CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

I'm nearly 50 and decided some years ago that life was just too short to bother accommodating people who are assholes. Perhaps he's brilliant, but there's quite a lot of brilliant people around and if there's a discovery just waiting to be made it's more likely that someone else will do than that the opportunity to make it will be lost forever.

I'm not arguing that everyone has to hold the same views, but if your need to have your views heard is so pressing that you're willing to damage the social cohesion of your peer group or team to the point that they can't get anything done then it better be something super-important like the lab being on fire or the discovery of fraud or catastrophic professional negligence.

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

#182

Post by OldFatCactus » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

travisoneill1 wrote: post #173

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…

Would he be qualified to state that men and women are equally skilled at physics? Surely you would need the same credentials to determine that.

No and he would still be just as dumb for using weak science and fake research to justify the position that he is unqualified to assert. But obviously there wouldn't be as big of a reaction from the scientific community because the assertion wouldn't have been tinged with vitriolic bigotry.

Any other weak what-ifs you want to discuss?

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

#183

Post by lawnchair_larry » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:26 PM UTC

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…

He didn’t publicly ridicule anyone. His comics are not offensive, and I found them to be pretty on point.

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

#184

Post by dijit » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:29 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #178

Udik wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would measures meant to protect somebody from violence ever be considered discriminatory in the first place?

People complain about government-funded women's refuges not accepting male victims of domestic violence. I think those people are wrong, especially if there are male refuges available.

> I think those people are wrong, especially if there are male refuges available.

Personally I think they are right, _especially_ if there are no male refuges available. Which according to my cursory glances seems to be the case, at least in London[0].

[0]: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/there-are-no-male-safe...

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

#185

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:29 PM UTC

harias wrote: post #12

chki wrote: post #7

He claims that he could proof his assumptions if he were to be published in a journal but I think it would be very strange if somebody published his "research". He is not a sociologist and this is clearly not his area of expertise.

Peer-review will help with that. I strongly support amateurs publishing if they have something real to contribute. Gate-keeping based on degrees is bad.

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by lawnchair_larry » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #111

>Prof Strumia analysed papers available in a database of particle physics research. He produced a series of graphs which, he claimed, showed that women were hired over men whose research was cited more by other scientists in their publications, which is an indication of higher quality. >He also presented data that he claimed showed that male and female researchers were equally cited at the start of their careers but…

That was my thinking on this metric as well. From an outsider’s perspective, it seems like quite a stretch to suggest that influence is a relevant metric for skill. There is likely a loose correlation, sure, but unless I’m missing something, it seems only slightly better than throwing dice.

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

#187

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

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,…

People sometimes make very elaborate and well-reasoned arguments that seem enormously persuasive but turn out to be based on dubious axiomatic assumptions. Your suggestion that science might be slowing down because we're not being nice enough to jerks seems pretty questionable. Surely, if this were true, the jerks could all just get together an out-science everyone else, Ayn Rand style, and everyone else would be forced to admit their fundamental superiority. We'll never know unless they try.

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

#188

Post by MAXPOOL » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #83

nabla9 wrote: post #28

You can't start neutral discussion with weak evidence, strong conclusion and open hostility. Strumia could have just presented his findings neutrally, without already made up his mind and having a clearly visible agenda and hostility. There is a pattern that is repeating: 1. Scientist has a political opinion on difficult politically volatile issue that is outside his field. 2. Scientist finds some supporting evidence…

There are really strong parallels between this and the Ted Hill NYJM fiasco. And, like the physicists in this story, professional mathematicians pointed out that Hill's paper was wildly inappropriate for the venue. Both Hill and Strumia tried to launder their institutional credibility into authority to make political arguments. Arguably, Hill was more successful, even if his stunt was more egregious.

In the 19th century William Whewell developed concept of "Consilience of Inductions". Evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions. We should feel more confident about our conclusions when we have lots of lines of evidence that stand alone independently, preferably collected by different people, in different parts of the globe or at least different universities. Maybe they don’t even like each other.

Many contrarian views grow long time in small small minded groups or even withing one individual. They have high internal consistency and logic. When exposed to outsiders, they usually spot some obvious errors immediately.

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

#189

Post by motohagiography » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:39 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #85

bhouston wrote: post #6

I am reminded of Larry Summers, then the head of Harvard, who said something similar: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/18/educationsge... I think that previously there was a distinct issue with not enough women going through the degree programs. If the degree programs are 80% men and 20% women, statistically the men will outperform the women in outlier achievements just because there will likely be more p…

> If male variance is higher, there are likely both benefits and downsides to it Yes, but the general concept is that the benefits and the downsides occur in different people. A single person doesn't illustrate "the benefits and the downsides" of greater variability any more than a single person can illustrate variability. WRT issues of pure sample size, you can see one of the standard supports for GMVH in the SAT To…

Would the drop out rate of men (assuming higher) provide an additional control? If low achieving men selected out of the data set before it was collected at the SAT level, there could be a long tail of underachieving men. This would certainly effect averaging, and if number of dropouts were greater than the 90th percentile, there could be some selection/survivor bias in play on how males appear as a group.

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

#190

Post by cm2187 » Sat, Mar 09, 2019, 11:40 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #85

bhouston wrote: post #6

I am reminded of Larry Summers, then the head of Harvard, who said something similar: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/18/educationsge... I think that previously there was a distinct issue with not enough women going through the degree programs. If the degree programs are 80% men and 20% women, statistically the men will outperform the women in outlier achievements just because there will likely be more p…

> If male variance is higher, there are likely both benefits and downsides to it Yes, but the general concept is that the benefits and the downsides occur in different people. A single person doesn't illustrate "the benefits and the downsides" of greater variability any more than a single person can illustrate variability. WRT issues of pure sample size, you can see one of the standard supports for GMVH in the SAT To…

And what I find frustrating in this discussion is that people don't like to think in term of distributions. The 78k female aren't less capable in any way than the 120k males, there is just fewer of them. But then a journalist will summarize that as "women scoring less than males in math at SAT". And then we go into a sterile flame war of blanket statements about gender, etc. The debate on the Damore memo in that respect was depressing, particularly from educated engineers who should know better.