This Sexist Researcher Claims That Women Are Bad At Physics Thanks To Psychological Differences

Academic journals are a way for researchers to put out the results of their deep-dive studies. Many are peer-reviewed, giving them that much more credibility when they do publish. However, it seems even prestigious platforms can do incredibly dumb things.

Image courtesy: The Times

The peer-reviewed academic journal Quantitative Science Studies has just made the incredibly controversial decision to publish a paper by a physicist named Alessandro Strumia. Why controversial? Well it's because this misogynist claims he has data to show that women aren't meant for careers in academic research.

For some background, Strumia used to be a visiting researcher at CERN's particle physics lab. "Used to be", because back in 2018 he made some pretty egregious comments about women in the field. He said physics was "built by men, not by invitation", specifically referring to his belief that women were being hired for jobs in scientific research over more capable male peers, merely to fulfil some vague nefarious gender politics agenda.

As you can imagine, sane people were equal parts horrified and bemused by his insane comments, and he was shortly cut off from ties with CERN.

Now Strumia's new paper claims to prove men are more capable for jobs in scientific research, as well as attempting to debunk the notion that women face more obstacles in STEM fields. He's already gone ahead and shared the paper online, which tries to to correlate data like how quickly women with physics PhDs are hired, how soon they start publishing papers, and for how long they continue to do so.

Based on his vast amount of scientific research put in, as well as his extensive background in gender discrimination (note: sarcasm, duh), he claims that male physicists are more productive than their female counterparts. He also goes on to insist that the systemic barriers against women in male-dominated fields like STEM research don't exist. Apparently, according to him, men are just psychologically better equipped to deal with physics research.

Or, as every sexist pig ever has said, "women are too emotional".

As expected, a number of experts that have perused his paper point out that it's brimming with unsubstantiated claims. Indiana University information scientist Cassidy Sugimoto told Science, "the manuscript does not provide a convincing understanding of the literature or the methods, lessening the credibility of the results."

What's even more confusing is that the journal's editorial team responded to Science, claiming they were aware of the holes in the "research" paper. So then why the hell are they publishing it? Well probably because there are, sadly, men on their team that agree with these archaic biases.

I mean it's 2019 guys, it's time to leave this bullshit by the side of the road already.