PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY | Statement in Response to Strumia’s talk at CERN last week
Dear Physics & Astronomy Community:
This letter is in response to a uniformed talk given last week by Professor Alessadro Strumia at CERN. If you are not aware of the incident you can see a summary here [1, https://tinyurl.com/y7eyg82r]. The talk has received such coverage that the undersigned departmental leadership felt compelled to address the presentation directly.
Professor Strumia suggested that men were over-represented in physics because of their inherent “interest and ability.” He showed some statistics on published paper counts and citations, concluding that physics as a field suffers from no sexism against women because “smarter people are less affected by implicit bias.” This approach ignores the fact that statistics of this kind are influenced by any bias inherent in the system and cannot be used to test for its existence nontrivially. It should be noted that CERN quickly disavowed the presentation.
There is substantial evidence that high-achieving scientists, both men and women, suffer from substantial preexisting unconscious bias against women [2]. An extensive literature in sociology exists showing that women in science are evaluated as less capable when performing identical work. While research in this direction goes back decades [3], the field has only recently begun to take steps to consciously address gender inequity and this has unfortunately spurred backlash of the type displayed last week at CERN.
This department repudiates the notions put forth in Strumia’s talk in the strongest possible terms. Not only are the theories he champions inconsistent with scientific studies [3,4], but they send a dangerous message to the community, especially young women who are considering a career in physics. As a department, we recognize the intrinsic worth of all who work and study here. We appreciate and value the ability of women to contribute at the highest levels in Physics & Astronomy and will do all we can to create an environment that fosters gender equity.
The Particle Physics group will be hosting a town-hall discussion on this issue for the department community next week with the date and time to be announced. We welcome anyone who wishes to raise a topic for discussion at that meeting to talk to us.
Sincerely yours,
James Bullock, Professor and Chair
Mu-Chun Chen, Associate Chair of Inclusive Excellence
Timothy Tait, Professor and Vice Chair for Graduate Studies
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of California, Irvine
[1] https://tinyurl.com/y7eyg82r
[2] http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474 , https://tinyurl.com/ybxsgpyq
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/387341a0, https://tinyurl.com/yd4j5cyl