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
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