas.
As for the concept of someone sitting alone in a lab, tinkering with their latest creation - it may be a cliché, but it may also have some grounding in fact. How many of us have sat up all night fiddling with our latest hobby project? How many other folks would want to? It's just part of what makes us tick. Is it an essential trait? No, of course not, but boffinry tends to attract people who get engrossed in their work. Rather than trying to change that, maybe we could try showing folks how engrossing it really is.
Not anymore.
A USC office removes 'field' from its curriculum, citing possible racist connotations
Interesting link but kind of empty of content. Like what are they replacing field (or even work) with?
Both field and work can be said to have "have racist connotations related to slavery" if you think about it too much. There are very few words that can not become toxic if you willing to twist it's meaning enough.
That aside I did find it rather odd the picture at the top showing a young person in rather short shorts.
As if working in fields wasn't rewarding and character building. I spent a season grape picking in France on a small vineyard - absolutely back breaking but the owners were fantastic people and we all worked together, drank together, and ate together. A great experience. I had such a great time I tried to refuse payment at the end, but they wouldn't have it. Viva le vendage.
I would love to still be working in the fields, except it doesn't pay as much as my family would like to spend!
I even worked my way up to Deputy President of the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs (England and Wales).
ICON: when I was 14, I was stubble burning on a very bright summers day with not a cloud in the sky. My gang (I was the eldest) managed to burn around all the headlands of a 10 acre field simultaneously and then it fire-stormed to the middle in a few seconds, producing a cloud very much looking like this ===========>
Police turned up from all directions within 10 minutes to find a completely bare field with hardly a black smut left.
I thought they were called farmers, not boffins.
I'm sure there are farmers boffin in the fields, along with muffin the mules and dobbin the donkeys.. But physicists also study in fields, often electromagnetic and gravitational. Problem is phsyics is hard, although..
There are six types, known as flavors, of quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom
6 genders of quarks! Bit of rebranding and less need to worry about not having a 'u' in flavor, which is not very inclusive but then it doesn't have an 'i' either. Might want to rebrand the strange quark to something potentially less offensive. There's also a huge issue that much of physics contains things named after dead white men, so there's scope to make this more inclusive as well. Rename Fermions to OGradyions? Paris is burning, a dead celeb grabs the headlines. Perhaps we have the wrong priorities?
Or perhaps the IOP does. Rather than doing right-on, politically correct boffoonery, why not get back to basics and look at the way STEM is taught in schools. Some of it will still be hard, but figure out ways to make it interesting and appeal to those young, malleable brains. Make science cool again! There's some great science communicators on YT who've figured out ways to get complex messages across in interesting and entertaining ways, eg Kyle Hill. No idea what his audience's demographics are, but maybe that's something the IOP could ask, or study?
Something I've noticed is after watching different communicators explaining concepts, I generally grasp the idea more than I would in some of the formal lectures that are online. Latest is pondering how to patent ZPE, assuming that could be made to work. A pretty complex area of physics with some diverging views, but a neat concept. Except if you could tap into ZPE, how would you patent this given patent offices routinely reject anything where Eout>Ein? Could be fun arguing that it's not 'perpetual motion', it's quite the opposite.
> There are six types, known as flavors, of quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom
No, no, you can't use "top" and "bottom", they have far too many connotations and will upset people.
We'll just have to go back to the old alternative names for the t and b quarks, "truth"[1] and "beauty".
[1] As t is the last on the list to be found, "The Search for Truth" was a much better title than using "Top"!
I went for a walk round the local park with a colleague a few years ago. He flatly refused to go into the bit of the park that was hedged and fenced off, as the sign on the gate clearly said "nature area", and that he might see something that would conflict with his religious obligations around modesty.
He stayed out of THAT field.
"pictures of wild-eyed elderly men being run together with the word [boffin]"
I picture Dr. Doofenshmirtz
"pictures of wild-eyed elderly men being run together with the word [boffin]"I picture Dr. Doofenshmirtz
Oh, come on. The classic, if not seminal, image is C.A. Rotwang, from Metropolis. (Wild-eyed)
Indeed; if we were discussing Mad Science then Rotwang fits the bill, but a proper Boffin will be reaching wildly for the mug of tea[1] whilst in his slippers.
[1] which the long-suffering assistant nudges into his hand in the hopes of avoiding Another Incident: whilst it did lead to a breakthrough, the damage done to the wainscotting will never be fully repaired.
Sometimes it is things like tone of voice, body language, and context that let you know whether something is an insult; in such cases the dictionary meaning of the word can be secondary or irrelevant. And words whose dictionary meaning is insulting can be used affectionately.
Somewhat at a tangent, but not entirely irrelevant: I recall being present at a dispute where in one phrase a swear word was deliberately omitted, but with sufficient emphasis, so that the target not only knew what had been meant, but even insisted that the missing word was actually used.
So we switch from boffin to brainbox, egghead or whatever. The IOP can run another study and find that over 90% of the population think replacement word is heavily gendered too. The problem is not the word but people's perception. The place to start is to find the cause of people's perception. My first guesses would be Sheldon Cooper, Brian Cox and Spock. Even when writers decide to make a scientist female we get Susan Calvin, Bennett Halverson, and Temperance Brennan more often than Jane Foster, Jemma Simmons or even Dr Harleen Quinzel.
When I worked at a provincial RG university in the UK, the work of university staff was universally headlined in the local rag as “University boffins [create/discover/{other verb}] …”.
And at school, those who - whether by dint of natural aptitude, hard work or both - excelled at STEM subjects were universally dubbed as “boffs”.
Neither usage seemed to be particularly gendered.
Growing up in the post-WWII years the typical usage seems to have been anyone involved in the sort of R&D that won the war (excepting, of course BP & the like which we were never told about). As such is was a term of respect. The IoPs problem seems to be that it's neglected to polish its own image.
I never knew "boffin" in The States.
The English/Australian author A. Bertram Chandler used "boffin" in his stories several times. ABC served in several merchant navies starting WWII, wrote a lot of SciFi 1950s-1980s.
> ...typical usage seems to have been anyone involved in the sort of R&D that won the war...
In ABC's tales, spaceship captain/commodore Grimes, or another Captain (once a woman) says "I'm no boffin..." or "The boffins tell me". Yes, it is a class society-- Grimes (like Chandler) rose from scurvy scum through naval ranks to Ship Captain. He knows just enough 'technical' to make dumb suggestions to his boffins (and advance the story line).
I am sure the engineers, technicians, and other folks who keep the ship working have equally rude nicknames for ignorant Captains--- but they didn't write these stories. (Actually Grimes gets called names. Just before the mutiny.)
ABC's worlds are mostly sexist AF. In most of his tales, women can only be Catering Officer (mess-hall attendant) or a quick roll in the hay. ABC's second wife may have pointed this out. He got more woke late in life. A ground-breaking novel set on an all-male planet (and interestingly the boffinry to make the biology work comes from the all-female planet next door).
Aside from TheReg and ABC, I never see 'boffin'.
the IOP’s own monitoring of the term over the last 12 months has found it used for racing tipsters, political pollsters, dermatologists, astrologers and car designers, as well as physicists, biologists and chemists
So, by their own admission, "boffin" is widely used in a non-gendered manner, to describe anyone with even a modicum of perceived expertise in pretty much anything. Yet their headline take-away is that it is gendered and (they hint) racist-classist and dissuades people from STEM.
Ah, but they made us look.
Thought I'd drop in this oldey, from El Reg comments, from 2010 (but I can't Google the original article? Hey, ElReg?!?)
Arrests were made after an argument over stolen cake led to a fight among scientists studying sea birds on an Arctic island, in a muffin stuffing Baffin puffin boffin biffing cuffing.
Don't blame El Reg! "We've enhanced our search results!" Duckduckgo and Startpage both return nothing but recipes for "muffin stuffing Baffin puffin boffin biffing cuffing". Add the -recipes operator and get ... recipes. In fact, I couldn't find any way to not get recipes. Search is officially broken, unless of course you want recipes.
Yah, but that's the weekly summary of commentary delights. The *original* comment cannot be found by Google. Hmm, perhaps they have retroactively instituted "history off" against ElReg?
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Well we could stick with: researcher, scientist, technician, engineer, ...
All perfectly good words, but by using other terms we make the writing more engaging and fun to read thus better communicating the topic. Writing is an art helped by a wide vocabulary.
Egghead and Brainiac I would see as more commonly a bit rude but then I would generally regard them as more American terms.
Boffin may be diminutive, but in the way we use diminutives for friends and loved ones: They may be a bit eccentric but they're our eccentrics and we recognise the great work they do.
It may be a British/American thing.
I'm thinking - and just run with me on this - that if someone asks you to stop calling them names...maybe put your favorite nomenclature back in your pants and stop calling them names.
Most of us learn this basic social decency in school, though the slower among us sometimes have to go through the old "spitting out your own broken teeth" cycle before the idea really takes hold. Falls under "your mileage may vary", I guess.
Also worth noting that physicists design things like, I don't know...lasers, atomic weapons? Maybe stay on their good side.
I'm thinking - and just run with me on this - that if someone asks you to stop calling them names...maybe put your favorite nomenclature back in your pants and stop calling them names.
In this case it seems to be mainly well-meaning people demanding that names not be used about people who are actually quite happy with them.
“‘Boffin’ gets used to describe literally anyone with the slightest technical expertise - the IOP’s own monitoring of the term over the last 12 months has found it used for racing tipsters, political pollsters, dermatologists, astrologers and car designers, as well as ...”
Here is the nub, they are not being shown proper respect and being lumped in with Dermatologists.
I think the IOP are with the smallish group of engineers who join anything professional sounding and pointedly add FRsomething to the end of all communications, and if they are German write letters bemoaning the difficulty of getting people to call them Herr Engineer when anybody with a PhD can get called Doctor, and why doesn't the govt pass some sort of law restricting the use of the word Engineer to properly qualified persons, and not any barbarian with a wrench in the pocket of his blue overalls.
Because some of us barbarians with wrenches in our overalls are far more qualified than the highly educated designers with lots of letters after their names.
As I've mentioned more than once in some of my rambling tales from robot manufacturing hell.
But then we have to contend with HR coming up with the title of 'engineer' for people trained just to replace stuff until the device works.
But back to the term 'boffin' ... nope never liked it... but then never liked being termed a 'geek' or a 'nerd' either... largely by 'jocks' who end up working under you because of their educational qualifications (or lack of them).
But the true reason for people not choosing the life of a 'boffin' is not because of the name or the social stigma... its because its bloody hard work.
If I do a personal profile for one of the employees, I can waffle all I like in assesing his/her abilities until it sort of fits in with what the boss wants to read.
If I'm figuring out translating euclidian geometery into spherical geometery, then the solution is either right or wrong... theres no grey area to waffle into.. just like most technical applications
A thread does not care if it can get into a race or a deadlock condition, you have to be able to program it to avoid getting in that position.
This is why being a boffin is hard..... and nothing you can do will ever change that to make it 'appeal' to people not inclined to do it.
Boris Dip.Comp(open)
Some fellow in Oregon was put through the mill because he had identified himself as an engineer in communications (about traffic-light timing, I think), without having the proper piece of paper. But if you don't go signing off on building plans, most of the time you can call yourself an engineer without anyone objecting. I once held a job with the absurd title Technical Support Engineer.
It's not just the popular press using the term "boffin", unless this organ considers itself in that category. The problem with using it is that it conjures up an image of people who are not normal "like us", and is dismissive of "them". This is not the ideal way to encourage youngsters to become scientists, nor to discourage the current anti-science phenomenon. Anti-vaxers and climate change deniers spring to mind.
- Pay good and fair wages to the people dedicating their lives to increasing our species scientific and technological capabilities. Yes, that includes research assistents, postgrads working to get their PhD, lab workers and undergrads working at research institutes.
- Increase public funding of research institutes.
- Make quality education available to everyone. Yes, that means funding it with public money.
- Increase public funding of research projects. Yes, particle accelerators and supercomputers are expensive. They are also worth it.
Yes, all the above points cost a lot of public money. But just for comparisons sake: Building the LHC at CERN cost 4.75 billion $ over a 10-year period (https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-does-it-cost-to-find-a-higgs-boson/#1891ccaa3948). I leave checking up how much each country spent on the 2008 bank bailout as an exercise to the reader.
- Ditch the "publish-or-perish" system.
- Make scientific results funded by public money available to the public.
- Make scientists not waste countless hours on applying for grants.
- Raise public awareness about the importance of science. No, "lets open some museum exhibits every now and then" is not enough. We live in an age where anti-scientific sentiment has become increasingly popular. Our society relies on scientific work to function, so our society should visibly support it.
- Have scientists sit in comittees making decisions about topics like climate change, pandemic action plans, public healthcare, macroecononomics, and similar topics that have to be intensively studied to be fully understood, instead of having them as "advisors" that are ignored or lauded based on where the political wind blows on a given day, or as backdrop props for photo-ops.
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What does happen next?
As far as I can tell from experience in countries which implement many of these points, like Finland, it seems to increase happiness and productivity of people working in science, bolsters scientific literacy in the wider population, makes the country a popular destination for people seeking good jobs in scientific fields, makes for impressive scores in international rankings, and mostly solves the economic problems that student debt causes.
If you want a recent example of what destruction is caused by supplanting democracy with committees of scientists, look at Covid.
Scientists did great work during that time, inventing vaccines and so forth.
However the ones given political power did abysmally. There is documented evidence in America of expert scientists being silenced for disagreeing with the consensus - for example on vaccine safety. We now know that the conspiracy theorists (which included actual expert scientists) had a point on the vaccines not being as safe as we were told.
In the UK we had scientists abusing their political power to push for a state of permanent lockdown. One which ( even if it was scientifically justified, which we now know it wasn't ), ignores the reality that the real world is a trade off - yes we need to not all die from Covid, but we also need to be able to run our economies so that we don't all starve to death.
Scientists should be given voices - as advisors. As they are in the UK. They should not be given political power as though they have divine knowledge.
( My guess is that you didn't read most of this and will just write me off as a Covid denier, but this is written now so I might as well press submit... )
You can do your own Googling but it's since come out that the worries about myocarditis weren't unfounded.
You'll also remember that scientists told us that the lab leak theory was conspiracy theorist tinfoil hatted nonsense.
The point of this is that scientists are fallible. Not that ( as I'm sure somebody will pretend that I've said ) that scientists are always wrong, or that Covid wasn't real, or that the vaccine and 5G causes whatever.
"You'll also remember that scientists told us that the lab leak theory was conspiracy theorist tinfoil hatted nonsense."
more citations needed.. and please do not come with the Trump appointee in FBI.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/heres-the-full-analysis-of-newly-uncovered-genetic-data-on-covids-origins/#
As for lockdowns and other covid measures: Please stop sprouting disinformation.
Masks, face-shields, lockdowns, vaccines: These were all measures that can and will aid reducing the fallout of a pandemic.
However, they need to be applied properly, not in the deadly clown-show way in which BoJo killed thousands upon thousands of elderly in the UK.
"BoJo killed thousands upon thousands of elderly in the UK."
As did a lot of US democrat politicians. Andrew Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer to name two.
I'm not sure arsetechnica is a reliable source. Occam's razor is works quite well here. City with US funded biolab that is doing gain of function on bat coronaviruses just somehow happens to be the epicentre of an outbreak of a virus that supposedly comes from a bat that can only be found some 500+ miles from the city.
Remember the people who said the virus did NOT come from the lab are the same people who said there was no evidence of human to human transmission.
Ah yes, all the dem grifters in early 2020 saying 'nothing to worry about, come to chinatown, Trump is being a racist' followed by 'Trump didn't protect us' while they dine out without masks or social distancing while telling you to stay home while your job evaporates.
Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells> but it's since come out that the worries about myocarditis weren't unfounded.
More likely to suffer myocarditis from getting Covid.
Look it up.
Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells>You'll also remember that scientists told us that the lab leak theory was conspiracy theorist tinfoil hatted nonsense.
The tinfoil hat part was the "bioengineered weapon" part of that story. Not that a source could be a lab. (See: UK foot & mouth outbreak for an example.)
Nice gaslighting.
If you have to lie to defend your position, you should reconsider why you are holding your position.
We were told definitively that the Covid lab had nothing to do with Covid. That the origin was the wet markets nearby.
It is now widely accepted that the lab is the probable origin as they were likely doing "gain of function" research ( while completely irrelevant, that sounds suspiciously like an engineered bioweapon to me...).
Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells> "gain of function" research ( while completely irrelevant, that sounds suspiciously like an engineered bioweapon to me
Did you conclude that by "doing your own research"?
Read around the subject a bit more. The DoE report was published with a "low level of confidence".
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/energy-department-low-confidence-covid-lab-leak-1234687031/
... and that's me being restrained. The only people I've heard using the term in a derogatory manner are the jealous wannabes.
I've been referred to as a boffin only a handful of times - as a mark of respect. Each time it set me up for the rest of the day.
She (Rachel Youngman) said in UK and Ireland, the formal study of physics struggles to attract girls, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, people of Black Caribbean descent, people with disabilities, and LGBT+ young people into the subject.
It seems minor but why specify "people of Black Caribbean descent" when speaking of difficulties attracting students not just in the UK but "and Ireland"?
There are plenty of young black Irish people who might usefully be engaged with but most are of African descent whose families moved to Ireland more recently (when it became a place to go to, rather than one to get away from) and very few of Carribean origin.
To answer a question from the end of that piece "Why not just refer to scientists as exactly that? Scientists.":
Bluntly, not all scientists - purely as "people who do science" - are boffins. As in all fields[1], there is a range of abilities, even if the curve is offset from the wider population. Your boffins are the best of the best.
[1] I'm still allowed to use that derogatory term here, yes?
I once happened to visit a street market, and was drawn to a stall offering various tools etc.. As the wind began to blow, the awning started to flap and the support struts worked slightly loose. The stallholder opened a spectacle case and took out a (brand new) 1" micrometer, with which he started to tighten the wingnuts on the awning. When he had finished, he returned the mike to its case and replaced it on his display. I said to him "I hope you are not going to sell that mike now that you've buggered it". He scowled at me and replied "Why not? no-one will notice".
"Boffin" always strikes me as one of those very old-fashioned terms, and brings up mental images of Michael Redgrave bouncing balls off the birdbath with some bungee, or a character from a Heath Robinson cartoon with big tufts of hair either side of a bald dome, wearing several pairs of glasses at once, shirt collar sticking out at unkempt angles and shirt buttons in danger of bursting off as they create a strange device using lots of knotted pieces of string.
It comes across as old-fashioned, very silly and a bit derogatory. Not really a word that belongs in today's lexicon.
I fail to see why the opinions of 2514 individuals should decide on the useage of any words in any language. I also fail to see why these nonsense pieces ever see the light of day. Mayhap the Institute of Physics should concern itself with funding useful research instead of pop-culture-war surveys.
Well, FWIW, this particular member is a bit ambivalent about the whole thing, but I'm not going to get in a froth about it.
Even if I personally have no objection, if underrepresented groups really /are/ put off by the whole "boffin" thing, maybe it is best avoided.
And what a waste of time this suggestion is! Changing terms, pronouns, etc. are easy to suggst but they don't change anything.
If there is a problem with getting your girls in science then look at the society they grow up in, and work on providing role models or changing their perceptions of role models. Make boffin acceptable by making it accessible and even desirable, in the aspirational sense. There are now plenty of excellent female scientists in different fields who probably be happy if you call them boffins. But most importantly, it's obvious that they are successful scientists without sacrificing any of their feminity; a culturally specific minefield all of its own.
Look at societies which value science, such as the fomer Soviet Union, India and elsewhere in Asia and learn from how they approach the subject.
The ridiculous thing here is that they should be celebrating the use of the ungendered term Boffin, I'm quite sure the pilots soldiers etc didn't check the gender mix in the labs when they referred to the Boffins producing new equipment.
If the IOP want to improve things they should just start using the term more often alongside pictures of female Boffins.
What a load of rubbish. But it did make people talk about the IOP, which might have been the point? I ditched the IOP membership in favour of a different technical institution as it was a better fit in my line of work.
Worrying about labels and naming conventions being offensive or not is the preserve of the alphabet brigade. Let's not go there. I absolutely am a nerd, and a boffin, and quite proud of it.
PS one of my best mates is of that persuasion and passionately hates the insistence on labelling. He openly uses the term alphabet people because of how stupid the whole labelling nonsense has become.
I personally prefer the term "expert", because I will absolutely seek advice and critique from other boffins and nerds in order to get the best possible result.
English has deep Latinate roots: some direct, others via Norman French. Present day French and other European languages more steadfast than English to Latin grammar require the proficient user to memorise gender designations for inanimate objects. We, the more pragmatic English, long ago ditched irrelevant notions, i.e. devoid of information content, of grammatical gender: we (the educated among us) apply them solely to those biological entities for which biological sex has meaning and is distinguishable among individuals (e.g. to cats, but not to amoebae).
Elements of the English-speaking world (particularly that using American patois) are tying themselves in knots over bizarre application of a generalised 'gender' concept not founded on biological observation and seemingly of the 'make it up as you go along' variety. One wonders whether the Académie Française is puzzling over extensions to "le" and "la".
I do wonder whether the ground for present day 'gender Babel' inadvertently was prepared by a trend dating back several decades of ignorant people dropping the term 'sex' in favour of 'gender' because they thought the former somehow crude; an analogy to American matrons with pretension to 'sensibility' referring to the "white meat" of a turkey instead of to "breast". Nowadays, all kinds of officialdom, sadly including the NHS, ask people to state their 'gender', not their sex. As in other respects, clarity of thought is being sacificed in the name of a goofy notion of 'diversity'.
I'm trying to think as to whether English really does have "deep Latinate" roots. We certainly have a lot of Latin words but very little truly Latinate grammar. What we have is a Germanic language (Anglo-Saxon with some lovely Scandinavian simplifications) with many similar constructs, but huge differences in the detail.
As for French, it's another bastard language, being the language of the Francs, a Germanic group, with even more Latinate influence than English. You see this particularly in comparison with the significantly more Latinate, but also newer, Italian and Spanish. Both English and French contain lots of archaic terms and constructs due their long histories as official written languages of nation states, with Henry V of England (because there was also, of course, a French one) the first English king to swear his oath of allegiance in English, Honi soit qui mal y pense, indeed.
The good old Académie Française does indeed get to ponder over gendering, though some of the changes made do at least have theoretical underpinnings from French feminism, Cixous, et al. Somewhat typically French, it's important that the problem is discovered, analysed and resolved in theory. The real world can wait!
German is also getting a bashing from the time wasters with discussions as to whether students should be der Student / die Studentin or (double gerund) die Studierende and whether the previously theoretically masculine-only plural should replace by the "gender star" (you can't make this shit up) so that die Studenten gets to become die Student*innen, and whether this monster should be aspirated or not. If it's not, it's the same as the feminine-only plural. This is considered somehow more inclusive for the generic plural than the masculine-only one!
Anyway, genders in language only loosely align with animal sexes, which only adds to the confusion and misapplcation. But also, no doubt, provides plenty of reasons for yet more "research projects".
My head hurts, where's the Aspirin™ icon? I'll have a pint instead, here's yours.
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