A Physicist Said Women's Brains Make Them Worse at Physics — Experts Say That's 'Laughable'

LiveScience ^ | October 2, 2018 | Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer

[ETL]

-snip-

Alessandro Strumia, the physicist in question and a professor at Pisa University in Italy, gave his presentation to a crowd at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), one of the word's most important nuclear physics organizations. The topic of the day was gender in physics, and the crowd was mostly composed of women, according to The Guardian.

Over the course of several slides of his presentation, which are available online, Strumia laid out an IQ-based argument for disparities between men and women in physics.

"Physics graduates have top IQ," he wrote. "It's needed."

He pointed to a study that suggests that while men and women have similar average IQs, men vary more, with very slightly more men at the low and high ends of the spectrum. This is the truth behind gender differences in physics, he argued.

And efforts to bring gender balance to physics are the result of "cultural Marxism" and politicians "promoting a victimocracy" and "ideology" ignoring "blind human biology," he added.

He further argued that men are discriminated against in physics, presenting data suggesting that men at CERN have more total citations, on average, than women. (The raw number of times one's papers have been cited is sometimes considered a mark of prestige in academia.) He also argued that a single example where a woman with fewer citations than him was hired over him was evidence of this bias. (In fact, a woman, Donna Strickland, was awarded part of the Nobel Prize in physics this morning (Oct. 2), for the first time in 55 years.)

[7 Women Who Broke Barriers in Science and Tech]

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[SkyDancer]

Thanks! Several FReeper’s helped me learn that html stuff and put the page together.

[wardaddy]

It’s sure been my observation

There are exceptions

My ex girlfriend is the dean of Hydrology at UT Austin

Her family was ravaged by cancer in Kingston JA area

High incidence of radon in those calcium carbonate rocks or at least they allow it up

She was a forerunner in the study of radon

[ETL]

Generalizations can be valid, just as exceptions to the rule.

[Tired of Taxes]

I have had this weird late in life conversion to tech that has stunned me. I’ve never been strong at math — until recently. . . . I think it was probably aided by an obsession with logic puzzles that I’ve had for over a decade

My experience has been similar. I've been wondering whether estrogen is a factor. For medical reasons, my doctors had to take measures to lower my estrogen levels, and now my verbal skills are not what they used to be. Some articles claim this is a side effect of lower estrogen. Anyway, all of a sudden, in recent years, I discovered an interest in math.

Of course, other factors are possible, too, such as not enough practice in English, focusing more on helping my kids with their high school math homework, and so on.

[clamper1797]

In my 40 years as a computer chip designer I have had the privilege of working with several very gifted woman engineers. I have deep respect for these women and thank them for the mentoring some had provided me over the years

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks ETL.

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• 'Physics built by men - not by invitation'

[FXRP]

“Growing up I was the only person who loved word problems in class... “

In real life, every problem is a word problem. You should have been a computer programmer.

[a little elbow grease]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8-4bpDXIiQ

Just for BIG LAUGHS — Trumps Cult Like Force —
(Alyssa Milano: “Trump using a “CULT LIKE FORCE” for influence....”) Stephanie Ruhle thinks Mylissa Milano has lost her f-ing marbles ….(check out Stephanie Ruhle’s face right after the 35 second point).