Physicist says women are worse at physics at CERN

This weekend, a renowned Italian physicist, Alessandro Strumia, presented to CERN budding scientists on the dangers of gender equality and "cultural Marxism" in science, claiming that women can not to be as gifted in physics as men, and complained that the victims of gender-based discrimination are male scientists, including himself, who have moved on to jobs that tend to to less experienced women.

The speech took place at a workshop organized by CERN, the research organization responsible for the Large Hadron Collider. The workshop aimed to highlight gender issues in the world of high energy physics. and Strumia was one of the 38 scientists invited by CERN to speak.

During the afternoon at Strumia (his workshop was entitled Bibliometric Data on Gender Issues in Basic Theory), he made a presentation counter to the very idea that women scientists were victims of sexism.

Highlights of the Strumia slides (which have since been removed by CERN) include:

• He described as "cultural Marxism" the idea of ​​widespread sexual discrimination against women scientists. He also wrote about the "PC Thinking Police".
• After claiming that "physics was invented and built by men," he wrote that brilliant women scientists such as Marie Curie are "well received" by their physicist colleagues, after showing "what they can make". In reality, Curie was rejected by the French. Academy of Sciences in 1911, even after having already discovered two elements and won a Nobel Prize.
• He himself used a case study to support his theory that women scientists are hired to senior positions in the field, although they have less merit and skills than men. He included a slide showing that he was quoted more times than women hired for the kind of role that he thought he probably deserved.
• He lamented the treatment of men who argued that sexist biases in the world of science and technology were overestimated or ordered naturally, referring to incidents involving people like James Damore and Lawrence Summers.

One of Strumia's arguments, that women are less cited in research because they are less able in physics, falls into disrepair under the slightest control, according to Jessica Wade, a physicist who also presented the workshop.

"Quotations are not a good measure of capacity. They rely on a peer assessment, which is biased against women and non-Westerners, and on scientists reading, respecting and quoting your work, which is still discriminating against women, "Wade said. to Gizmodo by e-mail, referring to a mine of research.

Wade was not present at the Strumia conference, but she was one of many scientists unhappy with the situation on Twitter.

"It's disturbing that he lied to conference organizers about the content of his presentation. He felt that it was acceptable to make these remarks in front of a room full of women at the beginning of their career and that he feared no repercussions, "she said. "His opinion will not only affect them, but the generation of scientists that he trains and supervises."

Strumia works mainly at the University of Pisa in Italy. And part of his research is funded by a grant from the European Research Council, which was carried out at CERN. This affiliation was sufficient for Strumia to obtain its own profile on the CERN webpage. one of the many scientists invited from the research center.

Shortly after criticisms of Strumia's speech began to circulate online, CERN nevertheless extracted the slides from an online database of the day's presentations, describing them as "very shocking". On Monday, in a press release, the organization announced that it was suspending "any activity at CERN with immediate effect, pending an investigation into last week's event.

The European Research Council also announced on Monday that it would contact CERN about the incident, while the University of Pisa announced that its Ethics Committee would investigate Strumia's actions.

CERN stated that it was unaware of the content of Strumia's presentation before, and that a scientist affiliated with CERN claims on Twitter, Strumia lied to the organizers about the content of his presentation.

But according to Marika Taylor, a theoretical physicist at the University of Southampton in the UK and a member of the CERN Workshop Organizing Committee, Strumia's motives were suspicious before her speech.

"The sexist bias in the quotes is a big problem, so we accepted his presentation. We were prepared to think that the data analysis implies that women are weaker, but we were ready to discuss this interpretation in a professional way, "she told Gizmodo by e-mail. "The presentation was not uploaded in advance. The content and delivery were not professional and violated codes of conduct. "

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, who spoke about racism and sexism on the ground, says the most pressing question is why Strumia was allowed to stay there.

"I would be interested to know how he was determined that he was the right speaker and whether his level of expertise on women in high energy physics was taken into account," she said. in Gizmodo.

Similarly, Prescod-Weinstein questioned why well-informed American experts who had studied and written about sexism and racial prejudice did not seem to be depriving themselves of the niches of intervention spoken to them. 'workshop.

"The figures for black women in European high energy physics are even worse than in the US, and we hope they will recognize that our growing intersectional discourse has something to offer them," she said. .

"For me, the fundamental question is whether anyone thought that a commitment to feminist theory was valuable or required expertise, and if not, why not?" She added.

Taylor noted that CERN and associated organizations took early action and began investigating Strumia's actions.

Strumia, contacted by both his university and CERN e-mail addresses, did not respond to a request for comment.