Brian Leiter tells me that Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy has made a kind of counterattack in response to the The New Republic's embarrassing interview of conservative pundits on evolution and intelligent design. He also misses the mark badly.

Will he also do a survey next week of liberal intellectuals on evolutionary psychology and whether they believe that are biological differences between the sexes? And whether those insights should be taught in school too?

Whoa, hold it. Notice the strange shift: the TNR article was about conservative pundits and thinkers; does Zywicki think that means "intellectuals"? Jonah Goldberg, an intellectual? The conservatives may be in bigger trouble than I thought.

He also makes another apples and oranges comparison. The TNR article asked general questions about a broad topic, evolution, on which there is virtually universal agreement among biologists, and found that many of the prominent voices in the conservative community are so far off the reality reservation that they disagree. This does not equate to asking liberals about subjects on which scientists legitimately and vigorously disagree—this is something on which we can reasonably expect to find disagreement among pundits, disagreement which is not indicative of a disconnect with the scientific community.

And what a silly question! "Are there biological differences between the sexes?" I do agree that if any liberal pundit says no, he or she is as much an idiot as those conservatives who claim evolution didn't occur. As for evolutionary psychology, I'm a biologist, and I'm in the camp that says it's a load of poorly done hokum, so I'll forgive Paul Krugman if he should think EP is junk; I'll be less pleased if he says he agrees with it, but since EP does have many proponents in academe and is taught at places like Harvard, I'll just have to roll my eyes and be understanding.

Zywicki lists the questions he'd ask. I'm not an official liberal pundit, but I do play one on my weblog, so I'll take a shot at them.

1. Are differences between men's and women's aptitudes solely a result of society and culture, or is there an evolutionary basis for some of those distinctions?

There is so much wrong with that question.

First, it assumes that there is a difference between men's and women's aptitudes. I know many women who are brilliant scientists, much smarter than I; it would be the act of a presumptuous pipsqueak for me to declare that my gonads bestow a greater aptitude for science on me.

But if I grant him that assumption, and agree that there is a statistical difference in the distribution of the sexes in various occupations which is in some way driven by gender, I would say that it is 100% the product of society and culture, and that it is 100% the product of biological evolution.

He's making the old, tired nature/nurture distinction, and it drives me nuts. It's a false dichotomy that is perpetuated by an antiquated misconception about how development and biology works. Genes don't work alone, they always interact with their environment, and the outcome of developmental processes is always contingent upon both genetic and non-genetic factors. There is nothing for which this is more true than the development of the mind: the brain is a structure which is incredibly plastic and responsive to input, since that is its job, to respond in sophisticated ways to complex situations.

Look, we're in the middle of a culture shift right now, and I see it nearly every day. Thirty years ago when I was in college most of my instructors and peers were male, and the stereotypical scientist would have been a guy with glasses and a white lab coat. It would have been easy to look around my classrooms and judge science as a male-dominated activity and make some half-assed guess that it had something to do with testosterone and bigger brains. Nowadays, I sometimes get class sections that are all women, and I feel a bit like a male dinosaur standing at the front of the room.

In biology at least, the trend is for the field to be populated by increasing numbers of women. In the next generation, the appropriate stereotype will be a woman in glasses and a white lab coat. Will the innatists start making half-assed guesses that it has something to do with estrogen and a nurturing instinct, or will they instead simply use the current situation of male privilege to prevent them from breaking into the upper ranks of the scientific hierarchy?

2. Do you think that schools should expose children to the scientific hypothesis that evolution has produced innate differences between men and women in interest and aptitudes, or should they teach that all differences are socially-constructed?

Neither. For one, "scientific hypothesis" is a generous promotion for the claim; I believe grade school kids ought to be instructed in the solid basics, not the hotly debated stuff on the edge. For another, this whole business of dividing the concept of gender differences into two wildly different and incompatible extremes, as I mentioned above, is lunacy.

3. Do you believe that Harvard's faculty was correct in censuring President Larry Summers for offering the hypothesis that differential performance by men and women in math and science achievement at elite universities may be in part the result of differential distribution of natural abilities in math and science between men and women at several standard deviations above the mean?

Emphatically yes.

What kind of idiot stands in front of a group of smart, accomplished, successful women scientists and tells them that he thinks women aren't as capable as men at doing science? He's in a room full of counterexamples, and he doesn't even notice? I say, fire him for being incompetent at his job and applying bad theory to administrative practice.

4. Do you believe that the theory of evolution applies to the evolution of mental traits as well as physiological traits?

The last question I refer to elsewhere as the question of "Neck-down Darwinism"--the idea that evolution applies only to the evolution of physical, but not mental, traits.

Oh. My. Gog. I've never paid much attention to Zywicki before, and now I see why: the guy is a flaming moron. "Neck-down Darwinism"? Not only does he use that term the evolutionarily clueless favor, "Darwinism", but he's invented this whole nonsensical straw man. I think EP is a pile of codswallop, but that definitely does not mean I think our heads poofed into existence magically.

Our brains are the product of evolution. I believe there has been selection for greater capacity, greater flexibility, and almost certainly other specific attributes in our species. I also believe that men and women belong to that same species, and both bear those same genes that have been the product of our evolution. There are different patterns of gene activity in men and women that are the consequences of different epigenetic influences; these definitely induce differences in development of the body, and may bias the development of the brain in various subtle ways, but any intrinsic biological differences in the operation of the adult brain are overwhelmed by social and cultural factors. My brain would be a very different thing if I'd grown up a child of neglect rather than as a member of a strong and supportive family, and those differences are more significant than if I'd been born a girl instead of a boy. I also think if I'd been born a girl, that it would be the subsequent expectations and pressures of family and society that would have a greater effect on my career choices than some slight difference in the size of my suprachiasmatic nucleus.

Will the left's religious faith in political correctness prove as powerful for liberals as traditional religious faith is for conservatives?

Man, he can't stop making up caricatures and straw men, can he? Opponents of evolutionary psychology do not dislike the field because of some political bias, but because we think it is poor science.