Something I’ve been thinking and talking about a lot during this #COVID19 pandemic is how seemingly small differences are being magnified in likely long-lasting ways. A THREAD (mostly about academia, but generalizable). 1/n

At a recent faculty meeting, I was struck by the differences between computational (not very slowed down) vs. experimental (shut down entirely) research. 2/n

The divide between 2nd year #medstudents students (off studying for step anyways) and 3rd year (clinical rotations necessary to choose careers) at home with rotations shuttered. 3/n

Male vs female (parent) academics. Regardless of individual feelings of equity, women are disproportionately penalized in this time: (4/n) https://twitter.com/cakitchener/status/1254021029489491968

Imagine a couple just before having children and one just after. Or a single parent who depends on childcare to advanced her/his work. what gets me is the knife edge between ‘have and have not’. 5/n

How about young #scientists near the end of their startup: those who got one point below the payline last cycle and those one point outside who needed a few key experiments done? 6/n

The #PhDstudents who just finished their last experiments vs those waiting on just one more. The #postdocs who just accepted jobs (turning down others) to find those jobs frozen/cancelled. (6.5/n)

These are all examples of seemingly small inequities that have nothing to do with quality or work ethic or ‘worthiness’ of the people involved, but instead are tiny stochasticities - which usually would be washed away. But now are being magnified. 7/n

My fear is that by amplifying these small differences we will lose a lot of qualified folks and forget why the divide happened (no reason), and ascribe it to ‘worth’ it ‘work ethic’ or something, leading to long term prejudice. 8/n

How can we collectively push back against this? Certainly universities and hospitals should extend tenure clocks, @NIHFunding and others should give no-cost extensions out. Institutes can give discounts for core services? @CCLRI? - but what can we as scientists do? 9/n

I don’t have all the answers. But talking about these issues up front will help. Being kind and understanding to ourselves and our colleagues will help. 10/n

If you and your lab have landed on the ‘have’ side more often than not, offer help to those who ‘have not’ - help with that analysis, offer space/reagents, tech time to catch them up. 11/n

These unprecedented times are going to hurt many people and leave a mark on our society for a few lifetimes, how can we ameliorate this now? (n/n) \\end{thought} - \\begin{discussion}