Not sure how much to trust GPT’s outputs here (I have not verified it), but I was a bit surprised to find that so many female Nobel prize recipients might (again, GPT might hallucinate) have had children. I think this is more towards anecdotal evidence, but might indicate that just counting number of articles leaves out important information. Perhaps the quality of work stays the same or is even increased by having children, even though the amount of work decreases? At least in my case with my kids, while my hours available for work has decreased, I definitely have not experienced a decrease in quality of my work, and if anything, I feel more invigorated and ideas come easily to me when I am not working.
Name
Field
Year
Children
Before/After
Carol W. Greider
Physiology or Medicine
2009
Yes
After
Elizabeth H. Blackburn
Physiology or Medicine
2009
Yes
After
Ada E. Yonath
Chemistry
2009
Yes
After
Doris Lessing
Literature
2007
Yes
Before
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
Physiology or Medicine
2008
No
N/A
Harriet A. Washington
Literature
2007
Yes
Before
Leymah Gbowee
Peace
2011
Yes
Before
Linda B. Buck
Physiology or Medicine
2004
No
N/A
May-Britt Moser
Physiology or Medicine
2014
Yes
Before
Olga Tokarczuk
Literature
2018
Yes
Before
Orhan Pamuk
Literature
2006
Yes
Before
Shirin Ebadi
Peace
2003
Yes
Before
Svetlana Alexievich
Literature
2015
No
N/A
Tawakkol Karman
Peace
2011
Yes
Before
Tu Youyou
Physiology or Medicine
2015
Yes
Before
Wangari Maathai
Peace
2004
Yes
Before
Wislawa Szymborska
Literature
1996
No
N/A
Yoshinori Ohsumi
Physiology or Medicine
2016
Yes
Before
Ōe Kenzaburō
Literature
1994
Yes
Before
Alice Munro
Literature
2013
Yes
Before
I also asked GPT to do the same for wealthy, self-made women:
Name
Net Worth
Source of Wealth
Children
Children Timing
Zhou Qunfei
Estimated $12.8 billion
Lens Technology
2
Before
Diane Hendricks
Estimated $11 billion
ABC Supply
7
Before
Meg Whitman
Estimated $5.1 billion
eBay, Hewlett Packard
2
Before
Judy Faulkner
Estimated $6 billion
Epic Systems
3
Before
Wu Yajun
Estimated $9.4 billion
Longfor Properties
1
Before
Rihanna
Estimated $1.7 billion
Music, Fenty Beauty
1
After
Kim Kardashian
Estimated $1.2 billion
Reality TV, Cosmetics
4
After
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Estimated $1.3 billion
Bumble
1
After
If not already obvious, I am probably at risk of some degree of motivated reasoning given that I already have 2 kids!
I did do 1 or 2 spot checks (felt like this was closer to doing nothing than something so didn’t detail this in my comment above). It seemed like the Nobel institute or some other web page had bios on all recipients and that these bios often mentioned kids. But I am quite unsure.
Edit/update: I randomly checked Ohsumi and not sure if GPT is ~racist but it included Ohsumi who it seems probably identifies as male. So that does is at least one mistake in the tables above.
Extremely minor and pedantic correction: Ōe Kenzaburō is male, not female: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenzabur%C5%8D_%C5%8Ce (I don’t think that makes any significant difference to the point you’re making, I just hate letting mistakes rest uncorrected!)
Does “before/after” mean the kids came before the Nobel, or the Nobel came before the kids? (probably what you want is the work that earned the Nobel, which is harder to time.)
Hi Julia that is a very good question and I realize an omission from my side. “Before” means the person had at least one child before the receipt of the prize. The data is straight from GPT and maybe I could have prompted it to do as you suggest and only count children that were likely to demand time during the work which led to their achievement. If this data looks interesting and have the potential to affect major decisions, I would advise to double check GPT’s work. I included it partially because the results surprised me (I would have thought many more recipients would be childless) and also because I am constantly in awe of what GPT can produce.
Not sure how much to trust GPT’s outputs here (I have not verified it), but I was a bit surprised to find that so many female Nobel prize recipients might (again, GPT might hallucinate) have had children. I think this is more towards anecdotal evidence, but might indicate that just counting number of articles leaves out important information. Perhaps the quality of work stays the same or is even increased by having children, even though the amount of work decreases? At least in my case with my kids, while my hours available for work has decreased, I definitely have not experienced a decrease in quality of my work, and if anything, I feel more invigorated and ideas come easily to me when I am not working.
I also asked GPT to do the same for wealthy, self-made women:
If not already obvious, I am probably at risk of some degree of motivated reasoning given that I already have 2 kids!
This seems like the kind of place GPT would make up things when the answer wasn’t on the web, and I would basically ignore this.
If someone thinks this is worth paying attention to, let me know and I’ll spot-check some of the rows?
I did do 1 or 2 spot checks (felt like this was closer to doing nothing than something so didn’t detail this in my comment above). It seemed like the Nobel institute or some other web page had bios on all recipients and that these bios often mentioned kids. But I am quite unsure.
Edit/update: I randomly checked Ohsumi and not sure if GPT is ~racist but it included Ohsumi who it seems probably identifies as male. So that does is at least one mistake in the tables above.
Extremely minor and pedantic correction: Ōe Kenzaburō is male, not female: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenzabur%C5%8D_%C5%8Ce (I don’t think that makes any significant difference to the point you’re making, I just hate letting mistakes rest uncorrected!)
Does “before/after” mean the kids came before the Nobel, or the Nobel came before the kids? (probably what you want is the work that earned the Nobel, which is harder to time.)
Hi Julia that is a very good question and I realize an omission from my side. “Before” means the person had at least one child before the receipt of the prize. The data is straight from GPT and maybe I could have prompted it to do as you suggest and only count children that were likely to demand time during the work which led to their achievement. If this data looks interesting and have the potential to affect major decisions, I would advise to double check GPT’s work. I included it partially because the results surprised me (I would have thought many more recipients would be childless) and also because I am constantly in awe of what GPT can produce.