An accelerator physicist reaches his breaking point

by Étienne Forest

Readers of the Heterodox STEM substack :

My name is Étienne Forest and I am a 63-year-old accelerator physicist. I am a naturalized Japanese citizen and former Canadian citizen. 

I was asked to review a paper for the Journal of Computational Physics  from Elsevier at the beginning of October 2022.  

I found out that Elsevier had adopted a policy of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (IDE) in May 2022.  They are already giving advice concerning the vocabulary we must use: avoiding words like “master” or “slave”, “whitelist” or “blacklist”, etc...  

In the process, Elsevier asked potential reviewers questions about their sex, race, ancestry, gender identification, etc.... Notwithstanding the fact that such questions are illegal in countries like France and that the Japanese government purposely does not keep public records on its citizen's race, I also find these questions very annoying and intrusive.

In the letter below, I express my strong, non-negotiable opposition.

This is likely the beginning of a slippery slope towards “Equity of Results”, a truly discriminatory concept because, out of pure ideology, it neglects the possibility that culture, race or other factors might influence the lack of equity of results. How to explain, via the Woke theories, the fantastic success of the Ashkenazim, 150 to 400 times over-represented in mathematics and physics? Undoubtedly these fields, socially constructed and subjective, have been redefined to favor the Ashkenazim! Does Elsevier aim for a percentage of Ashkenazim 150 times smaller? Would that be ideal? What method should be used besides pure antisemitism?  

Elsevier has a duty to address issues of IDE if there are systemic problems within its own rank, but it has no business asking us to do anything besides reviewing the scientific quality of a submission irrespective of the race, gender, sexual orientation, age or civil status (incarcerated or not).  I absolutely refuse to care about such things.

In my letter, I show, using the case of Canada, where the slippery slope will lead in countries foolish enough to follow the example of Canada.

Etienne Forest

To whom it may concern :

10,000 scientists, hundreds of universities, 100 countries, speakers of 100s of languages practicing countless number of religions built the Large Hadron Collider, perhaps the most complex machine ever built by man. I resent the fact that some bureaucrat, excreted out of the humanities, will tell us, physicists, about diversity, inclusion and equity when they are too dumb to tell apart what a 1 day old rat sees immediately: a mom and a dad.

Many American neuroses are now being imported to Canada and Europe. The George Floyd episode, the collapse of Roe vs Wade, cultural appropriation, etc... are all American neuroses that Canadians and Europeans are importing out of context within their own cultures as if they were the 51st state of the USA. The IDE ideology and its weaponized post-modernist underpinning is one of the principal vectors of contagion. As a naturalized Japanese, I will do my best to oppose the introduction of these diseases into Japan.

In Canada, an Ontario court forbade mathematics tests for high school teachers and the central government is massacring the French language all in the name of IDE.

In fact, the IDE Canadian remodeling of French, by the government, is a far more injurious attack on the French language than the feminization that was promoted by the Quebec and Belgium governments and resisted for a long time by the French government. You might as well send the Immortals of the French Academy to an epuration tribunal.

The French and the Academy pride themselves in the fact that French has a precise vocabulary. However the IDE ideologues of the Canadian government are roaming the dictionary to replace words with obvious grammatical gender with words where the gender is hidden in an attempt to construct a non-binary French vocabulary. Imprecise? Who cares: diverse and inclusive.

These IDE ideologues must be fought mercilessly at every level. The slippery slope is easy to see: it is called Canada.

I hope that Professors Rémi Abgrall (Editor in chief) and Stéphane Zaleski will realize, via the Canadian example, where kowtowing to IDE can lead to.

Accordingly, I am publicly announcing my desire to cease all interaction with journals that promote the IDE ideology.

Anyone can use or distribute the content of this email and, of course, reveal my identity. I am no longer the coward I was in 1990 when I first noticed this nonsense in Berkeley, California. It is time to grow a pair and fight for reason and the scientific method.

I do not base my conclusion on philosophical musings: smarter people are doing it. But I will say that equity in particular, as in equality of results, is a vicious concept on evolutionary grounds. We are not ants. How can evolution deniers of the woke left, the proponent of tabula rasa, explain that less 0.15% of the world population received 22% of all Nobel prizes? (See PS below) What does Elsevier intend to do about this flagrant violation of equity?

So, as a scientist would do, I look empirically at the aberrations that are now happening in countries like Canada that have adopted the IDE ideology. The results demonstrate that IDE is de facto injurious to the scientific method.

Living in East-Asia, it is clear to me that the scientific method, as an epistemological tool to extract knowledge from fairy tales, is perhaps the only import from the West that is universally accepted. If you do not believe me, go and ask the Chinese or Japanese about “democracy, Human rights, Christianity or Natural Law”. And yet, the purveyor of IDE are doing their damned best to destroy it in the West. Shame, shame, shame.

Best regards,

Patrice Nishikawa

(scientifically known as Etienne Forest)

P.S. On a final note, notice that 208 out of 930 Nobel laureates are Azhekanazi Jews. In fact, they mostly come from Central and Eastern Europe and are thus part of even a smaller minority. These people received 22% of the Nobel prizes with less than 0.15% of the World population. They are at a minimum 150 times over represented. Will Elsevier, for the sake of equity, work very hard to make sure that Ashkenazim represent no more than 0.15% of the people involved in scientific publications? Can this have anything to do with intelligence or superior culture or is it due to a vast Zionist conspiracy?