Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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It seems the brunt of the controversy around the author arose from non-scientific assertions he made during a guest lecture:

> During the presentation, he asserted that physics was built and invented by men, and stated on a slide that “Physics is not sexist against women.”

While the premise of the article is that the paper's publication is "a move likely to attract criticism", the person most critical of the paper, who is interviewed in the article, cites substantive non-political reasons why they dislike the paper:

> One member of the editorial board of QSS, which is published by MIT Press and the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI), gives Strumia’s paper poor reviews. The study is “methodologically flawed” and “fails to meet the standards of the bibliometric community,” says Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington...

So how does the content of the article justify your snark and imaginary irrational response?

>> During the presentation, he asserted that physics was built and invented by men, and stated on a slide that “Physics is not sexist against women.”

Well, the first claim is statistically true (and people who are against e.g. sexism in physics also accept it as true and want to change it).

The second is their opinion, which one might or might not agree with. Don't know about physics, but the biology department in our university was mostly women, for example (contrast with CS, which was 90% men).

>So how does the content of the article justify your snark and imaginary irrational response?

I already covered it in the second part of my response, didn't I?

"if this particular study indeed turns out to be bad (not replicating, bad methodology, etc) that would validate the above truth even more. It would obviously be because no good science could ever come from studying such issues -- not because papers regularly turn to be bad, regardless of subject"

No, you didn't, or at least I interpreted whatever you were trying to say as a red herring. Who in the article makes that insinuation? Who said anything about the paper's purported flawed methodology as automatically validating the "above truth"?

>Who in the article makes that insinuation?

Many people in real life, forums, etc. Who said it had to be in the article? I'm pointing at a larger trend.

I don't see how personal grievances and perceptions of "many people in real life" are useful and relevant to the discussion. Just like my many real life experiences with guys being assholes is not useful to discussing this paper and its publication.

We're not discussing some mathematical formula.

The whole thread is about the political perceptions and opinions of whether such an article should be printed, based on perspectives on various societal issues, plus some meta-discussion on how journals should work.

Check out the (at the moment at least) top voted comment: "In case anyone remembers the incident at CERN (...)" etc.

And of course that meta discussion is much more useful than wether this individual article is correct or not.

I dismissed the criticism because it was not substantive.

> methodologically flawed

How is it flawed?

> fails to meet the standards of the bibliometric community

What standards?

These are both unsubstantiated points, there is no counter argument because there is no argument to counter, all that can be done is to dismiss the argument which comes across as snarky.

If it's not clear, the quoted critic did not write the OP's submitted article. Perhaps "substantive" is the wrong word here, as I did not mean to imply the critic had the space to elaborate on what she meant. What I intended to convey was that her critique was based on valid grounds – e.g. a dispute on the methodology and research. Not "waaaaah i'm a SJW and this paper hurts my political beliefs so please ban it", which is how I interpreted the insinuation made by the parent commenter.

And again, it's worth reiterating what the critic does not assert: that she doesn't want the paper to be published by her journal. She explicitly tells the reporter that her editor-in-chief has complete authority and independence.

We don't have enough evidence to conclude that the 'methodology' concern is legitimate and not merely pretense for a political concern. We need to know about the specific concern. I'm glad she's not asking for the paper to be suppressed because if her concerns are valid, they can be vindicated through the ensuing debate; if the debate renders her concerns invalid, that's good too. In either case, we're a little closer to the truth of the matter and we can make better decisions going forward.

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