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) 606
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.
Timewave divide by zero 2018 A.D. (Score:2)
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Batshit crazy goes in cycles. Last peak was during WW1/2 and this one is hopefully less destructive. Blame it this time around on the social media that makes everyone's private thoughts available for inspection by everyone else.
Sorry, I cannot do a presentation (Score:2, Insightful)
It's better to just keep your mouth shut sometimes, even if your teeth grind, and your lips go blue, and you get cobwebs in your mouth.
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Truth is not welcome in politics of any kind. It invariably makes a lot of the politicians look really bad.
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Oh go jump in the river, Diogenes; you need a bath.
Follow the Scientific Method (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Correct (Score:3, Insightful)
physics is not sexist against women
This is true. Physics has no opinion on the matter. Many physicists however are definitely sexist against women. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
Re:Correct (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Many physicists however are definitely against mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Re:Real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:Real problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I don't think the trouble is gender discrimination (Score:3)
The nerds I know have very, very little tact. The few who do know what tact is have to try really, really hard to avoid saying incredibly off color crap. There are entire books about dead baby jokes and enough jokes about dead hookers and pedophiles to fill several books over. Being a nerd and spending a lifetime around other nerds I can tell you they'll cheerfully spout these gags along with harmless Monty Python jokes and be completel
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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.
You're begging the question.
He may well be a sexist - I don't know, but you can't justify the claim using the claim itself as evidence.
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physics is not sexist against women
This is true. Physics has no opinion on the matter. Many physicists however are definitely sexist against women. Not all but enough to be a real problem.
You might have missed the new hotness in intersectionality: the redefinition of -isms and -ists to refer to outcomes, not intent.
If an insufficient number of XYZ are not present, then "the system" (not specific people) is XYZ-ist and must be corrected. And if you are not XYZ, then you are a receiving a benefit of an XYZ-ist system and are thus XYZ-ist yourself. (Note: Denying your inherent XYZ-ist nature shall be taken as strong additional evidence that you are XYZ-ist.)
QED.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:good riddance. (Score:4, Informative)
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 [indico.cern.ch]
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.
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Re:good riddance. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:good riddance. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:good riddance. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:good riddance. (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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Maybe he should have presented his slides at a humanities or sociology conference instead of one dedicated to physics? Sounds like he was upset that women were invading his boys club.
He talked about the taboo subject, gender. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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truth spoken (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
It's not a political movement, it's economic (Score:3)
As an added bonus men and women are fighting among themselves over gender issues, making a nice skism in the working class.
So Sad (Score:2)
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Re:So Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
He's not wrong, but is just being a dick about it (Score:5, Interesting)
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?... [youtube.com] - 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.
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No argument for the wrong theory allowed. (Score:3, Insightful)
The idiot mentioned it in his own presentation: Women are overrepresented in the CERN administration. Why did he think he could give a scientific argument against the feminist agenda without getting reprimanded?
Validate Statement Using Scientific Method (Score:2)
"significant women physicists" yielded: ... for 6.8 Million results
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
- https://gizmodo.com/these-17-w... [gizmodo.com]
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Prof Strumia should have been strummed out for not doing any basic research before stating his conclusion.
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Maybe you should be strummed out for not doing any basic research as well.
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The is /. why would I RFTA?
On a more serious note, I misunderstood what was being presented - thank you for correcting me.
Fired for telling the truth? (Score:2)
That's Strange
Keep drawing those battle lines, SJW's (Score:2)
The Overton Window Pushback (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Hope he sues the BBC for the article title (Score:3, Interesting)
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He literally said it as one of two sentences on slide 17, and they linked to his entire slide presentation in the article. Pretty sure that that's not slander.
Feel free to describe how it is "out of context," however. I'm sure that this will be good...
E=mc^2 is sexist! (Score:4, Funny)
And Newton's Principia is a "rape manual". Didn't you know? Allow me to quote: "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"
Re:And just like that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: And just like that... (Score:5, Insightful)
A physicist just wanting to do physics without politics injected.... imagine that.
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A physicist just wanting to do physics without politics injected
If he had really been wanting to do just that why would he go to a workshop titled "High Energy Physics Theory and Gender" instead of one just on physics without the gender? The difference is that if you go to a physics conference and say something stupid you will be shown to be stupid by use of logic and data. If you go to a gender conference and say something stupid you are burnt at the stake as a heretic. Only one of these approaches teaches you why you are wrong and lets you, and others, learn from you
I admit I'm curious (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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You don't even need to look at jobs that get you killed. No one is seeking gender equality in jobs that women dominate.
Women dominate teaching below the college level, veterinarian jobs, and nursing, just to name a few. Yet there are no efforts to increase the number of men in those fields. You also never see a push for more women construction workers or farm workers or garbage collectors. It's only well-paying jobs where a high percentage of men is a problem. Low paying jobs? No one cares. Jobs where women
Re:I admit I'm curious (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I admit I'm curious (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I think only the one slide got him fired. Maybe the way he presented as well, I haven't seen that. The quote about physics' invention is very easy to misread, I can't blame CERN for reacting to that slide. Everything else... he's just attempting to analyze the issue. Nothing wrong with that.
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Re:And just like that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Yes, precisely.
For an example more close to home for most of us, consider pretty much every non-political online discussion forum ever.
If someone posts something that's political but trendy, that's fine. But if somebody reacts to it, posts the opposite point of view or even just tries to be balanced or put it in perspective, he'll get taken to the woodshed for "being political", "flaming", etc.
Re:And just like that... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [twitter.com]. An archive just in case. [archive.is] And enjoy the witch hunt in action. [twitter.com]
This is everything that hasn't been scrubbed by CERN [google.com] 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.
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Mashiki wrote:
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 [twitter.com]. An archive just in case. [archive.is] And enjoy the witch hunt in action. [twitter.com]
This is everything that hasn't been scrubbed by CERN [google.com] 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.
The twitter post you're calling "piece of shit" is @jesswade:
"When people in positions of power in academia behave like this and retain their status they don’t only push one generation of underrepresented groups out of science, but train others that it’s ok to propagate this ideology for years to come."
The "witch hunt in action" link shows a collage of Kavanaugh headlines by the poster @BeastOfWood with lines like "white male entitlement", and "white male supremacy" marked, it's not evident to me how the poster or the collage is relevant. The last link is just the same slides as posted in the summary.
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This is how Mashiki's mind works. He gets triggered easily because he believes in a vast conspiracy of feminists trying to destroy the world with Cultural Marxism, and so whenever anyone says anything he disagrees with in the slightest he assumes they are part of it and the embodiment of pure evil.
So why don't you prove me wrong. Go out, publicly, in front of the media and take ads out in the paper with the two following subjects: "The wage gap is a myth." "No, the US rate of sexual assaults is not higher then the Congo."
I'll wait. Enjoy the public lynch mob by the way.
Re:Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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100% this.
If you're a scientist, instead of shutting someone up to mollify the SJW's, bust his ass up with FACTS.
Then, it's a win-win, double smackdown for Strumia if he is proven wrong, again, with FACTS.
Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I don't think you or I are in any position to evaluate his claims of reverse bias in hiring. Unless we knew ALL of the details he account might be 100 percent accurate. Or perhaps not.
Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:3, Informative)
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A lack of insight coupled with shamelessness is the defining characteristic of the bitter modern misogynist.
Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Funny)
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???
Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:3)
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Yes, he was talking about genders and science, but his talk wasn't scientific. Where's his data?
His talk was almost entirely analysis of data. Lots of it. He's a physicist, that's what he does.
Sorry if this interferes with your SJW agenda.
A telling quote from the BBC article:
"There were young women and men exchanging ideas and their experiences on how to encourage more women into the subject and to combat discrimination in their careers. Then this man gets up, saying all this horrible stuff."
He said all these horrible things! Facts, data, analysis, all disagreeing with our established dogma! It was horrible! If we weren't so busy chanting "lalalalala we're not listening" then we'd almost be forced to rethink our ideas! Oh the SJW-ity!
Re:Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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tendency to violence, racism, sexism, bigotry, wilful ignorance, superstitious nonsense
That might be true.. if I had anything to do with 'outrage(d) fueled media', which I don't. It's my observation of the human species, formulated over all the decades of my life. That's okay, I don't expect most people to be honest enough with themselves to admit what I'm saying is true, the truth hurts too much for most people, and to be quite honest it hurts me deeply because I know I'm fundamentally no better, even if I try to be. Admitting I'm right is admitting you're just a caveman with high-tech toys;
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It's an interesting talk but I absolutely can't understand why a physicist would hold such a talk at a physics conference at CERN.
Simple.
Because it is negatively affecting a physics conference at CERN, not some random gender-studies organization's conference.
Why is CERN engaging in Post-Modern anti-Enlightenment political correctness when it should only be concerned with *scientific* correctness? Post Modernism is anathema to science. Science is a Meritocracy or else you're not engaged in science but rather politics.
Strat
Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to see us evolve beyond punishing people for stating views with which one may disagree.
Re: Our species needs to evolve (Score:4, Interesting)
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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 nonsense, and all the other stupid crap that we, as a species, seem to be infected with.
Human bigotry in it's many forms won't end until the last of humanity does. I don't believe it can be done and I don't believe there is one person on this planet that doesn't harbour at least a little bigotry in one form or another. That doesn't mean we should ignore it and say it's inevitable- we need to limit it as much as possible... but it will never end.
Re:Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Our species needs to evolve (Score:5, Interesting)
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CERN's statement points out that such personal attacks are unacceptable. It's just plain not okay pull shit like this.
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Unless i'm missing some irony here:
False dichotomy, we can all simultaneously reject the grossly absurdly evil machinations of post modern identity politics and one of is main weapons political correctness, and reject all those things you mentioned.
No one would be happier because one of the first of many casualties of that way of thinking is the loss of free will.
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Thank you for the diagnosis, I genuinely wasn't certain, will change my diet immediately.
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Many of these biggest minds were actually labelled as "problem students" by the mainstream schools and teachers of the day. They had to be home-schooled by tutors. Other times, home schooling by tutors was the only way of getting an education. Either way, that kind of intensive teaching going at the speed of one student rather than the average speed of a class would have accelerated their learning.
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He was not wrong in that "Physics was invented and built by men". By and large, this is undoubtedly true, with a few outliers. That observation in itself is valid science.
What would have been wrong if he had said that this needs to continue.
Science and physics should be blind. Whether you're a man, woman, hermaphrodite, black, white, green or invisible is irrelevant for producing theorems and testable hypotheses, and moving science forward.
Ever stopped to wonder why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, he's not wrong. Almost all the biggest minds in physics and math were men
True but have you ever stopped to wonder why? This is NOT evidence that men are better at physics but evidence of the extremely sexist society which has existed for centuries. Yes, things are a lot better now than they used to be but you have to be a monumental idiot to not realize that sexism in the past was directly responsible for the lack of women in physics or indeed any science.
This is what should have been pointed out to him by someone in the audience. This is the way that you fix idiotic thinkin
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Yah-- everyone needs to have the opportunity. But it may not be "fair" in numbers afterwards.
Testosterone seems to cause *increased variability* in outcomes. Women appear to be slightly smarter on average than men (depending on the metric you choose), but men have a greater variability in intelligence and performance. That is, men are over-represented at the very dumb and brilliant ends of the spectrum.
Equal opportunity may still result in an excess of men at the very top of many professions...
(And again
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the inflection MEN or MAN? I can't tell from the context.
It's "men" under a slide with heading "discrimination against women".
The very next slide has heading "discrimination against men".
People publishing media accounts of this crap with intentionally misleading exerts simply to stoke public outrage in order to rack up views for profit are the ones we should all be "outraged" at and demanding resignations from.
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I am sure that Marie Curie's Nobel Prize was in Chemistry.
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She had one in physics (1903) shared with her husband.
When I read the headline my first thought was "A certain Madame Curie would like to have a word with this guy..."
Re:Mme Curie ? (Score:4, Insightful)
A single instance does not make a statistic. The great women on STEM do exist, but they are few. Far too few for this to be a measurement error.
Re:Fool! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
For that, the pendulum has swung back pretty radically. Near 80% of new novels are now written by women.
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It is no coincidence, then, that 85% of new novels are absolute shit.
That has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with Sturgeon's Law [wikipedia.org].
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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?
Perhaps the fact that the quote people are upset about was on a slide titled "Discrimination against women" suggests that he does know that.
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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. T
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I swear, for all my straight-middle-class-Christian-white-male-ness, I really honestly do not know why so many of us in this category are so unreasonably threatened by those who aren't in the category.
It's really weird. It has defies any logic.
Nice word salad (with crunchy strawmen!).
First, just because you don't like what someone is saying, that doesn't automatically mean that the speaker is "feeling threatened".
Secondly, some people no doubt do "feel threatened", because you know, there are actual threats against them. (Yes, I know, pretend there aren't, ask me to google for you ...)
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So? Noether was pretty good. She was also an exception. They do not make a trend. Equal opportunity just means the exceptions get their chance. It does not mean suddenly everybody has to be equal. BTW, less women in the hard sciences does not indicate less intelligence or skill, it indicates different choices.