
Journal will publish heavily criticized paper on gender differences in physics - pseudolus
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/decision-certain-draw-fire-journal-will-publish-heavily-criticized-paper-gender
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4gotunameagain
In case anyone remembers the incident at CERN (mentioned in the article)
regarding the author of this paper, I have some n=1 information. I used to
work at CERN when this happened, and I remember the day because there was much
chatter and unrest about it. The author claimed that a woman was hired for a
position instead of him, while they were the only two candidates and he had
much more papers published and citations. While of course that does not mean
that there is systemic sexism in CERN's hiring process because it could very
well simply be that the guy is unbearable, I have heard a high-up HR employee
at CERN say that women are favored when hiring.

I strongly disagree with equality of outcome, since this is basically fighting
inequality with sexism.

I did not dare to speak my thoughts to anyone apart from very few colleague
friends.

~~~
brnt
> I strongly disagree with equality of outcome,

There's more to hiring than numerics, there's always the prerogative and
perhaps even need to take a chance. People have not always had similar chances
or abilities to produce the results you'd like to see in all candidates, but
it just may be you can give a person a place to shine. The candidate that
already shone may be safer, but in practice it may as well mean more of the
same (that you've hired). Since you're using the same metrics (paper output
etc. in your case). Sometimes more of the same is not what you need.

There's a whole universe of reasons for (not) hiring someone. Pretending
anyone is hiring (or even able to) based on merit is not seeing clearly. You
rarely know, apart from superstar hires for identical roles they've performed
elsewhere already, is all about taking a chance. You may as well freshen up
the org with atypical hires, in my experience worth their shots far more than
'default' hires, which, in my view, a nearly always just hires most similar to
you.

~~~
4gotunameagain
Of course metrics are not everything, as I stated in my original comment, but
it should have nothing to do with gender.

Maybe you want a better cultural fit, and that's 100% acceptable by my book.
But leave gender out of it.

~~~
acollins1331
The quickest way to get a cultural shift in a technical office is to go from
98% male to 70% male. Things get real different real quick. There's no reason
to leave gender out of culture shifts, except that you don't like it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> There's no reason to leave gender out of culture shifts, except that you
> don't like it.

Or that it's illegal in many jurisdictions to select a candidate because of
their gender. Can't speak for others, but if I see evidence of this happening
in writing, I have no qualms about forwarding the docs/emails/whatever off to
the Dept of Labor and a labor attorney to pursue this discriminatory behavior
(discrimination is discrimination, whether "anti" a specific gender or "pro")
by an employer.

Culture shifts should be a byproduct of effective, non-discriminatory hiring
practices (which includes blinding to protected classes).

~~~
brnt
> Culture shifts should be a byproduct of effective, non-discriminatory hiring
> practices (which includes blinding to protected classes).

Good idea, but nearly nobody does it (removing socioeconomic indicators such
as name/gender/address from CVs). It is also difficult to insulate yourself
from your network when hiring, as well as controlling for other items on a CV
(you want Ivy League? Hello bias!).

Which is why I think some active thought on the subject of diversity is
essential when hiring. You will never remove bias completely, so we might as
well acknowledge the 800 pound gorilla and deal with it directly.

------
coldtea
How dare they let science interfere with politics? If the science doesn't
agree with the current politics, it's obviously bad science.

And if this particular study indeed turns out to be bad (not replicating, bad
methodology, etc) that would validate the above truth even more. It would
obviously be because no good science could ever come from studying such issues
-- not because papers regularly turn to be bad, regardless of subject.

The only appropriate response is for non-scientific concerned groups plus a
few politically-minded scientists to put pressure to their institutions to
make sure such researchers don't work in the field again.

/s

~~~
danso
It seems the brunt of the controversy around the author arose from non-
scientific assertions he made during a guest lecture:

> _During the presentation, he asserted that physics was built and invented by
> men, and stated on a slide that “Physics is not sexist against women.”_

While the premise of the article is that the paper's publication is "a move
likely to attract criticism", the person most critical of the paper, who is
interviewed in the article, cites substantive non-political reasons why they
dislike the paper:

> _One member of the editorial board of QSS, which is published by MIT Press
> and the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI),
> gives Strumia’s paper poor reviews. The study is “methodologically flawed”
> and “fails to meet the standards of the bibliometric community,” says
> Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist at Indiana University in
> Bloomington..._

So how does the content of the article justify your snark and imaginary
irrational response?

~~~
coldtea
> _> During the presentation, he asserted that physics was built and invented
> by men, and stated on a slide that “Physics is not sexist against women.”_

Well, the first claim is statistically true (and people who are against e.g.
sexism in physics also accept it as true and want to change it).

The second is their opinion, which one might or might not agree with. Don't
know about physics, but the biology department in our university was mostly
women, for example (contrast with CS, which was 90% men).

> _So how does the content of the article justify your snark and imaginary
> irrational response?_

I already covered it in the second part of my response, didn't I?

"if this particular study indeed turns out to be bad (not replicating, bad
methodology, etc) that would validate the above truth even more. It would
obviously be because no good science could ever come from studying such issues
-- not because papers regularly turn to be bad, regardless of subject"

~~~
danso
No, you didn't, or at least I interpreted whatever you were trying to say as a
red herring. Who in the article makes that insinuation? Who said anything
about the paper's purported flawed methodology as automatically validating the
"above truth"?

~~~
coldtea
> _Who in the article makes that insinuation?_

Many people in real life, forums, etc. Who said it had to be in the article?
I'm pointing at a larger trend.

~~~
danso
I don't see how personal grievances and perceptions of "many people in real
life" are useful and relevant to the discussion. Just like my many real life
experiences with guys being assholes is not useful to discussing this paper
and its publication.

~~~
coldtea
We're not discussing some mathematical formula.

The whole thread is about the political perceptions and opinions of whether
such an article should be printed, based on perspectives on various societal
issues, plus some meta-discussion on how journals should work.

Check out the (at the moment at least) top voted comment: "In case anyone
remembers the incident at CERN (...)" etc.

And of course that meta discussion is much more useful than wether this
individual article is correct or not.

------
buboard
This old white man may be a good old sexist, but is there truth to the
statement "female physicists face more career obstacles than their male
colleagues" ?

I was lucky enough to do my Phd with an all-female group of advisors and i m
pretty sure it was beneficial for my work. There are all sorts of female-only
or female-first awards, funding, prizes, scientist networks and, considering
how there are less women in STEM field, conference quotas and funding quotas
visibly benefited my advisors and indirectly, me. This provided opportunities
for visibility for my (mediocre) work that were just not available otherwise.
I 'm not in academia so not sure how this translates to hiring prospects, but
AFAIK everyone is struggling, regardless of gender. I'd recommend having a
female supervisor however.

~~~
nyxtom
It’s actually the opposite problem at the moment. Far more women are pursuing
college degrees than men. Men have been in this declining trend, they dropout
more, get less grants, scholarships, ...etc.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-
me...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-men-are-the-
new-college-minority/536103/)

~~~
SolaceQuantum
From what I understand the issue is more complicated. Women are pursuing more
college degrees than men, but also men still occupy the a disproportionate
number of of administative, leadership, and professor positions. The overall
story comes that women pursue higher education because they need to acquire
more education/accolades to achieve the positions of male peers.

~~~
mytherin
Couldn't that also be explained by the fact that more women attending college
than men is a relatively new development, and most
administrative/leadership/professor positions are held by older people, hence
the gender ratio will take time (>20-30 years) to reflect the new gender
balance?

After all, the people that are professors now were studying in the
1980s-1990s, hence the current ratio of male/female professors should
logically represent the gender ratio of the field in the 1980s-1990s if there
is no inherent gender bias, not the gender ratio of the field in 2019.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
From what I understand new professorships, NSF CAREER awards, and similar are
still majority male. There is an observed phenomenon that when men enter a
female-dominanted field they still gain leadership positions faster than women
do. This happens in nursing and schooling, for example.

------
enriquto
It's not a particularly attractive subject of study (to my personal
interests), but publishing controversial ideas is _precisely_ the task of
scientific journals. Then, rebuttals of these ideas can be published, and the
readers can form an opinion in the face of evidence.

------
danso
I know 'gender differences' is in the headline of the submitted article, but
it made me think the paper was about physiological differences (e.g. female
and male brains are different when doing physics work), when it's more about
gender disparity in the field. I'm looking forward to seeing the data he
publishes (the paper states "Data are made available in Appendix A", but I'm
assuming the appendix hasn't been published yet).

------
nyxtom
To the degree that it can be established as a symptom of a bigger problem,
demographic measurements based on particular identities and gender are good to
have but shouldn’t be taken as some kind of political proof or validation -
it’s just measurements and data is good to know.

------
weberc2
I don’t see how this can be anything but a good thing. If you are certain that
there is discrimination against women in physics, then this is a great
opportunity to convince the world of it.

I never understood the attitude of “trust us, it exists, but no one is allowed
to question it”. I think Feynman said something like “I’d rather have
questions I can’t answer than answers I can’t question”.

EDIT: I don’t understand the downvotes. Why would someone not want an
opportunity to present evidence of their claims and rebut arguments to the
contrary? Why are we so adamantly opposed?

~~~
arijun
I upvoted you because I think it's a good question.

One problem is that nowadays, people often don't get presented with the
entirety of the available evidence on politically charged questions (like
gender equality). Whatever pundit or facebook friend will cherry pick the
evidence that suits their agenda, even if that evidence has been thoroughly
debunked. So while I agree with you that in the context of academic curiosity,
everything that can pass peer review should be published, sometimes publishing
something that you know will be debunked later could lead to a net societal
loss and should therefore be avoided.

Then again, I'm very against silencing opinions, even for the "greater good"
(within some framework I'm sure you could describe China's censorship as for
the "greater good")

~~~
XorNot
No one is obligated to amplify opinions either though. HN has a bizzare streak
that private publishers and organisations must grant their medium to every
controversial opinion that asks, which is bizarre on a forum that is based on
letting downvotes directly silence an opinion (and where down votes are only
enabled once you clear the bar of a certain amount of up votes in the first
place)

~~~
arijun
>a forum that is based on letting downvotes directly silence an opinion

I cannot express just how _strongly_ opposed to that approach I am. I reserve
my use of the downvote to low effort comments, factually inaccuracies, and the
like. If we silence people we disagree with we end up with propaganda, not
discussion. I’m often hesitant to downvote _any_ comments that espouse a
political opinion I disagree with, even if they are eg low effort, because I’m
worried about silencing the opposition.

Surprisingly (to me), I don’t see anything about what you should or shouldn’t
downvote in the site guidelines, so it’s possible my views don’t align with
the hn community as a whole. But I really like being able to have constructive
discussion, and would hate to have hn’s quality degrade to that of a political
subreddit.

------
sunseb
The only thing that should matter when hiring: the skills.

~~~
jkmcf
Like someone above alluded to, if you have an overbearing personality, a
history of poor people skills, and such, your skills probably won't matter
unless you are top 1%, and even then it will depend on just how bad you are.

~~~
whatshisface
If an overbearing personality was a disqualification for academic positions
there would be about three professors in America.

------
moomin
So, they’re publishing something that could pass peer review by someone with
no background in the field because...?

~~~
pnako
>In a move likely to attract criticism, a peer-reviewed journal

Literally the first sentence of the article. His original presentation was
heavily debated on Twitter and other places. Now that a revised version is
published, everyone will be able to publish rebuttals in various (peer-
reviewed) journals. That's how it's supposed to work.

~~~
moomin
This is approaching weird semantic questions: what is non-peer-reviewed
content in a peer-reviewed journal? I mean, normally the answer would be
“Sponsored advertising” but I don’t think Strumia is paying them.

And this isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Substandard papers don’t get
published. Papers from people with no grounding in the subject matter don’t
get the big journals. The debate is between legitimate scholars and studies,
there’s no evidence this paper passes either bar.

This isn’t politics, this is science. You don’t just publish your opinion and
shout “Debate me!”

~~~
pnako
What makes you think the paper was not peer reviewed?

This is from the paper:

>Acknowledgements I thank the referees for their comments; the InSpire team
for clarifications; Guy Madison for discussions and suggestions; Riccardo
Torre for (among many things) having implemented the WGND name-gender
association; Sabine Hossenfelder for having independently replicated the
results in fig. 8b and section 3.1 using arXiv data [Hossenfelder et
al.(2018)]; more colleagues who prefer not to mentioned.

I like the last sentence in particular and I'm not surprised :)

