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Hero.
I love everything about how she’s calling out the culture in her realm of academia and casting it in Stone by being the first pages of her book.
Sucks it all happened. But proud to have it justly put on blast.
What she has been through is awful.
I wish though that more people knew the difference between an Acknowledgements page and a Thank You page.
This should properly be titled Anti Thanks.
Acknowledgements should only cover individuals and institutions whose contributions are a direct factor in the material body of the text.
You should let her know so you can make your way into the next printing
Holy shit. Get em.
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
Dammit. Should have checked the comments first.
Oh, uh, why?
Because I squinted my way through the image first. I should have read the comments first.
Yeah. We had to do that kind of too, so we decided to type it all up. Opened up a notepad like program and wrote every single thing in the image, then went back to check for mistakes we made. We missed a few but the browser’s spell checker picked them up thankfully 🙂
It’s greatly appreciated, even though I derived no benefit. You make lemmy better.
Thank you. We try!
Bravo to the exceptional bravery on display here. I’m sure the majority of PhD graduates, including myself, wish they’d had the gumption to name and shame the suppressing factors contributing to a toxic academic environment. Reading this makes me kind of appreciative that my troubles were only administrative mismanagement and an inexperienced supervisor.
Also what the hell is up with TU Delft? It’s only partway through March and this is the second time this year that I’ve seen a PhD candidate publicly call out the institute.
The amount of dudes in this comment section who really aren’t getting it is astounding…
is it not normal to assign stripper names to all the women you want to have sex with?
/s
This sounds like the University of Ottawa. Watching physics professors sexually harass the few women in our class was disgusting.
Start creating a list of them…
The university does this actually. It’s called the faculty list of tenured professors.
God damn
Unfathomably based.
can’t wait to experience that myself!! 🥰
why is this rachel too scared to name names?
Libel lawsuits are a bitch.
And this burden of proof is on the accuser.
I don’t doubt the stories, but a court would see it in a different way for a good reason. It’s hard to find a solution between slander and rightfully calling someone out.
Reminds me of Sabine Hossfelder, a physicist, who had made some similar experiences.
Proof that educated people can still be immensely stupid and be utter human trash.
It’s sad that she decided to channel her experience into transphobia, as if punching down will somehow make up for all the punches she got.
Really? That’s news to me.
Was news to me also, very sad news indeed
She also made a video extolling the virtues of capitalism and how science wouldn’t have progressed without it, but then oddly went on to make videos about why she had to leave academia because of profit motive forcing her to research things that didn’t matter but got grant funding to keep her alive, without making the connection that the profit motive that destroyed her dream is due to capitalism.
Not to mention, she’s fueling anti-science perspectives.
Ironically - still successfully highlighting how smart people can be assholes.
Also, she’s very ableist in that she is against autistic people
clearly you don’t understand physics.
edit: oh no, soft science people downvoting me because they don’t understand conservation of energy. shocking.
Love the part on the video where essentially she says “I was given my first research position thanks to a grant for women. Also, there should be no research grants for women”. Piece of shit.
To be clear, you are criticising Sabine for saying there should be no research grants for women? If so, you perhaps misinterpret her meaning?
If I know Sabine at all from her videos, she would have meant that in an equal world, grants aimed specifically at either sex should not be necessary.
That’s quite different from a “raise the drawbridge” stance - but I’m a casual viewer, so please be kind while putting me right, if warranted.
in an equal world, grants aimed specifically at either sex should not be necessary
Not quite, I’m afraid. Her point was essentially “I had very good grades, so I would have been hired anyway, but instead of hiring me normally, they hired me through this grant for women, which is a form of discrimination”. She’s not explicitly saying “kick the ladder when I’m up top”, but it’s essentially the conclusion. She mentions it on the “what’s wrong with academia” thingy video.
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.
I appreciate her telling it like it is and not bowing to a pressure to please.
Found an article speaking more about it, if anyone is curious about the context/her work.
Never let the actions of others dictate your future. If you have a goal never never give up.
Victim blaming, classic
What I read was “don’t let these bastards stop you”, as in “whatever they do, you have your place in science or any other pursuit you make”.
It doesn’t mean “no change needs to be made”. Rachel didn’t give up, and was right about it, and it’s good she spoke up.
Who is the victim?
The woman who had to endure constant misogyny during her scientific career. You’re placing the responsibility on her instead of the people oppressing her
Shoutout to the physicists dismissing biologist experiment design as a whole instead of across sexual or gendered lines.
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
I read that as the subtext still being sexist because Biology tends to have more women in the field compared to Physics.
Nah, it’s typical university faction wars. Engineers say crap about architects, mathematicians sneer on physicists and so on…
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)
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.
