If you happen to be visiting the tiny island town of Lindau, Germany in the last weekend of June, there is a reasonable chance you bump into a Nobel laureate. This year, 37 laureates convened on the island to take part in the annual tradition of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. These meetings have been taking place since 1951 as an attempt to foster dialogue and conversations between leading scientists from Europe. It soon turned global, and began to include young scientists as well, thereby evolving into a forum that connects “a diverse, international community across generations with the aim of identifying solutions to the most demanding problems of our time”.
The 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting took place from 30 June to 5 July, 2024. This year, 63 of the 630 young scientists from 90 countries who attended the meeting were Indian nationals, though most of them were working or studying abroad. I was fortunate to attend the prestigious science event as a journalist.
Considering the fact that this tradition was initiated as a response to “Germany’s scientific isolation” post World War II, the meeting carries an obligation to be inclusive. However, to ensure it is so, the organising council has their work cut out for them. It is well-known that the Nobel Prizes have been historically skewed with respect to the genders and nationalities of the winning scientists. So how could an event centred on them be any different? Naturally, the list of attending laureates this year was dominated by men from the Global North. It also did not help that this year, the focus of the meeting was physics, the prize category that has historically awarded the fewest women.
To my surprise, the actual meeting looked and felt a lot more inclusive than I had expected it to be, based on the programme schedule that featured only three women out of the 37 star speakers. This was also the impression I got from numerous conversations I had over the week of the meeting with journalists and young scientists from underrepresented parts of the world. Things are far from perfect, but it seemed that the meeting council was doing some things right. Perhaps figuring out what these were could be enlightening for scientific event organisers in India who struggle with their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals? Fortunately, the Vice President of the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Heiner Linke, was willing to sit with me for an open conversation about how the meeting prioritises inclusivity.
“Manels are not inevitable. I think it’s as simple as stopping yourself and not going with the first idea you have.” – Heiner Linke, Vice President of the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings
Step 1: Track numbers
To start with, journalists at the meeting were given a ‘media guide’ which included a section called ‘#LINO24 in numbers’. It disclosed that 42% of the 630-odd young scientists selected for the event preferred the pronoun ‘she’, 57% preferred ‘he’, and 1% did not disclose their preference. The ‘participant directory’ distributed to all attendees also contained short bios of all the Nobel laureates and the young scientists present, along with their preferred pronouns. I counted at least six young scientists who preferred the gender-neutral pronoun ‘they’. The media guide also depicted the representation of various nationalities at the meeting. The largest shares were from Germany and India, followed by the USA and China.
It is important to note that such information is easy enough to gather, and the fact that the data was public encourages transparency and accountability. According to Linke, who has been on the council since 2018, “Putting it out there is about transparency. People are interested in the numbers, but I think more important is that we look at the numbers [ourselves] and we try to follow up. We do it because we have this unofficial goal to be sort of a United Nations of science. In an ideal world, we want to have the best, or at least among the best young scientists of each country in the world. To approach this goal, we need to follow the numbers.”
Step 2: Avoid ‘manels’
A ‘manel’ is the now well-known term for a panel containing only men. Since it is the ‘women in science’ subset of the science’s underrepresented population that receives most visibility today, manels have become a popular villain in our DEI discourse. That said, it should be understood that targeting manels alone does not make sense. After all, a panel including three men and three women may still be woefully skewed with respect to other marginalisations – for example, caste, geography, race, disability and transgender people.
Gender-sensitised individuals and organisations regularly call out events that fail to find even a single woman speaker in scientific events. The most common excuse is that there simply are not enough women. Organisations like BiasWatchIndia consistently question this, by comparing the gender ratios at these programmes with base rates that they have calculated for various fields of STEM. Yet, in most cases, manels continue unopposed.
The Lindau meeting this year was far from gender balanced; however there were visible attempts made to ensure the stage was not completely taken over by ‘old white men’ — the demographic that the Nobel Prizes are notorious for being biased towards. During panel discussions, experts were chosen not only from the Nobel laureate group, but also from the much more diverse cohort of young scientists.
“Manels are not inevitable,” stressed Linke. “I think it’s as simple as stopping yourself and not going with the first idea you have.”
I asked him to elaborate. “When you start thinking about who to invite for a topic – say it’s quantum physics – it’s not uncommon for the first five to seven names that come to your mind to be men; we have that bias somehow,” he said candidly. “But you can train yourself to stop at that point and question [yourself]. Is this really the best you can do? It’s not about lowering standards, it’s about thinking of other areas, other groups and coming up with names which are often better – or at least more exciting – than the ones you first had. It’s important to take that extra step to avoid unconscious bias, and this is something you can train yourself and your group to do.”
…despite the best of intentions, unpleasant incidents will happen. The best we can do is to nurture an atmosphere where young scientists feel empowered to speak out about them, and receive enough support from colleagues and decision-makers when they do. Moreover, organisers must publicly accept accountability, and demonstrate how they intend to address the issue.
Step 3: Partner up
Sometimes, it may be too much to expect organisers of a conference — who usually comprise scientists with expertise in a particular area — to take up the task of ensuring diversity. The good news is they don’t have to do it themselves. There are several organisations today, including the collective I help run (LabHopping/ TheLifeofScience.com), who would be more than happy to collaborate towards DEI goals.
In case of the Lindau meetings, they work with ‘partner organisations’ around the world to help select a worthy and diverse young scientist cohort for the meeting. The partners send the council their shortlist of nominees, and the council makes the final selection from this pool. The partners include government departments, national academies, universities and private organisations which also offer sponsorships to young scientists, something that the Lindau meeting council would not be able to manage themselves. India’s Department Of Science & Technology (DST) is one such partner organisation. Other examples are Iran’s Sharif University of Technology, African Academy of Sciences, Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
“We are always working to improve our partner organisation relationships. Finding partners in new areas is welcome. They are the ones who actually have the reach into the academic institutions, who can actually help us find the best, most promising young scientists,” said Linke. He added that financial realities had to be considered, and for this they also rely on philanthropists.
“I think it is important that we tell them (the partner organisations) that we are looking for gender balance,” said Linke. “It’s not magic, it’s just about taking that extra step to question if that really is the most diverse group you can find.” But what happens if a partner organisation offers a pool comprising almost all men? “They may notice that not many of their students are getting accepted. If there was a more diverse pool, then their yield might also go up’,” he said with a shrug and a smile. He added, “Usually that’s not necessary. I think they understand.”
Step 4: Create space for critique
However much an organising committee tries to prioritise diversity, given our unequal society, perfect representation will not be quick to achieve. There are bound to be mis-steps and the way to evolve from them is to be gracious during the time one is critiqued. The Lindau meetings themselves have been subject to scrutiny a number of times. After the 2016 meeting, a group of South African young scientist participants took the time to analyse the diversity of participant representation within the meeting. In the resulting commentary, they observed that “there are regions that were very under-represented, both in terms of the number of attendees and the number of young scientists who were given an opportunity to present their work”.
In the 2022 meeting, Nadja Hümpfer, a German biochemist had an unpleasant interaction with a Nobel laureate, prompting her to write an opinion piece about what the council needs to keep working on. In response to Hümpfer’s and other participants’ feedback, the council posted a blog titled ‘Conduct – Diversity – Inclusion’ where they reassured the community that their comments and complaints were being taken very seriously. They went on to share the results of a discussion they had and steps they intended on taking before the next meetings the following years.
During the 2023 meeting too there were controversial moments when two Nobel laureates Kurt Wüthrich and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard questioned the theme of that particular meeting, which was diversity. Wüthrich, notably, commented that he felt “discriminated against” as a male scientist. Some other laureates and several young scientists expressed their disappointment at these statements, and the council reacted by organising follow-up sessions to discuss what had happened and possible next steps. The following week, they released a statement, where they described the incident (with links and relevant timestamps to the recorded meeting) and provided a list of improvements they intend to make in future meetings.
In light of these recent controversies, I was unsure if my request for an interview with the council to speak about diversity would be entertained. It was refreshing to be told the following day that the Vice President would meet with me for a one-on-one interview. During the candid interview with Heiner Linke, I could not help but draw a contrast with the time Aashima Dogra and I secured an interview with the jury member of a big Indian science award. When we asked him about his thoughts on the dearth of women winners, a PR official who was chaperoning us attempted to interrupt, saying our question was not relevant. To his credit, the jury member did not have a problem with the question and proceeded to answer.
The point of highlighting these incidents is to illustrate that despite the best of intentions, these unpleasant incidents will happen. The best we can do is to nurture an atmosphere where young scientists feel empowered to speak out about them, and receive enough support from colleagues and decision-makers when they do. Moreover, organisers must publicly accept accountability, and demonstrate how they intend to address the issue. This is where things need to improve when we discuss DEI closer to home.
In our book Lab Hopping, Aashima Dogra and I wrote about a government-organised science fest where a sexist debate was allowed to happen in spite of considerable protest from the community. More recently, at a conference organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants, women were ordered to vacate the front rows of the auditorium to appease an invited “swami”. Sometimes we hear from news reports or the grapevine that the concerned organisation is looking into the matter, but rarely do we see them bother to make a public statement or hear about any outcomes. This less-than-transparent manner of handling such incidents ensures that we remain at square one.
Conclusion
The Lindau model cannot and should not be copy-pasted into our context — that is obvious. For one, many of our science conferences may actually have a larger percentage of women speakers than the Lindau Nobel Laureate meetings have. Then there is the matter of scale. Our events are not so heavily funded, but it could be argued that it’s not about how much we have but what we do with what we have. There are also different socioeconomic realities we need to consider here in India. That said, I do believe that the Lindau meeting serves as an example of some important and implementable takeaways. It just requires will and a little bit of imagination to craft these approaches into a version that works for us.
Notes:
This article was originally published in Vividh: Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity and Accessibility in Science in India, a compendium by IndiaBioScience.org. It is republished here with minor edits.
Nandita was able to attend the meeting at after being selected for a Journalist Travel Grant offered by the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.
Featured image by Siddhesh Gautam, with modifications by Sayantan Datta.
