Representation matters in Physics

Some of the hesitance that our students have about studying science is this misconception that you can only "do science" if you're "smart enough." Humanizing those that pursue science and their path to a STEM job helps more students consider doing the same.  A Twitter account called @RealScientists has a new curator each week to share their particular corner of science with the world. They have a whole week to talk about their specific job, the path they took to get there, publications, unique and funny memories, what they wish everyone knew about their field, etc. Some hashtags have gone viral to show the human side of scientists like #PregnantintheField with which female scientists share pictures of themselves with baby bumps while carrying out field research. The universal #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob hashtag gets really funny when scientists get a hold of it.

While most of us recognize that people come in all different shapes, sizes, colors and backgrounds outwardly acknowledging it is important in your classroom. In a time when many are feeling less welcome in our own spaces (work, home, country, etc) it is vital that we actively work to recognize marginalized groups in our fields and help to lift their voices.

On June 4th a new Twitter account @500QueerSci was launched with the purpose of bringing awareness of LGBTQ+ people working in STEM related jobs during the annual Pride Month. Their goal was to reach 500 personal stories and by mid July were at 630 biographies. People can submit their abbreviated biographies, pictures and social media links to be added to the catalog. The full list is found on their companion website 500QueerScientists.com.

The resource is amazing and as many have said when they first tweet their own featured biographies  they wish such a thing had been available when they were young. It serves as a reminder to young LGBTQ+ people interested in science that they are not alone and that can be life changing.

I recently went back to the website hoping to find a search bar to type "physics" into so that I could have a list of many LGBTQ+ people with backgrounds or jobs in the fields  of physics. I could not find one so I tweeted at @500QueerSci and asked:

@500QueerSci is there a plan in the works to make the stories searchable by field? I would love to be able to show my students some specific stories of 🏳️‍🌈scientists in related fields to what I teach.

— Bree BarnettDreyfuss (@BarnettDreyfuss) July 13, 2018

They responded that such a feature was in the works but in the meantime offered to find such profiles for me. Below are the names and links they provided:

1. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
2. Izzy Jayasinghe
3. Giampiero Mancinelli
4. Axiel Yael Birenbaum
5. Nicole Ackerman
6. Tzula Propp
7. Shawn Cole-Woods
8. Kelsey Collier
9. Carlos Arguelles
10. Aidan Robson
11. Ana Barbara Rodriquez Cavalcante
12. Beck Strauss
13. Kerstin Nordstrom
14. Tessa Carver
15. Christopher Aubin
16. Robert Newberry
17. Jost Migenda
18. Andrew Princep
19. John Barentine
20. Mackenzie Warren
21. Katie Mack
22. Ashley Spindler
23. JJ Eldridge
24. Stephen Lawrence
25. Alysa Obertas
26. Nick Geitner
27. Andrew Welsh
28. Georgia Squyres

So I have a list, now what? I intend to use it. I've seen several lessons and activities in the last year promoting learning about diverse modern scientists, not just the "dead white guys" we find in our textbooks. Depending on your school and community's comfort level you could do a few things with such a list; and the same could be done for scientists of color and women. 

• Whenever a particular field comes up in class, say astrophysicist, feature an LGBTQ+ person or person of color instead of whoever is at the top of a Google search list. 
• "Profile a scientist" activities are already usually limited to exclude the few that everyone already knows about like Einstein or Curie or Tesla. If you're going to set restrictions for who they can't research you may find yourself just producing a list from which students have to choose. And look at that, you have a class set (or almost) of physics related names right up there! How convenient!
• You can present the list in its entirety, or the full website, for students to explore st their own pace. You can lead a discussion or offer reflection time for students to think about the featured scientists' paths through education and the hardships they may have endured for being LGBTQ+, why their visibility is important, etc. 
• Make posters of the featured physics related persona biographies to display in your classroom or school all year.
• Feature an LGBTQ+, woman and/or person of color that is in the STEM field each week in your classroom. 

There are lots more things you could do to help expose your students to a more diverse world of STEM, but that should be a start! I encourage you to read through the biographies above and more to learn more about our very diverse and large STEM community. If you have any other fabulous lessons to share please let me know!

Edit: I was able to add a few more resources I could not find the first time around thanks to recent AAPT plenary Frank Nochese:

The hashtag #ActualLivingScientists is used by all kinds of, well, actual living scientists, to share information about their work and why its cool. Several teachers print out some of these profiles to make displays in their classrooms or around

Heather Waterman @WatermanPhysics makes a daily doodle on her board about a scientists from an underrepresented group. I have a minor in art and I still don't know if I could draw a scene every day that was this good!

177:180 Marine Zoologist Mary J. Rathburn 🦐🦀#dailydatedoodle #womeninSTEM #WomeninSTEAM https://t.co/Y0WGcV4TCQ pic.twitter.com/bTcO6LWIdR

— Heather Waterman (@watermanphysics) June 13, 2018

YouTube Skepticism: Nobel physicist doubts global warming

The scientific debate about the reality of anthropogenic climate change has resolved itself in the past 10-15 years. Much like natural selection and heliocentrism before it, the once-contentious scientific finding is no longer argued among serious scientists.

But there are backwaters.

Small, cult-like bands of like-minded authors and followers cling to geocentrism (and, indeed, to the notion that the Earth is flat). In America, legions of science-averse enthusiasts embrace "intelligent design" (and, indeed, young-Earth creationism).

Climate science deniers find solace in the handful of legitimate scientists who argue against the position of the vast majority of climate scientists. Their heroes on this melting ideological ice floe are—almost to a person—old white male physicists. The 2015 documentary, Merchants of Doubt, identifies a common thread among this small fraternity. Most are aging Cold Warriors who see environmentalists as "watermelons": (ecology) green on the outside but (Communist) red on the inside.

Fred Singer, Freeman Dyson, William Happer, and Ivar Giaever are leading representatives of this group. A math teacher at my school maintains a very active conservative political blog. He is a public school teacher in California whose contract is the product of collective bargaining. He opposes unionism, advocates for charter schools, and frequently derides California as the worst state of them all.

And he is an aging Cold Warrior who denies the well-established findings of climate science. When he came across an old speech by Nobel laureate physicist, Ivar Giaever, he shared it in a post.

I found it inspirational. I was inspired to write a corresponding video question set.

The video runs for 33 minutes, but it feels like an hour because it's a disjointed series of tangents masquerading as an argument. The TL;DR synopsis is that a Nobel physicist is upset that society hasn't enthusiastically embraced nuclear power, the physicist also doesn't understand climate science (and thus dismisses its findings), but finds it laudable that China adopted a one-child policy to mitigate climate change. He doesn't accept historical temperature data, but uses that very data to propagate the old "climate has always changed" chestnut.

Some viewers complain about Giaever's tones of condescension and arrogance. The title of Giaever's 2016 book, I am the Smartest Man I Know, does little to blunt such criticism. Like most elite scientists, he is an atheist, and he does reject the legislative agenda of creationists. His Nobel-winning work involved modeling superconductivity. He now serves as a science advisor for the Heartland Institute.

In any case, what about the content of Giaever's talk? It has been dismantled by Skeptical Science in a post titled "Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist." They were thorough, but didn't seem to break a sweat in assembling their takedown.

Still though, my climate science dismissive colleague found Giaever's tangential meanderings to be compelling. I will be delighted to show the talk to my students. But when I assign a video, I virtually always have a corresponding question set. Within the constraints of a presentation's contents, I like to mix multiple choice, fill in the blank, multi-select, matching, and short answer formats. I can't always include all formats, but I do my best.

In the wake of the March for Science, I am reminded of what I was told by a speaker at The Amazing Meeting 2 in 2004. In essence, it was "The cavalry isn't coming. If you see a problem where you live or work, you will have to be the person to solve it."

So here's the Giaever Video:
Nobel Laureate in Physics; "Global Warming is Pseudoscience"


And here's a link to my question set.
YouTube Skepticism: Is Global Warming Pseudoscience?

If you find yourself at the end of the year with awkward bell schedules that need to be filled despite students slipping below optimal attentiveness, here's a candidate that speaks to big-picture science issues.

March for Science: Dean's Day in DC

[Click any image to embiggen.] The forecast for the day called for rain, and left little room for doubt. I packed a rain jacket and rain pants (in the event of sideways-driven torrents). I packed an umbrella in case the rain remained vertical. I also covered exposed skin with sunscreen and packed a floppy hat in case the forecast was defied by reality. I wore heavy-weather shoes and thick wool socks. I packed a fleece as the forecast high was in the upper 50s. I knew I was going to be in the elements for the day. I wasn't go to bail no matter what. And I didn't want to be too uncomfortable.

But in the morning, the weather was still fairly mellow, so I was able to expose my custom T-shirt.

I walked the mile and a half from my hotel to Pershing Park, where I was told representatives of the AAPT would be found. DC bustles on weekdays, but can be a ghost town early on a Saturday morning. I grabbed some breakfast at a bakery/cafe that was doing a brisk business with science marchers.

I found some familiar faces (Dan Brown and Rebecca Vierra) at Pershing Park; AAPT Director, Beth Cunningham quickly joined, as did some Society of Physics Students (SPS) enthusiasts. A retired chemistry instructor showed up in his rainbow tie-dyed lab coat, so I hauled mine out of my pack and matched his look. We socialized and snapped pics for a while before making our way to the rally at the Washington Monument.

We knew we were headed in the right direction as we followed these two brainiacs.


We settled in some distance from the main stage, but with a nice view of a massive screen (atop a truck).

At 10 o'clock, the program began. Veritasium's Derek Muller, Cara Santa Maria, and The Roots' Questlove acted as masters of ceremony. A precipitous mist turned into sprinkles as the program continued. The rainbow lab coat was stowed, and my rain jacket was deployed.

Speakers, music performances, and short films ensued. The rain picked up. It continued in waves. When it got heavy enough, my maize & blue Michigan umbrella was raised. Umbrellas were ubiquitous throughout the crowd. But you feel bad when packed this tight while using one. It blocks views and sheds water on your neighbors.

Four hours of rallying would have to pass before the march was to proceed. Scientists were celebrated, a call and response of "I say 'public' you say 'health'" was launched.

The rain never really stopped. When the wind reached a certain persistence, I undertook a pit-crew donning of my fleece between my t-shirt and the rain jacket. Had it not been such a tight pack where I was, I would have tried to put on my rain pants over the quick-drying trail pants I was wearing.

Near the end, we got a call to action from Bill Nye, himself.



And an Earth Day tweet from... not Donald J. Trump, but from Pope Francis.


Then it was off to the march. We slowly cattle-herded our way out of the secured Washington Monument grounds to Constitution Avenue and marched to the US Capitol.

From time to time, an enthusiastic roar would make its way through the marchers. And there were chants.

"Show me what a scientist looks like : THIS IS WHAT A SCIENTIST LOOKS LIKE!"

"Science--not hate--makes America great!"



The sprit was great and the energy was positive. The signs were very clever and were all spelled correctly. Hbar vs. FUBAR, Show us your taxa!"

I stopped for a requisite US Capitol selfie.

At march's end, marchers laid down their signs along the walkway and fence leading to the Capitol: the impromptu sign graveyard blossomed and grew as more and more marchers finish the route. The rain had taken a toll on most of the signs, and the wind added entropy to the otherwise carefully placed placards.



Snake Oil Trump will haunt my dreams for nights to come.


At the end of the day, there was no way to navigate around the reality that science is under attack in the US from the Republicans who hold the presidency and majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives. It is likely that they will do significant damage to science and the environment as rapidly as they can. It is unlikely that they will change. We cannot nourish a hope that the attack will relent while the GOP maintains unbridled governmental power.

If scientist hope to get work done in the lab, they will need to get work done at the ballot box first.

I'm glad I was able to be in DC for the March on Science. I have more photos in my Flickr album and more videos on my YouTube channel.

March for Science Photos:

March for Science: Dean's Whys and Wherefores

When murmurs of The March for Science began circulating, I raised my antennae. When the date was announced, I booked a hotel room in DC and burned a bushel of frequent flyer miles to reserve round trip flights on Southwest.

I harbored a strongly-held personal opinion that I needed to be part of it. In the early days of planning, it wasn't obvious that there would be satellite marches. The groundswell of support made satellites a reasonable speculation. Still though, I wanted to be at ground zero.

As the days and weeks passed, others have been eloquent about why this march needed to be held. Why a fist needed to be raised. Why voices needed to be heard.

There were also the predictable backlashes to this backlash. Every call to action--real or virtual--is guaranteed to produce axe-grinding finger-waggers. "You need to not do that thing you intend to do; instead, you need to take up arms for my cause. If my cause wins, the world will be free of all problems—this one included!" This is the internet-generation's version of "Follow me; I'll make your crops grow!" I cast those aside and pressed on.

Another flavor of marginalization that often arises among the complacent comes in the form of the innocently dismissive question, "What do you hope to accomplish?" No matter how insightful the answer, the follow-up will be to suggest that you could accomplish those goals without a high-profile march/protest. Valid responses to the question vary, and bear a modicum of uncertainty. The question is intended to put participants on the defensive. The hoped-for change will not materialize immediately at the conclusion of the march, so the march was pointless.

As a seasoned debater, I never take such obvious bait. Instead, I prefer to turn the question around. I know—with absolute certainty—exactly what would be accomplished by not marching. Acceptance of an Administration that has made an enemy of science. Sweeping budget cuts for research. Denial of settled science. Ceding leadership in science and technology to China and India. Tacit approval for going full bore in the destruction of the environment in the US and around the world.

Science is undeniably the single best method that humans have developed to determine the truth of the reality in which they live. It's success is unmatched by any other method ever devised.

Right now, science is under attack. And it's losing. The American voters spoke in November, and the minority elected the anti-Science narcissist actively favored by Vladimir Putin. The Vice-President and the Secretary of Education are Creationists. The President thinks Climate Change is a tactical political concoction of the Chinese. The chief of the EPA has long been an enemy of environmental protection.

So we march to support the principles of science. Principles that helped make the United States a great nation.

A nation makes an enemy of science at its own peril. Some nations have done so. They are not nations many American is eager to migrate to.

My friend, Neil deGrasse Tyson, says it much better than I do.



In my next post, "The Day Of," I'll tell the story of my Earth Day 2017 in Washington, DC: The March for Science.