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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.
The greatest minds were never immune. Read up on the biographies of Newton, Tesla, etc. Humans have always been flawed. That was the single greatest achievement of the Scientific Method: making progress in the great game in spite of its flawed players.
Instead you'd rather these great minds ignore the truth and bow down to political correctness and pretend that everything that is not true really is? All in the name of making marginalized people feel better about themselves... That is absurd.
A physicist just wanting to do physics without politics injected.... imagine that.
If it really has been discredited, then quote the research that discredits it. Strumia has provided evidence to support his claims, and evidence is needed to dismiss those claims.
I really wish I'd live long enough to see our species evolve past all the tendency to violence, racism, sexism, bigotry, wilful ignorance, superstitious
I would say "willful ignorance" is not having even bothered to read the presentation.
nonsense, and all the other stupid crap that we, as a species, seem to be infected with, but as-is I'm not even so sure the human species will manage to survive to see the year 2100, when even the greatest minds among us aren't immune to all the above.
LOL you are being played by outraged fueled media simply to make money.
One of the slides amounted to: "No one is seeking gender equality in jobs that get you killed." Is that true? I suspect the military and law enforcement may be an exceptions since there's a lot of social prestige, but I don't hate myself enough to read jezebel.
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...
Looking at the pdf presentation in the OP's link, he went somewhere that some people do not want to be discussed, Gender differences and gender preferences.
Instead of refuting his argument, it's easier to call him a sexist bigot and just discredit him that way.
Appears he's making the statement, historically men did dominate the field, but didn't primarily exclude women, and when women started joining they won Nobels. But many fields of study appears to have gender differences, and that sexism wasn't the cause, but gender preference.
He states his theory, cultural Marxism re-writing history to promote oppression as the reason women did not contribute. Along the same lines of re-shaping history to push the narative that exploration and advancements were performed by men who raped, murdered, stole land and murdered indigenous people.
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.
Many physicists however are definitely sexist against women. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
Many physicists however are definitely against Italians. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
Stating opinion without proffering evidence for your position or even bothering to characterize it in an objectively unambiguous manner can be quite a bit of fun.
I would like to see us evolve beyond punishing people for stating views with which one may disagree.
Does he not even recognize that ideas and discoveries by women were almost unanimously dismissed and women even prohibited from participating in scientific fields or hell, any academic field until recently?
It's very disappointing that some scientists fail to realize how drastically the world has changed in the last 100 years.
There were probably a lot of discoveries by women that were posted secretly under a man's name with the credit given to a male relative or a male employer. Look how many female novelists in the old days used to post under male pseudonyms... and that was for something as harmless as a novel.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's not opinion and the facts are not hard to find for anyone who can be bothered to look for even 20 seconds on Google. Sexism is quite real and it is distressingly common in the field of physics and many other branches of science. It's ironic that you ask for evidence of sexism in an article about a guy who was fired because he (apparently) exhibited sexism publicly. If that isn't evidence I'm not quite sure you understand the meaning of the term.
His presentation provided data to support his position. In contrast you are offering nothing.
You didn't even bother to read his presentation. Had you have bothered to do so you would have noticed the sentence cited in the headline occurs under the heading "discrimination against women".
BTW the very next slide includes the heading "discrimination against men".
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
He didnt show up to the workgroup with a new model for detecting leptons, a new theory of strong force interaction, or anything else that would have been legitimately controversial. Alessandro Strumia showed up to shitpost about gender.
Are you curious why? I'll help.
https://indico.cern.ch/event/714346/overview
In addition to talks on nuclear and string theory, SM and BSM phenomenology, lattice field theory and cosmology, each day talks and panel discussions will be dedicated to research on gender in academia, with an aim to further the development and implementation of action plans to support women and other minorities in physics.
Way too many conferences already have one guy, or girl, who decides to bring a pot of shit to stir instead of any actual contribution to the conference.
Disagreeing with the status quo is not "bring[ing] a pot of shit to stir". Strumia provided evidence to support his claims. If he is wrong, then provide evidence that he is wrong.
Evidence huh? Did you actually read his presentation? Seriously, there is a link to it right there in the summary. Go through the whole thing. Evidence indeed.
If I didn't know it came from a professor (with an obvious axe to grind) I would have guessed it was done by a 9th grader. (with an axe to grind)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The more and more this small but loud group keeps pushing this nonsense, the sooner there will be a massive pushback against them and this agenda. Which is a shame because the snapback AWLAYS will undo what was previously accomplished.
What these idiots fail to realize is that it is OK to stop with progressive ideas once you reach a certain point. The people who used to push equality of the sexes have now transitioned into female subjugation of men at the expense of everything else. As someone who totally signed on for equality, this is NOT ok.
If you are a physicist, board member etc, were placed into that position by merit, and happen to be a woman good for you!
We should be at a point in history where we don't look at sex as a determining factor but ignore it in favor of a list of successful options.
But no, we aren't and can't focus on more important things because these loud nitwits have a hammer and see everything as a nail.
His being a dumb ass got him fired. Why do idiots like this feel entitled to bring up their backwards politics at non-political events?
If I'm working a job and presenting for my company and I go off on a rant about something political guess what will happen to me?
If you guess I probably will get fired you win. I'm tired of all these over privileged cry babies feeling like they have a right to throw out their politics on company time.
It's worth pointing out that the opposite would almost certainly not be the case though. If he had done a presentation on "Gender Diversity in Physics" that reached the opposite conclusions, the complaints wouldn't be made. And if you haven't noticed, the trend by the SJW crowd is to insert politics at ALL events, because "there is no such thing as a non-political event", and "being able to ignore politics is a white male privilege" and if you disagree, you're a bigot.
I'd be all for keeping these events non-political. Too bad one side has already decided that bridge must be crossed.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Perhaps you missed the part that one of the official subjects of the conference was gender in the field. It was relevant to the discussion. See AC's post about 4 or 5 below with the part in bold.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Yep.
Maybe the folks at CERN should have done the Scientific thing and refuted his paper using facts.
The statement, "physics is not sexist against women[...], however the truth does not matter, because it is part of a political battle coming from outside" shouldn't be that hard to refute, no? Then they make a presentation the next time and shame that guy into a career at Starbucks.
But they didn't that, did they. All they did was spout platitudes designed to placate the SJW crowd.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Why is there a conference about gender in CERN? Did CERN open a sociology branch?
Only two things can happen in such a conference. Either it turns into a politically correct echo chamber with nothing worthwhile coming out of it. Or it turns into a massive controversy that is equally unproductive. Do you ask sociologists to do quantum physics? No, because if you do, all you are going to get are time travelling cats or whatever bullshit people tend to think of when quantum physics is mentioned. So why would you ask particle physicists to do a conference about gender roles in society?
Physicists are free to discuss gender between themselves, and sociologists are free to talk about quantum physics, but to organize a conference in a reputable scientific institution, one would expect experts in their fields.
The relevant slide is number 17 titled "Discrimination against women."
The text:
Physics invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation.
Curie etc. welcomed after showing what they can do, got Nobels...
It's followed by "Discrimination against men" with cited examples such as women-only scholarships, extended STEM exam times only for women.
Clearly the two slides were intended to explore discriminatory practices. This conference took even the concept of exploring those ides as verboten, heresy, banned the witch and did the modern version of burning books.
If people are allowed to submit this garbage (see below), then I don't see any reason to censor the response (to the garbage)
- E=mc^2 is a sexist equation. "Because it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible Sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest."
Also: "The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, we attribute to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids.... From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders"
The guy was merely saying THIS stuff is wholly wrong and inaccurate.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
A woman I know recently applied to a PhD position. She already had a master's in the topic, from a school pretty strong in the subject area, doing some pretty difficult work, plus a fair amount of science communication & outreach on the side, and was looking to go further. She got rejected from a well funded position (with several openings), and later, she made the mistake of looking at the student roster to see who had gotten in. All male, seemingly straight out of undergrad, none of whom had a master's. She was kind of pissed, because while she couldn't prove that was a result of sexism, it sure looks like it, you know? And that's ridiculous, we shouldn't be dismissing anyone based on their sex, but this is definitely happening in science and academia.
Funny thing though, while that story is true, I lied about the sexes. I swapped them. Still feel the same way?
I have a hard time dismissing claims that there is political bias against men when I can see it happen. And before some moron accuses me of being sexist, I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of very competent female scientists out there, there are. And I'm not saying that there isn't real sexism against women in science, there is, I've seen it, and anyone who denies that or covers for it is part of the problem. That doesn't change the fact that screwing over men is also happening, and that it is not the way to go about fixing anything.
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...
Are any of you folks whining about SJWs actually reading his presentation and CERN's statement? On slide 15, he makes a dumbass little chart to whine about someone he calls a "commisar" hiring a woman instead of him. You can't pull shit like that at any conference in any field, and that's exactly what CERN's statement points out.
If you want to prop him up as a martyr for the red-pill crowd, that's your choice. But I wouldn't recommend picking a guy who torpedoed his reputation with a shit-tier analysis of gender issues because a woman got a job instead of him.
But they didn't that, did they. All they did was spout platitudes designed to placate the SJW crowd.
In the current uber-politically-correct world, placating the SJW crowd is pretty much the only thing that matters anymore. Don't do that and you are automatically a racist, sexist, xenophobe, and other sassy words that end in "ist" and "phobe."
Like scientist???
You don't get a invitation in the mail. You join by achievement, by accomplishment. All this gender talk is a distraction from real physics.
Well, no. You join by recognition of achievement, which came more readily for men than for women throughout most of history.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"