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Cern scientist: 'Physics built by men – not by invitation'
- wellboy 8y agoSo facts are offensive? I don't see any rebuttal to the facts presented in the article unfortunately. Anyone knows facts that disprove his?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- antt 8y agohttp://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html http://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html >American universities train roughly twice as many Ph.D.s as there are jobs for them. When something, or someone, is a glut on the market, the price drops. In the case of Ph.D. scientists, the reduction in price takes the form of many years spent in ``holding pattern'' postdoctoral jobs. Permanent jobs don't pay much less than they used to, but instead of obtaining a real job two years after the Ph.D. (as was typical 25 years ago) most young scientists spend five, ten, or more years as postdocs. They have no prospect of permanent employment and often must obtain a new postdoctoral position and move every two years. For many more details consult the Young Scientists' Network or read the account in the May, 2001 issue of the Washington Monthly. It's gotten worse since then.
- wellboy 8y agoWhat does that have to donwith women?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ddxxgg 8y agoMeasurements of metric are objective only from the people who establish them, who are biased. Even if the professor is right, challenging meritocracies is always valuable and necessary. This doesn't mean you should throw away all systems for selecting people to do a job; it means examining we must examine the consequences of using those systems and examining whether they are a net positive not only for the work you're doing but for society as a whole.
- awild 8y agoI'm just speculating, but network effects are extremely important in science and I see it as very possible that women might have a harder time networking (presenting their papers, talking to peers, given benefit of the doubt by peers, etc.) in a field that is dominated by men. My SO did her bachelors on AA in big corps and found a lot of studies that supported the hypothesis that males bosses statistically tend to promote and acknowledge the work of other males more than of their peers. (Though I have to concede that it was just a bachelors degree and could also have been badly/unbalanced researched and that I am too lazy to find citations, as I have no clue of where she got them.)
- aklemm 8y agoNo, but using them to ignore injustice is wrong.
- guard0g 8y agoI can sympathize with the lack of EQ, but this is ridiculous and also poor data science.
- traverseda 8y agoCan you clarify on that a bit? Obviously no one would expect his detractors to spend a bunch of time discrediting him, but at least a cursory explanation of the flaws in his methodology/data is kind of necessary. Why is this "poor data science"?
- guard0g 8y agoValidaton of hypotheses by data should consider the explanatory power of variables and possible presence of confounders. Does the distribution of inSPIRE citations reflect the lack of women in HEP, or does the lack of women in HEP result in the distribution of inSPIRE citations due to other confounders? What is the R^2 of the gender-equality-paradox line? Given that citations accumulate over 20-30 years, and the prevalence of men in HEP in the past, is it statistically significant to use gender citation ratios? Experimental research is often authored by the entire lab team, and a gender imbalance in the lab could account for greater gender disparity w.r.t. individuals with significant citation counts. Just saying, proper (data) science should validate a hypothesis and include a discussion of potential confounders and limitations in the data.
- Rotdhizon 8y agoGood on this guy for speaking some truth, even if he faced flak for it all around. He had the statistics to prove it, and he was discredited. He had the anecdotal experience to back his story, and he was discredited. By daring to say that people should be admitted based on merit and not given free passes into the field based on gender, he was lambasted. There was no rebuttal, the only responses were basically 'I don't like what he said'.
- simonrobb 8y agoLet's just ignore whether this guy's arguments are valid or not for a second, why, why would you present them in a room full of young, presumably aspirational, predominately female scientists at a conference focussed on getting more women to science? You can question whether such a conference should exist, but this isn't the way to make your point. Particularly when bringing up studies suggesting women like working with people and men like working with things - all those women in the room seemingly don't fit into that reductionist rule, so it's irrelevant in the context at best, and flat out wrong at worst. He's not a crusader, he just seems like a bit of jerk. > given free passes into the field based on gender Free passes aren't given based on gender, though preferential treatment might be given as part of an affirmative action program. Personally I think that is absolutely necessary, in all of STEM, because I believe there is a structural imbalance in our society against women. I'm open to the idea there isn't, and there are immutable biological differences at play, but unless we do something meaningful to correct the societal factor we'll never know. But it's super easy to say there's no chance of that and we should treat everybody totally equal, when you're not the one with the disadvantage. As to his arguments, so much of the evidence he points to can be shaped by the same societal forces he is trying to dismiss. "I made some simple checks and discovered that it wasn't, that it was becoming sexist against men and said so." Anybody who thinks they can unravel this in a evening on google is arrogant, and totally wrong. > speaking some truth Real scientists don't talk in terms of absolute truth, they deal in scientific consensus given the available evidence. Please consider being less dismissive, when almost 50% (and in some ways, 100%) of the world's population is affected by how we view and respond to gender.
- tomp 8y ago
- gdhbcc 8y agoAnd he is absolutely correct
- jonas_b 8y ago- The guy presenting this might be wrong. - He may be an asshole and/or have resentful intentions with making this presentations. However, none of the people who disagree with him in this article engage with any of these things. They're just angry that he's saying this at all! Their upset emotions seems to be the only case against what he's saying.
- simonrobb 8y agoIt's not the right forum to express this evidence/conclusions. It's insensitive, and entirely without empathy. People have good reason to be upset.
- adamrezich 8y agoIs this what "science" has become?
- simonrobb 8y agoBeing a scientist doesn't preclude having empathy. Presenting data and drawing conclusions is fine. You just don't have to be a dick about it.
- adamrezich 8y agoHow would you have changed the talk or slides to have corrected for this?
- simonrobb 8y agoI think the selection of studies was somewhat myopic, and I thought his reasoning was flawed, so I'd change that. But honestly I wouldn't have so much of a problem if he presented the same thing anywhere other than a conference for encouraging women into science. If I were any one of those women, I would have walked away discouraged and hurt.
- 8y ago
- tomp 8y agoFake news written to shock, not to inform. > In 2015, Nobel laureate Prof Tim Hunt resigned from his position at University College London after telling an audience of young female scientists at a conference in South Korea that the "trouble with girls" in labs was that "when you criticise them they cry". Why was this mentioned, right at the end of the article? Also, the author conventiently ommitted that Tim was joking, the audience laughed (i.e. got the joke) and the joke was about his wife, whom he met in his lab. In addition, the article doesn't even try to substantiate or explain why CERN considers the presentation as "highly offensive" - facts can clearly be wrong, but can they be offensive?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- krainboltgreene 8y agoYour lack of understanding is endemic in the community, utterly unsurprising, and really unoriginal.
- tomp 8y agoI'm flattered ;)
- posterboy 8y agoA fact is not offensive, but can be used offensively in an offensive argument. By some school of logic - so I learned recently but forgot what school that was - an argument consists at least of premises and conclusion. If the premises is underspecified, the conclusion can be wrong even if the premises is factual. That is, the correlation suggested by the data might not lead to the conclusion when more data is considered. The fallacy here might be post hoc ergo propter hoc (a term I also learned only recently). He was basically arguing outside of his field of expertise. I'm not inclined toward gender studies either, but if addressing their conclusions, that women are confronted with unintentional bias, then that argument needs to be taken up. The career argument is the premises, not the conclusion. Edit: If there is a bias, that would necessarily show up in statistics. Even if the initial data point doesn't show that bias. If there are two data points, one showing bias, one not, that's simply not enough to draw a conclusion either way. A physicist should know that. Anecdotal evidence of course does not count as additional data point.
- janlukacs 8y agoWe live in a post truth world. Instead of accepting men and women as complementary we're forced into "competition", yet another way of dividing society.
- mattdeboard 8y agoI sure this thread is going wonderful places.
- guard0g 8y agoIf you missed the link, here's the actual presentation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA91Kefj/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...
- unfamiliar 8y agoWhy was this flagged?
- rayiner 8y agoNone of these “facts” refute the hypothesis that “physics is built by men” because that’s who has been allowed into the field to date. For example, the points about citations can be explained by the fact that male authors are much more likely to cite themselves, and the fact that social networks play a role in how often works are cited: https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2017/05/female-authors-get-fewer-citations-astronomy https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2017/05/female-authors-ge.... It also ignores that the citation gap has narrowed dramatically over the past decades, which is the opposite of what you’d expect if measures to admit more women into the field led to underqualified women entering the field. This ia just lazy reasoning from people who should know better.
- Insanity 8y agoWhy was this flagged? I don't think it deserves to be flagged - even if the opinion the person holds is unconventional. OT: He does say his conclusions might not be fully right. But that the assumption of identical brains is ideology. Now, I agree with this but it does not mean one is better than the other. The fact that women might produce _less_ output (as shown in the stats?) does not mean they produce less valuable work. They might just get their priorities different later in life, as opposed to men. But again, those are generalisations and you probably should not try to generalize these kinds of things to apply to _all women_. It was also not the right place to make those comments I think.
- tomp 8y agoControversial non-PC opinions are often flagged on HN, because no productive discussion usually results (not just gender, but also politics).
- Insanity 8y agoSeems to me that the comments of such a discussion ought to be flagged rather than the entire article. But that can grow out of hand more quickly, unfortunately.
- tomp 8y agoYeah the second thing is the problem... You also often see like 100 upvotes and 300 comments and many comments downvoted... HN algorithms recognize such articles/threads as "flame wars" so they demote (but not flag) them.
- rayiner 8y agoIf you're going to lob grenades, own it instead of hiding behind "but I might be wrong." The math/science magnet high school I attended is now predominantly Asian, in an area that's predominantly white. My hypothesis is that Asians are better at math/science than whites. But I could be wrong! At the very least, the "assumption of identical brains is ideology." /sarcasm ^^^ Do you think that's a useful analysis of the situation, or is it unnecessarily inflammatory given the shaky reasoning underlying the point?
- DoreenMichele 8y agoHe also said that he himself was overlooked for a job that he was more qualified for, which was given to a woman. So, basically, he got burned -- or feels he did -- and he wants justice of some sort. Which is not unreasonable per se, but this is not really the way to go about trying to get that.
- aklemm 8y agoYou either have to believe that there is a meritocracy and that it's under attack by an unnamed mob of truth-haters or you have to believe there is a pattern of shitty behavior (against women in this case) that people are--sometimes clumsily--trying to rectify so that anyone with a contribution to make to physics (or computer science, etc.) gets a decent chance at it. I believe the latter.
- hanselot 8y agoAnd people should respect your dogmatic religious beliefs.
- traverseda 8y agoRight. The thing is that there's gender disparity going in the other direction as well, fields that pay well and are well respected but that are dominated by women. Nursing being an obvious example. Any theory that explains why physics is gendered should also explain why education is also gendered. It's unlikely that those two fields ended up with skewed gender ratios for completely different reasons. So, why do you think psychology, education, and nursing are all female dominated fields? If it was simply a pattern of shitty behavior, what I would expect is some fields that women obviously don't have access to, and a more or less even gender ratio in all the other fields. What I'm seeing instead looks a lot like gender ratios are a gaussian distribution, which I don't think fits your hypothesis that the gender ratios are caused by "a pattern of shitty behavior". That probably is a co-factor, but it doesn't explain the female-dominated fields very well.
- aklemm 8y agoInteresting, but I think this flirts a little too close to the fallacy that this goes both ways equally. In your examples of nursing, education, and psychology I would suggest that a man in each of those fields is actually advantaged compared to his female peers, even if he is outnumbered significantly. The same is not true for women in many of the well-paying fields in which they are underrpresented. So, just from a very high level consideration of what is the most important thing to focus on, I still think shitty behavior is it. There is no better use of time than reading and reflecting on what shitty behavior is and then building up the bravery to call it out daily. That is hard, critical, adult work.
- DarkWiiPlayer 8y agoThis constant "Men vs. Women" narrative really doesn't make any sense to me. I've always seen people as just that, as individuals, with strengths and preferences that will most likely decide what they will work as. Making everything about gender just annoys me, no matter who does it. Was physics built by men? Sure, probably because women weren't allowed to, or maybe they really didn't want to, who knows. But this outrage isn't about those women in the past who could have made it big, is it? It's about the present day situation where gender is not a deciding factor (or a factor at all) in who is allowed by society to do what.
- dagw 8y agoI've always seen people as just that, as individuals The problem is that there is lots of research indicating that while many people will swear up and down that this is what they do, in many cases it subconsciously isn't the case. Had you asked me two years ago or so I would have absolutely sworn that I was no way biased with regards to gender, but about a year and a half ago I started to seriously introspect on these issues, specifically trying to focus on my subconscious actions and running through past interactions, and now I honestly don't feel confident claiming that anymore. I obviously never actively discriminate and try to be aware of my action, but the subconscious is a hard thing to control.
- simonrobb 8y agoGreat response. It's uncomfortable doing an honest self-evaluation.
- DarkWiiPlayer 8y agoSure, everybody is biased in many ways. I am not claiming I don't have any bias, but those become irrelevant if you make an effort to decide things rationally. And in my opinion, when judging other people, we should always make sure we're basing our decision on rationality, not what feels better to us. This obviously requires some work to train yourself to notice when you're lying to yourself or making up reasons to go with the decision that feels better when you should really know it's not the correct one.
- 8y ago
- growlist 8y agoI do wonder whether humanity will suffer through us aiming for equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Won't we inevitably end up with less talented/innovative/productive/etc people at the top since some will have come through purely to meet a quota?
- gerland 8y agoA fragment of email that was sent to CERN emploees: We have therefore decided to remove the slides from Indico, in line with our Code of Conduct that does not tolerate personal attacks and insults. Diversity is a strong reality at CERN, and is also one of the core values underpinning our Code of Conduct. The Organization is fully committed to promoting diversity and equality at all levels.
- mrhackerpoland 8y agoI come from Poland where girls either choose a) medicine b) pyscology c) fashion related gig like hair dressers, tailor d) modeling (often most pretty girls choose this) Here in Poland, entry level gigs in technology companies pay way less than modeling gigs these days. I asked many of those girls who went into modeling and fashion related jobs, they always said, they found it easier and more rewarding than jobs where someome else might steal their credit.