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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
thank you
You’re welcome! 🙂
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.
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.
normalize it to the point that the anti-acknowledgements name names
This seems to be the Netherlands (TU Delft). Maybe it’s normal there.
I don’t think so. Academia is still a pyramid system, and a lot of people want a post-doc or not burn bridges
Related:
He really didn’t coin the term for her specifically, as nice as that sounds.
Well, at least in connection with her:
Coined by English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell in March 1834 in an anonymous review of Mary Somerville’s book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences in the Quarterly Review
That sounds like it was for her specifically in the first use
Name dropping TU Delft is surprising to me! ETA: found more info here, but not about the lawsuit piece.
https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/a-no-thank-you-to-the-person-who-assumed-i-was-the-coffee-lady
Yeah… Not that surprising to me. TU Delft hasn’t been doing so hot. They literally have it all. Corruption, harassment, nepotism. But if you are not a PhD student you shouldn’t be too affected by any of these.
- https://www.ctol.digital/news/phd-termination-tu-delft-academic-fairness-debate/
- https://www.fnv.nl/nieuwsbericht/sectornieuws/fnv-overheid/2024/04/tu-delft-pleegt-censuur-op-eigen-universiteitsblad
- https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/inspectorate-of-education-ascertains-mismanagement-by-tu-delft-but-the-latter-criticises-the-investigation
- https://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/4830825/klokkenluider-tu-delft-maakt-levens-kapot-ik-hoop-dat-dit-eindelijk-eens-stopt
Thanks so much for these links. I haven’t had time to look into Dutch sources. I have two good female friends doing their PhDs in other universities in the Netherlands in the sciences, and I’ve never heard anything even remotely close to this! They love their positions.
This is a pretty holistic article on all the “badness” in english https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/victims-of-social-unsafety-always-draw-the-short-straw-at-tu-delft-an-official-report-that-would-be-the-end-of-me
Edit: Just generally read a bit on delta if you want to know more. It’s the Uni press. They even got censored by the university when they first reported some of this if I recall correctly.
Dank u wel!!
Geen probleem 😉
Thanks. I only heard about Delft from a woman studying there, and didn’t hear any complaints. I guess PhD students cannot run as easily, so they get the short end :(
Actually, I was loosely considering applying there, this made sure I won’t. That stuff needs to be made more public, so that their reputation noticeably suffers. Only then will people care to enact change.
I’m curious there, too.
Shoutout to the physicists dismissing biologist experiment design as a whole instead of across sexual or gendered lines.
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…
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?
I’m a heavy equipment mechanic, and every day in the shop I hear other guys complaining about how an engineer fucked up a design on a piece of equipment and that’s why it failed. Or that the engineer made it hard to work on on purpose. So cringe. I just roll my eyes at them and tell them if they are so smart then why aren’t they the ones designing the equipment lol
Its sad that all the fields feel the need to shit 9n each other. We as a society would got a lot further if we could all get along 😁
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.
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.
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.
It’s got an element of truth but they’re still the butt of a joke
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 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.
There’s always rivalry between physicist and biologists. Or chemists and biologists. Or biologists and biologists. Damn biologists, they ruined biology!
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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.
Fuck these misogynistic pigs, idiots like these need to be called out more often. It’s too bad she couldn’t give names out and completely humiliate and ruin them.
While I agree with the first part of what you said, I don’t think the longterm solution is to call out individuals and make their lives horrible. It sure is a good way to maybe deter a few people from doing those misogynistic things. But what we need is actual structural change. It shouldn’t be possible these people to do such things in the first place without being sanctioned. And we should educate people more on feminism and intersectional struggles in general.
counterpoint: many people fundamentally need to be shamed if they’re being shitheads, or they will never improve. The important part is just that they also need to be given a clear way to redeem themselves.
Naming and shaming is part of the structural change.
Only if the accusations are true. It is just a post on the internet, there is no proof any of this is true or factual. Don’t be in such a hurry to harm others and damage their lives.
As a woman, and having known many other women, I can promise you that none of what is mentioned is particularly far fetched. It’s sad, but we all have multiple stories like this. Almost any woman could put together a similar paragraph of incidents she has personally experienced.
Edit to add: she didn’t even name anyone! No one is harmed, except the people who know they should be ashamed of themselves.
As a man I’d have never believed how common such behavior is. I’d have thought that’s really outlandish.
Now I’ve gone through the (probably stereotypical) process of a guy having a daughter, she’s an adult now.
What she told me - no, all this stuff isn’t unusual at all. The first time she was afraid (and called me as she already had a phone of her own) she was not even 10 years old, riding her bike from my place to the ex-wife’s place, teenage boys catcalling her.
There’s a lot of us men around who find it hard to believe, because it doesn’t happen to US. But it does. Frequently.
It’s not happening to us, but it’s happening all around us and we choose not to see it. Once my own daughter began talking to me about her experiences and pointing out men’s problematic behavior in public, I can no longer not see it.
I know it never happened around me personally, I’m tall and mean looking, but working in service for over a decade and most people don’t know how bad it is. You learn that the restraining order needs to happen BEFORE it gets worse not as it gets worse. And none of that protects workers traveling to work. You can’t let anyone walk alone to their car alone after close, and if a guy comes in and asks for an associate with those creep vibes, and they aren’t known to the associate or a part of their private life in anyway, you need to aggressively fight it. On visit two looking for her, you have to pull her behind closed doors and report to the police he’s stalking and get a restraining order. SECOND VISIT. Anything less and you’re letting to go way to far.
It’s worth noting too that for every instance of feeling scared, there are at least 5 situations where women feel belittled. I think even well meaning men are a lot less aware of it happening, or of them doing it themselves. My own father is a sweetheart who means well, but he’s skeptical of anything I tell him until my husband repeats what I’m saying. I’ve had achievements minimized because I didn’t also raise a family while doing them. I’ve been denied entry into hobbies. I’ve been given fewer opportunities at work because they want a cute face at the front desk. I’ve been told math is not for me, while being the only middle schooler in the math team who could regularly beat high schoolers at competitions. I’ve been told no boys would ever want to be my friend, because boys can only be after one thing, so all the ones being friendly are faking it. And of courses I’ve had boys stop being my friend when it becomes clear that friendship is all I’m after.
It’s harder to spot but cuts to your self worth like these add up over time.
As the husband of a woman with a PhD, let me assure you that I have witnessed several of these first hand when I travel with her to conferences.
A bit more, this is a chapter from a PhD thesis
We should absolutely ruin their lives. Fuckem
Fucking relatable.
No thank you to the hundreds of years of chemist men taking credit for women’s discoveries.
No thank you to the old white Persian man gate keeping chemistry from Ukranians and older women in my class.
No thank you to the sexist math book author who used shoeless women in a kitchen as a word problem example.
No thank you to Amazon for banning my 15 year account for calling the sexist math book author out in reviews.
White Persian?
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.
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
There is an excellent Science channel on Youtube and Nebula with a Physics PHD who’s made some eye-opening content about harassment and misogyny in STEM and Academia.
She’s a great science communicator. Another famous Youtuber (Captain D) called her “the Jenny Nicholson of science” her Dark Matter video is my favorite, though her Gell-Mann Amnesia video is a “must watch” imho.
Watch her dark matter video. And the follow up. But for the love of God, dodge the comments. SO MANY people read the title of the video and then went to make comments calling her wrong, even though she spent like an hour specifically addressing the arguments they make.
Dark matter is not a theory. It’s a problem. Fuck!
The only thing you should post in those comments is:
Dark Matter
Where is it?
How much?
Where is it?
How much?
Do we need it?
I thought it was a theory like how gravity works is a theory.
Like I said, watch her video. She goes into lots of detail and gives a much better explanation than I could ever hope to. But here I go anyway:
The gist of it is that “dark matter” isn’t really an attempt to explain anything. Like, theory of gravity, we have some good rules, things accelerate depending on mass and proximity to other things. Theory of dark matter? Not so much.
Dark matter is a problem in the sense that it’s an observable phenomenon we can’t really explain. When we observe really far away stars and galaxies, they interact in ways that imply far larger amount of matter than what we are actually observing. So where’s that matter? We don’t know! Dark matter! But unfortunately that nomenclature and the many ideas surrounding what does cause the dark matter phenomenon have deeply clouded the conversation.
Dark matter is not a theory of how things work. It’s a problem to be solved.
So it’s more we know it’s there we just don’t currently know what it is.
It isn’t theoretical much like the stink around me rn isn’t theoretical even if I cannot see or smell it with my stuffy nose because when I farted the dog barked at me and ran out of the room. I might not be able to directly observe it but clearly it is there.
Uhh I guess it’s kinda like that, minus you knowing you farted. Imagine the dog barked and ran but you genuinely had no idea why that happened. As a joke you go “dang that was like I farted so bad even the dog couldn’t stand it!” But now everyone heard you say you farted, so any time a dog barks and runs away they call it “Rowbot’s fart.”
Dark matter may not literally be matter of any kind at all. All we know for sure is that objects with a certain amount of observable matter are, for some reason, behaving like they have much, much more. But also not with any consistency; some of them act like they have 30% more, others like they’re twice their size. We just call it dark matter because “dang it’s like there’s a bunch of matter we can’t see.” But we don’t really know what’s causing the discrepancy.
To be fair, it’s not like we’re totally clueless about it, but as of yet no single hypothesis has any concrete proof.
Love her videos! Really opened my eyes to a lot of this.
Here are two videos on that subject that are great to start out with
I recently got recommended her channel. She’s amazing, like Jenny Nicholson but for science.
Holy shit. Get em.
The amount of dudes in this comment section who really aren’t getting it is astounding…
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This just makes me sad. How can science advance, if we gatekeep one half of human population? In my academic career I have consistently found women to be smarter and better than men. Yet, these misogynistic ideas seem to persist. We deserve better than old farts with even older bias heading the institutions that make up our society.
It’s exactly that is why they’re kept down. Tiny men are afraid that they won’t seem as smart as the woman in the room.
As a man, I try to be different. I mentor the women around me and encourage them to do more, be better. I successfully got one of my mentee to negotiate her salary just yesterday even though she felt uncomfortable doing so. Try to be the change we need
Never understood why some people so desperately need to be the smartest being in the universe. You’re a magic meat computers running on a system of hormones so complex that tweaking their balance just a bit can cause unforseen permament consequences. None of us have the right to call ourselves “smart”. Just chill and do your best.
I don’t mentor anybody. I am not smarter than anybody and frankly I am always learning from everybody, at all levels of experience.
Never claimed to be smarter than anyone, but if you’re experienced then people look up to you. A little bit of encouragement can go a long way. Like my story, all I did was nudge her to negotiate, and she felt the confidence to do so.
I can recommend looking into “science days” and stuff like that. It makes you a lot more hopeful for the future to see a lot of curious, open-minded 12-year olds.
And then they likely become the usual cynic adults, but hey, you tried.
When I was in elementary school, we always had a table at the back where the advanced students would do more difficult stuff than the rest of the class while not being completely isolated. The table was always me and 5 or 6 girls. When we graduated high school, I was the top-ranked boy - and the 22nd-ranked student overall. I just took it completely for granted that girls were smarter than boys (although I did perceive the very strong anti-intellectual culture among boys which seemed more impactful than native abilities).
It wasn’t until I went to college that I started encountering the belief that men were fundamentally smarter than women, even though every college and university I’ve attended had more women than male students and the women had much better academic performance. That was my first taste of the power of group delusion.
But now they’re all “DEI hires,” at least in the US, so we’re fucked over here
Half way through the Hidden Figures movie I started to realize that the racist sexist people in charge really deserved to lose to the Russians.
It cannot
Now I want an anti-acknowledgment section in my dissertation too
