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CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

bbc.com

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Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#41
From the particlesforjustice link:

"As an example of the inappropriateness of citations as a metric, almost 1/3 of Strumia's citations come from being one of thousands of authors on the CMS Higgs discovery paper, to which we can safely conclude that his contribution (as a theoretical associate in an experimental collaboration) was modest. Hundreds more citations come from papers about the statistically insignificant 750 GeV fluctuation at CERN, which disappeared with more data."

Ouchie.

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#42
Q: Did Prof. Strumia work with subject matter experts on his controversial research before giving his presentation?

My opinion: Being an expert in one area may not translate well into other areas. I'm a pretty good sysadmin, maybe even above average. But I don't present myself as a good/great devops or software engineer because I know I don't know as much as the developers I work with. If I'm trying to figure out some issue that involves a build or code in some way, I do my initial research then present that tentative conclusion to trusted experts for them to review. I don't make a presentation saying definitively "this is now happening" because I'd probably be wrong.

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#43
post #37
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Strumia himself said in his controversial presentation, "science is not by invitation". Anybody who can present data and draw logical conclusions should be admitted to the discussion, irrespectively of specialisation, gender, schooling, social background, political convictions, etc.

Then why should he care if he's affiliated with CERN? Go publish papers to the intellectual dark web. Academia is enough of a trashfire that if you could do it better without degrees and training, it would be very easy to get other dropouts and enfants terribles together and produce results that CERN couldn't with its gatekeeping and political correctness, right?

> Then why should he care if he's affiliated with CERN?

Because it's a violation of the principle just stated above. Since he proved he can do physics at high level enough to be part of CERN, but was excluded on political grounds... And yes, of course in a perfect world fair competition between ideas would eventually win. That is of little consolation to those who are punished for expressing their thought.

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#44
post #35

Lying about the contents of your talk so you can insult members of a selection comitte that didn’t pick you is not a good way to get a contract renewed, who would have known? Strumia must have really let his victory of the 750 GeV iron throne* dictate his sense of entitlement. *: http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2016/06/game-of-thrones-750-...

Your comment points to an underlying story. It mentions a selection committee that was not referenced in the article. Can you please link me to a source where I can learn more about it.

One of his slides shows a ”case study” that compares the citation number of a named female member of the selection comitte (there are of course several more members), the citation number of the named female that got the position, and the citation number of Strumia himself.

Underneath this table he wrote ”the opressive ambient started to open”...

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#45
post #38

And the fact is his statements were all backed up by real data, one would think Physicists could easily debunk them if they were bogus. Instead his detractors provided nothing but wishful thinking platitudes. Ideology over science, feelings over truth, shrieking, hysterical pronouncements over rational argument, welcome to the age of bullshit. Good luck with your next Physics breakthrough.

He has some statistics? Shark attacks increase in the summer and so do the sales of ice cream. There has been a lot of discrimination so it might be a little early to look at the data. Consider: The first women was admitted to Yale in 1966. The woman who helped Einstein with the math for General Relativity couldn’t get a job at a university without some help. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether

[deleted]

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#46
post #2

On one hand, in this political climate it's really stupid to say something like that. On the other, someone has to be the first person to say it. (Not that I necessarily agree with what he said)

> On the other, someone has to be the first person to say it. I don’t understand this point. Please could you expand on what you mean?

The tale of The Emperor's New Clothes [1] would be appropriate.

In society in general we've decided to take as an assumption that everybody is identically capable in everything and thus that any and all differences must then be attributable to some form of discrimination, bias, or prejudice. And this is something that is pleasant to believe in large part because not believing it has led to dystopic outcomes in the past, including but not limited to government driven eugenics. So it's something that we want to believe. And also stating you do not believe it is a great way to have people judge you for some secret ist of some sort or another.

At the same time this view is contradicted by reality. In times past this reality would have been mostly just empirical, but in modern times we also have genetic and other factors strongly contradicting any notion of inherent equality. So what to do? In my opinion the most important thing here is to ensure as much equality of opportunity as reasonably possible. And this is an effort that should never relent. However, at the same time, it also has to be acknowledged that the lack of equality of result does not inherently mean there's a problem. Ultimately it's the typical problem. Trying to create utopia is often a great path to dystopia. Enforced equality of result for all is rather a key point in Brave New World.

Of course this does not mean that discrimination does not exist. But the standard for assumption of such needs to start growing beyond wild induction from dubious toy experiments, or from works that start with absolute equality as an assumption.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#47
post #43
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why should he care if he's affiliated with CERN? Go publish papers to the intellectual dark web. Academia is enough of a trashfire that if you could do it better without degrees and training, it would be very easy to get other dropouts and enfants terribles together and produce results that CERN couldn't with its gatekeeping and political correctness, right?

> Then why should he care if he's affiliated with CERN? Because it's a violation of the principle just stated above. Since he proved he can do physics at high level enough to be part of CERN, but was excluded on political grounds... And yes, of course in a perfect world fair competition between ideas would eventually win. That is of little consolation to those who are punished for expressing their thought.

He was not rehired because he so publicly demonstrated he is not suitable for working together with others: in his famous talk he explicitly named and then insulted collegues because the took part in a hiring that didn’t give him the job.

A big international organisation with collaboration as a core goal is simply not a good fit for a well known asshole.

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#48
post #25

And the fact is his statements were all backed up by real data, one would think Physicists could easily debunk them if they were bogus. Instead his detractors provided nothing but wishful thinking platitudes. Ideology over science, feelings over truth, shrieking, hysterical pronouncements over rational argument, welcome to the age of bullshit. Good luck with your next Physics breakthrough.

> one would think Physicists could easily debunk them if they were bogus Done: "Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder cited papers addressing some of Strumia's conclusions and provided an alternative analysis, arguing that after accounting for disproportionately higher rates of women leaving the field the sex differences Strumia claims to have found become negligible."

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/10/gender-bias-in-acad...

Re: CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia

#49
post #43
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why should he care if he's affiliated with CERN? Go publish papers to the intellectual dark web. Academia is enough of a trashfire that if you could do it better without degrees and training, it would be very easy to get other dropouts and enfants terribles together and produce results that CERN couldn't with its gatekeeping and political correctness, right?

> Then why should he care if he's affiliated with CERN? Because it's a violation of the principle just stated above. Since he proved he can do physics at high level enough to be part of CERN, but was excluded on political grounds... And yes, of course in a perfect world fair competition between ideas would eventually win. That is of little consolation to those who are punished for expressing their thought.

> Since he proved he can do physics at high level enough to be part of CERN,

One, no, he didn't, he made errors of basic science in his argument and that should make his entire physics work suspect.

Two, "he can do physics at high level" is the opposite of everything CERN and the scientific method itself stands for. The scientific method does not say, if you're a genius, you can make discoveries. The scientific method says, if you work consistently and steadily and reproducibility in a community of peers, you can discover things about the world by using data from the world. Science is not about hiring mages who have a high enough mana level. CERN is a collaboration and a laboratory, which implies working together. If you're operating on a high level at your own, you have no need for CERN. If you're operating at a high level when you happen to have other colleagues around, then being able to work with those colleagues is a skill you must have as a scientist.

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