{"id":2490,"date":"2018-10-03T12:44:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T11:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=2490"},"modified":"2018-10-14T17:08:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T16:08:44","slug":"alessandro-strumias-cern-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=2490","title":{"rendered":"Alessandro Strumia\u2019s CERN Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"\"<\/a>Alessandro Strumia (Professor of Physics at Pisa University)<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh dear, Professor Strumia has got himself into a spot of bother. No doubt you\u2019ve heard. The good professor (oops, sorry, bad professor \u2013 very, very bad physics professor) gave a talk at CERN claiming men were being disadvantaged in physics, not women. Shocking stuff, you must agree. No \u2013 you must<\/em><\/strong> agree. He was immediately dismissed from CERN (though I don\u2019t know about his position at the University of Pisa). The slides of his talk were immediately deleted from the CERN servers.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think the chaps (and chapesses, of course) at CERN would know the internet is forever, what with their having invented it an’ all. I\u2019ve saved his slides for posterity here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The slides are written in a type of physics-joke terminology, making references to fashionable physics theories. I\u2019m not about to try to explain what spontaneously broken symmetries are, or the significance of terms like M-theory. Suffice it to say that he establishes himself as a nerd of the physics variety. He seems to have declared himself a conservative, too. Clearly, he was intent on self-destruction.<\/p>\n

The talk was delivered during a conference on 28th<\/sup> September 2018 specifically about gender in high energy physics. So, Strumia\u2019s talk was relevant. However, it would appear that this was the sort of conference at which only one opinion was ever going to be acceptable. To be fair (someone has to be) it might have been possible to broach the main subject matter of Strumia\u2019s talk without actually being kicked off the site \u2013 perhaps escaping with merely being ostracised and spat at a little. But, whilst I didn\u2019t hear him speak, I can imagine his first few slides would have been delivered in full-on physicist-Aspie bluntness.<\/p>\n

A pity, really. Perhaps an opportunity lost \u2013 though maybe it\u2019s just what he wanted. And I could guess that the motivation might have been frustration \u2013 the frustration born of decades of male physicists being chastised for their sexism and being accused of disadvantaging female physicists at every turn. If so, it is surely a frustration \u2013 even a concealed anger \u2013 which many male physicists must share by now. There are just so many decades of unjustified blame one can absorb.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhysics was invented and built by men\u201d is the quote which the press are mostly using. You\u2019d have to be very Asperger indeed not to anticipate flack from that one. \u201cHighly offensive\u201d came the chorus. Well, obviously. Is it true, though? Well, decreasingly so since the mid-twentieth century. But as a very good approximation before that you can\u2019t argue with it, albeit with very notable exceptions.<\/p>\n

The obvious exception is Madame Curie, whom Strumia notes in his talk \u2013 she of the two Nobel prizes. But the No.1 female physicist for me \u2013 by a country mile \u2013 is Emmy Noether (even though she was strictly a mathematician, and equally notable in that capacity). Noether\u2019s Theorem is the most stunning theorem in the whole of mathematical physics. For God\u2019s sake don\u2019t tell the feminists. We\u2019ll never hear the end of it. Especially the bit about having to lecture at Erlangen without pay and at Gottingen under the name David Hilbert. Shh! Quiet!<\/p>\n

Mary Somerville is worth a mention, though I struggle to think of a discovery to attach to her name (no doubt someone will remind me). She was one of those to speculated about the existence of Neptune before it had been observed, but she is not the one usually credited with Neptune\u2019s theoretical prediction (several men competing for that honour).<\/p>\n

There were a number of female astronomers, of which Caroline Herschel (sister and assistant of William) is noteworthy, though only as an observer not a theoretician. She was an accomplished observer though, having been brought up in the art by her brother. She bagged eight comets, using a telescope specially built for her by her brother, plus several nebulae which were not in the existing catalogues. There seems to be a mini tradition of sister-astronomers, another one being Sophia Brahe, though she may have been only Tycho\u2019s assistant rather than an observer in her own right \u2013 history does not record.<\/p>\n

Of all the stories of female scientists being diddled out of their just recognition by the patriarchy, that of Lise Meitner is the most valid. Co-discoverer with Otto Hahn of nuclear fission, only Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize. Meitner has a far greater claim to unjustified neglect than the much vaunted Rosalind Franklin<\/a>, though one must be cautious about assuming that sex was the reason. A great many contributors to discoveries fail to win Nobels which are awarded instead to others \u2013 and most of these also-rans are men. And as for Mileva Einstein-Maric, the stories about her contributions to relativity are preposterous nonsense<\/a>. Like Emmy Noether, Meitner\u2019s principle misfortune was not so much being female as being Jewish in Nazi Germany, from which both of them had to flee in the 1930s. Both women received plentiful accolades in their later careers, however.<\/p>\n

After the middle of the twentieth century, female physicists become more plentiful – and I’m not going to attempt any summary of that.<\/p>\n

But back at CERN\u2026<\/p>\n

What hasn\u2019t surfaced in the press is that one of the things Strumia had been doing at CERN is developing a novel algorithm for assessing scientific achievement based on citation analysis. The substantive part of his talk was based on this work, which (I guess) deserved serious consideration. He also quoted some familiar results from Swedish studies on gender and career choice, which undoubtedly are relevant to the subject matter of the conference. I take some delight in quoting Wikipedia \u2013 if only because I suspect this quote will not remain there long\u2026*<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Strumia has complained that science is “becoming sexist against men<\/em>“. Jessica Wade, scientist at Imperial College, London has rebuked Strumia’s claims, saying they have “long been discredited”. However, Tom Whipple<\/a> has recently contested claims like those made by Wade, saying that recent evidence “is a challenge to one prominent stream of feminist theory, according to which almost all the differences between the sexes come from cultural training and social norms<\/em>“. Steve Stewart-Williams, a scientist at University of Nottingham, said that “there was now too much evidence of this effect to consider it a fluke<\/em>“.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*As of 7th October, 4 days after writing this article, the above Wiki has been removed<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

What Whipple and Stewart-Williams are referring to here is the so-called gender paradox in careers: the more gender equal a society, the greater the degree of gender segregation in employment. Of course, you have to believe in social constructivism to regard this as a paradox. For the rest of us (i.e., most of us) it is entirely unsurprising that men and women, given sufficient freedom, will gravitate to different occupations by choice, simply due to innate differences in preference. In contrast, where there is less freedom and greater economic pressure, you will tend to get (say) a greater proportion of women engineers \u2013 simply because financial considerations oblige women to enter professions which pay, rather than occupations motivated more by personal preference. I dare say that Chinese women are not intrinsically more interested in engineering than western women: they just need the cash and it isn\u2019t so readily available in Chinese social science research.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had the usual predictable commentary on the Strumia affair. In the Telegraph, Lindsay Nicholson has a piece titled, \u201cPhysics does have a women problem \u2013 and it’s not rocket science to work out why<\/a>\u201d. There is nothing in the article to justify the claim that physics does have a woman problem, and so \u201cworking out why\u201d does not even arise. This is a really cheap trick. Unless you have your wits about you, the message conveyed by the title sticks \u2013 despite it being given no substance by the article itself.<\/p>\n

The most amusing thing about the article is that is provides an illustration of the issue of gender preference. Lindsay Nicholson herself took astrophysics at university (apparently to annoy the nuns at her convent school). She declares herself to have been of middling ability \u2013 until she discovered \u201cthe joys of the student newspaper \u2013 and the union bar\u201d. Fair enough, but she also says she was offered several jobs, at least one in a technical field (as a rocket scientist, no less). But she preferred to become a journalist. Surprise, surprise. Then she goes on to lament the continuing low percentage of women in science. Who is the more responsible for that: she or I?\u00a0 (Women are the majority of pure science students<\/a>, by the way).<\/p>\n

Nicholson writes,<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough I wasn\u2019t the best in my class at University College London – that honour went to an absurdly tall skinny boy who couldn\u2019t make eye contact. I wasn\u2019t the worst either \u2013 that was a rugby player who later switched to engineering.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am offended! Offended, I say! Who would not be offended by her outrageous appeal to the stereotype of the Asperger-nerd gawky male physicist. Too easy a target from the Olympian heights of her female glamour and fine social adjustment. And is it just me \u2013 or is she assuming that we will understand the rugby player in question to have been male? Shocking!<\/p>\n

Nicholson ends with these two remarkable claims,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe definition of physics is that it is the science of measurement\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Err, no it isn\u2019t. The science of measurement is called metrology. Ye Gods, what dork could possibly think that that was an adequate definition of physics?<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Strumia \u2013 as a physicist – should remember that the scientific aptitude of the male versus the female brain is not something that can be objectively measured\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s a big claim, and probably false. It\u2019s almost a denial of the existence of an objective psychology. Psychologists – over to you to defend your discipline.<\/p>\n

But all this is beside the point. Nicholson\u2019s title stated that physics does have a woman problem \u2013 but then failed to address the matter at all. So, let\u2019s do so. It just so happened that the same day the Alessandro Strumia affair broke, this month\u2019s Physics World flopped through my letterbox. It\u2019s the 30th<\/sup> anniversary edition of the Institute of Physics’ house journal, though that\u2019s of no great relevance. Here to hand, then, is a ready exemplar of the woman problem in physics. Let\u2019s just take a look at how the male-monopoly of Physics World manifests the patriarchy at its most blatantly misogynistic. Let\u2019s see how women are ignored.<\/p>\n

Firstly, here are all<\/em><\/strong> the pictures of people which occur in the magazine (both in ads and articles),<\/p>\n

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I make the final score 14 photos of men and 17 of women. Not a bad effort for a subject which is about 85% male – if your objective is to redress the imbalance, that is.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve left out those little inset pictures of authors that you sometimes get. In that context note that 12 authors were men and just 5 were women. Shocking! Something must be done! (Though why momentarily escapes me).<\/p>\n

The editorial staff is a different matter: 2 men and 4 women. Here they are,<\/p>\n

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I also omitted a couple of black & white photos of men because these were from an article (by Margaret Harris) about ads as they were 30 years ago and how they have changed \u2013 so these images would be misleading as regards the present day.<\/p>\n

The photos in the article about graduate careers in physics were: 3 women and 2 non-white men.<\/p>\n

One of the women pictured above is the President of the Institute of Physics, by the way.<\/p>\n

The current president of CERN is Professor Agnieszka Zalewska, pictured below.<\/p>\n

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Other things of note in this issue of Physics World include two articles on diversity in physics, particularly as regards women in physics, occupying a whole page.<\/p>\n

Most of another page was devoted to Jocelyn Bell-Burnett\u2019s donation of her $3M prize money to create new graduate studentships for under-represented groups in physics. One presumes this will include women particularly, given Jocelyn Bell\u2019s being passed over for the Nobel prize for the discovery of pulsars (another genuine grievance, I think).<\/p>\n

The president of the Institute of Physics (Julia Higgins) had a three-page article reviewing how physics has changed over the last 30 years. Higgins was one of those responsible for setting up the Athena project in the 1990s. Most of the article does not concern gender, but a great deal did, including positive action. She\u2019s in favour. Examples: if a shortlist does not contain women \u2013 go back and put some in. And this admission: \u201cIf you look at nominations for fellowship of the Royal Society, we do work proactively to make sure women get nominated\u201d. The sexism from which she reports having suffered were two instances of being mistaken for a secretary. The sexism to which she confesses is a persistent preferencing in hiring\/advancement based on sex. Is she more sinning or sinned against?<\/p>\n

The letters page is of interest also. It\u2019s not a normal letters page, though. It\u2019s a hand picked selection of the most witty or pithy letters over the last 30 years. The correspondents names indicate 33 men, 3 women and one indeterminate. One of the women co-authored a letter with a man concerning a (whimsical) suggestion for particle nomenclature. Their affiliations were schools of psychology and English. One of the other women correspondents wrote to make reference to an article on Women In Physics and to complain about an invitation to a college reunion which was extended also to her wife. The last woman correspondent wrote to inform us that Brian Cox was not on TV because he knows physics but because he\u2019s pretty (which she finds distracting, poor thing). Change that to any female TV presenter and see if such a letter would get published – let alone chosen as one of the best letters in 30 years. Double standards? Yep.<\/p>\n

One issue of Physics World hardly constitutes a scientific study, though I can confirm there is nothing unusual about the issue in question (apart from being the 30th<\/sup> anniversary issue). So you can ask yourself which of the following two propositions seems best to fit the evidence from Physics World,<\/p>\n