A senior scientist who said physics "was invented and built by men" has been suspended with immediate effect from working with the European nuclear research centre Cern.LuMo compares this to persecuting Galileo here and here.
Prof Alessandro Strumia, of Pisa University, made the comments during a presentation organised by the group.
He said, in comments first reported by the BBC's Pallab Ghosh, that physics was "becoming sexist against men".
Cern said on Monday it was suspending Prof Strumia pending an investigation.
It stated that his presentation was "unacceptable".
No woman would be fired for pushing the accomplishments of women or for whining about men. This man was fired for presenting some facts and opinions about men. So his firing proved his point -- physics is sexist against men.
I thought that his punishment was potentially justifiable because he was injecting political opinions into a scientific context. But his talk was to a gender politics workshop where all the other opinions complained about male oppression. They will never get to the truth as long as contrary views are censored.
The Galileo analogy is a little silly. Galileo was allowed to publish his arguments about the Earth going around the Sun. He got into trouble when said the official Bible interpretations had been proven wrong.
I am writing this as the Nobel Physics prizes are announced. Marie Curie got one about a century ago.
One of the three prizewinners was a woman, the first in 55 years.
David Benatar has written an excellent book on The Second Sexism that counters the Tradcon male shaming.
ReplyDeleteIt turns out that 41% of women think "The feminist movement unfairly blames men for women's challenges."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/feminism-project/poll/
A poll in Britain showed 70% of people think feminism has gone too far.
https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/03/08/poll-most-british-men-women-say-feminism-gone-too-far/
In truth, Physics was very largely invented and built by men. This is a historical fact (whether you like it or not)that really has no wiggle room for debate unless you are going to invoke an alternate universe where men an women inexplicably make identical career choices. There have been some female physicists of course...but the field is still in fact overwhelmingly male. This will only change when more women decide for themselves (not because someone tells them to) to take more of an interest in physics.
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