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Alessandro Strumia, The Mansplainer (STEM community)

#1
C C Offline
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/artic...udoscience

EXCERPT: . . . By now the story has been echoed by many major newscasters around the world, and discussed in public and private forums, blogs, twitter feeds. [...] Strumia's slides contain a collection of half-baked claims, coming from his analysis of InSpire data from citations and authorship of articles in theoretical physics. [...] He uses all sorts of ways, from methodologically questionable to ridiculous, to try and make his point. [...] The motivation for the talk is apparently revealed on slide 15, when he describes his personal case of failing a selection when a woman scientist was hired. His complaint is based on having had more citations than the competitor!

[...] I will not comment further Strumia's discussion, other than noting that he heavily relies for his "inference" on the IQ: starting from a debatable observation (different RMS of men and women on that quantity) he tries to show that there is no discrimination, as if IQ could be used as _the_ indicator to hire brilliant scientists. I bet Strumia has taken several IQ tests in his life, and is quite happy about his results. As Hawking used to say, people who brag about their IQ are losers; I would add that people who use IQ measures as indicators of anything but ability to solve IQ tests should be advised to not embark in quantitative research. [...]

The writing is on the wall: during their education female students are as good as or better than males in STEM disciplines; however, society is geared up to convince them since their birth (and us with them) that they are less good than males, and that they should seek different paths in their careers. The outcome is in front of us all. I have a 15 year old daughter who excels both in humanity studies and in scientific disciplines, and I know she needs a strong will in order to not be driven away from what she truly would like to do after high school (no, it's not Physics).

In the end I think Strumia, with his high IQ and all the citations, was quite naive [...] or instance, he is the recipient of an ERC grant, and the European Commission will not like to know they funded somebody who actively goes against their code of conduct and ethics: maybe those funds are going into hirings.

As with human-made global warming, woman discrimination in STEM is an established fact that will continue to have deniers: human beings will always have motives to deny evidence. The burden is on society to find ways to draw the line at some point. We cannot silence minoritarian views - that would be horribly bad. But we can certainly disallow them from mudding waters and prevent us from taking rational actions....

MORE: https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo...ner-234498



And then there were three: finally, another woman awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics
https://theconversation.com/and-then-the...ics-104323

EXCERPT: Three, only three, is the number of women who have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in the 117-year history of the prize. Donna Strickland, aged 59 and an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, in Canada, is the female academic who this year was awarded the holy grail recognition for her major contribution to physics. She shares the 2018 prize with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou. The last time a woman received the Nobel Prize in Physics was 55 years ago, when Maria Goeppert-Mayer won in 1963. Before that it was the exceptional Marie Curie who won the prize in 1903. In 1911 Curie also won the Nobel prize in Chemistry....

MORE: https://theconversation.com/and-then-the...ics-104323
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#2
Syne Offline
(Oct 4, 2018 02:54 AM)C C Wrote: [Correct link to article: https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo...ner-234498]

EXCERPT: . . . By now the story has been echoed by many major newscasters around the world, and discussed in public and private forums, blogs, twitter feeds. [...] Strumia's slides contain a collection of half-baked claims, coming from his analysis of InSpire data from citations and authorship of articles in theoretical physics. [...] He uses all sorts of ways, from methodologically questionable to ridiculous, to try and make his point. [...] The motivation for the talk is apparently revealed on slide 15, when he describes his personal case of failing a selection when a woman scientist was hired. His complaint is based on having had more citations than the competitor!
Most of that sounds like unsubstantiated ad hominem...even attributing motivation.
Quote:[...] I will not comment further Strumia's discussion, other than noting that he heavily relies for his "inference" on the IQ: starting from a debatable observation (different RMS of men and women on that quantity) he tries to show that there is no discrimination, as if IQ could be used as _the_ indicator to hire brilliant scientists. I bet Strumia has taken several IQ tests in his life, and is quite happy about his results. As Hawking used to say, people who brag about their IQ are losers; I would add that people who use IQ measures as indicators of anything but ability to solve IQ tests should be advised to not embark in quantitative research. [...]
More ad hominem, inferring bad character traits not demonstrated, and again attributing motivation.
Quote:The writing is on the wall: during their education female students are as good as or better than males in STEM disciplines;
Isn't that the exact same sort of "inference" this author is critical of? If you cannot infer career success from IQ (which this author claims only indicates "ability to solve IQ tests"), how could you infer career success from success "during their education" (which much more literally indicates ability to pass academic tests)? Hypocritical, if not willfully intellectually dishonest.
Quote:however, society is geared up to convince them since their birth (and us with them) that they are less good than males, and that they should seek different paths in their careers.
Gender studies crap that seriously calls in to question the authors credentials to question methodology in the first place.
It's not society, it's evolutionary psychology. "Less good than males" doesn't explain why women overwhelmingly choose lower paying, non-STEM careers. Inherent aptitude does, and that is likely to affect success in STEM fields as well.
Quote:The outcome is in front of us all. I have a 15 year old daughter who excels both in humanity studies and in scientific disciplines, and I know she needs a strong will in order to not be driven away from what she truly would like to do after high school (no, it's not Physics).
She will not be "driven away from what she truly would like to do"; she will simply find that "what she truly would like to do" tends toward the humanities after puberty, i.e. when her gender preferences fully express themselves.
Quote:In the end I think Strumia, with his high IQ and all the citations, was quite naive [...]  or instance, he is the recipient of an ERC grant, and the European Commission will not like to know they funded somebody who actively goes against their code of conduct and ethics: maybe those funds are going into hirings.

As with human-made global warming, woman discrimination in STEM is an established fact that will continue to have deniers: human beings will always have motives to deny evidence. The burden is on society to find ways to draw the line at some point. We cannot silence minoritarian views - that would be horribly bad. But we can certainly disallow them from mudding waters and prevent us from taking rational actions....
Notice no real, substantial arguments. The author is another physicist speaking outside of his area of expertise...and parroting a lot of SJW tripe, likely white-knighting, and sounding like he wants the guy fired.
No, woman discrimination in STEM is not an established fact, and he again appeals to motive (a fallacy).
So we can't silence minority views, but this guy desperately wants to.
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#3
Syne Offline

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mNHf2wW0LEw
Better quality slides as pdf: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhO...1Kefj/view

1. We know from the outset that there is no general male/female symmetry. This is a physiological and psychological fact.
2. As such, interest and ability are not uniformly distributed.

Some studies have concluded that there is larger variability in male scores compared to female scores, which results in more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution. Additionally, there are differences in the capacity of males and females in performing certain tasks, such as rotation of objects in space, often categorized as spatial ability.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differ...telligence

3. Multiple studies have shown that females, even among infants and apes, prefer people, while males prefer things. Hence the gendered career preferences, where women tend towards fields dealing with people (education, psychology, humanities, medicine, law) and men fields dealing with things (physical/risky jobs, construction, STEM, business, law).
4. Why do even women in STEM cite more males than females? Jealousy or merit? Because if they really think there is sexism in STEM, they would be working to correct it themselves...by promoting other women in their citations. This shows that either cattiness or just doing good science is more important to the women supposedly being discriminated against.
5. While men have many of the best, highest-paying jobs, they also have the worst, highest-risk ones...again, conforming to a greater variance in male IQ distribution relative to women.

If you deny these, you're simply an anti-science ideologue.
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