Women at CERN

Also CERN can write satire. In her latest entry on women at CERN, Pauline Gagnon writes:

"I strongly believe we will have achieved equality the day an incompetent woman will be elected to a high position."

This is a nice quip. But the trouble is that this is the case already, at least at CERN! There are several hundred female CERN scientists. Being at CERN is a high position in many countries. And the poorer the country, the higher the position is.

Now the data: the poorest countries send the highest percentage of women to CERN.

Yes. The poor countries have the most incompetent women...




P.S. There is one exception, also at CERN. In June 2012, when rumors about the discovery of the Higgs started circulating, Fabiola Gianotti, the spokeswoman of ATLAS, one of the CERN experiments, gave an interview. She said that the rumors should not be believed. A few days later, on July 4th, in a seminar watched world-wide, she confirmed that the rumors were correct. Gianotti is really as incompetent as Pauline Gagnon defined.

Truth, Sex and CERN

As is well known, both experiments at CERN, ATLAS and CMS, found a similar mass for the Higgs particle. In the beginning, we were told that this happened without each experiment knowing the results of the other.

Slowly, the truth is surfacing:"Half of ATLAS is sleeping with half of CMS", explains one of the researchers.

Ok, now we know how the agreement between the two experiments occurred. Calling the LHC the "Tunnel of Babylon" is apt.

But what are the real results on the Higgs?