Article content continued

Photo by Richard Juilliart/AFP/Getty Images

“Physics was invented and built by men” and “women are actually being hired over men who are more qualified,” an indignant CBC reporter quoted Strumia as saying. The reporter then turned to a disgusted female physicist, Jessica Wade, who claimed that Strumia is a “jealous” bully, and suggested that men like him are the reason only about one in 10 physics professors are women.

Wade appeared the following day on the CBC’s flagship radio program, The Current, where she expanded on her outrage, telling listeners how “terrifying” it is for women that gatekeepers like Strumia exist to keep the talented female physicists out. The host of the show, Anna Maria Tremonti, could barely contain her contempt for Strumia, demanding that Wade explain, “What does the research actually say?” Wade responded with the usual: stereotypes about women being bad at math cause young women to avoid STEM, and those who persevere face misogyny in promotions, publications and student evaluations.

Not for a second did the CBC bother to examine what Strumia actually said. If they had scrolled through his 26-slide lecture, they would have found not an attack on women in physics but an evidence-based plea to end discrimination against men in the field. Strumia, it turns out, made a far more convincing argument about gender bias than the one advanced by Wade and regurgitated by the CBC.

Photo by David Beard courtesy of Oxford University

It’s true that Strumia, who is not a native English speaker, wrote the awkward sentence that “physics was invented and built by men,” but he immediately followed that by saying women like Marie Curie were welcomed into physics “after showing what they can do.” In other words, physics is a meritocracy; women who are up to the task are included.