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COMMENTARY

Female contributions to high-energy physics
in a wider context: Commentary on an
article by Strumia

un acceso abierto

diario

Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group, University of Wolverhampton, Reino Unido

Mike Thelwall

Citación: Thelwall, METRO. (2021). Female
contributions to high-energy physics in
a wider context: Commentary on an
article by Strumia. Quantitative Science
Estudios, 2(1), 275–276. https://doi.org
/10.1162/qss_c_00118

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_c_00118

Autor correspondiente:
Mike Thelwall
m.thelwall@wlv.ac.uk

Derechos de autor: © 2021 Mike Thelwall.
Publicado bajo Creative Commons
Atribución 4.0 Internacional (CC POR 4.0)
licencia.

La prensa del MIT

Strumia’s presentation at CERN in 2018 (Strumia, 2018) rightly drew widespread condemna-
tion from the physics and wider scientific community (Guardian, 2018; Independent, 2018), en-
cluding a petition with over 4,000 signatures, mainly from physicists (www.particlesforjustice
.org). His article in this issue corrects the major flaws in the bibliometric part of his argument
and contextualizes the results better in terms of confounding factors that differently affect men
and women. Below I comment only on the published article and not on the presentation. To be
honest, I found the presentation slides (I did not hear the talk) so offensive in style that I do not want
to comment on the one important point in the slides that I agreed with.

The article by Strumia finds, among other things, that men tend to write more papers and
attract more citations than women, and that this becomes increasingly true for the most produc-
tive and cited fraction in high-energy physics in the database studied. This occurs for reasons that
could not be explained to the standard level of statistical significance with any of the confound-
ing factors checked. To set this in context, my recent study showed that female first-authored
research from the United Kingdom, United States, and Spain was more cited than male first-
authored research, but the reverse in India and Turkey (Thelwall, 2018), so it is possible that
one gender bibliometrically outperforms another in some ways of slicing up science, pero esto
should not be extrapolated to all of science.

Do Strumia’s high-energy physics results give strong evidence that males are somehow better at
high-energy physics? Absolutely not. As the paper acknowledges, it is not possible to check
all confounding factors and bibliometric indices are not reliable indicators of academic contribu-
ciones, as they only reflect academic publishing and the academic impact of academic publishing.
Nobody should make hiring decisions based on publishing and citations alone. Además, career-
based bibliometric statistics involving gender are always hard to interpret because of the many
factors that affect women more. Some of these are structural, such as lower retirement ages until
recently, some are recorded and individual, such as career breaks or part-time working for carer
responsibilities, and some are unrecorded, such as families unequally sharing childcare and other
responsibilities outside working hours (affecting academics that research in their spare time) y
sexism. It also seems likely that there are gender differences in teaching (Ceci, Ginther et al., 2014)
and other nonpublishing contributions to universities in many countries and fields. It is entirely
likely—although also unproven and inherently impossible to prove—that women make greater
contributions to high-energy physics than men when the totality of both genders’ contributions
(publications and other) are considered. Although this is too difficult to measure, it should
not be forgotten.

The low proportion of women in most science, tecnología, engineering, y matemáticas
(STEM) subjects in many countries is a concern. Initiatives such as Athena SWAN in the United

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Female contributions to high-energy physics in a wider context

Kingdom and ADVANCE in the United States are attempting to redress this imbalance among uni-
versity academics, and multiple attempts to redress the gender balance in the United Kingdom
have led to a female majority taking exams for (optional) science subjects for the first time in
2019 (Guardian, 2019). Thousands of journal articles have also investigated the STEM gender
disparity, with conflicting evidence of potential causes (Ceci et al., 2014). Por supuesto, given our
history of gender discrimination in education, the top priority should be ensuring that the lack
of girls and women is not still due to sexism and gender discrimination at school, at university,
and in hiring and promotion decisions, as well as in society generally. Part of this is ensuring that
issues disproportionately affecting women, such as a greater likelihood of taking career breaks or
periods of part-time working for carer responsibilities, do not hamper their choice of career or pro-
motion prospects. It is also important to ensure that all members of society are fully free to choose
careers, unconstrained by factors such as gender, etnicidad, wealth, or disability. Nobody should
believe that they can’t follow their career goals because of who they are, and nobody should have
to fight against prejudice to get their career goals taken seriously and supported.

Against this background, it is always wonderful to hear female success stories in science. I
can’t imagine how hard it must have been for the female science Nobel Prize winners to fight
through prejudice and sexism to make their contributions, and I hope—and believe—that it is
easier for the current generation. These success stories must surely also help to create a culture in
society where it is accepted that gender should not be a barrier to science careers, perhaps also
creating role models for the next generation.

Personal preference also plays a role in career choices in richer nations. Since there are many
female biologists but few female mathematicians, physicists, or computer scientists getting research
degrees in the United Kingdom (HESA, 2018: Cifra 18, postgraduate research degrees), for exam-
por ejemplo, it is logical to wonder why scientific women disproportionately target biology whereas scientific
men disproportionately target mathematics, física, and computer science. As cited in the Strumia
paper, one theory is that women value the societal benefits of careers more whereas men are more
focused on individualized benefits (Diekman, Steinberg et al., 2017). This raises the possibility that
fields such as high-energy physics, with a low proportion of women are, or are perceived to be,
less directly beneficial to society. As a corollary of this, it is possible that the lack of women in
high-energy physics is not primarily due to sexism but due to a lack of women that want to do it. Si
this is true, then the challenge for high-energy physics is to persuade women that it is worth doing.

REFERENCIAS

Ceci, S. J., Ginther, D. K., Kahn, S., & williams, W.. METRO. (2014). Women
in academic science: A changing landscape. ciencia psicológica
in the Public Interest, 15(3), 75–141. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177
/1529100614541236, PMID: 26172066

Diekman, A. B., Steinberg, METRO., Marrón, mi. r., Belanger, A. l., & clark, mi. k.
(2017). A goal congruity model of role entry, engagement, and exit:
Understanding communal goal processes in STEM gender gaps.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(2), 142–175. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868316642141, PMID: 27052431

Guardian. (2018). 1,600 scientists rebuke CERN physicist over
gender bias. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/06
/1600-scientists-sign-petition-against-cern-physicist-alessandro
-strumia-open-discrimination.

Guardian. (2019). Female students outnumber males in A-level sci-
ence entries. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug
/15/female-students-outnumber-males-in-a-level-science-entries.

HESA.

(2018). Higher Education Student Statistics: Reino Unido, 2016/
17—Qualifications achieved. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/11
– 0 1 – 2 0 1 8 / s f r 2 4 7 – h i g h e r – e d u c a t i o n – s t u d e n t – s t a t i s t i c s
/qualifications.

Independent. (2018). Physicist who claimed ‘physics was invented
by men’ suspended by CERN with immediate effect. https://www
.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/physics-men-women
-invented-alessandro-strumia-physicist-cern-workshop-talk
-a8562801.html.

Strumia, A. (2018). Experimental test of a new global discrete sym-
metry. https://alessandrostrumiahome.files.wordpress.com/2019
/03/strumiagenderslidescern.pdf.

Thelwall, METRO. (2018). Do females create higher impact research?
Scopus citations and Mendeley readers for articles from five coun-
intentos. Journal of Informetrics, 12(4), 1031–1041. DOI: https://doi
.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.08.005