Seven years ago I published a paper that got some media attention, and one of my colleagues told me I should document the coverage for my tenure file. This is how I became aware of a blog post about my paper, written by a man who seemed to have been angered by the title. Seriously, it was clear from his post that he had not even read the abstract; he certainly did not read the full text. Instead, he concluded (based on the title, I remind you) that I had been permitted to write this paper because I was "a girl" and not because my hypothesis had any scientific merit.
I was grousing about his arrogance to Elwood, who said, "He must be a physicist." My mouth fell open, because this guy was indeed a physicist. Elwood (who was trained as a physicist) pulled up this XKCD comic:
In the years since then I have occaaaaaasionally been reminded of this comic while discussing various corners of the social/behavioral sciences with my husband. So when I saw this tweet yesterday--
U of Illinois brought back 40,000+ students to campus based on a model created by 2 very confident physicists, who said epidemiology was important but intellectually unchallenging.
— Self-certified armchair epidemiologist (@yellingatwind) September 3, 2020
Things are not going as planned, because it turns out students party and live together. pic.twitter.com/g5abUj1KsC
--it is just possible that I rolled my eyes and muttered about physicists and arrogance.
And it is also possible that I snort-laughed at this new XKCD today:
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