• Of the Air (cele/celes)
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    9 hours ago

    For anybody having difficulty reading the text:

    Anti Acknowledgements

    There have unfortunately also been people who have been less than helpful in my journey here. I wanted to acknowledge those too, because I know I am not unique in this experience.

    No thank you to the physics study association that made me sing songs about how women couldn’t study physics without sleeping with the professor, the day I stepped into university life. No thank you to the 5th year physics student that decided to assign me a ‘stripper name’ within the first minute of meeting me in the physics coffee corner in my first year. No thank you to the technician that was responsible for onboarding me on the use of the cluster in my third year who raised his eyebrows and asked me if that meant I was some sort of “computer girl”. No thank you to the senior researcher that sent me utterly inappropriate texts after a conference, then proceeded to ‘apologise’ months later by telling me they had not been meant for me anyway so “no hard feelings remain hopefully”. And no thank you to him for attending every conference I’ve been to since. No thank you to the people who told me that it was “surprising” that I was doing a PhD since I was a girl. No thank you to the man who mistook me for a coffee lady at a conference, and after having to correct him two times that I did not work there, responded with “you should consider it”. No thank you to the researcher that asked me what I was wearing underneath my outfit during a conference. No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists “don’t know how to design an experiment”. No thank you to the people who have called me scary instead of strong and intimidating instead of intelligent. And finally, no thank you to the executive board of the TU Delft, whose knee-jerk reaction to being held up to a mirror about the social safety at the university, was to sue the party holding up the mirror instead of looking at the problems they highlighted.

    I wish I could tell you this has all made me stronger somehow but in reality it has only shattered my confidence. You have made me feel like I do not belong in science and I cannot forgive you for that.

    -Rachel

  • @PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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    2213 hours ago

    This sounds like the University of Ottawa. Watching physics professors sexually harass the few women in our class was disgusting.

  • @mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    410 hours ago

    No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists “don’t know how to design an experiment.”

    That’s just what physics does to your brain. They’re all like that.

    • @melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      48 hours ago

      yeah. the rest of this seems like serious grievances, but physicists saying dumb arrogant shit to other scientists about not being ‘real’ fields seems like blaming water for being wet.

    • 野麦さん
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      1412 hours ago

      Spoken like a true man. I’m a victim of sexism in STEM, now resigned to finish my degree in Japanese rather than deal with the awfulness that is men in Engingeering.

  • @NotLemming@lemm.ee
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    851 day ago

    Normalise this. In the past women would have been accused of being unprofessional to have called men out like this. That’s the only reason why every woman doesn’t do it.

    • @AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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      34 hours ago

      My mom is a biologist and complains how physicists always come into biology, try to reinvent everything without looking at any prior work, and then fail to execute their (sometimes interesting, sometimes not) method

    • @ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      341 day ago

      I read that as the subtext still being sexist because Biology tends to have more women in the field compared to Physics.

      • @Nikelui@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Nah, it’s typical university faction wars. Engineers say crap about architects, mathematicians sneer on physicists and so on…

        • @mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml
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          1016 hours ago

          How people can walk out of a university with degrees and not understand how all areas of knowledge contribute towards each other and link together in ways that are not immediately obvious astounds me.

          • @GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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            215 hours ago

            because of a long established undercurrent of competition within departments (and even between professors) for recognition and advancement. That and there are some people that have very large but very fragile egos that can’t allow another person or discipline to grab more sunlight than them.

        • @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          15 hours ago

          Engineers say crap about architects

          As an engineer, this shit is so cringe… There is a youtube gaming channel with an alleged engineer who plays video games (often related to physics or building things), and his entire fucking personality is formed around mocking architects for being “stupid.” He literally substitutes in the word “architect” instead of calling someone stupid. He say’s “they’re an architect.”

          Grow the fuck up goddamn. How insecure do you have to be?

        • @sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          214 hours ago

          I heard a joke once that a physical chemistry experiment will have 1000 data points per trend line; I organic chemistry will have 10 data points, and biochem will have 2 data points.

          I bet to biochemists it’s very insulting. Back to the comment in the anti-acknowledgements, that was insulting without even being funny.

          I like the ones that are symmetrical, like math thinks that physics is easy, and physics things that math is too unreal (I don’t remember the jokes)

          • @emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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            412 hours ago

            a physical chemistry experiment will have 1000 data points per trend line; I organic chemistry will have 10 data points, and biochem will have 2 data points.

            There is an element of truth in this, but that one biochem datapoint probably took more money and (wo)manpower than a hundred phys chem datapoints. Which is sad, because biological systems are usually more complex, and therefore more ‘noisy’, needing more datapoints for a definitive result. Medical studies get a lot of datapoints for obvious reasons, and because they can afford to do it thanks to Merck et al.

    • @GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works
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      81 day ago

      I don’t really understand how that one was a problem if they’re also a physicist, or even if they’re a biologist. Nothing wrong with some fun rivalry.

      • @toddestan@lemm.ee
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        311 hours ago

        When I was at college us physicists would joke about the biologists and the chemists and the mathematicians and the engineers, and in turn they’d joke about us, and we’d all have a good laugh over it.

        I suppose it would come down to the context and how it was said.

      • Tar_Alcaran
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        251 day ago

        There’s always rivalry between physicist and biologists. Or chemists and biologists. Or biologists and biologists. Damn biologists, they ruined biology!