We wholeheartedly agree with Miner et al. (2018) that industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists should take a lead in addressing gender inequity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The focal article is particularly timely in light of the recent controversial “Google memo” (Damore, 2017), in which a senior software engineer endorsed the same individual-level myths regarding the gender gap in STEM that were critiqued by Miner et al. (2018). However, we caution against painting all STEM fields with the same broad brush. We argue that it is critical for I-O psychologists to be aware of important differences between STEM subfields, as these distinctions suggest that a “one-size-fits-all” approach may be inadequate for addressing existing gender disparities in STEM. In order to be maximally effective, interventions may need to emphasize distinct issues and target different points in the career pipeline depending on the specific STEM subfield in question.

On June 13, 2012, a group of key stakeholders, leaders, and national experts on tuberculosis (TB), occupational health, and laboratory science met in Atlanta, Georgia, to focus national discussion on the higher than expected positive results occurring among low-risk, unexposed healthcare workers undergoing serial testing with interferon-γ release assays (IGRAs). The objectives of the meeting were to present the latest clinical and operational research findings on the topic, to discuss evaluation and treatment algorithms that are emerging in the absence of national guidance, and to develop a consensus on the action steps needed to assist programs and physicians in the interpretation of serial testing IGRA results. This report summarizes its proceedings.

In very general terms, the physical scientist is concerned to identify and define certain regularities in the material world, and to embody them in laws or theories which both furnish an explanation of them and enable him to predict and to some extent to control particular kinds of future event. It is noticeable at once that the elements of prediction and control are largely absent from Greek speculation, and this is due partly to certain of its inherent characteristics (to which I return in a moment), and partly to its lack of three further particular features which are an essential part of the natural sciences today. These are briefly that they are experimental, quantitative, and laboratory-based. This generalization is, of course, at once too wide and too narrow. Not all scientific theories rely on experiment in the narrow sense or on laboratory operations; the observations of the astronomer and the activities of the field-biologist can, up to a point, dispense with both. But it remains true that the experimental test and the laboratory and its instruments are essential elements in modern science, and neither the astronomer nor the biologist can in the last resort dispense with them. Similarly, quantitative measurement plays an indispensable role in the physical sciences and is the basis on which they have been built up, even though the theoretical physicist may spend little time measuring or experimenting and be mainly concerned with the mathematical analysis which is so vital an element in modern physical theory.

My title is an ambitious one, and defines a field which is more suitable for a book than for a single lecture, and which has the added disadvantage that it crosses the boundaries between a number of disciplines: history, science, philosophy, and technology. Anyone who chooses such a theme is in danger of being told by those well-versed in the individual disciplines that his knowledge of each of them is inadequate; which may well be true, and is certainly true of me. But cross-disciplinary exploration is in itself a desirable activity; and if a few explorers perish in the process no great harm is done, and others may follow their example more successfully. I should not, however, in saying this, like it to be thought that I am claiming any great novelty for what I shall say to you today. Little of my material is new; all I can hope to do is to suggest to you a particular interpretation of it.