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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.
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.
I would like to see us evolve beyond punishing people for stating views with which one may disagree.
As someone that works at an Ivy league veterinary school I just have to point out that there are actually programs to help men enter the field due to the current imbalance. There are also similar programs for men in nursing. They vary from everything including better work balance, family time off and mentoring.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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...
When is the last time you have heard of a protest that women are just as good at picking up garbage or mining coal as men. Or that a woman can dig a ditch just as well as a man? Where are the complaints that women are just as good at cleaning out sewers as men?
There may well be discrimination in those fields, and there may be individual women who fave a just complaint about it, but if so, they aren't getting a lot of support from other feminists.