Proving Yourself Wrong
The story of a journalist who tested her own impression of gender bias in email salutations, found she was wrong, and publicly admitted it, demonstrating the importance of empirically evaluating one's beliefs.
THE IDEA
3. Do you ever prove yourself wrong?
One Monday morning, a journalist named Bethany Brookshire sat down at her desk and opened her email. She had received two replies from scientists she had emailed to request an interview. One was from a female scientist and began, “Dear Dr. Brookshire . . .” The other was from a male scientist and began, “Dear Ms. Brookshire . . .”
How typical, Brookshire thought. She went to Twitter, typed the following, and hit send:
Monday morning observation:
I have “PhD” in my email signature. I sign my emails with just my name, no “Dr.” I email a lot of PhDs.
Their replies:
Men: “Dear Bethany.” “Hi Ms. Brookshire.”
Women: “Hi Dr. Brookshire.”
It’s not 100%, but it’s a VERY clear division.12
Her tweet was liked over 2,300 times. “Not surprised,” one woman commented. “For sure there is bias!” another wrote. “Totally my experience, too,” said another.
As the supportive replies piled up, however, Brookshire began to squirm. Her claim was based on a rough impression, from memory, of how male and female scientists typically replied to her emails. But the actual data itself was sitting in her inbox. “Shouldn’t I test my claim?” she thought to herself.
So she went through her old emails, ran the numbers—and discovered she had been wrong. Out of the male scientists, 8 percent called her “Dr.,” and among female scientists, 6 percent called her “Dr.” The data was sparse enough that no confident conclusions could be drawn from it, but it certainly did not support her initial observation. She followed up her original tweet one week later,13 sharing the results of her investigation: “New post: I took the data on this. It turns out . . . I was wrong.”
To be clear, the fact that Brookshire was wrong in this case doesn’t mean there isn’t gender bias in science. It just means that in this particular instance, her impression of bias was mistaken. “We all identified with something because it sounded like our reality,” Brookshire wrote in a follow-up blog post. “In many cases, it may well be reality. But my observation about my emails was a mistake.”14
Can you think of any examples in which you voluntarily proved yourself wrong? Perhaps you were about to voice an opinion online, but decided to search for counterarguments first, and ended up finding them compelling. Or perhaps at work you were advocating for a new strategy, but changed your mind after you ran the numbers more carefully and realized it wouldn’t be feasible.
When to use it
When forming opinions based on anecdotal evidence, pause to gather systematic data before drawing conclusions.
Before making a decision based on gut feeling, run the numbers or conduct a small experiment.
When you notice a pattern in your personal experience, consider if it might be biased by memory or expectation and test it objectively.
In discussions or debates, challenge yourself to look for evidence that contradicts your position.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Bethany Brookshire's email salutation test
Journalist Bethany Brookshire had an impression that male scientists addressed her as 'Ms.' while female scientists used 'Dr.' in email replies, despite her PhD. After tweeting about it and receiving many supportive replies, she decided to test her claim by going through her old emails. The data revealed that 8% of male scientists and 6% of female scientists called her 'Dr.', which did not support her initial observation. She publicly admitted her mistake in a follow-up tweet.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Think of a time you had a strong opinion about something. Did you check if your impression was supported by data?
How often do you proactively test your assumptions, even when they feel obvious?
What would it feel like to prove yourself wrong in a public setting, and why might that be valuable?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Scout Mindset (Julia Galef)