Sorry, lady scientists, you don’t count


Vera Rubin was a famous astronomer who did research on dark matter, and has an observatory named after her. Sadly, though, she was obviously a DEI hire, what with her lady bits and all, and her observatory has been forced to edit their web page describing her contributions.

DELETED: “Science is still a male-dominated field, but Rubin Observatory is working to increase participation from women and other people who have historically been excluded from science. Rubin Observatory welcomes everyone who wants to contribute to science, and takes steps to lower or eliminate barriers that exclude those with less privilege.”

Did I say “forced”? Not so…someone in the administrative chain of command at the observatory chose to willingly comply with Donald Trump’s crusade against non-white non-men and decided to curry favor by deleting a woman’s role from their web page.

It makes me sick. Do not comply. Resist. Fight back with, at the very least, non-action on these discriminatory rules. Anything else makes you a chickenshit.

Comments

  1. says

    Well, obviously you can’t do science unless you’ve got a white dick.

    I bet Jocelyn Bell Burnett is unimpressed.
    (If you don’t know, she discovered pulsars so they gave the Nobel Prize to her boss. Even though her boss said, “You stupid woman, it’s just interference.” Even after she pointed out the ways it was distinct from interference.

  2. says

    I’m starting to realize that a hallmark human trait is cowardice. Straight up fucking cowardice. Afraid of what? Mean tweets?

    Our ancestors walked headlong into a hail of rifle bullets to stand up to these shitstains.

  3. David Heddle says

    A small contribution that anyone teaching introductory physics can do is to join the grass roots movement to rename the SI momentum unit from kg m/s to “Noether”. (symbol: n) (You can web search to see discussion on this if you are unaware.) She deserves a much bigger honor, but this is a small step in the right direction.

  4. raven says

    It makes me sick. Do not comply. Resist. Fight back with, at the very least, non-action on these discriminatory rules. Anything else makes you a chickenshit.

    QFT.

    .1. They don’t have the support or power they claim to have. Trump didn’t even get 50% of the popular vote and it was only 1.6% more than Kamala Harris.

    .2. An example would be ICE. ICE can’t round up millions of undocumented migrants by themselves. They don’t have the resources.
    70% of their “arrests” are handoffs from the local police.
    ICE can’t search private areas without a search warrant.
    The people they pick up have the rights of due process and court hearings.

    Mostly at this point, the ICE raids are just Cruelty Theater for Red state fundie xians.

    .3. It is always easier to tear things down and destroy them, then to do positive things that will make US citizen’s lives and our nation better.
    Destroying the EPA and USAID are low hanging fruits.
    I could do it. In fact, Musk’s minions are 6 college age boys without any real expertise in anything. I suspect a 10 year old could do it.

    If the GOP actually carries out their cuckoo tariff economic plan, we will all be poorer in 4 years.
    And, that is going to make their reelection more difficult.

    FWIW, Mexico stood up to Trump and those 25% tariffs are already gone for now. It took a day.
    Don’t overestimate them and don’t underestimate us.

  5. John Morales says

    N is the unit of force already, David. So, she’d get the same letter, but lowercase.

  6. John Morales says

    “FWIW, Mexico stood up to Trump and those 25% tariffs are already gone for now. It took a day.”

    Tariffs postponed by a month after Mexico propitiated Trump by promising to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops to its northern border. Way to stand up!

    (But we know how extortion works, no? The demands will not stop)

  7. John Watts says

    Perhaps, in the near future, everyone will be required to take a DNA test. Only primarily European, Y-DNA haplogroups (R1b, R1a, I, E1, and a few others) will be allowed to apply for certain jobs. The only fly in the ointment is that most African American males possess the same genes found in western European haplogroups. There’s a reason why so many Black young’uns on Southern plantations resembled Massa. This is part of the history of the U.S. that the MAGAts are so intent on eradicating. We can’t upset sensitive, young White minds by claiming their ggg-grandparents were raping their slave women. That’s woke history, right?

  8. David Heddle says

    @9. That’s right. That’s why I wrote it in lowercase “(symbol: n)” ! Of course we could say “n” but write it “EN”, her initials, if it seems right that she should get uppercase. (She deserves a posthumous Nobel, if only that was possible.)

  9. Rob Grigjanis says

    David Heddle @12:

    She deserves a posthumous Nobel

    For what, exactly? She wrote a paper in response to a request by David Hilbert to prove that, in general, energy is not conserved in General Relativity (theorem II in her paper). She did prove that, and in addition proved that, for a wide class of models, the continuous symmetries of those models imply conservation laws (theorem I in her paper).

    It’s the latter for which Noether is best known in physics (see Noether’s theorem).

    Whether that deserves a posthumous Nobel is certainly debatable. I wouldn’t object, but I’ve seen many boosters of Noether who don’t even know what she did. The most common is on the lines of “Noether saved Einstein’s ass by proving that energy is conserved in GR”. Which is flat out wrong. Celebrate what women do, not misinformed nonsense about what some think they did.

    A translation of her paper (written in 1915, but not published until 1918) can be seen here;

    http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0503066

  10. David Heddle says

    @15. I’ve actually never heard another physicist say “Noether saved Einstein’s ass” but the again I work in nuclear, not GR. I was speaking of her work (as you mentioned) on the connection between continuous symmetries and conservation laws. We’ll have to disagree on whether that is worthy of a Nobel. I personally find it a 10 on the scale of 1 to Dirac in terms of its insight to something fundamental in the universe and its pure beauty. YMMV.

  11. Rob Grigjanis says

    @15:

    We’ll have to disagree on whether that is worthy of a Nobel

    We don’t necessarily disagree. The people who invoked Einstein’s ass were certainly not physicists. I’d be happy with a poll conducted among women theoretical physicists to decide the matter.

  12. Steve Morrison says

    Unfortunately, there’s never been a Nobel prize for mathematics, so Noether couldn’t have been honored for her real life’s work on things like rings satisfying an ascending chain condition.

  13. John Morales says

    Also, I think it’s a very stupid opinion. Here’s the level of acumen at hand:
    “More than anything, what Democrats seem to wish for, at the outset of the second Trump presidency, is for it to be 2012 again.”
    and
    “But if the Republicans are seeking to reverse the 20th century, the Democrats seem to wish to simply ignore the 21st.”

    (See, one ignores C21 by wishing more than anything it were 2012 again. In her mind, allegedly)

    Bah.

  14. chrislawson says

    Jom Brady@7–

    Absolutely true and can’t be stated often enough. The modern “conservative” movement is built around tearing down political and institutional principles that were part of the founding culture of the US. They hark back to the 1950s, meaning they miss all the sexism, racism, and homophobia, while conveniently forgetting the top income tax rate was 92%, the average CEO earned only 20x the salary of the average worker, the majority of high-impact of scientific research was done in well-funded public institutions, and SC judges would recuse themselves if there was any hint of conflict of interest.

  15. springa73 says

    chrislawson @21 –

    I think today’s right wing in the USA wants a combination of the 1950s socially and the late 19th century economically. They are very much reactionaries, convinced that most of the social and political changes in recent decades or even centuries have been huge mistakes, and that the way things were done in the past was vastly better. (With the exception of all the benefits brought by modern medicine and technology, of course. They want to keep those, refusing to acknowledge that many of these advances wouldn’t have happened without the social and political changes that they hate.)

  16. says

    springs73@#22:
    I think today’s right wing in the USA wants a combination of the 1950s socially and the late 19th century economically….

    I think it’s a general tendency of reactionaries to be short-term shallow thinkers who jump at what appear to be attractive fixes, and mythical fantasies of an imagined past, then they (rather naturally!) fail trying to implement it. I think Elon is a clever bozo, Bill Gates is a brilliant bozo, Bezos a grindy schmuck etc. These become right-wing messiahs because of the basic argument, “you feminists can’t complain about Hugh Hefner, ‘cuz he is rich” Oh yeah? Watch me.

  17. bcw bcw says

    Amy Klobuchar and every Democrat on the Senate Agriculture committee just voted to advance the nomination of the insane, climate -change -denying Brooke Rollins as Agriculture secretary. Way to be unified Dems!

  18. unclefrogy says

    I think it’s a general tendency of reactionaries to be short-term shallow thinkers who jump at what appear to be attractive fixes, and mythical fantasies of an imagined past, then they (rather naturally!) fail trying to implement it.

    illustrates lack of understanding reality, the habit of thinking that your own limited point view from your own experience, a data set of 1 is valid and true universally. It is short term and myopic cherry picking the parts you like and feel the most about and disregarding everything else. It is irrational and emotional and to impalement the ideas so generated usually have to resort to blunt force trying to make reality to bend to their will.

  19. John Morales says

    “Lol. Captain Hyperliteral strikes again. X-D”

    Sure.
    Because noticing two mutually-exclusive claims about purported motives is merely literalism.

    (So, they aren’t literal claims? O! Such a revelation!)

    Here you go, Captain:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_speech

    You truly are an ignoramus.

    Those two claims are in separate paragraphs.

    So, at best, two figures of speech.
    Which they are not, they are literal claims.

    Thing is, they are mutually-exclusive.

    Whether or not they are figures of speech, they cannot both be true.

    You want to call that hyperliteralism, I can’t stop you.

    I note that, yet again, you pop into a thread to specifically try to diss me somehow, in your typical modus.

    Your first and only comment, about me. Of course, of course.
    Your Moby Dick, I am.

  20. StevoR says

    It’s unclear who ordered the specific alterations of Rubin’s biography. The White House, the observatory and the federal agencies that fund it, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

    Source : https://www.propublica.org/article/vera-rubin-astronomer-dei-trump (the link in the OP.)

    The lack of a transparency and accountability here also deserves highlighting I reckon.

  21. John Morales says

    unclefrogy, thing is, if things change (for the worse, but whatever, change) then seeking to back to the state before the change is to what ‘reactionary’ refers. Right?
    Reacting to social change, seeking a return to the status quo ante.

    So, at some point, those who oppose MAGA and Trumpism will become the reactionaries.

  22. says

    So, at some point, those who oppose MAGA and Trumpism will become the reactionaries.

    PZ, we can already replace this shit with the ChatGPT plug-in. Would you please? Thanks.

  23. StevoR says

    @ Robert Westbrook – 3 February 2025 at 3:17 pm : “I’m starting to realize that a hallmark human trait is cowardice. Straight up fucking cowardice. Afraid of what? Mean tweets?”

    Losing their jobs, being targeted and singled out and harrassed by Trump & his mob. Not just mean xheets.

    Losing work and thus your livelihood in an already unstable economy where prics are skyrocketing is a rather serious threat. Whic isn’t to say people shouldn’t stand up and fight back against it but it is worse than just mean tweets..

  24. John Morales says

    “PZ, we can already replace this shit with the ChatGPT plug-in. Would you please? Thanks.”

    Pure malice. At least you are honest, Marcus. Spiteful, but honest.

  25. John Morales says

    Go on, prove me wrong, instead of sniping and alleging. Go on, Marcus.

    I willingly left your blog when you whined about me, you asserted most strongly that I was but to be ignored.

    (I don’t feel all that ignored, actually)

  26. John Morales says

    (sigh)

    See, ‘reactionaries’ is not being used literally, but rather as synonym for the Radical Right (MAGA, whatever) and is now in certain people’s minds a fixed term.

    But its meaning is quite clear and indisputable, especially in an USAnian context.
    It’s a reaction to social change, and a desire to go back.

    Now, you may find all that too abstract or abstruse or stupid or random or rambly, but I had a point there, Marcus.

    I gotta admire your claim that a LLM could emulate me — the Johannine position.
    Care to even try to attempt to sustain it? Easy enough to set up a protocol.

    (I know, I know. It was but bluster intended to be insulting. But it reveals who you are)

  27. says

    So, at some point, those who oppose MAGA and Trumpism will become the reactionaries.

    That’s the same stupid misleading diversionary word-game we heard in 1981. With pretty much the same stupid misleading diversionary intent. (And you’re bitching at me for going astray from an original subject?)

  28. unclefrogy says

    Sr. Morales
    yes true I was responding to the text quoted as it was written.
    My response does not use that exclusively, because I do not think that kind of thinking is by any means restricted to the conservatives. It is often seen in most extremist and of course religions. there are on occasions represented here with people who only think of their own personal point of view and do not ask themselves very deeply questions nor reality.
    The extreme right and left are very much alike in their lovingly nursed blind spots and the violence and cruelty is not very far from the surface

  29. John Morales says

    ‘the conservatives’ is very much akin to ‘reactionaries’, unclefrogy.

    The meaning is not about a group, but about an attitude and an ideology

  30. John Morales says

    “The extreme right and left are very much alike in their lovingly nursed blind spots”

    There is no “extreme left” in the USA.

    (Arguably, there is not even an actual “left”)

    This stupid “both much the same” rhetoric is not helpful, in my estimation.

    (Or at least, not true, which is much the same thing for me)

  31. StevoR says

    @ ^ John Morales : Quite so.

    From what I gather, following McCarthyism and the Red Scare ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism ) the left inthe USoA was pretty much wiped out and if anything extreme left remains it’s very small and isolated and uninfluential indeed.

    The Overton Window was pushed way askew long before Trump or even the tea party came about.

  32. strangerinastrangeland says

    DEI is now replaced in the US with WILtT – White, Incompetent & Loyal to Trump.

  33. says

    I keep hearing Martha and the Vandellas louder and louder: Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide ! (Oh, no, I can’t give credit for that great song to a woman named martha can I??!! choke on my sarcasm you bigoted, white, male, rtwingnut, xtian terrorists!)
      This is just one more example of hundreds of the anti-intellectual movement by the drooling mump* cult.
    *Prof. Snyder – MUsk_truMP cult

  34. Bekenstein Bound says

    My response does not use that exclusively, because I do not think that kind of thinking is by any means restricted to the conservatives. It is often seen in most extremist and of course religions. there are on occasions represented here with people who only think of their own personal point of view and do not ask themselves very deeply questions nor reality.

    Altemeyer’s RWA scale may prove rather illuminating in this instance.

  35. John Morales says

    Yeah, the Right-wing Authoritarianism Scale was developed by Bob Altemeyer in 1981, but it refers to the Right-wing Authoritarians.

    To bring it up as some sort of retort to the claim that “I do not think that kind of thinking is by any means restricted to the conservatives” is, well… I shan’t say.
    I mean, yeah, so wise! That sort of thinking is spread throughout the population.
    Not restricted to one group.

    And so you, in your wisdom, refer to the decades-old Right-wing Authoritarianism Scale as some sort of informative contribution.

    Thing is, that (silly) claim has little to do with lady scientists, no?

    (But hey, why do the actual topic at hand?)

  36. John Morales says

    [What it supposedly illuminates — elucidates! — is left to the imagination. Of course]

  37. Walter Solomon says

    If Barack Obama deserves a nobel peace prize, Bob Dylan should wipe his ass with it.

    Considering they awarded it to Kissinger, it’s been no better than toilet paper for decades prior to Obama.

  38. Bekenstein Bound says

    Actually, Altemeyer himself says the RWA scale can be applicable outside of just “conservatives”, and includes the example of die-hard adherents to the nominally-communist Soviet regime. Essentially, it’s anyone who is a dogmatic stick-in-the-mud, regardless of which ideology they are dogmatic about.

    Next time, read up before you open your damn gun ports.

  39. John Morales says

    “Actually, Altemeyer himself says the RWA scale can be applicable outside of just “conservatives””

    Mmmhmm.

    So, again: “What it supposedly illuminates — elucidates! — is left to the imagination.”

    What is the specific relevance of your adduction?

  40. John Morales says

    Well, more than one pending question you are loudly attempting to evade, e.g.
    “Thing is, that (silly) claim has little to do with lady scientists, no?”

    (There they are, for anyone to see, care they to do so)

  41. John Morales says

    I already did.
    “Thing is, that (silly) claim has little to do with lady scientists, no?”

    Look, it’s a scale measuring a rather subjective metric and specifically applies to individuals, not to ideologies.

    (I seriously doubt you actually know what it is, based on your comments hitherto)

  42. John Morales says

    But, hey, I don’t want to diminish your contribution that a Right-wing Authoritarianism scale for people might well show that Right-wing Authoritarians who propose Right-wing Authoritarian ideas and policy and so forth score quite highly in Right-wing Authoritarianism.

    (Rather illuminating, well… how so, supposedly, since it is precisely what one would expect?)

  43. John Morales says

    Want another tack?

    Not to have fun with you, but rather to school you.

    Me: So, again: “What it supposedly illuminates — elucidates! — is left to the imagination.”
    You: Do your own homework.

    Burden of proof, you know?

    Your claim it’s elucidating, your repeated silence about what it specifically allegedly illuminates kinda belies your words.

    (Come on, try harder. I mean, I myself did my homework, as I have just demonstrated)

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