More and more it seems we live in the era of the forced apology and
therefore it's refreshing to see one man. Professor Alessandro Strumia, theoretical particle physicist,
refusing to apologize
for defending science from feminist ideology.
Not surprisingly that man is now being denounced by thousands of his colleagues and that's my subject on today's Fiamengo File
I'm Janice Fiamengo of the University of Ottawa.
It is a truth universally
acknowledged that any academic field in which the number of women is not at least
equal to the number of men (and preferably double) must be a field in which
sexism is keeping women out.
Any man who contends that there is no sexism in his field is
immediately held up as one of sexism most dangerous
exemplars. Of course we're talking about elite
fields in academia. not dirty and dangerous
male-dominated jobs like frontline soldiering, long-haul trucking,
garbage collection, street paving,
commercial fishing, mining, logging
roofing,
construction, sewer repair, and so on.
The feminists just aren't interested in getting more women into these jobs
and therefore these jobs are never the focus of panels of outraged experts or public statements by academics
who've made comfortable
well-paying careers enforcing male guilt.
When professor Alessandro Strumia of the University of Pisa came to a conference of the European Organization for Nuclear
Research or CERN
conference on high-energy theory and gender he must have known that a non feminist presentation would go over about as well as
Galileo's subversive
cosmology pleased the Inquisition in
1633.
According to the Church of
feminism all men in STEM must manifest a deep concern about the declared
woman problem and must pledge to make ever greater efforts even including perhaps
sacrificing the best and brightest if necessary in order to meet
diversity goals. And by the way, as we all know, this is a church in which confessing your sins won't bring any forgiveness
so don't even think about it.
Now this is a longish video. So you might want to skip to the end
but I hope you'll agree with me that it subject worth the time because
what happened to Professor Strumia?
last month is a stark symbol of the attack on truth being waged by social justice warriors in science as
Strumia mentioned in his presentation
physics has always been a special community of researchers
dedicated to understanding the truth of nature.
Physics requirements are rigorous intellectual honesty and reliance on quantitative evidence.
Physics cannot flourish when these requirements are suppressed for any social goal
So let's look at what professors Strumia did that got him "unpersoned" by his fellow academics.
In short he created a series of graphs to show that far from being discriminated against women are significantly
advantaged over men in physics hiring
promotion and
financial assistance and that claims of bias against women which we hear so frequently simply don't rest on any hard evidence.
Now I encourage everyone to read through Strumia presentation
Which is linked below and judge for yourself whether he made his case or not
I won't go through the entire presentation
But I will highlight his main findings and the outrageous backlash
He received a backlash that included the accusation that he dismissed the ability of
scientists of color even though he never mentioned race in his findings at all
And before I start, let me thank two brilliant friends of mine one who works in astronomy and the other who works in physics
They helped me to decipher some of the arguments made by and against Strumia
Thanks to my husband also for listening to many versions of this
text.
So to turn to the presentation that caused all the fuss on
page 8 of his talk professor Strumia looked at the claim made in a
2016 paper that women's contributions to physics are passed over because
male physicists and not to cite papers with female first authors
Strumia analyzed the data and found that both male and female
researchers cited more papers with male first authors to the same degree
male authored papers were more often cited by both men and women
Likely because he suggested the male authored papers were more
Significant not because of any bias against women on
page 12 of his presentations Strumia considered the evidence for bias against women in physics
hiring by plotting the number of citations male and female researchers have typically had when hired
into their first job
This is really fascinating evidence.
Citations, which are the number of times ones published work is cited by others
obviously, are one major way of determining the quality of a person's research. The more cited the more
significant and influential.
Up until
1995
Strumia found male and female researchers had a comparable number of citations when first hired there was no
discrimination.
But since
1995
female researchers have been typically hired with less than half of the citations a male
PhD graduate has needed to be hired in other words over the last twenty three years from
1995 to the presence to the present hiring has been
Overwhelmingly stacked against men and I've seen this with my own eyes also
discrimination against men at the same time
the feminists have been complaining non-stop that more needs to be done to hire women into all academic fields and
what's Strumia found about initial hirings held for male and female?
scientists being hired out of one job into another at later points in their careers. Also on page 14 he showed that
female scientists are, at whatever stage, hired with fewer citations than male
scientists. In addition bias against men
extends to the awarding of fellowships also on page 15 of his presentations Strumia showed that the average
number of citations for young male physicists awarded prestigious
CERN fellowships is about twice the number of citations for female CERN fellows
So in other words CERN fellowships are being awarded regularly to lesser qualified female
physicists because they're female. On
page 260 sorry on page 16
Strumia showed that male physicists are more productive again by a factor of two than female
physicists throughout the whole course of their careers
Why do men outperform women in physics?
overall
Strumia
hypothesizes that the intellectually honest answer is that more men than women
have the desire and skills to do very high-level
physics and this is most likely because there are more men clustered at the very highest levels of intelligence according to the
standard deviation models
Which is not to say that there aren't women who are brilliant at physics
Just not as many as men because men's IQ
Distribution is broader and that's what accounts for the fact that there are more men in physics. There is no plot
Against women. In fact right now there is a plot so to speak against men
so if we care about what is best for physics
We should stop pretending
At least this is the implication. I think of Strumia research. We should stop pretending that heroic measures are needed to guarantee
female participation
well
Reaction to strew. Strumia presentation was swift and harsh
the video of his talk was immediately removed from the CERN website, so
We can't watch it to see if really was as CERN officials claimed quote highly offensive
according to CERN authorities Strumia stepped over the line of acceptable conduct
by naming a person present at the conference saying that in a competition for a
theoretical physics position at the National Institute of nuclear physics in Padua a woman with far fewer
Citations than she was given the position in fact as he showed in his presentation
He had ten times the number of citations she had
This was interpreted by CERN authorities as an attack which they stated was quote
Contrary to the CERN code of conduct and quote
Strumia was immediately
suspended from CERN pending an investigation and his home University. The University of Pisa has opened an ethics
investigation into his conduct
now one can disagree about whether professors Strumia stepped over the line in mentioning this
personal factor perhaps it was unwise it definitely gave
ammunition to his enemies. In an email he sent to me Strumia said that he mentioned it in a joking manner
certainly in my opinion his suspension from CERN was
excessively punitive
Given that much of his talk was pure numbers based analysis and that the so-called attack
appears to have been a simple statement of fact
but the CERN suspension it wasn't enough for some members of the academic physics community a
public letter condemning
Strumia in the strongest of terms
Co-authored by 18 mostly US based physicists was posted on a website calling itself
Particles for justice and to date the letter has received thousands of scientists signatures
And it's a doozy of a letter. I've read a lot of public statements by far-left
intellectuals over the last few years, but I think this one might be the most
unhinged I've ever seen it begins with a
histrionic assertion that quote the humanity of any person regardless
of ascribed
Identities is "not up for debate"
the clear implication is that Strumia himself merely by objecting to
feminist policy was actually in some way calling into question the humanity of women or any other people which
He wasn't I?
Think everyone who signed this letter should be ashamed of such dishonesty
The co-authors of the letter also lament thats Strumia used his physics
Credentials to pretend he had something to contribute to a discussion of gender bias, which isn't his area of expertise though
Of course if he had made a plea for more aggressive measures to promote women in physics
They would never have complained that he lacked the credentials to do so
They continued that quote those among us who are familiar with the relevant literature. No thats true
Strumia's conclusions are in stark
disagreement with those of experts and quote
This is a classic academic feminist M ol
Create a discipline that is based not on scientific methodology but on
Untestable claims about privilege lived experience
intersectionality and
unconscious bias then staff the discipline with
ideologues who found journals and cite one another in their articles and
Then claim that a real scientist has no standing to use
quantitative methods to challenge the findings of your fake
discipline
well in order to show us what only
gender experts can see the letter writers enumerate a series of
Rebuttals to Strumia's points there first and most general criticism is thats Strumia quote
frequently made the basic error of
Conflating correlation
With causation and quote. Well, this might be a meaningful criticism
But they fail to give a single instance in which it is the case
Where does he do it?
Strumia's basic argument is that when feminists claim that something must be done about physics so-called?
Woman problem and when it can be shown that less qualified women are being hired in place of more qualified men
Then feminist policies are causing discrimination against men in physics
I just don't see where the logical error is on the other hand one could certainly argue that the authors of the letter
continually confuse correlation
With causation they find that fewer women work in high-level
high-level physics and the fewer women win Nobel prizes
In physics and they conclude that therefore women are discriminated against in physics due to sexism
This is a clear case of
Correlation, not necessarily involving causation. So physicists heal thyself
The letter writers also include a personal attack on
Strumia's research record in order to suggest that he is a mediocrity bitter about beaten out for a job by a female
competitor, for example, they poopoo his involvement in one experimental paper with
thousands of authors claiming that this one paper
accounted for almost 1/3 of his total
Citations and that his contribution to the paper was likely modest. Will I call sour grapes?
Strumia was included in this very prestigious paper because he worked on the theory of the Higgs boson a
Revolutionary concept in understanding how particles acquire mass it was hardly insignificant
but even if you take away those
thousands of citations from that one paper
He still has many many more than his competitor
And in fact the vast majority of his papers have few authors and are highly cited his age
Index of 82 is knocked down impressive far better than his competitors
28 and yes, of course, it's true that
Quality cannot be measured
solely by numbers Rumia himself never claimed it could be but there is no doubt that in terms of influence as a
scientist Strumia is the superior candidate and it is
Astounding that the letter what writers try to pretend he isn't
When it comes to specific rebuttals of Strumia's points
The wobbly logic of the letter writers is even more obvious
Responding to Strumia's demonstration that both men and women cite more
Mail authored papers than female first authored papers. The letter writers say that quote
choice of
References is subject to unconscious bias in addition to conscious discrimination such
Unconscious bias is often found at similar levels in both men and women end quote
so in other words when
Women cite more mail first authored papers and female first authored papers bias is still in
operation because
Women can be just as biased as men
Wow, this is a real stretch
What happened to this special authority of women's lived experience?
which has become the basis for so much feminist theory if women themselves are just
as biased against women as men are said to be biased against women then how can bias
against women be measured at all if there's no unbiased standpoint and then
Why is it so important to hire more women into physics if they will merely replicate the biases of their male colleagues
The authors don't pursue this line of reasoning
If instead they go on to assert that just because women and men both cite more
Male first authored research papers
that doesn't mean that there are more significant male first authored papers on the contrary according to the letter writers the
citation rate quote only suggests that male and female
Scientists are equally capable of identifying
the most cited papers in their field end quote
Well, I'm at a loss with this one
it seems to say correct me if I'm wrong that these scientists are citing the male first authored papers only because
Everyone else is citing them and that that has little if anything to do with the importance of the publication's
If true this would seem to suggest that
Physicists are either incapable or not interested in
Judging the worth of the research conducted by their fellow scientists, which is quite an astounding assertion
That would surely call the entire physics enterprise into question, but the letter writers don't pursue this line of reasoning either
they go on to bridle at Strumia's emphasis on male achievement in physics including his
Suggestion that overall more men than women are interested in and talented in very high-level physics
They say quote Strumia argues that since the most cited papers are
Disproportionally by men this gives evidence that men are intrinsically better at physics
In between intrinsic ability and citation counting. However, there is the huge and complicated process of how
physicists are raised trained
tired and
perceived even at the professorial level
Discrimination can still play an important role end quote. Well, first of all Strumia didn't say that men are
Intrinsically better at physics. He said that men and women are on average of equal intelligence
but that there are more men who are brilliant at physics and that men's
interests tend to be in things while women's interests tend to be in people and this is
generally recognized in discussions of IQ
He certainly didn't make it up but the letter writers simply rule this whole area of research
out of order
They won't even deal with it and in they merely fall back on their standard claim of pervasive bias
but this is even those Strumia has just presented hard evidence that far from
Experiencing negative bias women are positively advantaged in all the areas
They were referring to in training and hiring and promotion
Once again, the letter writers rely on a classic feminist modus operandi, it doesn't matter how often female
advantage can be concretely proven a
generalized conveniently
unmeasurable
anti-woman bias
can never be absolutely disproven and
Therefore it is constantly evoked as if it were a self-evident truth
Unmeasurable factors are again the failsafe in the letter writers response to
Strumia's graph about women's lesser achievements in physics throughout their careers
They say quote Strumia uses as evidence for his case a claim that the number of citations for women
Increases more slowly than for men as their careers progress his numbers
however, do not control for many factors including
Social expectations that may result in women taking on more primary caregiver roles at home or more
departmental roles earlier in their careers and quote
I have no idea how such factors could possibly be controlled for
so this is a meaningless criticism in my opinion and if social
Expectations are factors in female underachievement in physics. Why is it that in many other?
Academic fields and the social sciences and humanities where presumably women face the same social
expectations women's numbers have increased massively
Over the past four decades, why would social expectations be a deciding factor?
only in physics and other mathematics based disciplines
The letter writers of course don't attempt an explanation
over all the letter writers make no attempt to
seriously lies through me as graphs to show how any of his numbers or
Inferences are inaccurate
All they've got is their moral outrage and such outraged powers their concluding ad
hominem attack
The letter writers end by pointing to what they call Strumia's
quote deep contempt for more than half of humanity that clearly comes from some source other than
scientific logic and quote
well, I suppose they just couldn't resist not only were they compelled to denounce Strumia as a
Misogynist and a racist even though he said nothing about race
but they had to claim in good stalin esteem that he may be mentally ill as well or at least a
hater as
anyone must be who would object to the hiring of less qualified people on the basis of
characteristics totally irrelevant to physics
And the letter writers go even further to allege that women and other marginalized
People who come into contact with Strumia will suffer from his claimed
Bigotry the clear implication being that's true
Mia's professional colleagues and superiors should actually remove him from positions in which he would supervise graduate
students or
participate in hiring decisions
The mind boggles at their willingness to make such a vicious
Allegation, but I guess when you can't rebut someone's argument and when you can't even begin to prove that he actually has
contempt for women
The only thing you have left is mob attack in an attempt to ensure that Strumia's professional life
never
Recovers from his decision to call out the BS that passes for serious discussion at a science conference
Well, I can only hope that
Strumia's colleagues will resist the call to punishment that they will recognize the utter
irrationality of the letter writers claims and yet
Thousands of scientists have seen fit to attach their names to this document
Just scroll through the list on the additional page attached to the letter and look at the roll call of Shame
Named after name after name of presumably smart people patting themselves on the back for their virtue
Finding it easier to shame a leading scientist than to deal honestly with his data
to paraphrase TS Eliot
This is the way that physics ends not with a big bang but a feminist whimper
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