Old Science

Science is racist, or something:

The Washington Free Beacon recently outlined a bit of a controversy over at the Department of Energy. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a cosmologist and a professor of physics and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Through a Biden appointee, she is in the top slot of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel at the Department of Energy. The panel advises the department on funding and research priorities for particle physics and has an impact on the use of federal money. Her position of prominence has some scientists concerned about ethical issues and about the potential for the panel to find itself in the crosshairs of Trump's anti-DEI crusade. From the Free Beacon:

She first raised eyebrows in 2020 when she argued that a culture of "white empiricism"—in which "only white people" are deemed capable of objectivity—"undermines a significant theory of twentieth-century physics: General Relativity." Einstein’s theory is rooted in the "idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other," Prescod-Weinstein wrote in Signs, a gender studies journal published by the University of Chicago. "Yet the number of women in physics remains low, especially those of African descent … Given that Black women must, according to Einstein’s principle … have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression, we can dispense with any suggestion that the low number of Black women in science indicates any lack of validity on their part as observers."

Prescod-Weinstein has also opined that string theory failed to succeed because there were too many white men in the field of physics. She was also one of the ones who cried that James Webb (the one for whom the telescope was named) had purged the ranks of NASA of gay people. She stuck by her claim even after the agency itself debunked the rumor.

Dead scienntists still need defending...