"Statement on a Recent Talk at CERN"We write here first to state, in the strongest possible terms, that the humanity of any person, regardless of ascribed identities such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, disability, gender presentation, or sexual identity is not up for debate. Physics and science are part of the shared inheritance of all people, as much as art, music, and literature, and we should strive to ensure that everyone has a fair opportunity to become a scientist.(...)Strumia complains that he personally was not hired for a position that a woman was hired for, despite having a larger number of citations than her. He even compares his citation number to that of a (female) member of the search committee for this job. This information is surely useful for understanding the psychology of why Strumia would give such a talk, but it is no indication of injustice in the hiring process. Indeed citations accrue for all kinds of reasons, some laudable and some not, and using them as a substitute for scientific quality is very problematic; any responsible hiring process will take much more into account than mere citations, especially for a management role, as in the case of the position in question. As an example of the inappropriateness of citations as a metric, almost 1/3 of Strumia's citations come from being one of thousands of authors on the CMS Higgs discovery paper, to which we can safely conclude that his contribution (as a theoretical associate in an experimental collaboration) was modest. Hundreds more citations come from papers about the statistically insignificant 750 GeV fluctuation at CERN, which disappeared with more data. As physicists, we are used to vigorous and often heated debate over ideas and theories, but the fact that Strumia took the opportunity to personally attack scientists who have been active in efforts to improve the situation for minorities and white women in physics, out of apparent jealousy that at some point they were offered jobs that he applied for, is deplorable and unacceptable.Strumia uses as evidence for his case a claim that the number of citations for women increases more slowly than for men as their careers progress. His numbers however do not control for many factors, including social expectations that may result in women taking on more primary caregiver roles at home, or more departmental roles earlier in their careers. These in fact might fit his data better than assuming women are inferior since the decline he claims does not begin until after the postdoc level.Strumia argues that Marie Curie's Nobel prize is evidence against discrimination. Lauding one outstanding individual does not exculpate anyone from oppressing thousands of others. Further, it should be noted that Marie Curie faced both xenophobic and sexist resistance to her work both during her research and during the process of receiving the Nobel Prize. Her success, in spite of this resistance, is heroic and admirable, and not an example of being welcomed with open arms by the community as Strumia suggests. Moreover there are at least four women whose work is relevant for particle physics who are widely viewed as having deserved the Nobel prize but who did not receive it, in some cases even though their male colleagues did: Chien-Shiung Wu, Vera Rubin, Lise Meitner, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. While we are pleased to see Prof. Strickland's accomplishments recognized this year, a gap of 55 years since the last woman won the Nobel Prize in Physics does not suggest that women in our field face no external obstacles to success. Such well-known cases where accomplishments of women were not formally acknowledged suggest that similar omissions may be occurring at all levels, and raise another possible reason for the differential in citations discussed previously.Strumia argues that it is actually men who experience discrimination, since they are more likely to serve in wars and be used as forced labor. While many talented people of all genders still face barriers due to war and conflict, these concerns are not part of the experience of the majority of white male physicists born and raised in Europe or North America in the current era.(...)Finally, we would also like to underline how grossly unethical it is to misrepresent the topic of one’s talk to workshop organizers to promote an agenda which is antithetical to the workshop itself.https://www.particlesforjustice.org+"Gender-bias in Academia: The Case Strumia"(...)The slides (Strumia's presentation) contain statements that are both inaccurate and exceedingly unprofessional.For example, he begins his talk by stating that “smarter people are less affected by implicit bias,” but this is wrong. Studies have shown repeatedly that intelligence does not protect from thinking biases. Yes, intelligence is useful to overcome certain types of biases (mostly those that can be exposed with mathematical reasoning), but only once people are aware they are biased to begin with. Strumia’s mistaken belief that intelligent people are less affected by cognitive biases does not remotely surprise me. I have encountered this very same attitude (“We are too smart to be biased!”) among almost all high-energy theorists and phenomenologists I have spoken with about the issue. That in itself is a bias, known as the “bias blind spot.” But that Strumia is ill-informed about the very topic he speaks about at a scientific workshop is not the biggest problem with his presentation. Far worse is that he names and attacks two women, apparently because he is annoyed he did not get a job that he was shortlisted for. (...)http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/10/gender-bias-in-academia-case-strumia.html?m=1+"Le cifre sono ingannevoli. Forse deliberatamente perché nella presentazione è l'unico caso di capre e cavoli. Così accusa Silvia Penati (già presa di mira nella slide 10, una delle due donne sui 5 membri della commissione dell'INFN, il numero delle sue citazioni è irrilevante) di aver truccato il concorso per promuovere un'incompetente (in realtà, i commissari hanno ritenuto 10 persone più valide).La prima cifra somma citazioni individuali che, sotto, nella stessa slide sono indicate come "Nicit", la seconda quelle collettive indicate come "Ncit". (Tra l'altro gran parte delle pubblicazioni di Strumia sono "reviews", i.e. raccolgono e commentano lavori altrui, che sono molto più citate dei paper di ricerca). Per esempio il suo paper più citato ha 2.900 autori e 8.000 citazioni collettive, gliene toccano 2,6. Escludendo le "Ncit", le rassegne, le sue cantonate da "ambulance-chaser", la differenza si riduce, idem come "primo autore": lei 41, lui 44"http://ocasapiens-dweb.blogautore.repubblica.it/2018/10/02/donna-debunking-strumia/+<3<3"The Strumion. And on."(...)"Among his other amazing discoveries is the fact that despite its presence in closely related fields, there is no gender bias in citation practices in particle physics. This is obvious, since we are too clever and scientific to be biased in any way².Therefore Strumia can use citations as an exact proxy for physics ability. By the way, he “inspired” me to check my citation count on the Inspire database and it is a LOT bigger than his. And I mean several times bigger. So clearly I am not being paid enough and should have all the jobs. Or maybe it’s just that I’m on some big collaborations, like ATLAS. Or CMS, which has a Higgs discovery paper with more than 8000 citations. Which, funnily enough, is one of only two CMS papers I can find of which Strumia is an author, despite being a theorist. So that’s more than a quarter of his citation count there even though he only popped into the collaboration for a couple of papers. He must have done something super useful for CMS.Moving on.Apparently, his argument goes, there is a wider distribution of IQ values in the male population than female. So there are more high-IQ male individuals (as well as low ones, of course). Lesser mortals might wonder what to do with such information, but not the man who gained hundreds of his precious citations by explaining a 750 GeV bump which turned out not to be there after all.In a brilliant intellectual leap, he takes IQ as a proxy for physics ability, ignores the documented evidence of structural and other bias against women in science and society, assumes the distribution of IQ amongst the population of physicists (highly selected under those biases as it is) is the same as that amongst the general population, and proves – PROVES I TELL YOU – that men are better than women at physics and if wasn’t for inherent bias against us we would be getting most of the jobs. Especially that one on Slide 15, I guess.*The Strumion*. A very small particle which interacts by misleading conference organisers and insulting its audience based on shabby analysis of cherry-picked data?"https://lifeandphysics.com/2018/10/01/the-strumion-and-on/+"The Natural Order of Things? Part III: The Song Remains The Same"(...)Strumia’s core premise is so flawed as to be laughable. His argument rests on the idea that citations scale directly not only with the quality of science but, remarkably, with intelligence. (...)So what explains the tendency for nations that have traditionally less gender equality to have more women in science and technology than their gender-progressive counterparts do? That question is posed here: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/(...)That out of the way, let’s turn to the article in The Atlantic you cited… (Δεν θα κάνω quote όλη την τεράστια απάντηση)https://muircheartblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/the-natural-order-of-things-part-iii-the-song-remains-the-same/---Το σχόλιό μου:Good riddance poor loser! ;-)