Cern cuts ties with 'sexist' scientist Alessandro Strumia - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47478537 if you're interested, here are the actual presentation slides

I don't buy it, he was probably trying to expose their time travel experiments.

To a time where women were treated like subservient?

of course he's italian lmao

I lightly skimmed the slides and barely understood any of it if im being honest. But I don't think the Lecturer is being sexist, or rather that was the intention. Anyways, I'm going to try and work through what he seems to say. It starts with a definition of two theories on “fundamental theory and gender”. These seem like two viewpoints that the researcher defined. No real issue so far it seems. In fact they seem quite logical to me at least. The Mainstream is explained through examples (all of those are hyperlinks) and the conservative seems to be defining general etiquette in science based fields. It does not directly state anything sexist. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/0e5aa550-1cb5-421c-abd8-7eeaafaa9266/1.PNG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/482f01df-d087-454d-a0a3-83df8e374941/2.PNG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/d214515b-cb7a-4951-8ea7-f3c17dc34e05/3.PNG This seems like the formulation of a theory rather than an explicit statement. Theory can be wrong. The conservative viewpoint seems intriguing however. It doesn't deny unfair representation is occurring. Everything seems fine to me so far? The slides go on to demonstrate some statistics which correlate to over-representation. The bottom slide mentions power, I don't think this is meant in a negative manner, rather just an embodiment of Conflict Theory in Sociology. Once again I don't see anything explicitly negative, just empirical data. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/24298157-6624-4df6-aa7e-663aacec706b/4.PNG I think I found the slide people are upset over. But Lecturers usually don't fully explain their thoughts on the slide, rather use it to put the main topic on the board and expand on it. I wish we had more information for this one. But I believe the point trying to be made is historically, sciences like physics were made by men. Once women demonstrated a 'merit' they were welcomed into the culture. It just seems like observation not explicit statements. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/7437c28d-d095-45d1-94ca-b0582fae0313/5.PNG I see a lot of bias here though, the slide on women is lacking in terms of content, the men's side is full of citations though. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/d1750798-8fce-4c89-b38a-2915dcf1a313/6.PNG It then exemplifies the conservative theory and how there is a pretty big difference between credibility and speakers. It seems logical to me, a researcher who has been cited 157000 times probably knows his shit. But I don't really know the context of the situation. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/d380c5dc-dee0-4fc8-97bd-c4635cf09cd9/7.PNG https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/71693849-0679-43b9-8236-e2f1e7d5ed0e/8.PNG It then comes to a pretty hefty conclusion though. I highly suggest reading the slides and the sourced articles rather than these images though. But I'm not necessarily for the claim that this is cultural marxism. Sure the 'Victim Culture' of today is annoying, but I dunno in this case, the researcher made his claim and supported it, albeit biased, it does seem coherent and its interesting to read through. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/739/3019a66d-ddbb-4f9b-b51f-8703fc3b9a45/9.PNG Should he have been fired? I don't know. This is a really touchy issue and im pretty sure someone else can get more out of these slides than I can.

And of course he's being a crybaby about it.

Heard u were talking shit

Non rompere le palle

I agree, he makes a fair point and is backing it with good data. It's a heated topic and people are quick to shit on others when it's brought up. With that in mind, I think he could've made a much better impression by just leaving out the last two slides. I get what he's trying to say, but I think your message will reach the other side with far less controversy by calling it a "battle".

You started it, vuoi altri problemi o ti bastano quelli che hai gia?

Yeah, no, the guy is a piece of shit. You imply that he's merely testing "conservative 'theory'" - wait hold on 0. That's not even what theory MEANS in a scientific context. The closest would be hypothesis. This guy is using "theory" as in a layman's theory. The same way people say "well evolution's JUST A THEORY". okay, now that that's out of the way You imply that he's merely testing "conservative 'theory'", not necessarily saying it's right or wrong. Except on slide 7, he goes "but only if you believe the wrong theory", basically saying "conservative 'theory' is RIGHT and mainstream 'theory' is WRONG". I'll get back to slide 7 later. Right out the gate you can dismiss "conservative theory". "Science doesn't judge based on sex or race" "overrepresentation is just because of overperforming" (read: "men are just BETTER"), and "smarter people less affected by bias." Here's a study that went ahead and gathered data and showed that, actually, yeah, scientists DO favor men over women, even when it's a randomly assigned male or female name. As well as this which shows that women experience many more instances of sexual discrimination or harassment at work. You can ignore the opinion ones (ex. "women view discrimination as a bigger issue"), but the actual numbers of harassment incidents and being paid differently for the same job don't lie. Did I mention he just up and said "some groups overrepresented because overperforming". Like come on, again, that's literally just saying "men are only in science more because they perform better". "There's no discrimination against women in science saying that they're worse than men - they're just legitimately worse than men" is such a blindly self-contradicting statement that it baffles me. Slide 6 is just kind of bizarre. "Women aren't discriminated against in legal fields, so STEM CAN'T be sexist!" What the fuck argument even is that? "THEY'RE not discriminating, so how can we be" is not a goddamn argument. "There's more female admins at CERN" doesn't change anything either: that's still more humanities focused, I would assume. I may be wrong. But if I'm right, that doesn't prove that women aren't biased against for science-related jobs. He points out that "gender equality paradox" graph, but - what the fuck is that correlation there? There is a negative correlation, yeah, but the points are so spread out as to basically be blobs. Not to mention OH MY GOD IT'S THAT SAME GODDAMN SHOW AGAIN. I didn't even know I was going to be talking about it again. His source for that slide is that same "gender equality is DUMB" european show that tries to claim that "boys like action figures and girls like cooking sets so this proves men like objects and women like people". Where they have the researchers IN THE ROOM with the babies, which interferes with the actual data. Babies are constantly trying to figure things out and learn from their surroundings, including some guy in a labcoat right next to them smiling or frowning when they pick up a toy. Not to mention the fact that those babies are at an age where they likely already have similar toys at home.I always love having this on hand. The guy says "oh yeah you can see a flat line between different cultures" and blah blah blah. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/210867/e5f35278-97a3-4c56-8bc9-c7003ce3ff11/sure, flat.png THAT IS NOT FLAT Okay back to the actual guy the thread's about 7. Slide 8. "Men are cited more often by men and women, that proves there's no sexism". No, that's just - okay I know you all are going to shit on me for this, but - internalized sexism. It just shows that societal pressures and gender roles affect women too. (And before you say "but a woman in a scientific field wouldn't be biased against herself" - people always think they're an exception. Pro-life women who get abortions anyway, all the American poor who vote republican because "I'LL be rich someday, any day now", etc.) 8. The guy continues to argue as if citations are a quantitative value of how good you are as a scientist. Like it's DBZ or some shit. First of all, that's a mix between appeal to authority and appeal to popularity. "The more someone quotes you, the better you must be. And if you're better than someone else, we can just automatically take your side on any disagreements". And again - saying "there's no bias against women, just look how much more often these men are cited compared to women" is simply begging the question. 9. Slides 17 and 18, god damn. You yourself admit he's clearly biased here, but that should be enough to show that he's, well, biased. He omits literal, measurable tons of evidence of discrimination against women, simply saying "it's not men's fault they invented physics. And hey, Curie got a Nobel prize." 10. The only legitimate gripe is that women got 15 more minutes on one test. A lot of it is complaining "why do scholarships for women exist" and "why do nondiscrimatory hiring laws exist". 11. What does the draft even have to do with discrimination in STEM? The draft is discrimination both ways. Men must join the military, women can't join the military. Of course, neither of these are actually held up today, and furthermore, neither has anything to do with STEM. "THEY'RE sexist, so WE can't be" isn't an argument. 12. "Discriminations against men “shall not be considered discrimination” (Istanbul convention article 4). Click to check". Except that's not what the Istanbul convention even says. Read it and scroll down to page 8. The actual quote 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", which is something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. 13. Slide 19 is the only other legitimate gripe he has of discrimination against men. Excluding the "here's a picture of an empty room, BAZINGA" snipe. But again - someone else being sexist doesn't give you an excuse to be. 14. Okay I'm just going to reiterate point 1 again, because slide 20 is literally just the words "Give a try to Conservative theory". Again, I didn't even know that was in here before I started this. 15. Slide 21 starts off with more "MY CITATION LEVEL IS OVER 9000", placed on the same page as actual citations. Of course, these citations are more of the same issue with that same tv show and his citation measuring - mistaking is and ought. 16. What the fuck are slides 22 and 25. Anyone who says "cultural marxism" unironically is unironically a conspiracy theorist. And an idiot. 17. Slide 23 is full of issues. He's pulling equations out of his ass to get his "theory" to match a bell curve (not hard to do when pulling numbers out of your ass), then just makes the "theory" he doesn't like a line in the opposite direction. wow so science much smart. 18. Furthermore, he's using IQ as a measurement, which is like using BMI for health. It's flawed to all shit. Slide 23 is nothing but dressing random numbers and terms up to look smart. That's what the entire thing is. Equating citations with how smart you are, saying "men don't get cited more because of bias, they get cited more because they're better, just look at this, men are cited more, that must mean they're better", posting random comics and snipes, whining about scholarships, etc.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/172/73428e03-78e8-4d2d-8629-2860df42b396/image.png I'll take the third option for 'blatant strawman'

Yeah it is pretty shitty to be honest. I stated in my initial post that I wasn't trying to make any far reaching statements on it. But it is interesting to read through. My main intent was to get those slides onto the page at the very least so we could stop the potential dumpster fire of threads that don't actually use the topic to further any arguments. I want to say that I do see what he might be trying to get towards, only his intent seems to be so negatively charged, and with his history that you provided, yeah. I would argue that the firing is justified in this case.

Yeah maybe sticking to your field is the way to go. Remember that when you try to make arguments about sociology from a background in physics, you have about as much credibility as a sociologist trying to make arguments about particle physics.

The problem is with intellectual arrogance. Edgy STEMlords like this guy act as if their 'superior' education in "hard" sciences gives them the exclusive right to dictate the validity of social sciences as if they are only suited to lower intelligence or politically minded individuals. Nah, actually it's that social reality is mind boggling complex and filled with intangibles, requiring a different range of tools than strict adherence to the scientific method. That doesn't mean it doesn't offer robust, evidence-based conclusions. It's no wonder he relies on illegitimate and thoughtless arguments to support his position, he's likely ignorant of the extent of evidence that exists to support the opposite of what he's arguing. Anyone with a modicum of training in social scientific methods could formulate are far more thoroughly evidence backed argument.

Please don't misrepresent what I'm saying. Nowhere did I make any claims upon the research or tell anyone what to think of it. i just offered some quick interpretation and tried to work through it so we (as a whole) could come to a conclusion. That is why I prefaced my post by directly saying I skimmed it and couldn't really make sense of it. I mentioned sociology because the slides mentioned it. The interpretation may have been wrong, but please stop acting like I'm trying to be a know-it-all on this. It's intriguing to read and work through. And I enjoy the process. I don't have any ill intent here. Correct me if i'm wrong, and i'll cede my point.

I'm not certain that poster was talking about you, but rather the physicist from the article.

who are you??

I had to make an account to say that that first study you linked is complete bs. I have read it before and it has a lot of issues, the chief of which being that the percipients knew they were in a study. In other words, given that they knew they weren't actually hiring real people, their results mean nothing. On the other hand studies where people thought they were actually in the process of hiring people hired women MORE often then men. pnas.org/content/pnas/112/17/5360.full.pdf There is no evidence I know of that shows women are having a tougher time being hired than men. The people claiming it's because of sexism aren't being scientific and yet try to act like it is. It's truly disgusting. While I can't say for sure why less women are in STEM then men, the IQ variance hypothesis seems to have at least some evidence supporting itself unlike the sexism narrative being shoved down people's throats. This is harmful to science as a whole because it causes both sides of the political spectrum to mistrust science/scientists. This sexism controversy is contrived and has done no good for anyone.

There is no meaningful difference in IQ between men and women. Full stop. Drop this pseudo-scientific drivel. The sad thing is that I agree with one of your premises: that women being underrepresented in STEM doesn't necessarily mean that discrimination is occurring at the hiring level. This is a fair argument. We can't look at uneven outcomes and then assume we instantly know the cause. There's a lot that goes into gender representation in an industry or field. I hate agreeing with you people on shit.

I have read multiple studies that show that while average intelligence between men and women are the same, the varience between them are not. While I admit I haven't personally dissected every study to see if there was something I was missing, I have heard it being used as a possible explanation for why men make up the most petty criminals and why they make up the majority of scientists. Even if that turns out not to be the reason at least it wasn't based on a falsely created statistic. If you can explain why these studies are false I would be willing to agree with you on it.

"studies that I am not going to link and have not really looked at prove I am right, if you can't disprove those you're wrong"

That is not what I said. I have read and looked at these studies. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606001115?via%3Dihub Sex differences in the right tail of cognitive abilities What I am saying is that if you want to explain why these studies are false be my guest, but there are multiple studies that suggest a difference in variance between male/female intellect

Treating people like human beings is bad! That's something Karl Marx would do!

I have a major in sociology, but a minor in psychology. He's talking about the standard deviation in IQ -- men are more likely to be the outliers in either direction, dumber or smarter. It has more to do with biology and the nature of the Y chromosome if I had to guess. Male and Female brains don't really meaningfully differ in a distinguishable way that we can reasonably separate from a gendered environment from birth: Meet the neuroscientist shattering the myth of the gendered brai..