Within the original article, there's a reference to this paper:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/704991 (the author seems well-credentialed in the physics realm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanda_Prescod-Weinstein).
Does anyone have any insight as to what this paper's trying to show? Looking at the beginning of the conclusion:
> The central argument of this article is that white empiricism limits who is authorized to make claims about physics and that this is damaging to physics and alters its empirical direction.
All I can get from it is that the author's trying to point out that (1) science has emerged in dialogue between humans, and (2) we should be mindful of who exactly's participating in that dialogue as that influences the kind of science that emerges. This seems somewhat reasonable and a good justification for encouraging a diversity of perspectives.
But what new insight/perspective does the paper really contribute?
For example, earlier in the same paper we find this when talking about some of the author's perceived failings of string theory:
> Surveying what should happen next, there are at least three distinct possibilities:
> 1. Patience is required, and evidence is coming.
> 2. String theory has failed to succeed in expected ways because the community—which is almost entirely male and disproportionately white relative to other areas of physics—is too homogeneous.
> 3. The scientific method overly constrains our models to meet certain requirements that no longer serve the needs of physics theory.
> ...
> The second option is effectively unconsidered in the literature. Instead, the case for the third option has been made. This is a curious turn of events. Rather than considering whether structural and individual discrimination results in a homogeneous, epistemically limited community, physicists are willing to throw out their long-touted objectivity tool, the scientific method.
The author hints that "there are at least three distinct possibilities", and from what I understand of postmodernism, it's what's hidden in the margins of the text, i.e. what's left out of a philosophical argument, that usually unravels that original argument entirely. One glaring missing possibility is that we just haven't yet found a better theory or approach that more accurately fits observations than string theory. If that's what the author's trying to convey with option 2, it seems like a pretty unnecessarily racialized and facile way to do so to me, and still hints at an important omission that there may be a totally non-racialized explanation for why string theory hasn't lived up to expectations.
Maybe I haven't read enough postmodern literature to be able to appreciate this paper's contributions (maybe they're subtle), but from my first reading it ultimately just seems like one long complaint that black women have been excluded from physics by white men, which isn't really a novel contribution in 2020 if the theme already made its way into popular films. For someone so well-credentialed, I really would've expected a more substantial epistemological critique, or at least practical recommendations as to how to cultivate an environment that encourages a diversity of perspectives. Or, even more practically, if the author had actual evidence of bias (i.e. practices of actively excluding people of certain groups from the physics community), why not address that in the appropriate forum?
It's all very strange to me, including why a paper like this is cited in Scientific American.