> A few weeks ago, a lot of people on academic X quickly forgot about their support for “Women in STEM” and got angry at, of all people, Katalin Karikó, the co-inventor of the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines and 2023 Nobel Prize winner. Her crime? A passage from her book where she laments that academia involved way too much people pleasing and political games for her…. A couple of months ago I wrote a piece called “The flight of the Weird Nerd from academia”, in which I argued there is a trend wherein Weird Nerds are being driven out of academia by the so-called Failed Corporatist phenotype. Katalin Karikó is a perfect example of a Weird Nerd.
What this misses is the fact that a massive element of the “support for women in STEM” discourse was the blatant demonization of the Weird Nerd in favor of the Failed Corporatist.
What this misses is the fact that a massive element of the “support for women in STEM” discourse was the blatant demonization of the Weird Nerd in favor of the Failed Corporatist.