Misogyny in Academic and Research Milieu

I’ve been watching the Cosmic Front series on Curiosity Stream, and I realised something highly worrying.

The dark matter was discovered in 1970 by Vera Rubin. David Bennett supposed that the gravitational effect accredited to the dark matter should be caused by dark stars (a several different kinds of dwarf stars). He led a research in order to prove his hypothesis.

Unlike the expected, the antithesis arose from the results: the dark stars amount is not enough to explain the dark matter gravitational effect – in fact it’s less than 1% of the required.

Bennett has been unhappy with his discovery. He declared his frustration in not being able to beat a woman. Notice that the big issue has been that the dark matter’s a woman’s discovery.

For one decade the dark matter very existence was widely rejected just because it’s a woman’s discovery.

We thought misogyny was a 4chan guys’ thing, fruit of gamer lists and things like that, but it isn’t: the misogyny is a social institution.

Part of the rejection to the M87 black hole picture’s veracity is because of the project tech leader is a woman. Those men who believe in its veracity credit the guys in the team for the achievement instead of her leadership – everyone trying to diminish the women’s worth.

Donald Lyndel-Bell dedicated his life to massive black holes’ research. He supposed three hypotheses for their existence: 1️⃣ lots of ordinary black holes merged into each massive one; 2️⃣ ordinary black holes has eaten gas until become massive ones; 3️⃣ the massive black holes was born in the early universe among the first stars and galaxies, result of direct cloud collapses.

The first hypothesis fell apart when computer simulations proves the universe is too young for massive black holes emerge from small one’s merges, leaving the two other possibilities.

But according to the mass adding hypothesis, there couldn’t be massive black holes in the inception of the universe. Priyamvada Natarajan was able to identify those impossible objects, discarding the second hypothesis in favor of the third.

But the direct cloud collapse hypothesis is still reject by the community just because it’s a woman’s proof.

Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, RDML Grace Hopper, Vera Rubin, Katie Bouman, Margaret Hamilton, Natarajan, all those women have been diminished in their importance, but the real fact is that the women have been as important as men for science evolution – if not more so: behind every great man there was a supportive woman without whom he could not be that great, while behind every great woman there has always been a prejudice force telling her she was not able. 🐝

So the real virtue’s due to the women.