New Scientist has asked me to write an article for them describing my reasons for doing the statistical study of the conference allocations at Fermilab, and describing my feelings about the response the study has gotten.
It was interesting to get a chance to write about both. The preprint doesn't give the background behind the study, and except on this blog I haven't publicly spoken about my feelings about the study, and especially about the responses it has received.
I was at a party yesterday where roughly 20% of the people were particle physicists and they all had either read my study or knew about it. None of them had known I had ever done the study up until now (which was my main reason for releasing it...people should know when they are working under a system that is prone to bias). One of my friends asked what I thought of the commentary left on the Nature article. I said that, to be honest, I am dismayed at the extremist responses the study has engendered. I never expected the preprint to get this kind of publicity, and I am not sure it is good for the field. There may be some good that comes out of it (for instance, new particle physics experiments trying to avoid administrative systems that are ripe for endemic bias), but there has been a whole lot of bad that has come out of it; the commentary left on the Nature article and the Chronicle of Higher Ed article is a terrible advertisement for STEM as a career, whether you are male or female. Also, it is a terrible advertisement as to what happens to, or is said about, people who dare to do studies like mine. And I don't think the commentary is going to raise anyone's awareness enough to make it any easier for the next person who does a study like mine. I read the commentary and it literally makes me wince.
I don't know what the "right" amount of publicity is for something like my preprint. Obviously I released it because I wanted particle physicists at Fermilab to be aware of the problem. I don't know how much publicity would have struck a good balance between particle physicists knowing about the study, and a media circus that is painful to witness.
Things have calmed down considerably at Casa Absinthe as far as e-mails and phone calls, etc, but the last couple of weeks have been a rocky ride. But, if I had to do it all over again, I would have released the pre-print last month. There is no "good time" that it could have been done. Also, as my husband has pointed out, it would have been something that would have always bothered me if I had never released it.
So, despite the media circus, I am glad that it is out there. If the extremist commentary has done damage to the field by discouraging young people from pursuing physics, it isn't my fault, because the commentary thread just reflects the sorry state of the field. I didn't write the commentary, other people did.
Still, I hope other people have not been scared away from doing studies such as mine. There is a lot of similar data out there at other experiments just waiting to be analyzed and it would be really interesting if a trend started where people in the field started doing studies like this on a regular basis. If they haven't been scared off that is.
