So I read with amazement in this moning’s Times that a professor at the University of Pisa thinks women aren’t suited to be Physicists. As a woman with a Physics background (it’s my first degree), I’m here to say this professor couldn’t be more wrong.
Women physicists changed the world, in more ways than you would ever believe unless you followed this stuff. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the majority of you reading this right now did so via a wifi connection. You have Hedy Lamar (physicist and actress) to thank for that. She was a physicist who invented the frequency-hopping technique needed to create wifi.
If you’re into space, you’ll love the amazing talents of Jocelyn Burnell, who discovered pulsars. That’s a discovery, by a woman astrophysicist, that changed the way we study space. Thanks, Jocelyn!
Ever heard of DNA tests? You can thank woman physicist Rosalind Franklin for discovering the structure of DNA. We have to wonder what other amazing discoveries she could have made if she had lived past age 37.
So there are three examples of world-changing discoveries from women physicists. I could go on but I’ve made my point. So let’s address why this man felt he had to make this ridiculous claim.
Apparently he believes that men have “a greater variability in IQ”; which I believe makes him a world record contender for the fastest self-own in recorded history.
There’s no evidence to back up this delusional claim, by the way; but he would probably dismiss that little factoid as “cultural Marxism”, which he also blames for the number of people whose careers have apparently (well, according to him anyway) been destroyed for speaking out against this monstrous regiment of women who are taking over the sciences (even though we as a society struggle to get women to actually enter the sciences as a career – people like this man aren’t helping that struggle, by the way).
The fact of the matter is, there is no conspiracy. This guy’s career will be ruined because he made an outrageous claim without recourse to facts. A principle of science – you could say it’s a fundamental principle, in fact – is that any statement must be backed up by evidence.
This man made a claim that cannot be backed up by evidence, and then he presented a conspiracy theory to obfuscate his claims. That’s bad science. Clinging to bad science makes him a bad scientist. If there’s a reason for his career ending, that’s the reason. It doesn’t even need women to be involved.
He showed himself up and he’ll pay the price for it, because that’s how the world works.