Alessandro Strumia, the bozo physicist who was run out of CERN for his ridiculously chauvinistic decrees about the unsuitability of women to do physics, got a friendly profile in the Sunday Times. I haven’t read it, since it’s behind a paywall and what I can see of it certainly doesn’t encourage me to subscribe, but here’s a nice breakdown of Strumia’s claims. From the first one you can tell why the article was demotivating.
The headline of the Sunday Times piece includes the words: “the data doesn’t lie—women don’t like physics.”
If you are wondering if this is a case of an engagement editor gone rogue in search of hate-clicks, the headline that ran in print was even worse: “My Big Bang Theory Is: Women Don’t Like Physics.”
Read the rest. It’s…ugh.
We may anticipate being subjected to more of this drivel from Strumia in the future.
Strumia has apparently turned his lecture into a paper, which he hopes to have a peer-reviewed journal publish. “Whether he finds one ready to brave the inevitable backlash remains to be seen,” writes Conradi.
I would wonder what journal would stoop so low to publish that crap before I would be concerned about an imaginary “backlash”.
Maybe Quillette? It sounds perfect for them.
I studied physics.
Consistently, female students would get better grades than men.
Consistently, the higher you go in the hierarchy the less women you’d find.
If Strumia can’t see the problem there, he’s willfully blind.
The data don’t lie – women don’t like physics. Irrelevant. The question is, what happens to the women who DO like physics and want to pursue it?
You know, most men aren’t that wild about physics either. I would go so far as to say that regardless of their sex, most people do not find physics to be their cup of tea. The question is whether having or not having a penis is the reason most people don’t care for physics. To my knowledge neither Strumia nor anyone else has produced any real evidence that it is.
However, for the sake of argument, let us suppose that every woman in the world, with the exception of one lone outlier, has no interest in physics. Should not that one lone outlier be encouraged to pursue her interests and study physics if that’s what she wants to do? Even if women in general like physics less than men do, I don’t really see that that gains that much for the misogynists, since the ones who do like physics should be treated as individuals and not as members of a group.
Women don’t like physics? Lise Meitner would have used this strutting pizzle as a neutron absorber.
Weirdly, I am also shopping a new paper around to several highly-prestigious physics journals. The working title reads:
As all good little boys know, anatomy is destiny! Women are fated to dislike physics, just as men are fated to like football. Oops. I don’t like football. I’d better get a DNA test!!!
A reputable journal in the appropriate field should do a peer review and publish the review.
Crip Dyke — you beat me to it.
The only reason women don’t like physics is because the field has people like Strumia.
There was an awesome Twitter thread about it:
https://threader.app/thread/1109881911009144832