
Ann Nelson Took on the Biggest Problems in Physics - digital55
https://www.quantamagazine.org/ann-nelson-took-on-the-biggest-problems-in-physics-20190822/
======
seattle_spring
She was a mod in a Washington Facebook group for hiking, which had about 150k
members. She was the only mod who took a stand against bad behavior in the
outdoors instead of just sweeping it under the rug.

I was devastated to see such a tragic loss.

~~~
mtnGoat
This is not true at all, I am personal friends with a number of the mods, none
of them are allowing bad behavior in that group and none of them promote bad
behavior in the outdoors. And they certainly aren't sweeping anything under a
rug.

~~~
mtnGoat
Down voting it, doesn't make it any less true. Interesting response though.

~~~
seattle_spring
You can't downvote direct responses to comments, so it wasn't me.

But yes, they absolutely do sweep it under the rug. Anytime someone calls out
bad behavior, the comment threads are locked. People who consistently call out
bad behavior are banned ("put on the scat list"), and it's expected that you
just "scroll on".

Ann was, as far as I could tell, the only one who would create campaigns on
awareness.

It has to be one of the worst run Facebook groups on, well, Facebook. There's
another group called "You run a Facebook group, not a country, but OK," which
pretty much targets the overbearing moderation practices exemplified by that
group.

And no, I've never been banned, so you can save that assumption :)

~~~
mtnGoat
well when you moderate a group that big(for free, in your spare time) and have
first hand experience you can speak to how they are handling things, otherwise
its just another uninformed opinion.

How else would you deal with threads that are constantly off topic? Aside from
turn comments off? How else do you deal with someone that keeps whining about
the group and how its members act? How its moderated? If you don't like it,
leave. ya know? it's exactly how id treat someone that kept complaining...
show them the door. Many have left on their own to form different groups.

Anne was a great lady, but to say she was the only one moving the needle or to
assume they are hiding things is just bizarre to me.

~~~
seattle_spring
OK.

------
lordgrenville
The article is about the subject's social justice activism, not about her
physics research. Nothing wrong with that but not what I was expecting.

~~~
tempguy9999
As I get older I tend not to see things falling into distinct groups; they all
blur together.

While you say it's not physics, to me it is because fixing one problem will
help the field so (again, to me) separating them seems a mistake.

But that's just one POV.

~~~
b_tterc_p
Is someone a great physicist if they produce 0 papers but reduce stigma in
STEM

~~~
tempguy9999
If the reduction in stigma got more people involved who _did_ produce quality
work, then they've improved the field of physics - so in a way, yes.

You may reject the _label_ 'physicist', I'd understand that, but results are
results. (Edit: in which case, does the label matter?)

------
oefrha
> Particle physics, even compared to the rest of physics, is a notoriously
> homogeneous discipline, full of white men.

I’m a non-white-male theoretical particle physicist myself and I somehow don’t
feel that (dominated by, maybe; full of, absolutely not). Need some stats to
back that up.

~~~
thicknavyrain
Also a (former) non-white-male particle theorist (well, phenomenologist) here.
This isn't hard data by any means but in the first year of my PhD, I attended
a mandatory summer school for all particle theorist (and associated fields)
PhD students in the UK.

There were about 95 student attendees. About 5 of those were women and only
two of 95, including myself, were non-white. And very amusingly, the other
non-white guy was someone I went to high school and university with. Also, he
was on ATLAS and not strictly a theorist as such! If we discount myself on the
grounds of being a phenomenologist, that probably makes things even worse.

~~~
JetSetWilly
The general population of the UK is overwhelmingly white compared to eg. the
US. Many parts of the UK eg. Scotland it is 98% white or more, so it would be
expected that courses in any discipline are going to be overwhelmingly white
at universities in those regions.

~~~
thicknavyrain
For sure, although given that 87% of Britain is White British, for a cohort of
95 students in my year, one would expect all things equal for there to be
about 12 non-white students, when in fact there were two.

This is not to get mired into a debate about inclusion in STEM, but it's also
worth noting that both me and my other non-white friend (who's background I
know because we grew up together, weirdly), were very fortunate to have had
quite middle class upbringings too, and hailed from Northwest London.

In fact, I doubt it comes as any surprise for me to say that from my time at
undergrad all the way up to completing my PhD, I suspect that the much bigger
discriminant for getting into Physics is class more than race (gender is a
separate issue here I suppose). I remember this coming up in a talk from
someone on the IOP commission to look at inclusion in Physics, although for
their online reports I can only find the ones on gender, for anyone
interested:
[http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/r...](http://www.iop.org/education/teacher/support/girls_physics/reports-
and-research/page_63816.html)

~~~
JetSetWilly
Another thing to consider is that the UK as a whole not being 99% white is a
recent development of the last four or five decades. At least in the first few
decades most immigrants were working class and so you wouldn't expect their
offspring to be proportionately represented at university level for
socioeconomic reasons.

So I would argue the disparity is more of a socioeconomic access one than a
racial one.

------
oblib
Made me think about the lifters and grifters we all run into during our lives.
Ann Nelson was a brilliant and powerful lifter.

------
zeristor
She died whilst hiking, how common is that?

Are there any guidlines to reduce these dangers, was she walking in a
particularly dangerous area?

~~~
mtnGoat
She was aware of the risks, the area wasnt overly dangerous. She was waking on
a ledge that crosses a cliff face, I've crossed it a few times, it's sketchy
but "safe", in that dozens do it yearly without issue.

It's hard to quantify the seriousness of deaths while hiking because we don't
know how many hikes there are each day, and there are agencies actively
working to downplay and hide the data.

