I think he had personal reasons for giving this talk. He links to a presentation given by Anna Ceresole (http://www.weizmann.ac.il/stringuniverse/sites/stringunivers...) at the latest STRINGS conference in 2018 on gender equality. In that presentation they explain how they created a European Network of female string theory researchers (virtually unknown to me, never seen a paper by them, whereas in the US there are a lot of very good female string theorists Cvetic, Silverman etc.) with the explicit goal of increasing the number of females in permanent positions. The chair of that EU funded network Silvia Penati apparently hired Anna Ceresole for a professorship that Allessandro Strumia also applied for.
There is a stark difference in the number of citations Ceresole (~3000) and Strumia (~30000) have, and Strumia has roughly double the number of first author papers. So on the face of it this seems like a very bad case of unfair / biased hiring practice.
Only if you think hiring decisions should depend only on certain measurable professional qualifications. Which they of course never are. If someone has a specialization that you already have in your portfolio, while a competitor has a different specialization that would be an addition, then the competitor can be preferred. If someone is a loner while the competitor is a teamplayer, then the competitor can be preferred. Etc. Maybe he just behaved like an a* during the hiring procedure, taking for granted he would be hired. You don't know and any conclusion based purely on the numbers is unwarranted and premature.
I think it is unethical to hire someone, if you are both part of a special interest network of any kind. If you compare their citation record on (http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/A.Ceresole.1 and http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/A.Strumia.1), there is really little contest who should be hired though (both work in high energy physics, Ceresole more on theory, Strumia on phenomenology). But yes I agree there are many factors that play into the hiring decision we can't know about. In any case it seems most likely that this was his primary motivation.
One of the points under contention is the lower rate of citation of women in any field. Thus using number of citations is a sexist metric and amounts to little more than dick waving.
I don’t really care either way. There are quite a few very good female string theorists, who presumably got through the hiring process without any affirmative action. High energy physics is a very competitive field you just can’t afford to hire less than excellent people if you want to stay relevant.
Yes, but there is a more embarrassing detail that's missing from Strumia's talk:
Ceresole does not have a SINGLE refereed publication since 2014, and the one from 2014 is not exactly in the best journal. And that wasn't because of a career break. According to her CV she has been the Coordinator of the INFN
Theory Group in Torino since 2015.
It is hard to believe that she could have been hired for any position in 2018 without a henchman (or henchwoman) on the committee. So the question arises whether someone close to her pushed her application. Then we know about the close association with Penati through a European COST action. Now what should have happened in such a case is that INFN's anti-corruption code should have been followed. I won't discuss the implications any further, and only say that all hell may break loose if there was something fishy about this hiring.
Read the INFN code for yourselves, and consider that Italian academics are civil servants, so that a case of corruption would constitute a felony under the penal code. I wouldn't get into a fight for affirmative action over this case. It could backfire terribly.
As far as I can read, the author makes points based on the data he analysed. The jabs at gender studies near the end were somewhat misplaced in my opinion but they do not contain the core message.
It should be easy enough for someone opposing this man's view to take the dataset presented about and disprove the conclusions made.
Claiming statistics like "amount of citations at time of hiring" are offensive is by no means helping anyone's case.
I hope the author will be reinstated quickly because I see no reason to act revenge upon him just because one disagrees with their conclusions from a statistical analysis. This is exactly what the peer reviewed system should prevent.
> The jabs at gender studies near the end were somewhat misplaced in my opinion
Maybe, maybe not. I have several female friends who went on to study soft sciences and regret it. Some say this out loud, some give non-verbal clues. They clearly prefer their daughters to choose STEM careers. The paradox here is that these kids are just not interested in STEM that much, just as my friends themselves are not. They treat STEM as a way of making money, not something interesting to discover. If you don't have this internal curiosity in you, it's hard to pass it on to your kids.
> Physics is not sexist against women. However truth does not matter, because it’s part of a political battle coming from outside. Not clear who will win.
So why poke that bear? You know it'll maul you if it notices you.
> PS: many told me “don’t speak, it’s dangerous”. As a student, I wrote that weak-scale SUSY is not right, and I survived. Hope to see you again.
Oh yeah, but being perceived as a crank in your specialized field is nowhere near as dangerous as alerting the pitchfork crowd. I don't think he'll survive that, he just painted a target on his whole field. It'll be Damore 2.0.
EDIT:
> When science and politics collide, politics always win. Science needs an environment free of politics.
Yes; to quote dlss[0], "The political process converts ideas from logical propositions into group signaling devices. Once a idea becomes a signal, any question of its truth or falsehood is commonly ignored for several human generations.". Science should avoid it as much as possible.
This is an unfair description of the content. Some good points, interesting statistics, but some of the slide would belong more in some obscure subreddit than in a scientific conference.
"I said Thoughtcrime according to Minister of Truth and PC Thought Police."
"It’s blind human biology practiced as in the plains of Africa thousands of years ago."
> "I said Thoughtcrime according to Minister of Truth and PC Thought Police."
Judging by the reaction, he's not wrong (and given a similar reaction to Damore's memo, which was written in a much "nicer" style, this statement wasn't the cause of the reaction - i.e. it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy).
I find this sentiment weird. Science is, to me, inherently political. As I have noted before, it's interesting how people will claim anything they don't like is "political"-> bad. You probably don't go around telling off scientists acknowledging climate change for being political, after all.
You know that politics/money influences science when studies get published (or don't), get grants (or don't) based on whether the results match the interests of whoever wants to influence the outcome. This is inherently bad and it's weird to me you challenge that. Scientists acknowledging the climate change do just that - they publish the studies based on what's actually going on, not what someone wants to see.
That's unrealistically idealistic. Science depends on things like funding, ability to voice unpopular opinions and to research them etc. These are all influenced (if not entirely determined) by the zeitgeist and science doesn't exist independently of that.
Two fronts. Firstly, people will be prevented from exploring avenues that don't really fit into the zeitgeist. Secondly, people won't be interested, inclined or knowledgeable about ideas outside the zeitgeist to sufficiently explore them.
In the western world, being able to voice unpopular opinions is treated as a given, a baseline, a default state (and it is, since it's a fundamental part of western democracies). The "politics" here have negative impact on the ability to explore avenues outside the zeitgeist.
I'm not sure about that anymore (atleast in practice). There's a lot of subtle speech policing that happens especially in academic circles and there's some amount of counter movements too (e.g. https://heterodoxacademy.org/)
What is the "western world"? Does it include Spain, Italy, and Germany during their respective dictatorships? Does it include East Germany during Soviet control?
Or, let's consider only western democracies.
Does that include Volksverhetzung in modern Germany?
Does it include the US during the various anti-socialist and anti-communist movements? Or those prosecuted under the Sedition Act of 1918, like when Debs was jailed for speaking out against US involvement in WWI?
Nor is the US alone of the western democracies in prosecuting people for their seditious acts of speaking out against the government.
And then there are the western democracies which have (or had) laws against blasphemous libel. Was Canada not part of the western world in 1935 when Rahard was found guilty of saying things "calculated and intended to insult the feelings and the deepest religious convictions of the great majority of the persons amongst whom we live"?
The historical evidence says that your views - that the ability to 'voice unpopular opinions' - is not a fundamental part of the western world, nor even a fundamental part of western democracy.
Important? Certainly. Influential? Yes. But fundamental and a default state? No, I don't think so.
I think I disagree with this. To take a look at the first few points:
* I don't follow why the distribution of women in different fields "Does not look discrimination". Seems to me it could be adequately explained by either M, C, or a combination of both, theories
* I find the correlation between % of women in STEM/Theory and Gender Equality Index unconvincing for a few reasons. One is that there are regional + cultural correlations between countries that, unaccounted for, undermines the regression somewhat. The RHS plot also looks like it's influenced a lot by a few high leverage points on the right hand side.
* I have no idea how you get to "it’s merit, not sexism." from "M more cited than F, equally by M and F". To think that sexism operates only through the action of misogynist men is a naive and unhelpful view of the world. There are plenty of alternative, structural reasons that could cause a trend like this. To take one example, if women leave the field in greater numbers or earlier in their career than men, they could not present their findings at conferences or promote their papers in ways that would boost citations.
I know it's hard to fully engage with a talk when you just have the slides, but I think even with full generosity of interpretation, the points raised here are still lazy, weak points.
Furthermore, data is a tool. A very useful tool, but one among many. When we reach for data alone, while giving no weight at all to the lived experiences of our female friends and colleagues, we are throwing away real, useful information. This talk fails to really acknowledge any points beyond the bibliometric data. If you're really interested in getting to the truth, with no agenda, using only one limited source of information is a really poor way to do it.
while I agree there are some real arguments, this is not what I would call a scientific presentation. It starts acceptable, but page 19, 22 are just unnecessary and have a connotation.
Page 24 seems a bit conspiracy-theory-like.
The comic on page 25...that's not scientific. It frames your opponents as angry grown-ups denying young girls the chance to shine in science!
I think on the other pages are are also phrases and formulations that don't have a phrase in scientific presentations. CERN is full of smart people and they will find a way to deal with this issue.
Thanks a lot for the presentation, I heard about this this morning and was wondering about the content.
To my ex-physicist, ex-CERN, the presentation looks good after a quick read. There are numbers (nubs are good), graphs (graphs are good) and expectation of statistics which make sense (as opposed to a lot of "studies").
I now expect the adversaries to burn it on the stake by refuting one by one the slides.
Oh well, at least this is what is done in science. CERN completely fucked up here, the atmosphere must have changed in the 20 years I was there last.
This is really a shame and simply shows the incapacity of some grouos to discuss FACTS.
Huh? What are the good points? It's very cringey presentation!
First slides trying to sound sciency about a political topic. You can't use statistics as objective tool for political decisions - the questions you ask are already biased, see for example slide "% of women in theory". There is (super weak) negative correlation between gender index and women in fundamental theory. So what? If you chose a different subfield it might come out differently! Cherry picking at its best. "I'm evidence-based" lol, the fake paper about chocolate helping weight-loss is as well!
Statistics is probably the most valuable tool for creating policy, the aim of politics. What else do you propose we use to make decisions about interfering with stochastic processes over diverse populations?
Not necessarily. This can be viewed as a case of vaccines-cause-autism. The proper scientific answer there is to prevent endless repetition of the same boring, already sufficiently disproven, 'good points'.
His observations/facts/data can be explained in a number of different ways, if you take into account that there are sociological factors to consider. Even in physics just taking the data 'as is' is not acceptable: you need to check whether the data is reasonable. In these case there are huge questions to be answered: why do women publish fewer papers? Why do they get cited less? If the answer is 'because of sexism', then the argument presented by this physicist is a circular argument.
I believe if he'd given the presentation, minus his "cultural marxism", it would have been ok. IMHO he brought this on himself by bringing in politics.
Time for everyone to open up the tin can where we keep our opinions. At this point there's a passive background level of gender politics which seeps into every conversation at a constant rate like clicks in a geiger counter. Depending on the facts and narrative, the same people and publications hold up their news articles as vindication. "look look! sexism is still a big deal" say team sjw on this article. A few months back it was "look look! sjws really are being unreasonable" as the demore controversy unfolded. metoo became a bit of a wash, with points going to both sides. Kavanaugh sits on our tounges right now as we try to decide if his controversy falls into gender politics or just normal politics. No minds are changed, just different subsets of people get slightly quieter for the 2 week news cycle. Its the exact same mechanic as the gun debate. One group waits for school shootings to say "ban assault guns", and the other group waits for trucks to plow through crowds to mock the first group with "ban assault trucks".
Call me privileged or whatever, but this whole thing is a sideshow. It moves votes and sells papers and nothing more. I wonder if this is what it felt like in France during the Dreyfus affair.
I think you'd have to be willfully blind to see that the sexes have been increasingly turned against one another for political gain by various factions in recent times to the point of absurdity. I have known these "men vs. women" (both men and women!) people personally in my life and as I got to know them better, came to learn that they truly believed in their dangerous, ridiculous, absurdly reductive worldview at a very core level.
I went to a game development convention with one such person and we started the event off by watching a presentation given by a woman about how to get started with VR development in Unity. The presentation was informative and well-done. As we walked out of the conference hall afterwards, I asked my friend what she thought of the talk. Her first, immediate, and only comment: "it was practically all white dudes in there." As a white dude myself I had absolutely no idea how to answer this. I still don't.
Why does anyone try to defend universities anymore? Why does anyone working at them think they can voice un-PC opinions? Other than maybe the university of Chicago, are there any that don't routinely punish academics for offending extremist women whilst still loudly proclaiming that they're bastions of free thinking and intellectual bravery? I can't think of any.
All I ever read about with respect to universities these days is incredible weakness. No matter how absurd or extreme the complaint, the administrators always fold. A terrible sign of the intellectual decay at heart of our civilisation.
"Oh man people are really mad at this person, therefore _the person must be right_"
You think that better arguments are going to convince people with this kind of reasoning?
Loads of people all over the place are just wrong. It happens all the time. And there isn't a moral obligation to respond to some wrong opinion over and over again.
People who think we need to have rational debates with flat earthers are not people who will be convinced by much. They are the 20% of people who think Bigfoot are real.
I can't come up with counter arguments to your post that you would not dismiss. That doesn't mean you're right, it means I'm bad at coming up with high quality counter arguments.
It won't help if you ignore their existence, just like you're ignoring the existence of counter-arguments to this guy's talk, many in this very thread.
having read the whole presentation, I'm very surprised to read the article. What's on the slides doesn't match the content of the article.
Also, I find it ironic that he mentions people fired because of similar opinions on the slide 24, and then gets suspended for the same reason. Could we at least have an honest, open discussion about the content rather than silencing the (currently) non-mainstream views?
I read through the slides briefly, is it just an analysis of the current state of affairs? I can't quite tell to be honest, a lot of jargon there that's over my head, but I worry if those complaining fall into the same boat as me, in that there might not be nothing sexist there but now we can't discuss it in scientific terms now because the mere discussion point is sexist in itself.
The issue is that you can make any opinion because you have just some slides you do not know what was actually said. This institutions should apply the existing rules for this kind of complaints and this kind of issues are not for HN IMO.
Physicists have been the canary in the coal mine for societies.
From being expelled from Nazi Germany for Jewish physics.
To being dissidents in the USSR for their anti-nuclear stance.
To being killed in the cultural revolution for being bourgeoisie collaborators.
To being painted as communists in the US for their anti-nuclear views during the second red scare and their their pro-climate change views more recently.
Somehow I don't see this ending well for gender studies.
It's just overwhelming how this sexist narrative is globally accepted. Being a man was never easy to begin with, but things like that are really discouraging.
Then again, us men seem to have put up with it since at least Galileo. Who famously spoke out something unrelated to the current controversy, but with the common feature that the clergy at the time also found it comparably unacceptable.
I'm kind of worried that this inflammating mess is starting to take hold in Europe after stirring up so many waves in the US and especially Canada.
To make it clear, I'm not advocating against feminism and the debate of this topic in and on itself, but us technical people, men and women of enlightenment-era reason "Vernunft" need to consistently contest the growing conflation between debate and disagreement. It is wrong to automatically assume that when we consider something "debatable" we secretly believe it to be "irrefutably false". That is an uncultured and rather arrogant stance, because an actual debate we enter with the humility of the possiblity that we, all parties entering debates, any and all of us may be wrong.
To quote Stephen Fry, ''I would like this quotation from Bertrand Russell to hover over the evening. "One of the painful things of our time is that those feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and in decision. Let doubt prevail.''
