For eight years now, in between waitressing jobs, I have been questioning the ideas of stringers and loopies, at countless conferences and seminars at research universities, and in private conversations and emails. Along the way I obtained a PhD on my own quantum gravity research. In the decade before that, I spent year after year studying mathematical physics, at interesting places around the world. In the decade before that I worked, amongst many other things, as a professional experimental physicist. Now the experimental results pointing away from traditional stringy foundations are rolling out at breakneck speed, and I continue to write this blog.
As far as I can tell, after all that, not one professional physicist values my opinions on quantum gravity. In fact, people with backgrounds in mathematics, computer science, philosophy, chemistry (and God knows what else) have sternly offered their advice to me, as if their university status and gender is itself a sufficient measure of their superior knowledge about physics. Well, it is not for us to judge. We shall let Nature do that.
14 years ago
Ms Franklin at Harvard to publish a paper had to have hundreds of co-authors cited with her. And they would not let her do hands on repairs on her physics experiments.
ReplyDeleteYes, things have certainly changed. But when there were only one or two women, nobody felt any real threat to their way of life. Back in the 1980s we thought we were breaking that last barrier. How wrong we were.
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