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At a Workshop Last Week, a CERN Scientist Said 'Physics Was Invented and Built by Men -- Not By Invitation'; CERN Has Suspended the Scientist (bbc.com)
New submitter ilguido writes: At a workshop organized by CERN, Prof Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University said that "physics was invented and built by men, it's not by invitation", BBC reported Monday. Strumia's presentation [Google Drive link] that supports the idea that "physics is not sexist against women[...], however the truth does not matter, because it is part of a political battle coming from outside" has already received a lot of criticism, with one female physicist defining Strumia's analysis as "simplistic, drawing on ideas that had long been discredited." In a statement on Sunday, CERN said, "It is unfortunate that one of the 38 presentations, by a scientist from one of the collaborating universities, risks overshadowing the important message and achievements of the event. CERN, like many members of the community, considers that the presentation, with its attacks on individuals, was unacceptable in any professional context and was contrary to the CERN Code of Conduct. It, therefore, decided to remove the slides from the online repository." On Monday, CERN said it has suspended the scientist from any activity at CERN with immediate effect, pending investigation into last week's event.
Sexism fired him, I don't see anything sexist in his presented material. On the contrary, he is attacking a persistent agenda distracting from physics and that lacks sound logical support.
Never mind that women having the right to property and self determination is something that only happened over the last century or so. In other words, they weren't invited to the "invention" of physics.
It's a witch hunt, the person who made this into an issue went out of their way to make it an issue. They're part of a extremist feminist group that has a history of getting offended because they want to be. Behold the piece of shit. An archive just in case. And enjoy the witch hunt in action.
This is everything that hasn't been scrubbed by CERN and may be incomplete. It's another Tim Hunt, Mat Taylor, donglegate in action. But remember, SJW's really aren't the problem...no no, they're just misunderstood, really out for the best, trying to make the world a better place by stomping on your face.
Om, nomnomnom...
Truth spoken, world goes nuts. As is the norm now.
As far as whether it's appropriate - he's reacting to a huge political movement that's been going on for years now. He didn't just come out of nowhere and decide to do this.
In fact I'd say it's almost inevitable that highly analytical minds are going to react against this identity politics at some point. It's more surprising how rare it is to see reactions.
I would like to see us evolve beyond punishing people for stating views with which one may disagree.
The primary assertions: ...are largely indisputable.
- physics was largely invented and advanced by men
- meritocracies are based on results, not on your sex, no matter what society "wants" to see
Interesting Ted talk by a feminist activist who was making a documentary about 'men who hate women' and came to realize that in some ways men are marginalized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - the point that resonates with this thread is where she said "you can look around and say that every single person was born of a woman, and nobody will doubt or criticize that.... but if you say look around and nearly every single building you see was built pretty much by men and you get immediately attacked"
That said, in no particular order:
- there's no reason women can't participate in physics going forward. None.
- there's a HUGE amount of base sexism in the field today
- it's never been a pure meritocracy anyway
- there IS a cultural/social pressure from people who have this silly notion that half the participants in every field must be female. This is frankly stupid, and should be resisted. However, acting like an ass and flinging shit at a conference like this is simply not productive in the larger scope.
If you have SPECIFIC instances where A was promoted over B because A had a vagina and B had clearly better work, then let's talk.
To me it seems he's actually just butthurt because HE didn't get a promotion he wanted, and has been seething about it for a while.
-Styopa
There is a war against us. This presentation outlines how the war works and get him fired. That is basically proof that the war against us exists.
It is not weird that if a white man goes up against a woman or another "minority" for something (say college admissions) that he would want to be accepted if he was better than the minority. Unfortunately that is not how it works these days. Diversity quotas mean that white men are at a disadvantage given equal SKILLS.
That is the definition of discrimination. The thing we are apparently trying to end.
They took the title out of context and did so on purpose. I'm pretty sure that's slander in the UK.
I know a few female PhDs in engineering subjects. When asked, all of them said that gender discrimination was not an issue in their studies or their research, except for the very rare "conservative old professor" that was easily avoided. Gender discrimination in the hard sciences is at worst a myth and at best irrelevant. The rare cases were it happens get blown all out of proportion to fuel an utterly sexist and misandrist movement.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
He broke one of the cardinal rules about slide decks on controversial subjects - make sure no sentence may be pulled out of context and used against you. Some interesting analysis and infographics in the paper. His conclusions are probably what pissed the most people off - that people screaming about how unfair STEM fields are to females may play a significant role in discouraging females from the field, which in my small sample survey (of STEM females) was strongly agreed with. But that puts part of the blame back on SJWs who are more interested in virtue signaling than being constructive, so of course he must pay. SNAFU...
We had. It's part of the basis of having the first amendment in the US. We're regressing, though.