Physics education journals are known for their eclectic mixes of articles. Some papers are exactly what you’d expect in a good education journal: Statistical studies of student performance in response to different teaching techniques. Such studies can be done well or done poorly, like any other type of study, but it’s entirely reasonable that education journals put these studies out there for further consideration.
Sadly, it is not even the first paper of the kind -- see, for example, here--paper from J. Chem. Ed. published by the American Chemical Society, "A Special Topic Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconcious Racism in STEM"
My favorite quote from it: The course explores “the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism.” “To problematize time as a linear social construct,” the paper says, “the Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of wave-particle duality was utilized”
Earlier, J. Chem. Ed. published the whole special issue on the topic of DEI and how we should replace teaching chemistry by promoting Critical Social Justice...
Nov 5, 2023·edited Nov 5, 2023Liked by Dorian Abbot, Anna Krylov
That course should also teach Schrodinger's feminist: A superposition of two polarization states, which collapse when convenient into either:
- a strong brave independent woman for whom (Joe Biden's words) "There's not a single thing a man can do that a woman can’t do as well or better."
OR
- an oppressed, powerless child-like creature who is easily intimidated by a scary misogynist western society and therefore requires special treatment and protection, and taxpayer-funded programs to tell her what she _really_ wants to do with her life. (Hint: NOT being a loving wife and mother in a nuclear family!)
Sometimes you can get them to oscillate between states in the same sentence!
Nov 5, 2023·edited Nov 5, 2023Liked by Dorian Abbot
It seems that these "social justice" articles undergo a less rigorous editorial review and refereeing process than the "science" ones, even though they appear in the same journal. That accords with what I have seen at conferences and on campus. White male science profs that usually are skeptical and challenging to new ideas in their field seem to suspend any criticism of ideologies shouted at them from the other side of campus. It's a toxic mix of savior complex / chivalry and fear of cancellation. I've had colleagues literally walk backwards away from me, furtively looking side-to-side, for my merely suggesting that minority women participation in STEM might not be wholly due to sexism. (One of them backed into a desk and nearly fell over, very satisfying!)
I think that campus SJWs can't believe their success in penetrating into STEM! It took them a while, but they were expecting _some_ resistance from a field known for objectivity and rigor. Weak nerds saw some heads rolling and also felt a need to assuage their own perceived guilt, so caved in. This is also partly the fault of conservative/libertarian faculty and administrators ceding the field of academia to the Marxist-based postmodernists.
That leaves level-headed practitioners, such as the author of this piece, exposed to risk of career destruction. Plenty of examples out there. With no ability to push back, sadly I do not see this changing anytime soon.
Nov 5, 2023·edited Nov 5, 2023Liked by Dorian Abbot, Anna Krylov
"Years of efforts (ostensibly well meaning) and mountains of peer-reviewed publications in physics education research have failed to produce material change in the conditions that Black students, staff, and faculty encounter in physics"
The more important, more general point is that those mountains of publications have failed to produce material change for ANYONE. Physics is just hard, and it's very unlikely that there is any magic bullet.
Old joke from academia:
Q: What is the fastest way to improve the quality of a university?
This was a problem when I was a newly-minted faculty member 31 years ago. It's just gotten out of control now. Physics education has always been known much more for amusement than edification. It was our mistake for just rolling our eyes.
I agree with you that Fluid Mechanics (together with other branches of Transport Phenomena) are very important for many academic disciplines: Low Re is applicable for Biology, while High Re is applicable for Climatology...
I've now read a dozen or more such articles. Where specifics (or examples) are needed in the reasoning is exactly where the articles avoid being specific.
“ In order to become more relevant to a changing social sensibility concerning broader issues in the world (such as the climate crisis, rampant racism, White backlash/rage, and neocolonialism), physics curricula must shift their foci, methods, and content to become relevant and applicable to how physics is practiced today. But more than that, we have an opportunity to inform what guides research priorities and technological developments in the future by centering justice issues within the physics curriculum.”
Recently I heard a lecture by a *very* famous professor in physics education, considered among the best in the field. It was more or less a mishmash of words organized into long lists. Only at the very end it became clear that one of his main assumptions was that all students come in with equal abilities and motivations; they differ only by the fact that some had a good high school teacher and others had a bad high school teacher. The normally critical physicists in the audience did almost nothing to challenge the speaker.
In one cited paper, a clever play on words is used (original terms in bold are CAPITALIZED below):
“1. What does it mean to think beyond just PHYSICS , ….
2. What constitutes JUST physics, i.e., what does physics for justice look like?”
One can keep playing this game: to me the “physics for justice” breaks down into “physics for JUST ICE” - a fine line of inquiry involving the nature of water in a solid state.
After I roll my eyes, I often just ignore something, a reasonable reaction, but I sometimes think about what value I might find in what I read or offer something that the authors might have included but didn't. In this case, I think of fingertip pulse oximeters as a technology that works better on lighter skin than darker skin. Superficially the reason seems obvious (that darker skin will reduce the amount of light that the sensors use to measure the effect in the blood vessels), and maybe it is that simple, but maybe a deeper understanding would be interesting. ( I haven't investigated deeply, but presumably there are at least two wavelengths of light - one sensitive to oxygenated blood and one not so much). This is an example ripe for including in a Physics 101 lab, and including more examples like it is likely to turn out students more aware of asking their colleagues at tech firms, "Hey, before we deploy this widget (whatever it might be), have we thought about the unintended effects of our tech' in society...?"
The pulse oximeters are an important example indeed. I guess I would just note two things:
(1) Plenty of people who agree that pulse oximeters need improvement also roll their eyes at articles like this. There's no reason to believe that articles like this are necessary or even helpful for getting improvements in pulse oximeters. Frankly, they probably turn off more people than they move to actual improvement.
(2) In my experience, the people who enjoy these articles the most are also the least invested in academic standards. And how will we get more reliable pulse oximeters without well-trained scientists and engineers?
Your second comment brings to my mind the old saying, "If you know HOW to do something, you can always get a job ... working for someone who knows WHY."
We might ask if college graduates might have learned to ask these sort of questions about WHY.
Another one, hypothetically a public health person might have zeroed in on why COVID killed more men than women: what factors were most important in creating that statistic (if it is still true - it was ripe for interpretation in the early days of the pandemic)?
Or why did one group discover Neptune and another one did not? (I recall it had to do with distrusting the predictions based on a national-level attitude of not-invented-here ).
I guess my comment, generally speaking is, there are a lot of dumb articles in the literature. I'm not defending dumb articles, but I realize that not every refereed article is going to be great. Some aren't even wrong, as they say.
Alex- nice article. Here's a couple of thoughts that are a bit off-topic.
One of the list of otherwise irrelevant social issues mentioned- climate- does fit quite well in a undergrad curriculum. In a 1/2 semester sophomore intro to thermal physics course, we do teach about blackbody radiation. It's a small step to include, as we do, a brief lesson on how differential transmission of high and low frequencies changes the steady-state Earth temperature. It's important and works well.
On viscous friction vs. sliding blocks, I agree. I think an even bigger change would also help, following Thomas Moore's approach of doing conservation laws before F=ma and other time-derivative material. It's both a more grown-up way of thinking about the material and more accessible to students who don't reflexively think in terms of calculus. It's not directly related to questions of justice except in that better teaching is good for everybody and starting with material that requires no calculus should be more accessible to kids who had weak math background.
Sadly, it is not even the first paper of the kind -- see, for example, here--paper from J. Chem. Ed. published by the American Chemical Society, "A Special Topic Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconcious Racism in STEM"
(https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00293).
My favorite quote from it: The course explores “the development and interrelationship between quantum mechanics, Marxist materialism, Afro-futurism/pessimism, and postcolonial nationalism.” “To problematize time as a linear social construct,” the paper says, “the Copenhagen interpretation of the collapse of wave-particle duality was utilized”
Earlier, J. Chem. Ed. published the whole special issue on the topic of DEI and how we should replace teaching chemistry by promoting Critical Social Justice...
Unfortunately, universities are hiring people who are dedicated to this ideology. Look at this course, offered on Rice: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/11/04/more-on-the-ideological-erosion-of-science/
That course should also teach Schrodinger's feminist: A superposition of two polarization states, which collapse when convenient into either:
- a strong brave independent woman for whom (Joe Biden's words) "There's not a single thing a man can do that a woman can’t do as well or better."
OR
- an oppressed, powerless child-like creature who is easily intimidated by a scary misogynist western society and therefore requires special treatment and protection, and taxpayer-funded programs to tell her what she _really_ wants to do with her life. (Hint: NOT being a loving wife and mother in a nuclear family!)
Sometimes you can get them to oscillate between states in the same sentence!
I’ve seen them doing that!
It seems that these "social justice" articles undergo a less rigorous editorial review and refereeing process than the "science" ones, even though they appear in the same journal. That accords with what I have seen at conferences and on campus. White male science profs that usually are skeptical and challenging to new ideas in their field seem to suspend any criticism of ideologies shouted at them from the other side of campus. It's a toxic mix of savior complex / chivalry and fear of cancellation. I've had colleagues literally walk backwards away from me, furtively looking side-to-side, for my merely suggesting that minority women participation in STEM might not be wholly due to sexism. (One of them backed into a desk and nearly fell over, very satisfying!)
I think that campus SJWs can't believe their success in penetrating into STEM! It took them a while, but they were expecting _some_ resistance from a field known for objectivity and rigor. Weak nerds saw some heads rolling and also felt a need to assuage their own perceived guilt, so caved in. This is also partly the fault of conservative/libertarian faculty and administrators ceding the field of academia to the Marxist-based postmodernists.
That leaves level-headed practitioners, such as the author of this piece, exposed to risk of career destruction. Plenty of examples out there. With no ability to push back, sadly I do not see this changing anytime soon.
"Years of efforts (ostensibly well meaning) and mountains of peer-reviewed publications in physics education research have failed to produce material change in the conditions that Black students, staff, and faculty encounter in physics"
The more important, more general point is that those mountains of publications have failed to produce material change for ANYONE. Physics is just hard, and it's very unlikely that there is any magic bullet.
Old joke from academia:
Q: What is the fastest way to improve the quality of a university?
A: Blow up the faculty of education.
This was a problem when I was a newly-minted faculty member 31 years ago. It's just gotten out of control now. Physics education has always been known much more for amusement than edification. It was our mistake for just rolling our eyes.
I agree with you that Fluid Mechanics (together with other branches of Transport Phenomena) are very important for many academic disciplines: Low Re is applicable for Biology, while High Re is applicable for Climatology...
I've now read a dozen or more such articles. Where specifics (or examples) are needed in the reasoning is exactly where the articles avoid being specific.
“ In order to become more relevant to a changing social sensibility concerning broader issues in the world (such as the climate crisis, rampant racism, White backlash/rage, and neocolonialism), physics curricula must shift their foci, methods, and content to become relevant and applicable to how physics is practiced today. But more than that, we have an opportunity to inform what guides research priorities and technological developments in the future by centering justice issues within the physics curriculum.”
This is “just” so much buzzword salad.
Recently I heard a lecture by a *very* famous professor in physics education, considered among the best in the field. It was more or less a mishmash of words organized into long lists. Only at the very end it became clear that one of his main assumptions was that all students come in with equal abilities and motivations; they differ only by the fact that some had a good high school teacher and others had a bad high school teacher. The normally critical physicists in the audience did almost nothing to challenge the speaker.
Thank you for a fair-minded perspective!
In one cited paper, a clever play on words is used (original terms in bold are CAPITALIZED below):
“1. What does it mean to think beyond just PHYSICS , ….
2. What constitutes JUST physics, i.e., what does physics for justice look like?”
One can keep playing this game: to me the “physics for justice” breaks down into “physics for JUST ICE” - a fine line of inquiry involving the nature of water in a solid state.
Volodymyr Zelensky is an Israeli operative . . . Ukraine’s Azov Regiment Visits Israel: ‘Mariupol is our Masada’ . . . https://nationalvanguard.org/2022/12/ukraines-azov-regiment-visits-israel-mariupol-is-our-masada/
.
Why Do the Ukrainians Allow Their Country to Be Completely Run by Jews? . . . https://russia-insider.com/en/why-do-ukrainians-allow-their-country-be-completely-run-jews/ri27010
.
Zelensky, Biden, Satanism, War, Greed, Theft, Propaganda, Domestic Spying, International Intrigue, Treason, Sedition, FTX, Ukraine, Israel . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/zelensky-biden-satanism-war-greed
.
Documents leaked from Soros’ “Open Society Foundation” show how the Jewish billionaire behind Hillary Clinton gave orders to the State Department and manipulated media coverage of events in Ukraine . . . https://nationalvanguard.org/2016/09/documents-show-soros-ran-us-foreign-policy-on-post-coup-ukraine/
.
How Christine Lagarde, Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland Funded a Massive Ukrainian Ponzi Scheme . . . https://russia-insider.com/en/how-christine-lagarde-clinton-and-nuland-funded-massive-ukrainian-ponzi-scheme/ri27390
.
Jewish Corruption in Ukraine . . . by Andrew Joyce, Ph.D. . . . https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2023/02/17/jewish-corruption-in-ukraine/
After I roll my eyes, I often just ignore something, a reasonable reaction, but I sometimes think about what value I might find in what I read or offer something that the authors might have included but didn't. In this case, I think of fingertip pulse oximeters as a technology that works better on lighter skin than darker skin. Superficially the reason seems obvious (that darker skin will reduce the amount of light that the sensors use to measure the effect in the blood vessels), and maybe it is that simple, but maybe a deeper understanding would be interesting. ( I haven't investigated deeply, but presumably there are at least two wavelengths of light - one sensitive to oxygenated blood and one not so much). This is an example ripe for including in a Physics 101 lab, and including more examples like it is likely to turn out students more aware of asking their colleagues at tech firms, "Hey, before we deploy this widget (whatever it might be), have we thought about the unintended effects of our tech' in society...?"
The pulse oximeters are an important example indeed. I guess I would just note two things:
(1) Plenty of people who agree that pulse oximeters need improvement also roll their eyes at articles like this. There's no reason to believe that articles like this are necessary or even helpful for getting improvements in pulse oximeters. Frankly, they probably turn off more people than they move to actual improvement.
(2) In my experience, the people who enjoy these articles the most are also the least invested in academic standards. And how will we get more reliable pulse oximeters without well-trained scientists and engineers?
Your second comment brings to my mind the old saying, "If you know HOW to do something, you can always get a job ... working for someone who knows WHY."
We might ask if college graduates might have learned to ask these sort of questions about WHY.
Another one, hypothetically a public health person might have zeroed in on why COVID killed more men than women: what factors were most important in creating that statistic (if it is still true - it was ripe for interpretation in the early days of the pandemic)?
Or why did one group discover Neptune and another one did not? (I recall it had to do with distrusting the predictions based on a national-level attitude of not-invented-here ).
I guess my comment, generally speaking is, there are a lot of dumb articles in the literature. I'm not defending dumb articles, but I realize that not every refereed article is going to be great. Some aren't even wrong, as they say.
It would be some effort, but if someone is keen on it, they could publish a rebuttal or critique. Sokal did that recently for another article in this genre. https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/2/260
Alex, I agree with every observation and point you made here...as an aside, I wanted to attach this like to my paper that suggests that looking at things in terms of low Reynolds' Numbers may make aspects of physics such as special relativity more comprehensible: http://labs.plantbio.cornell.edu/wayne/pdfs/Wayne-Acta%20Physica%20Polonica%20B%20v41p2297.pdf
Alex- nice article. Here's a couple of thoughts that are a bit off-topic.
One of the list of otherwise irrelevant social issues mentioned- climate- does fit quite well in a undergrad curriculum. In a 1/2 semester sophomore intro to thermal physics course, we do teach about blackbody radiation. It's a small step to include, as we do, a brief lesson on how differential transmission of high and low frequencies changes the steady-state Earth temperature. It's important and works well.
On viscous friction vs. sliding blocks, I agree. I think an even bigger change would also help, following Thomas Moore's approach of doing conservation laws before F=ma and other time-derivative material. It's both a more grown-up way of thinking about the material and more accessible to students who don't reflexively think in terms of calculus. It's not directly related to questions of justice except in that better teaching is good for everybody and starting with material that requires no calculus should be more accessible to kids who had weak math background.