
CERN cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia - kgwgk
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47478537
======
bhouston
I am reminded of Larry Summers, then the head of Harvard, who said something
similar:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/18/educationsge...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jan/18/educationsgendergap.genderissues)

I think that previously there was a distinct issue with not enough women going
through the degree programs. If the degree programs are 80% men and 20% women,
statistically the men will outperform the women in outlier achievements just
because there will likely be more positive outliers in the larger group by
definition even if the means are similar. I think that just because the sample
size for women is smaller, it will appear that the variance is smaller as
there are less samples to spread it out. Thus it is possible that this will
address itself if women equalize with men or exceed them in terms of
graduation numbers in the relevant fields.

Given that women have actually come to dominant a lot of previously male
dominated fields, fields where prominent men said women would never succeed
at, I think that mathematics and physics could fall as well. It may take
longer, but it is very possible.

If male variance is higher, there are likely both benefits and downsides to
it, and I wouldn't be surprised if while statistically women are different
there are unforseen benefits to that.

I feel like he has found one statistical difference between men and women and
believe that this defines forever men and women performance in the very
complex field of physics. This is over simplifying everything and I'd never
bet on such an oversimplified prediction based on cherry picking by an
amateur.

I think that when some people discover there are third rail/hot button issues
that "can not be talked about in polite company", they take stronger positions
on those issues in a reactionary way than are actually warranted by the
evidence.

EDIT: What about this comment is causing this to be downvoted?

~~~
jmole
I've been reading recently about a structural/sociocultural/technological
phenomenon that's actually holding women back in a field where women tend to
dominate in representation at the academic level, but are regularly
outcompeted by men at the professional level.

Piano playing.

It all comes down to the shape of the instrument, and hand-span, which is
unquestionably (and uncontroversially) larger in men than in women:
[http://www.smallpianokeyboards.org/uploads/3/4/1/6/34165129/...](http://www.smallpianokeyboards.org/uploads/3/4/1/6/34165129/right-
hand-span-results-with-dots-dec-2016_1_orig.jpg) (from
[http://www.smallpianokeyboards.org/hand-span-
data.html](http://www.smallpianokeyboards.org/hand-span-data.html))

The interesting thing is that there is a solution to the problem, the 7/8
piano, which has an octave spacing of 5.5" as opposed to the 6.5" on a typical
piano.

The thing is, no one really takes it seriously outside of a few universities
and a dedicated group that's trying to advance this cause.

Even women who learned to play long ago grouse that "I can play a regular
piano, you just have to use different technique!", but won't admit to
themselves or to others that the technique they're required to use is a
detriment to playing the instrument with ease.

The other issue is that these pianos are hard to come by, since almost every
manufacturer makes pianos of the same keyboard size, and pianists are one of
the few musicians expected to play on whatever instrument they're given.

The other interesting thing is that the majority of men would actually play
better on these pianos, because they would suddenly have "rachmaninoff hands",
but the legacy of having hundreds of thousands of existing pianos just sitting
around prevents progress from being made toward this goal.

P.S. if anyone wants to make a startup company for building 7/8 digital pianos
(of which there are none currently on the market), hit me up.

~~~
paganel
This could go the other way, like you might be seen as saying that women don't
have hand-spans as big as men, meaning that they're not as good as men when it
comes to their physical capabilities and as such "providing" them with smaller
pianos might be looked at as "demeaning" towards said women (you're thinking
about them as not being as good as men are). Gender politics can be fun like
that.

~~~
mamon
So producing shoes or coat's in women sizes is also "demeaning" towards women?
I can't imagine why producing smaller pianos would be any different.

~~~
gambiting
Because someone would say that it shows that a woman cannot play a proper
piano like a man can - she has to be provided with a smaller(and therefore
obviously inferior) one.

~~~
scott_s
But it's important to keep in mind _no one is saying that_. It's dangerous to
get wrapped up in what people _might_ say because that relies on your
imagination, not reality.

------
nabla9
You can't start neutral discussion with weak evidence, strong conclusion and
open hostility. Strumia could have just presented his findings neutrally,
without already made up his mind and having a clearly visible agenda and
hostility.

There is a pattern that is repeating:

1\. Scientist has a political opinion on difficult politically volatile issue
that is outside his field.

2\. Scientist finds some supporting evidence.

3\. Scientist comes out with agenda, evidence and overly confident conclusion.

4\. Backlash

5\. Scientist claims that he is discriminated. He thinks that just because he
had some hard data, his presentation was just cold neutral science.

6\. Others find easily some evidence that explains his theories away (Women
leaving the field in disproportionately higher rates in this case).

~~~
tptacek
There are really strong parallels between this and the Ted Hill NYJM fiasco.
And, like the physicists in this story, professional mathematicians pointed
out that Hill's paper was wildly inappropriate for the venue. Both Hill and
Strumia tried to launder their institutional credibility into authority to
make political arguments. Arguably, Hill was more successful, even if his
stunt was more egregious.

~~~
MAXPOOL
In the 19th century William Whewell developed concept of "Consilience of
Inductions". Evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on
strong conclusions. We should feel more confident about our conclusions when
we have lots of lines of evidence that stand alone independently, preferably
collected by different people, in different parts of the globe or at least
different universities. Maybe they don’t even like each other.

Many contrarian views grow long time in small small minded groups or even
withing one individual. They have high internal consistency and logic. When
exposed to outsiders, they usually spot some obvious errors immediately.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> _He also showed cartoons deriding women campaigning for equality in
science_ and presented the results of an analysis that he claimed showed that
work conducted by female physicists was not as good as their male
counterparts.

My underlined sentence, is most likely the reason Cern considered that
Alessandro Strumia's actions would bring disrepute to the Centre. Holding and
publicly discussing controversial views is one thing. Publicly ridiculing your
colleagues is quite another.

~~~
zarkov99
Did you see the slides in question? If not take a look:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA91Kefj/view)

I see no great insults here, one cartoon suggests that the gender studies
activists that are so concerned about the lack of women in STEM could have
better addressed the problem if they themselves pursued careers in STEM rather
than gender studies. The other cartoon is even milder. As to ridiculing his
colleagues, from what I can see there is one slide in which Strumia states a
female colleague that was hired over him has 10x fewer citations. Assuming
that is true, how is that ridiculing a colleague?

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Yes, I've seen the slides. They are offensive and the cartoons in them are
offensive in the context of the slides. There is no question that they would
harm CERN's repuation and that people at CERN would be livid at Strumio's talk
as a result.

------
mcguire
From the particlesforjustice link:

" _As an example of the inappropriateness of citations as a metric, almost 1
/3 of Strumia's citations come from being one of thousands of authors on the
CMS Higgs discovery paper, to which we can safely conclude that his
contribution (as a theoretical associate in an experimental collaboration) was
modest. Hundreds more citations come from papers about the statistically
insignificant 750 GeV fluctuation at CERN, which disappeared with more data._"

Ouchie.

~~~
leereeves
And yet even if you throw out half his citations, he would still have over 3x
as many as the woman who was hired over him.

He has 21,000 citations.

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alessandro_Strumia](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alessandro_Strumia)

The woman who was hired has 3000.

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna_Ceresole](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna_Ceresole)

~~~
SiempreViernes
Yes, the slide you refer to, where he publicly names and insults a member of
the selection comitte that didn’t hire him is the slide that relly got him in
trouble.

You are, quite obviously, going to get in trouble by demonstrating such lack
of professionalism. Any selection comitte that considers questions such as:
”will the candidate respect collegues if they happen to be female” will from
his presentation know that the answer is _absolutey not_.

~~~
leereeves
> the slide you refer to

I didn't refer to any slides. Are you replying to the wrong person?

> ”will the candidate respect collegues if they happen to be female” will from
> his presentation know that the answer is absolutey not.

But now I will refer to slides, to counter that statement:

 _Physics does not depend on nation, race, sex ⇒ open to good people from any
background._

 _Curie etc. welcomed after showing what they can do, got Nobels..._

He doesn't object to women in physics. He objects to lower standards and
"positive discrimination" for women in physics.

------
anigbrowl
I'm nearly 50 and decided some years ago that life was just too short to
bother accommodating people who are assholes. Perhaps he's brilliant, but
there's quite a lot of brilliant people around and if there's a discovery just
waiting to be made it's more likely that someone else will do than that the
opportunity to make it will be lost forever.

I'm not arguing that everyone has to hold the same views, but if your need to
have your views heard is so pressing that you're willing to damage the social
cohesion of your peer group or team to the point that they can't get anything
done then it better be something super-important like the lab being on fire or
the discovery of fraud or catastrophic professional negligence.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
That’s one way to look at things. But keep in mind, in that hypothetical
world, we just erased Feynman, Einstein, Oppenheimer, and, well, probably the
entire United States. Folks may disagree about whether that’s a net win or a
net loss.

~~~
anigbrowl
No, 'we' didn't. Einstein does not have a reputation for alienating his
scientific colleagues or throwing tantrums at the IAS that I'm aware of.

------
rjf72
For those that would like to see the slides of his talk to judge for
themselves they are available here [1]. The slides described as "cartoons
deriding women campaigning for equality in science" by the BBC, are 5th and
and 2nd from the bottom.

[1] -
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA91Kefj/view)

~~~
sonnyblarney
The BBC's characterization I think is unfair, I suggest HN'ers actually read
the presentation.

While controversial, I don't think it's poignantly offensive.

I'm wary of researchers getting into flame wars and I guess CERN does have the
right to avoid such things, at the same time, he seems to be making some
points with a lot of data - the best thing someone concerned with opinions
could do is actually debunk them instead of having him silenced ... because
the BBC's article trying to shut him down may in fact have the opposite
effect.

~~~
tptacek
It's a formal presentation at a CERN workshop that invokes "Cultural Marxism".
CERN had to apologize for the presentation after the workshop. Of course
they're pissed.

~~~
sonnyblarney
They had to apologize because some people were going to be offended, surely,
it doesn't mean the presentation is intellectually offensive.

'PR' is different than 'Science'.

'Cultural Marxism' is just a popular term for Intersectionalism, and it's a
real issue, particularly on campus.

People should be able to talk about issues that are a little bit
uncomfortable.

~~~
tptacek
He misled CERN to get his talk into the workshop, didn't provide materials a
priori, deliberately gave his talk an obscurantist title, and attacked the
workshop (and specific individual scientists and organizers) during the
presentation. It was a stunt; he played the workshop. Nobody is going to
congratulate him for that.

~~~
davrosthedalek
While I agree with your other points, I have yet to attend a physics
conference where I'm asked to provide my slides a priori.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not suggesting he had to, just that he in several ways went out of his way
to make sure nobody knew what he was going to say. It's not like the workshop
accepted his talk knowing he'd be presenting a contrarian view; had they know,
they would not have accepted him.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Yes, but adding fictive ways to your "several ways" makes it disingenuous. The
things he did different from the normal process (title, abstract etc.) are
enough to show that he deceived CERN.

~~~
tptacek
Sure! Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I thought you didn't have a point.

------
PostOnce
I went into this leaning towards "they probably are mistreating the guy", but
nope, dude's... wrong, manipulative, a liar to further his own goals?

The guy quotes the Istanbul Convention, article 4, as being

"Discriminations against men 'shall not be considered discrimination'"

[https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/01A6/production/...](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/01A6/production/_105922400_47478537.jpg)

But what it actually says is

"Special measures that are necessary to prevent and protect women from gender-
based violence shall not be considered discrimination under the terms of this
Convention."

[https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-
list/-/conventio...](https://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-
list/-/conventions/rms/090000168008482e)

So I don't know how much deeper I need to dig in light of this to figure out
this guy was probably justly dismissed and will lie to and attempt to
manipulate the media in his favor, given his obviously intentional misquoting
the above. This doesn't further any cause of men's rights or anything, if
anything it harms it.

~~~
Udik
Why would measures meant to protect somebody from violence ever be considered
discriminatory in the first place?

~~~
DanBC
People complain about government-funded women's refuges not accepting male
victims of domestic violence.

I think those people are wrong, especially if there are male refuges
available.

~~~
dijit
> I think those people are wrong, especially if there are male refuges
> available.

Personally I think they are right, _especially_ if there are no male refuges
available. Which according to my cursory glances seems to be the case, at
least in London[0].

[0]: [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/there-are-no-male-
safe...](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/there-are-no-male-safe-houses-
for-male-victims-of-domestic-abuse-in-london-and-a-charity-is-
asking-a3912091.html)

~~~
DanBC
You've failed to show whether there are any government funded domestic
violence shelters for women in London.

And reading your link it seems the government funding is clearly for both men
and women:

> “Tackling domestic violence is a key priority in the Mayor’s Policing and
> Crime Plan. He has provided £2 million of funding for the Pan London
> Domestic Abuse Service – the biggest of its kind in London – which is open
> to men and women.

> “Through Survivors UK, the Mayor also supports male victims of rape and
> sexual abuse with funding to help them receive counselling through one-to-
> one support and advocacy support should they wish to report to the police
> and proceed through the criminal justice route.

Domestic violence shelters in the UK are almost entirely provided by
charities.

~~~
dijit
I wasn't aware that we had specified the criteria as being government run,
because of course refuges are operating as independent charities...

I thought it was about government _funded_ refuges?

In July of 2018, while under austerity, the government gave 19M GBP to various
charities who support domestic abuse survivors.[0]

Curiously, zero of those charities allow men to enter their shelters.[1][2]

[0]: [https://www.gov.uk/government/news/19-million-fund-to-
suppor...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/19-million-fund-to-support-
victims-of-domestic-abuse)

[1]: [https://localgiving.org/charity/safenet/project/janes-
place/](https://localgiving.org/charity/safenet/project/janes-place/)

[2]:
[http://www.cih.org/resources/PDF/presentations/arch2015/1Vic...](http://www.cih.org/resources/PDF/presentations/arch2015/1Vicky%20Atkinson%20-%20domestic%20abuse.pdf)

------
lgleason
I wonder what would have happened if he had done a presentation in favor of
the current favored political/pseudo religious orthodoxy with bad/inaccurate
poorly done data. We will never know but, I'll bet you not much would have
been said about it.

I'm not in the field, but from everything I've read the rest of his work is
some of the top in the field. So we un-person this individual and start to
dis-credit his work, not based on its merit, but because of the creators
"moral character".

If someone dug back into Einstein and many other prominent scientists I'm sure
that they could find plenty of issues with their moral character as well. For
science to thrive it needs to be based on realism and facts. If someone
presents inaccurate facts, they need to be refuted with with accurate ones and
a lively debate needs to be possible to get to truth.

The mobs condemning someone does not achieve that goal. This is also probably
one of the reasons why scientific innovation is continuing to slow down.

~~~
OldFatCactus
Lol

Firstly, the guy isn't qualified to make such a sweeping statement about the
opposite sex. So before we even step into the problems with why it's a dumb
idea to say such things, lets just make it clear that he's a physicist and not
an anthropologist, biologist, or sociologist.

We definitely care about his moral character, but it's also just flat out
incredibly naive to discredit women in his field when they've been playing
catch-up for years due to cultural boundaries in the sciences.

Any scientist who steps out of their lane to attack another gender or race
deserves every bit of what they get. It's cowardly to use your position as a
scientist in a completely unrelated field to justify your hatred for some
other group of humans.

Moreover, the guys history is terrible. He's got a chip on his shoulder about
women and unethically chose to use his platform as a CERN scientist to
exercise his anger.

~~~
travisoneill1
Would he be qualified to state that men and women are equally skilled at
physics? Surely you would need the same credentials to determine that.

------
duxup
>Prof Strumia analysed papers available in a database of particle physics
research. He produced a series of graphs which, he claimed, showed that women
were hired over men whose research was cited more by other scientists in their
publications, which is an indication of higher quality.

>He also presented data that he claimed showed that male and female
researchers were equally cited at the start of their careers but men scored
progressively better as their careers progressed.

I know being published and cited is a big deal in those fields, but is that
really a great measuring stick? Couldn't those choices be filled with any sort
of bias, or just picking things that support a common theory or line of
thinking... and not indicate quality?

It seems like a potentially poor benchmark.

~~~
Barrin92
Yes, it is completely circular. Because if discrimination against women
exists, then the higher citation rate and slower career progress are equally
explained by this.

This isn't evidence in favour of some causal explanation about innate
differences between men and women, he's just trying to justify his prior
assumptions.

This is very much comparable to the circular nature of IQ measurement. People
with racist attitudes often conflate innate ability and IQ, because IQ is very
much designed to measure the sort of things that people who like IQ tests are
good at.

These people will often present evidence in the same way the physicist does,
by pointing out that say, people with higher IQs have higher personal income,
but this obviously neglects the facts that if IQ tests / degrees etc.. are
licenses for success in the first place, so you're just running in circles.

~~~
toasterlovin
IQ tests are not used as barriers to any institutions in the US (or in most of
the developed world). They are almost exclusively used for research purposes.

~~~
0815test
IQ tests have been used as barriers in _some_ circumstances - for example,
people who are "too smart" may be at a disadvantage should they want to enter
some police forces in the U.S.

------
bloopernova
Q: Did Prof. Strumia work with subject matter experts on his controversial
research before giving his presentation?

My opinion: Being an expert in one area may not translate well into other
areas. I'm a pretty good sysadmin, maybe even above average. But I don't
present myself as a good/great devops or software engineer because I know I
don't know as much as the developers I work with. If I'm trying to figure out
some issue that involves a build or code in some way, I do my initial research
then present that tentative conclusion to trusted experts for them to review.
I don't make a presentation saying definitively "this is now happening"
because I'd probably be wrong.

~~~
mcguire
The neat thing about physicists (and many engineers) is that, because they
understand the fundamentals of everything, they are completely qualified to
speak on any topic.

------
Mugwort
I'll just say this. Anyone who discourages anybody from even TRYING to learn
or pursue a career in science is a bully and a jerk. That's the way the world
is going and being tech savvy only makes the world a better place. That said
our schools and workplaces should still be based on MERIT. I don't care where
the science comes from so long as it's good science. If it just so happens to
be more men are doing science than women, then we should make sure it's not
because somebody is being shut out. Everyone get's to try and I even mean slow
learners who are men and maybe even white. I say this because we NEED science
and technological know-how going forward. If someone is so inclined educate
them, give them a job. Yes we need more women in science, because we need more
people in science, badly. It would be a pity if someday we achieve some quota
that we're satisfied with and leave it at that. The world demands more people
competent in science than can every fill the need, especially going forward. I
personally DO NOT CARE wha the sex of the scientist who did XYZ happens to be.
If fewer women get into the sciences or lean towards studying biology or
something else, I accept that on one condition, that the DOOR is OPEN for
EVERYONE. The country with the most technologically capable citizens is
probably the one that's going to lead the world. Science education should be
given out liberally and not rationed for an elite few. I personally do not
care how the final stats and quotas look. Did every woman sincerely interested
in a science career have the support and means necessary to pursue her goals?
The answer to the question should be a resounding YES. The next thing is that
I don't like sexist people but why make an example out of this guy and fire
him? It doesn't solve anything. He didn't harass or grope someone. Go ahead
and trash his ideas, discredit him, etc. whatever but leave his job alone.
It's savage to fire people just because they have opinions you do like.

------
pygy_
There's no doubt Strumia did a dumb, and while he may kind of have a point
regarding the variability hypothesis, there's actually more to it.

It comes down to chromosomes. XY individuals have a single X chromosome while
XX individuals have two (duh).

The X and Y chromosomes have a small section that pairs one another (the
pseudo-homologous region), but most of their chromatin is different.

The Y is mostly made of genes required for the architecture of the testicle,
whereas the non-homologous part of the X contains genes that are implicated in
many cellular processes. Humans need at least one chromosome to be viable.

In XX individuals, to avoid the over-expression of the dedicated X genes
(those that are not part of the pseudo-homologous region), one X chromosome is
deactivated. This happens at random, during the early embryonic life.

As a consequence XX individuals have roughly one half of their cells that
expresses the alleles of their father's X and the other half expresses those
of their mother's. XY individuals only express the alleles of their mother's
X.

Depending on what an allele does and how an allele pair interacts, this can
have different consequences.

The canonical example is color vision where XY individuals are more often
affected by color perception issues than at a much higher frequency than XX
individuals. Also, some XX individuals exhibit tetrachromacy, i.e. for them
color is a 4d space rather than the RGB 3d space most of us are used to.

For other parameters like body size, having distinct alleles results in a
phenotype that is in between. After normalization, XY individuals have a
larger variance in body size than XX folks, since the latter can fall into
more intermediate buckets.

Sex chromosomes in birds are the other way around. Males have a WW pair while
females have a WZ pair. In birds, the variance for body size is larger in
females.

This leads us, at long last to IQ, whose variance is larger in the XY group
than in the XX one (with an identical mean in both groups). This may lead one
to think that it makes it normal to have more XY folks in academia for
mathy/brainy topics like physics (since there will be more of them in the
upper tail of the distribution), but it ignores several things:

\- IQ is an imperfect measure, and we may be ignoring people whose faculties
are, like tetrachromacy, out of reach for XY folks, who designed the tests.

\- XY folks in the upper tail of the distribution for a given parameter (say,
IQ) have nevertheless a higher probability to be catastrophic in other
dimensions (when compared to XX folks). This is relevant because science is
becoming more and more of a collective endavour where social abilities matter
as much as raw intelligence. It looks like Strumia sucks at that game.

~~~
fromthestart
People are unwilling, to the point of delusion, to accept the _possibility_
that this higher variance really does explain differences in representation
among sexes across various top talent industries.

Academic society is in a weird place where _this_ kind of bias is acceptable.
Which is antithetical to science and I therefore understand Strumia's
frustration.

~~~
rosser
Meanwhile people (though broadly, it appears, a different set of them) also
appear to be unwilling, to the point of delusion, to accept the fact that it
is meaningless to attempt to extrapolate from statistical phenomena to
individual, or vice-versa.

So, sure: stipulated. Male _h. sapiens sapiens_ have _statistically_ greater
variability, across the population. That in _no way whatsoever_ prevents a
woman from being the biggest or smartest, or a man the smallest or weakest, or
either the best at one job, or the worst at another. Population trends are
_population_ trends. They do not meaningfully constrain individual expression.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
You are correct that a set of people are unwilling to accept that, but it’s
actually the same set. Those who bring up male variability pretty frequently
take great pains to state, gratuitously, that it applies to populations in a
general sense and not individuals. Damore called this out as well, but the mob
rewrote his words for him to omit anything like that.

 _Most_ men advancing this argument have no problem whatsoever with the idea
that there can be women who are better than they are. For some reason it’s
impossible to utter words like (downvoted, wtf? See...) GP did without a lot
of people putting extra words in your mouth and assuming you’re using
population generalizations as a thinly veiled charade to attack individuals.

~~~
rosser
That's quite curious to me, since the overwhelming majority of the argument
I've seen that cites the Damore memo glosses right over that distinction, or,
at best, does an, "I'm not saying the thing, but, you know, _the thing_..."
with this very question.

Maybe that's an inference I'm putting there, in at least some of the cases,
but in another nontrivial subset of them, it's a serious exercise in creative
interpretation to find any other read of the person's own words.

~~~
telotortium
Without taking a position on the strength of the arguments in the Damore memo,
if most of your news diet comes from the anti-Damore side of the debate,
you're more likely to see only the less reasonable people on the pro-Damore
side, for the same reason that people on the anti-SJW side mostly encounter
the most inflammatory arguments on the pro-SJW side.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
How the hell did this guy get flagged? Is SJW a trigger word now?

~~~
rosser
No, but it's corrosive to constructive discourse, per my other comment.

I'm legit a little slack-jawed in "did you _really_ go there?" to see this
comment adjacent to that, considering.

EDIT: I didn't flag that comment, fwiw.

EDIT 2: "Trigger word" is another great example. That's a dismissive use of
the notion, implying the people being "triggered" are irrational, emotional,
and, by inference, wrong. It's an _ad hominem_ , and it's destructive
discourse.

I don't know when we decided it was cool to conflate people expressing
disapproval with people who've been traumatized and are reacting to a stimulus
that's evocative of their trauma, but it's not. Speaking as someone who's
experienced multiple kinds of the traumas that can legitimately warrant
"trigger warnings", it's really, really not.

I truly want to understand how someone thinks they can talk to and about
people like that, and then cry foul at blowback.

------
Udik
To me, the point in Strumia's case is that it doesn't matter whether his
conclusions, or data, are sound or bonkers: the fact is that bad scientific
research eventually condemns you to irrelevance, not to political outrage and
disciplinary measures. The latter should be reserved to those who _knowingly
falsify_ data, plagiarise other people's work, etc.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Uh, you do know his actual actions was to misrepresent the contents of his
talk, and spend time of it insulting members of a selection comitte that
didn’t hire him?

The fact is that he thinks open harrasment of people that didn’t judged him
less suitable for a position is ok, which in itself is reason to keep him away
from any position of imprtance.

~~~
Udik
The personal attack (or piece of personal anecdata) in the presentation was
certainly condemnable and should have been left out- but let's not pretend the
problem wasn't the content of the whole presentation, personal attack or not.

~~~
SiempreViernes
While his whole presentation had serious issues, starting with his
misrepresentation of its contents to the organisers, the personal attack is
clearly the most important infraction.

It is, _on its own_ , enought cause to sanction him as he was.

~~~
tptacek
The JusticeForStrumia page (run by supporters of Strumia) showcases an email
from CERN that says exactly this: the personal attack was the major
professional problem from the talk.

------
octopoc
At my company, any sort of presentation at trade shows or conferences has to
be reviewed by the marketing department first. In fact often the content
originated from the marketing department. It seems to me like large scientific
organizations like CERN should do something similar. Science has always been
political and probably always will be.

------
eruci
Perhaps he meant to say that "some women were less able at physics than some
men. And vice versa."

------
patrickg_zill
The skeptic in me asks: if he goes to a friend of his at CERN and asks him to
present a talk that reaches the exact opposite conclusion, no matter how shaky
the reasoning, will that person be similarly in danger of losing their
position?

~~~
fl0wenol
If he takes pot shots at colleagues by way of example during the presentation,
then yes.

------
chki
He claims that he could proof his assumptions if he were to be published in a
journal but I think it would be very strange if somebody published his
"research". He is not a sociologist and this is clearly not his area of
expertise.

~~~
harias
Peer-review will help with that. I strongly support amateurs publishing if
they have something real to contribute. Gate-keeping based on degrees is bad.

~~~
geofft
There is too much crank science in the world to evaluate it all in good faith:
if peer reviewers were tasked with reviewing every clever idea from someone
who notices a correlation in one data set—and, in particular, at conductor
their own experiments to replicate the result—there would statistically be no
time for correct science.

Scott Aaronson's "Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong" on
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304)
is a similar argument. Though there's no hard logic why a non-TeX math paper
from an outsider would be wrong, the probability that it's right is extremely
low.

~~~
iguy
> There is too much crank science in the world to evaluate it all in good
> faith

Absolutely. And thus sadly a solid field needs a certain (ideally low) amount
of gatekeeping.

But there are also academic fields which are very far from solid, in which the
same license to ignore "cranks" is employed, not to save some mathematicians
time, but to build a wall around an ideology.

I don't really think there's an easy way to tell the difference "from
10_000ft", the two situations look identical in that there are journals, those
who publish can get jobs, and later edit these journals... and without reading
any of the work, there's no way to tell if it's basically solid or basically
nonsense.

------
SiempreViernes
Lying about the contents of your talk so you can insult members of a selection
comitte that didn’t pick you is not a good way to get a contract renewed, who
would have known?

Strumia must have really let his victory of the 750 GeV iron throne* dictate
his sense of entitlement.

*: [http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2016/06/game-of-thrones-750-...](http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2016/06/game-of-thrones-750-gev-edition.html)

~~~
harias
Your comment points to an underlying story. It mentions a selection committee
that was not referenced in the article. Can you please link me to a source
where I can learn more about it.

~~~
SiempreViernes
One of his slides shows a ”case study” that compares the citation number of a
named female member of the selection comitte (there are of course several more
members), the citation number of the named female that got the position, and
the citation number of Strumia himself.

Underneath this table he wrote ”the opressive ambient started to open”...

------
fallingfrog
Haha I totally misread that as “sexiest” scientist

~~~
samcday
That would certainly have made for a much more interesting article!

------
ktjfi
On one hand, in this political climate it's really stupid to say something
like that. On the other, someone has to be the first person to say it.

(Not that I necessarily agree with what he said)

~~~
peteretep
> On the other, someone has to be the first person to say it.

I don’t understand this point. Please could you expand on what you mean?

~~~
rjf72
The tale of The Emperor's New Clothes [1] would be appropriate.

In society in general we've decided to take as an assumption that everybody is
identically capable in everything and thus that any and all differences must
then be attributable to some form of discrimination, bias, or prejudice. And
this is something that is pleasant to believe in large part because not
believing it has led to dystopic outcomes in the past, including but not
limited to government driven eugenics. So it's something that we _want_ to
believe. And also stating you do not believe it is a great way to have people
judge you for some secret _ist_ of some sort or another.

At the same time this view is contradicted by reality. In times past this
reality would have been mostly just empirical, but in modern times we also
have genetic and other factors strongly contradicting any notion of inherent
equality. So what to do? In my opinion the most important thing here is to
ensure as much equality of opportunity as reasonably possible. And this is an
effort that should never relent. However, at the same time, it also has to be
acknowledged that the lack of equality of result does not inherently mean
there's a problem. Ultimately it's the typical problem. Trying to create
utopia is often a great path to dystopia. Enforced equality of result for all
is rather a key point in Brave New World.

Of course this does not mean that discrimination does not exist. But the
standard for assumption of such needs to start growing beyond wild induction
from dubious toy experiments, or from works that start with absolute equality
as an assumption.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes)

~~~
mcguire
" _In society in general we 've decided to take as an assumption that
everybody is identically capable in everything and thus that any and all
differences must then be attributable to some form of discrimination, bias, or
prejudice._"

This is false, as you partially admit later. The default assumption in society
is that many groups are intellectually, morally, emotionally, and physically
inferior. This assumption has been made in our society for hundreds of years.
And it has led to many poor outcomes---not for the ones benefitting from the
assumption, though.

The countervailing hypothesis, that everyone is "identically capable" until
clearly demonstrated otherwise, is very recent and hardly universally
accepted. And the idea that this hypothesis is "contradicted by reality" is
also not clearly true, since the data is not unambiguous.

In other words, if you find that the fundamental research on which your
scientific field is based was falsified, you don't start to clean up the mess
by assuming the falsified results are true.

~~~
rjf72
It's paradoxical as I do agree with you that this is a rather new ideology and
is not widely accepted. Nonetheless, the view has a disproportionate hold on
power. You're unlikely to face any consequence for suggesting outright false
things that fit the ideology, but you can face extremely severe consequences
for stating things, even well supported, that run against the ideals of the
ideology.

However, I do not agree that the science is ambiguous here and I am very open
to anything to the contrary. I can offer specific studies, but I'm fairly sure
you'd agree that the more we reveal through genetic research, the greater a
role it seems to play in practically everything. Yet there is the issue that
many critical genetic factors are unevenly distributed and have very high
rates of heritability. What gives reason to believe that it might be that
people are "identically capable" in spite of this?

One final point I'd add is that in society power was traditionally not driven
by assumption of power, but by power itself. Whichever group was able to prove
itself smarter, more powerful, etc than another group had a tendency of
imposing its will on the 'weaker' group. Power was rarely given, but often
taken. This trend only came to a rapid freeze since the birth of nuclear
weapons which have rather revolutionized the notion of power. In a world
without nuclear weapons we would not have this unsteady "balance" of power
between Europe, China, Mideast, US, and each of their respective allies.

------
dominotw
oh I remember listening to Janice talk about it in her podcast

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOCIke7zLMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOCIke7zLMo)

------
russellbeattie
This is like saying Americans are empirically bad at soccer.

First, so what? Second, he should be smart enough to realize this is a rash
generalization, regardless of past data. Third, he should know that saying
something like this just insults those already in the field, encourages
ignorance from others, and discourages those coming into the field, and thus
serves absolutely no purpose.

For someone who is supposed to be an intelligent and capable leader of a
heavily funded public project, this is pure stupidity and justifies any action
they took against him, _regardless of gender politics_.

That said, the guy is totally sexist. No idea why BBC bothered to put it in
scare quotes, when it's unquestionably true.

