Real-world scientists

[Ultraviolent4]

This thread is intended to build upon the foundations established in duvessa's about real-world references in crawl. That thread highlighted the issues that occur when lazily-implemented, real-world references serve to potentially offend and alienate. I’d like to raise a similar (but no less important) concern that arises from uncritical references to real-world scientists.

As I’m expecting some very predictable responses, I echo duvessa’s opening sentiment.

NOTE: If you unironically complain about "political correctness", you should probably go back to complaining about food or high elves instead of "participating" here.

Further note: I’m Australian so my sources will mostly reflect that.

The concern
There is a severe, worldwide underrepresentation of females in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) – refer to Key Findings 12.1 to 12.5 of this report. This is true at senior education level, in university/college (both undergrad and postgrad) study and in the workplace. I’d guess that many crawl devs work in the technology field which means they feel the effects of this daily.

If it isn’t already obvious to you why a lack of women in STEM is problematic for society, please refer to this talk.

There are numerous reasons for the female underrepresentation in STEM but several well-known and accepted ones distill into what I would call gender stereotypes. From birth, young girls have the idea transmitted to them by society that STEM is a male pursuit. Schools mostly focus on male scientists and the vast majority of scientists and experts on TV and in movies are male. I’m willing to bet that while most of you reading this would know many male scientists, you could only name 2-3 female scientists at best.

As a quick aside: for anyone who would like to learn more about some amazing female scientists, this list of Nobel Prize winners is a good start.

The unfortunate result of these gender stereotypes is that society ends up with a self-reinforcing system because females have so few role models. STEM becomes a sort of invisible career choice because it's supposed to be for males. Luckily, “research has found that the largest influence on female decisions… is due to controllable factors, such as encouragement and exposure…” (emphasis mine). Refer to page 13 of this report.

Scientists in crawl
Crawl doesn’t explicitly have “scientists” in the game but when it wants to refer to one it uses “inventor”. The most prominent one is the male unique Nikola who is very obviously a reference to Nikola Tesla. His description even includes a quote from Tesla himself.

Proposal 1: Change male Nikola to female Nicola or Nicoletta
This change will allow crawl to have a visible scientist who is female. The theme of the unique along with the description clearly quoting Tesla will still invoke the male, real-world scientist for those people who care about such things. For anyone who says it’s somehow unthinkable to change a real-world reference from male to female like this, I refer you to Sojobo who is the King of the Tengu in Buddhist mythology but the Queen of the Tengu in crawl.

The second most prominent scientist in crawl is Maxwell. While he is never shown directly, multiple unrandarts in the game refer to him. Maxwell’s Thermic Engine strikes me as a clever reference to James Clark Maxwell’s contributions to the field of thermodynamics but the rest are lazy and don’t seem to fit in any meaningful way. Take Maxwell’s Etheric Cage for instance: what does this have to do with Maxwell besides the fact that the item has a “sciency” feel?

Proposal 2: Change Maxwell’s Etheric Cage to Curie’s Etheric Cage
The item’s theme centres around harnessing magical energy and the resulting contamination. It's both beneficial and harmful to the user. I couldn’t think of a more perfect place to reference Marie Curie and have more female science exposure.

Some of you may say that crawl is only a video game that doesn’t influence what happens in the real world. Some might also push back by saying that social issues such as these are not worth thinking about here. To those people and arguments, I would counter that it doesn’t hurt the game to aim at inclusivity and social good.

Short version
Crawl probably shouldn’t have references to real-world scientists but if there must be, we shouldn’t be reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes by making them all male.

[Siegurt]

Re Nicole/nicoletta: I would rather we use real female scientists than try to rebrand the gender of an existing scientist, there's plenty to choose from so making one up seems like it misses the point (How would one even know it was supposed to be a reference to anything at that point?)
Re Curie: I'd like to see her name attached, if anything, to something radiation-centric, perhaps Curie's Plutonium Sword (Meitner would be another good candidate for the plutonium sword)
Maybe Ayrton would be a good moniker for the arc blade, it's also alleterative.

Finally, it seems like if this is something you're passionate about, crawl isn't exactly the most useful forum, there's a pretty small number of crawl players worldwide, and the number of those who are female is tiny, not to say inclusiveness is a bad thing, just that your impact is going to be very very small, nearly immeasurably so.

[chequers]

Nikola is definitely too real-world and should receive a full rename. "Female Nikola Tesla" is as much a real world reference as "Nikola Tesla".

Maxwell is borderline -- the thermic engine description contains a Maxwell's Demon reference but otherwise the only link is that the character is an inventor named Maxwell. The thermic engine reference is mild enough I don't really mind it. Anyway there used to be a spell Maxwell's Silver Hammer, so the reference isn't clear in the crawl context either.

[Sprucery]

I'm all for gender equality. In this case, however, I really think the best approach is to remove the references to real-world people. They seem out of place in the fictional Crawl universe anyway. (I don't really want to kill Nikola Tesla... at least in Nethack it is easy to leave Izchak the shopkeeper alone.)

[VeryAngryFelid]

This "gender equality" is non-sense. If we reference real world people, we should not change their gender to make some people feel better. I mean if we had a game with the fastest runner in the world and with the highest person in the world, would you change one of them to woman too?
It's a shame to change gender of real person, no matter from male to female or from female to male. It's disrespect to Tesla IMHO...

[VeryAngryFelid]

Crawl probably shouldn’t have references to real-world scientists but if there must be, we shouldn’t be reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes by making them all male.

Except Maxwell, Tesla and about 99% scientists before XX century were male. I know there are historical explanations for that but lies are worse than "reinforcement" of what actually was true. Most crimes, inventions, discoveries, wars etc. were done by men.

[duvessa]

having the player brutally murder nikola tesla? fine. having a unique named "nicoletta"? TOO FAR. DISRESPECTFUL AND LIES

[nago]

No the proposal is "Swap the gender for a character who references to a real person" just because yes to gender equality so let's rewrite things just to be equal like I want to.

If characters who are reference to real person are okay for DCSS' lore (a thing which could be okay or not, I'm not arguing about that) and it is a true that it's necessary to have female counterpart otherwise there are "harmul gender stereotype" (whatever that means, really both in reality and in a roguelike game), then more female-historical-reference-unique could be added.

Wikipedia is on the spot too o help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... th_century t

[n1000]

What's so bad about referencing real world scientists in crawl? Instead of imposing equal representation of male and female only "inventors" by renaming Nikola why not add references to actual women scientists?

Renaming Nikola to another obvious reference to a male scientist does nothing to increase the representation of women scientists in DCSS. In fact, I think the opportunity to add references to women scientists in a more than trivial way is distracted by the suggestion. I support reappropriating fixedarts or unique monsters to celebrate women in STEM (unless someone convinces me crawl shouldn't make reference to real-world scientists)

[archaeo]

Sprucery is right, and so is n1000 but,

Finally, it seems like if this is something you're passionate about, crawl isn't exactly the most useful forum, there's a pretty small number of crawl players worldwide, and the number of those who are female is tiny, not to say inclusiveness is a bad thing, just that your impact is going to be very very small, nearly immeasurably so.

While Ultraviolent4 emphasized "exposure," as though the issue is that girls and young women will be encouraged by gender parity among the scientists referenced in Crawl, I'd note that the possible "impact" of such a change (or more impactful changes to the way gender, culture, and other real-world issues are represented in the game) is significantly broader. For example, a fair number of people in the Crawl community are teachers and professors of STEM subjects, and research has demonstrated that teachers' expectations of students have a large impact on said students' performance.

Representation and inclusion help reduce the cognitive/unconscious biases that create the conditions for discriminatory, unequal results. Sometimes, however, the answer is to avoid representing anything at all. It's difficult to avoid gender in general, but it's pretty easy to avoid references to real-world scientists. Crawl's better when it sticks to its original flavor anyway, or at least flavor that has been thoroughly laundered through the fantasy canon; referencing the real world doesn't accomplish much, and while it arguably isn't hurting anything, it sure does end up creating a lot of these threads.

And on that point, if anyone uses this thread as an excuse to get super angry about video games, I'll temp ban you until you write me a short essay on the accomplishments of a female scientist. The intersection of real-world politics and Crawl is a tricky one, so let's stay constructive in GDD, please and thank you.

[Shtopit]

I am OK with calling Nikola Nicoletta, because who cares, I still get the reference and the character becomes a bit more unique.

I am against random use of a rl woman scientist for stuff that has nothing to do with her. For example, Curie's Etheric Cage: what does that have to do wity Marie Curie? Instead, Marie's Plutonium Sword references the fact that she was a pioneer in the field of radiation studies, and that she ended up contaminated for the lack of safety protocols no one had invented yet.
I am against using the surname and I think that the first name is better. The real reason is that these are just references to rl scientists, it's not them being inserted in the game, just references to them; there are a lot of Nikola in the world, so finding one in the Dungeon isn't too strange. Finding a Tesla? Now that's weird and breaks immersion. Besides, all Crawl uniques have a name but no surname: we don't know Sigmund's family name.
The SJW reason is that Curie was actually her husband's surname, since she was Polish. She was quite happy to marry him though, so this isn't much of an argument in this particular case.

[Airwolf]

As long as I can kill and eat them, I am happy.

[watertreatmentRL]

It's great that people are passionate about issues like this one, but I want to push back on the notion that unrepresentatively low numbers of women in STEM careers are primarily the result of cultural factors, stereotyping, and discrimination, things we might hope to change by recalibrating the content of cultural products, like video games, or changing people's attitudes.

Conspicuously absent from the discussion here and much more suspiciously in, for example, the guardian article linked, is the impact of pregnancy and raising children on high-power, high-commitment careers (including the upper echelons of business, legal, and medical professions as well as some areas of STEM). That is a structural, material dimension that causes real attrition (I've seen this a lot both with former colleagues and members of my own family). Addressing it takes a real commitment of social resources, e.g. parental leave, child allowances, child care programs, etc. An analysis that focuses primarily on culture, stereotyping, and discrimination works to the relative advantage of career-only professionals for whom children is not a part of the plan. Similarly, it offers no challenge to existing market mechanisms or labor practices. It should come as no surprise that this is the preferred explanation of elite discourse.

The politics of nondiscrimination and cultural representation, though noble in sentiment, have been around a long time and have had mixed results at best in addressing persistent poverty in minority and historically disadvantaged communities, as well as gender representation in some industries and in the upper echelons of many industries. If you are serious about these issues, your best bet is to get involved with a socialist party or some form of direct action. (Maybe the OP and others in this thread who are very much on board with this idea already have.)

By all means, change names and genders of characters in video games. It probably doesn't hurt. But don't go around saying it's going to change the world and don't go saying that low representation is the product of personal choices conditioned only by culture rather than material circumstances.

[Leszczynek]

Short version
Crawl probably shouldn’t have references to real-world scientists but if there must be, we shouldn’t be reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes by making them all male.

I can't believe this is in GDD and not in CYC.

[bel]

I was not aware that there was any "foundation" laid in the other thread.

I would say "No" to Nicoletta (it would completely destroy the flavour) and "whatever" to the etheric cage, because it's rather arbitrary.

In the last sentence, "all" here means "two", which is a rather small sample size to draw conclusions from. But it's easier if you already know where you want to end up.

Different proportion of women in various fields is indeed, in part, a product of personal choices. In the US, more women than men get science degrees, but they go into different fields in various proportions. There are many other factors involved as well, some of which have already been mentioned earlier. Almost none of them apply to video games, but I don't see any harm in changing the Maxwell reference.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I am not in favour of completely removing real world references. For me, noticing and looking up references, and reading quotations and description is a fun part of the game.

Perhaps, for the sake of balance, one could add Marie, a unique somehow based around irradiate, malmutate, etc.. There are of course other examples to choose from if one cares to look.

[Lavandula]

I doubt that anyone who plays crawl long enough to meet Nikola has any chances to succeed in STEM fields. Especially considering the fact that technological singularity is upon us, and soon we all will lose their jobs and spend the rest of their existence eating off minimal income checks and being afraid that police state will cancel those.

Why not make some uniques based on your list? I'm asking seriously, because the only funny thing that pops in my head is Elizabeth, nun of Gozag that spawns with band of vampires and casts Call of Chaos (dunno if potion petition works for monsters).

[Sprucery]

I doubt that anyone who plays crawl long enough to meet Nikola has any chances to succeed in STEM fields.

Many already have...

[Majang]

Besides, all Crawl uniques have a name but no surname: we don't know Sigmund's family name.

Aah. Is this why Norris was removed from the game? I wondered about that.

[bel]

For example, a fair number of people in the Crawl community are teachers and professors of STEM subjects, and research has demonstrated that teachers' expectations of students have a large impact on said students' performance.

This is not directly related to Crawl, but as it happens, I have been recently reading about this topic. Here's an abstract from a review of the literature:

This article shows that 35 years of empirical research on teacher expectations justifies the following conclusions: (a) Self-fulfilling prophecies in the classroom do occur, but these effects are typically small, they do not accumulate greatly across perceivers or over time, and they may be more likely to dissipate than accumulate; (b) powerful self-fulfilling prophecies may selectively occur among students from stigmatized social groups; (c) whether self-fulfilling prophecies affect intelligence, and whether they in general do more harm than good, remains unclear, and (d) teacher expectations may predict student outcomes more because these expectations are accurate than because they are self-fulfilling.

Also, you may have heard that social psychology in general is in a big replication crisis. Confident pronouncements about large outcomes are likely to be dubious.

[archaeo]

yesno and Vajrapani, this is GDD, and even if the OP is satire, I'll lock the thread if we start treating the discussion that way, thanks. Feel free to come back with more substantive replies if you like.

Also, you may have heard that social psychology in general is in a big replication crisis. Confident pronouncements about large outcomes are likely to be dubious.

I'll be honest and point out that one of my pet peeves is the degree to which psychology is called out for having a "big replication crisis" when it's clear that other sciences are having similar issues. The problem isn't psychology as a field of study, but research culture in general, as well as software that sucks (like the embarrassing fMRI bug that has invalidated wide swaths of neuroscience).

Not that you're wrong to encourage skepticism. Psychology as a whole suffers greatly from the fact that a lot of the literature is based on studies conducted on white, American undergraduate students, a population that likely fails to be representative of humanity as a whole. Thanks for linking the literature review.

[Ultraviolent4]

even if the OP is satire

It's not satire. I put quite a lot of time and effort putting this post together because it's a serious issue; I work in the STEM field myself.

I am against random use of a rl woman scientist for stuff that has nothing to do with her. For example, Curie's Etheric Cage: what does that have to do wity Marie Curie? Instead, Marie's Plutonium Sword references the fact that she was a pioneer in the field of radiation studies, and that she ended up contaminated for the lack of safety protocols no one had invented yet.

Here's the description for Etheric Cage:

A fine mesh cage designed to capture magical energy. Experimental notes suggest research was abandoned when the cage began to capture magical contamination almost as effectively. Perhaps you could wear it on your head?

Among other things, the item increases your MP regen rate, doubles all magical contamination while worn, causes heavy contamination when removed and is chaotic.

Does that not sound to you like the item could be related to radiation studies? Does it not sound like it contaminates one due to a lack of safety protocols no one has invented yet? To me the item is a much more perfect fit than a sword.

[Vajrapani]

Okay, here a more substantive reply: Crawl is a game where you don't spend an extended amount of time reading text and changing 'him' to 'her' is unlikely to have even the most minuscule impact on anything at all. Will I care? No, but I dislike this trend where a few lines of code get changed ,especially in regards to unique gender, and everyone pats themselves on the back as if they've actually accomplished something.

In my honest opinion, this is just a blatant attempt at virtue signalling.

[Shtopit]

Here's the description for Etheric Cage:

A fine mesh cage designed to capture magical energy. Experimental notes suggest research was abandoned when the cage began to capture magical contamination almost as effectively. Perhaps you could wear it on your head?

Among other things, the item increases your MP regen rate, doubles all magical contamination while worn, causes heavy contamination when removed and is chaotic.

Does that not sound to you like the item could be related to radiation studies? Does it not sound like it contaminates one due to a lack of safety protocols no one has invented yet? To me the item is a much more perfect fit than a sword.

Not really, the source of radiation is too different. The cage captures it from the environment and then bestows it upon you, the plutonium sword emits it and needs no further source. AFAIK Marie Curie defined radiation, identified radium as a source and found a way to purify it. Conceptually it's a lot closer to the plutonium sword, because:
1. Radioactive metal like the ones discovered by her
2. The effects are due to a source of contamination that we can all identify as radioactive --> Curie reference
3. The project of the cage was abandoned, which means that a. there were safety protocols and that b. it was a failure, and attaching a woman's name to a failure to improve the view of women in STEM research doesn't strike me as coherent.

[monkeytor]

My opinion:

Change Nikola's name so it doesn't reference a real-world scientist. Nikoletta etc. is still an oblique reference to the real-world Tesla; if this unique is to be made female, pick some other name.

Don't add references to real-world scientists, regardless of gender.

If we are going to seriously talk about male vs. female representation in uniques, won't we also need to talk about non-binary gender, trans, etc.? Possible workaround: refer to all uniques and gods as neutral "they" in descriptions.

On a related note, we could also talk about the implied ethnic/cultural backgrounds of the uniques. The "humanish" uniques all have rather "normal" European names: Sigmund, Edmund, Frederick, Margaret, Louise, etc. As the species (or should I say "race"?) gets more "exotic", so do the names: Dowan and Duvessa, Ijyb, Vashnia, Tiamat, Mara, Grum, Xathua, Nergalle, etc. There are exceptions, but this is the general tendency. We thus have an implicit association, on the one hand, of the normal/human/average with the European, and, on the other, of the non-human/exotic with the undifferentiated non-European. Something to think about.

Back on the subject of gender, I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that all the famous named wizards (Iskenderun, Lehudib, Golubria, etc.) are of unspecified gender. They're the real "scientists" of crawl; in the spirit of OP's suggestion, why not make them all female?

[Ultraviolent4]

Not really, the source of radiation is too different. The cage captures it from the environment and then bestows it upon you, the plutonium sword emits it and needs no further source. AFAIK Marie Curie defined radiation, identified radium as a source and found a way to purify it. Conceptually it's a lot closer to the plutonium sword, because:
1. Radioactive metal like the ones discovered by her
2. The effects are due to a source of contamination that we can all identify as radioactive --> Curie reference
3. The project of the cage was abandoned, which means that a. there were safety protocols and that b. it was a failure, and attaching a woman's name to a failure to improve the view of women in STEM research doesn't strike me as coherent.

You make some very valid points here. I gave my proposals in the OP but game design isn't really my strength. I still think the Etheric Cage is the better fit though and a slight description change (to address your concerns) would make it perfect. I think we'll have to agree to disagree here

[watertreatmentRL]

I just took a look at some of the sources cited in the OP and once again in reading GDD, I find myself scratching my head. The Australian government report cited is unabashedly focused on increasing total STEM workforce participation, by whatever means necessary, due to the potential benefits for the Australian economy and business community. (See introduction to that report.) The particular passage the OP cites in turn cites a study from Google research, the gist of which is roughly that they would like for society to increase the supply of qualified workers for their technology firm and to do so in ways that will not take significant social investment (though admittedly the latter part is what I read into the way they frame their study). They simultaneously claim that while female representation in undergraduates CS programs is down from a peak of 37% in the 80s to 18% at the time of writing, that in fact the primary explanation for women leaving and declining to enter CS is cultural. If so, it strikes me as impossible that differences in media representation between the 90-00s and the 60-70s are what's going on here. More likely, this is the story of a field going from hot to not. [edit: combined with a persistently abnormal and unhealthy relationship between young men and computers...]

The Google report further claims that there is a serious shortfall in the information technology labor force, a claim that has come under fire in recent years. The criticism is that this narrative is pushed to drive down labor costs through a glut of job candidates. Far from suggesting that women may hope to find better lives in the information technology field than they find following the life plans post collegiate women predominantly pursue instead, they simply suggest that more women = bigger labor force. True enough.

Another interesting Australian report https://www.wgea.gov.au/sites/default/files/Gender%20composition-of-the-workforce-by-industry.pdf gives some feel for what's going on with under representation post-college. Representation of women in full time "Professional, Scientific and Technical Services" is slightly above what you would expect from the total full time workforce participation numbers. The story is generally lower workforce participation and much lower full time participation. This, of course, is totally consistent with the picture I outline above: Tech firms are in fact pushing for an increase in total workforce participation from women. At this point, I will remind the reader that working is actually bad. Given an uncoerced choice between a life free of wage labor and one dominated by it, a normal human being will reliably choose the former. For decades both men and women have been moving in the wrong direction, in aggregate, in terms of hours worked per year in view of increases in labor productivity and technology. It is astonishing that a nominally left political perspective would push in the opposite direction!

[VeryAngryFelid]

They're the real "scientists" of crawl; in the spirit of OP's suggestion, why not make them all female?

At first I was going to reply with "this is what I was talking about. Positive discrimination blahblah" but then realized that I find it amazing how people reference "witch hunt" as a good thing in OP spirit. Most witches were female indeed, I am not going to deny it...

[kuniqs]

having the player brutally murder nikola tesla? fine. having a unique named "nicoletta"? TOO FAR. DISRESPECTFUL AND LIES

lol pressing '4' till a paperdoll disappears is like brutal murder to you?

[emikaela]

If we are going to seriously talk about male vs. female representation in uniques, won't we also need to talk about non-binary gender, trans, etc.? Possible workaround: refer to all uniques and gods as neutral "they" in descriptions.

i like to think of all the uniques that had their pronouns changed as canonically transgender. although then we have a serious underrepresentation of trans men...

as far as i can tell the gods are never referred to by pronoun anywhere in the actual game. this seems reasonable to me as a form of nb inclusion. it does bother me a little when players inevitably gender them outside of the game, but that's hard to change.

[Factorialite]

Crawl probably shouldn’t have references to real-world scientists but if there must be, we shouldn’t be reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes by making them all male.

Except Maxwell, Tesla and about 99% scientists before XX century were male. I know there are historical explanations for that but lies are worse than "reinforcement" of what actually was true. Most crimes, inventions, discoveries, wars etc. were done by men.

I only pacify uniques.

[Factorialite]

I'd prefer removing all real-world references over just changing the male scientists in the game to female scientists, but if we are changing, I'd prefer keeping Nikola and just adding a female unique (most likely Curie, a unique malmutator of some sort). That brings up two problems that make it less exciting, though. The first is that you are actively adding real-world references, which is against the spirit of duvessa's earlier post, and the second is that you're introducing a female unique that everyone is going to hate. I think the best solution is just to rename Nikola to a random female name if you want to be more inclusive without tying it to a specific person. Ophelia would be a good name, as there are no uniques that begin with the letter O.

[Rast]

adding a female unique (most likely Curie, a unique malmutator of some sort)

This is good. Give her Corrupting Pulse, Violent Unravelling, Irradiate, Gell's Gravitas, and two amulets.

[Rast]

It's great that people are passionate about issues like this one, but I want to push back on the notion that unrepresentatively low numbers of women in STEM careers are primarily the result of cultural factors, stereotyping, and discrimination, things we might hope to change by recalibrating the content of cultural products, like video games, or changing people's attitudes.

Mods should move all the debate about the reasons for female underestimation in STEM into a CYC thread and leave this one simply for discussing what changes, if any, would improve crawl.

[yesno]

Real world references in Crawl are corny but charming in a kind of artless 80s nerd kitchen sink fantasy cliche way. That said i don't really like killing Tesla and seeing mythological figures like Mara and Ereshkigal is always a bit jarring. Please never swap Nikola into Girl-Tesla with a silly name. It's not offensive or anything, just really stupid.

[kuniqs]

The real reason why sword of jihad got renamed was not because muslims were annoyed. It was because you were annoyed. Now we're having the same situation.

[njvack]

This thread has, I think, run its very limited course of useful life; I'm locking it. If anyone objects to it, PM me or the other mods.