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Comment by Confusion | Hacker News Reader

Only if you think hiring decisions should depend only on certain measurable professional qualifications. Which they of course never are. If someone has a specialization that you already have in your portfolio, while a competitor has a different specialization that would be an addition, then the competitor can be preferred. If someone is a loner while the competitor is a teamplayer, then the competitor can be preferred. Etc. Maybe he just behaved like an a* during the hiring procedure, taking for granted he would be hired. You don't know and any conclusion based purely on the numbers is unwarranted and premature.

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I think it is unethical to hire someone, if you are both part of a special interest network of any kind. If you compare their citation record on (http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/A.Ceresole.1 and http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/A.Strumia.1), there is really little contest who should be hired though (both work in high energy physics, Ceresole more on theory, Strumia on phenomenology). But yes I agree there are many factors that play into the hiring decision we can't know about. In any case it seems most likely that this was his primary motivation.

And Rosa Parks primary motivation was that she was black and denied a seat.

Since when does motivation make someones point invalid?

I don’t really care either way. There are quite a few very good female string theorists, who presumably got through the hiring process without any affirmative action. High energy physics is a very competitive field you just can’t afford to hire less than excellent people if you want to stay relevant.

High energy physics is a dead end field where people impress each other with how intelligent they are by producing ever more unverifiable results.

One of the points under contention is the lower rate of citation of women in any field. Thus using number of citations is a sexist metric and amounts to little more than dick waving.

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