Reply to commentaries about “gender issues in fundamental physics: A bibliometric analysis”

My bibliometric study about fundamental physics and gender (Strumia, 2021) received four commentaries: Andersen, Nielsen, and Schneider (2021), Ball, Britton et al. (2021), Hossenfelder (2021), and Thelwall (2021). One commentary replicated the analysis: Sabine Hossenfelder (the only author of the commentaries who works in fundamental physics) writes: “His findings are significant and robust. My collaborators Tobias Mistele, Tom Price, and I have been able to reproduce the bibliometric results with the same database and with a different database of the same disciplines” (Hossenfelder, 2021). Some other commentaries performed partial checks using my data, which I made fully public. They raised doubts about specific scientific points. I first clarify such doubts, confirming my results. I next reply to generic sociological comments that, in my opinion, denote a lack of insider knowledge of fundamental physics. I conclude by addressing comments that go beyond the scientific issue, touching on political topics.