{"id":9250,"date":"2018-10-28T17:09:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T21:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=9250"},"modified":"2018-10-28T22:40:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T02:40:52","slug":"free-speech-and-irritants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=9250","title":{"rendered":"Free speech and irritants"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allow me to preface this post with the following: I despise Donald J. Trump, the infantile, narcissistic, racist, misogynist “leader of the free world” who is quite possibly a traitor and may never have become president without help from his Russian buddy Putin. Also, when it comes to matters that I consider important, I am a small-l liberal; I support, for instance, LGBTQ rights, the right to have an abortion, or the legalization of cannabis, to name a few examples. I celebrate the courage of #MeToo victims. I reject racism and misogyny in all forms, open or covert.<\/p>\n

Yet I am appalled by some of the things that happened lately in academic circles, sadly justifying the use of the pejorative term “SJW” (social justice warrior) that is so popular on the political right. A few specific cases:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Last month, the European nuclear research institution CERN held a workshop with the title, High Energy Physics and Gender<\/em>. One of the speakers was the Italian physicist Alessandro Strumia. Strumia offered a semi-coherent presentation, whimsically titled Experimental test of a new global discrete symmetry<\/em>. In it, Strumia argued that men are over-represented in physics because they perform better. In the presentation, he offered some genuine data, but he also offered what may be construed as a personal attack, in the form of a short list of three names: those of two women who were hired by Italy’s nuclear research institute INFN, along with Strumia’s, who was rejected despite his much higher citation count. Strumia’s research is questionable. His conclusions may be motivated by his bitterness over his personal failures. His approach may be indefensible. All of which would be justification to laugh at him during his presentation, to not accept his work for publication in the workshop proceedings, and perhaps to avoid inviting him in the future.\n
    <\/div>\n

    But CERN went a lot further<\/a>. They retroactively removed Strumia’s presentation altogether from the conference archive, and have since administratively sanctioned him, putting his future career as a physicist in question. When this response was questioned by some, there came the retroactive justification that his one slide containing the three names constitutes a “personal attack”, violating CERN policy.<\/p>\n

    I don’t agree with Strumia. I don’t like him or respect his research. But I have to ask: If he is not allowed to offer his views at a conference dedicated to “high-energy physics and gender” without fear of severe repercussions, where can he?<\/p>\n

    Now you might ask why he should be given a platform at all. Because this is (supposedly) science. And science thrives on criticism and controversial views. If we only permit views that preach to the choir, so to speak, science dies. I’d much rather risk getting offended by clowns like Strumia from time to time.<\/li>\n

  2. Meanwhile, a few weeks ago, we learned of Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian<\/a>, who prepared and submitted 20 completely bogus papers to reputably social science journals. Here are a few gems:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n