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]

-snip-

[ETL]

The particle physics lab at CERN

[ETL]

[chris37]

Maybe we should ask female super expert Alyssa Milano what her thoughts on physics are.

[50mm]

We need the opinion of an esteemed rocket surgeon to dispute this.

[grania]

I’m laughing at the title. The Physicist isn’t an expert about whom excels in his field of endeavor.

[bgill]

Different strokes for different folks.

[ETL]

[SkyDancer]

Paging Marie Curie to the white phone.

[AndyTheBear]

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]

--emphasis added.

Sure, a single example is bad when he does it, but great when we do it in the next sentence....

[Tax-chick]

I’m laughing at the title. The physicist isn’t an expert about who excels in his field of endeavor.

It's a common conceit that a person who is an expert in one subject also knows absolutely everything about every other subject.

[ETL]

Different strokes for different folks.

"He also said that there are fewer women than men in physics largely because of innate differences in intelligence between the sexes, and partly because women are less interested in physics."

[<1/1,000,000th%]

And he provided data.

[Mermaid Girl]

It’s curious. Speaking as a broad, I do sometimes think that the stereotype of men being more technically apt is true. Women are the emotion and creativity, men are the problem solvers.

However... while I’m an English teacher and a writer, I have had this weird late in life conversion to tech that has stunned me.

I’ve never been strong at math — until recently. While studying for a certification exam, something in my brain clicked. I think it was probably aided by an obsession with logic puzzles that I’ve had for over a decade.

So, essentially, logic puzzles were my gateway drug to math and tech.

Now, I’ms seriously mulling a late in life career switch and am teaching myself basic coding (it also helps that two of my older brothers are programmers.) For me, it was just learning the parameters of new language.

I do think what this guy said is pretty brilliant, because it will make numerous feminazis heads explode and it’s a refreshing viewpoint considering this weird cult of wymyn we’ve seen evolve in the last two decades.

[Blogatron]

A very long list of male physicists with few females. All the great composers, too.

[SkyDancer]

I do get the odd look now and then when the door to the flight deck is open and people see me sitting in the right seat doing my thing. I want to see their look when I finally get to sit in the left seat (captain).

[samtheman]

Marie Curie unavailable for comment.

[heartwood]

But the world is full of gallant men...

The only time I changed a tire was in my own driveway at the end of a dead end street... every other time I started some man just took over... Brains are a wonderful thing.

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

The guy is right. Take the top 0.1% of IQ—1 in 1000. Vast majority are men. It’s a fact.

Try to explain it to the “some women have penises” crowd, and you’ll get Kavanaughed.

[ZOOKER]

Anyone remember Jimmy the Greek?

He said something on national television about why black people are so good at sports - and never worked again.

I remember thinking the same thing then as I am now -
1) Maybe he's right
2)There's no way it can ever be proven
3) He's incredibly stupid for bringing it up in the first place.

Just because you think it's true, doesn't make it right to say it.

[Basket_of_Deplorables]

BTW, at the undergrad level, Electrical Engineers have higher math IQ than either Physics or Math majors. Or any other major.

Yes, EE is that difficult.