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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

#141

Post by OldFatCactus »

titanix2 wrote: post #130
OldFatCactus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol Firstly, the guy isn't qualified to make such a sweeping statement about the opposite sex. So before we even step into the problems with why it's a dumb idea to say such things, lets just make it clear that he's a physicist and not an anthropologist, biologist, or sociologist. We definitely care about his moral character, but it's also just flat out incredibly naive to discredit women in his field when they've be…

It is comments like yours that is currently fuelling the ‘diversity’ meme pushback. You are denying someone the right to express facts just because of its gender and divergent political opinion. The guy is a physicist, he is way more qualified than any sociologist to deal with statistics. Your position is not only ridiculous virtue signaling but you are also creating a scary world where the messenger is more importan…

Wow a free speech soapbox. Guy got what he deserved, nothing else to it. Pretty funny you think that a physicist is somehow more qualified to explain deeply entrenched socioeconomic, cultural, and biological issues by being better at statistics?? Your position is just naive, wake up to reality. There are consequences to unethical behavior in the science community. Trying to disguise his motivations behind some thin veneer of research while having a record of misogyny should be clear to any unbiased reader.

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

#142

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

zarkov99 wrote: post #133
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #36

>> He also showed cartoons deriding women campaigning for equality in science and presented the results of an analysis that he claimed showed that work conducted by female physicists was not as good as their male counterparts. My underlined sentence, is most likely the reason Cern considered that Alessandro Strumia's actions would bring disrepute to the Centre. Holding and publicly discussing controversial views is o…

Did you see the slides in question? If not take a look: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9... I see no great insults here, one cartoon suggests that the gender studies activists that are so concerned about the lack of women in STEM could have better addressed the problem if they themselves pursued careers in STEM rather than gender studies. The other cartoon is even milder. As to ridiculing…

Yes, I've seen the slides. They are offensive and the cartoons in them are offensive in the context of the slides. There is no question that they would harm CERN's repuation and that people at CERN would be livid at Strumio's talk as a result.

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

#143

Post by mmmmpancakes »

titanix2 wrote: post #130
OldFatCactus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol Firstly, the guy isn't qualified to make such a sweeping statement about the opposite sex. So before we even step into the problems with why it's a dumb idea to say such things, lets just make it clear that he's a physicist and not an anthropologist, biologist, or sociologist. We definitely care about his moral character, but it's also just flat out incredibly naive to discredit women in his field when they've be…

It is comments like yours that is currently fuelling the ‘diversity’ meme pushback. You are denying someone the right to express facts just because of its gender and divergent political opinion. The guy is a physicist, he is way more qualified than any sociologist to deal with statistics. Your position is not only ridiculous virtue signaling but you are also creating a scary world where the messenger is more importan…

> express facts

Lol what “facts” are you referring to?

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

#144

Post by superkuh »

OldFatCactus wrote: post #119
lgleason wrote: post #115

I wonder what would have happened if he had done a presentation in favor of the current favored political/pseudo religious orthodoxy with bad/inaccurate poorly done data. We will never know but, I'll bet you not much would have been said about it. I'm not in the field, but from everything I've read the rest of his work is some of the top in the field. So we un-person this individual and start to dis-credit his work,…

Lol Firstly, the guy isn't qualified to make such a sweeping statement about the opposite sex. So before we even step into the problems with why it's a dumb idea to say such things, lets just make it clear that he's a physicist and not an anthropologist, biologist, or sociologist. We definitely care about his moral character, but it's also just flat out incredibly naive to discredit women in his field when they've be…

It's obvious you have chosen not to inform yourself about this particular situation before commenting. You didn't even read the BBC article which had a big bold,

"The decision follows an investigation into comments, first reported by BBC News, made by Prof Strumia at a Cern workshop on gender equality."

The trigger for all this was his presentation at a workshop dedicated to having CERN physicists making statements about gender. Weather you agree with the controversial statements by Alessandro Strumia or not is not relevant to the parent comment being wrong.

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

#145

Post by moomin »

OldFatCactus wrote: post #119
lgleason wrote: post #115

I wonder what would have happened if he had done a presentation in favor of the current favored political/pseudo religious orthodoxy with bad/inaccurate poorly done data. We will never know but, I'll bet you not much would have been said about it. I'm not in the field, but from everything I've read the rest of his work is some of the top in the field. So we un-person this individual and start to dis-credit his work,…

Lol Firstly, the guy isn't qualified to make such a sweeping statement about the opposite sex. So before we even step into the problems with why it's a dumb idea to say such things, lets just make it clear that he's a physicist and not an anthropologist, biologist, or sociologist. We definitely care about his moral character, but it's also just flat out incredibly naive to discredit women in his field when they've be…

Well put. 100.

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

#146

Post by fromthestart »

pygy_ wrote: post #113

There's no doubt Strumia did a dumb, and while he may kind of have a point regarding the variability hypothesis, there's actually more to it. It comes down to chromosomes. XY individuals have a single X chromosome while XX individuals have two (duh). The X and Y chromosomes have a small section that pairs one another (the pseudo-homologous region), but most of their chromatin is different. The Y is mostly made of gen…

People are unwilling, to the point of delusion, to accept the possibility that this higher variance really does explain differences in representation among sexes across various top talent industries.

Academic society is in a weird place where this kind of bias is acceptable. Which is antithetical to science and I therefore understand Strumia's frustration.

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

#147

Post by pjc50 »

lgleason wrote: post #115

I wonder what would have happened if he had done a presentation in favor of the current favored political/pseudo religious orthodoxy with bad/inaccurate poorly done data. We will never know but, I'll bet you not much would have been said about it. I'm not in the field, but from everything I've read the rest of his work is some of the top in the field. So we un-person this individual and start to dis-credit his work,…

> Einstein and many other prominent scientists I'm sure that they could find plenty of issues with their moral character as well.

The question has been raised as to whether Einstein's wife Mileva Marić made an uncredited contribution to his work.

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

#148

Post by pygy_ »

iguy wrote: post #122
pygy_ wrote: post #113

There's no doubt Strumia did a dumb, and while he may kind of have a point regarding the variability hypothesis, there's actually more to it. It comes down to chromosomes. XY individuals have a single X chromosome while XX individuals have two (duh). The X and Y chromosomes have a small section that pairs one another (the pseudo-homologous region), but most of their chromatin is different. The Y is mostly made of gen…

> In birds, the variance for body size is larger in females. Do you have a reference for this? I would be surprised, as I thought the explanation for variance was not about chromosomes, but about investment... but I don't actually know if that's true, and birds (WW/WZ as you say) or reptiles (temperature) would be interesting examples.

I do!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/evo.12224

This is observed not only in birds vs mammals but also in insects (some have heterogametic males like mammals and others (butterflies) have heterogamic females, like birds).

Key figure: https://i.imgur.com/4E6FUXN.png

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

#149

Post by Barrin92 »

guitarbill wrote: post #87
melling wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the UK, significantly more women study at university now than men [0][1] (not in Physics though). I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Prof Strumia, but simply pointing out that maybe we can agree we've come a long way, and that historial data or past injustices is not a good starting point for policymaking that will affect the bright minds of young uni students. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/201…

>and that historial data or past injustices is not a good starting point for policymaking that will affect the bright minds of young uni students.

given that one of Strumia's data points to bolster his argument was the citation rate of women vs the citation rate of men, this isn't an historical data point. There are significantly more senior physicists, with higher citation rates than women, simply because women until fairly recently had a low foothold in academia.

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

#150

Post by iguy »

gambiting wrote: post #131
mamon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So producing shoes or coat's in women sizes is also "demeaning" towards women? I can't imagine why producing smaller pianos would be any different.

Because someone would say that it shows that a woman cannot play a proper piano like a man can - she has to be provided with a smaller(and therefore obviously inferior) one.

This was certainly why no teenage boy wanted to be seen playing a 3/4 size guitar! But one would hope that adults could behave better.
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