#31187: — 07/08  at  08:50 AM
Leiter writes, after stating that he has little tolerance for ID:
[The writers that]conducted this survey) plainly have their own "religious" beliefs when it comes to scientific questions. If we understand "religious" in this context along the lines of "unquestioned truths taken on authority" that render "taboo" certain scientific topics of inquiry or which is impervious to rejection by evidence, then it is plain that in some areas the left has elevated "religious" belief over scientific inquiry by turning certain scientific questions into unquestionable articles of faith, rather than open questions subject for scientific inquiry.


Leiter makes the false (but conervative dognmatic) claim that the "left" has elevated the legitimate claims of scientifc inquiry into articles of "religiuos faith". He then claims that these "articles" are not open to scientific inquiry.

This is an oft repeated but completely disingenuous argument. Leiter condemns ID, but extends the ID argument. Established science, under Lieter's view, can always be undermined trough the claims of psuedoscience or any politically motivated and properly packaged cause

I wish I had more time to write, but it is a stock trading day and things are moving

#31190: PZ Myers — 07/08  at  08:57 AM
NOT Leiter -- Leiter brought the article to my attention, but it's Todd Zywicki who is making those mistakes.

#31193: — 07/08  at  09:27 AM
PZ - I'm a long time lurker, and agree that this is a silly rejoinder on the part of Zywicki. My fear is that the crowing over the conservative pundit is at least poorly timed. I think that the thesis of these attacks is that conservatives, more so than liberals are forced into silly conclusions by ideology and ignorance. However the only data I have seen is that some conservatives make silly conclusions based on ideology and ignorance. There is no data on a similar set of liberal pundits. My confidence is high that they would fair better; it is low that there would be anything resembling a complete lack of ideology and ignorance. My inner scientist says: finnish the data collection.

My inner scientist also says keep up the educational fight. I interact regularly with some liberal engineers who believe in evolution but whose dogmatic faith is appealed to by ID. "But how could you prove that some action of a designer didn't happen somewhere/sometime?" they might ask. My most successful rebuttals have appealed to power. I think that claiming the ID proves God must move around by way of a flagellum is funny. They don't. But when I offer any of the hundreds of powerful explainatory mechanisms of evolution (I've recently read Dawkins' "The Ancestors Tail" and Carroll's "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" , plenty of raw material but I still come here for more) they are reminded of the reasons to embrace the more empirical viewpoint.

#31194: Alon Levy — 07/08  at  09:27 AM
Apparently, in some ideologues' dream worlds, there is no scientific research, only ideology and bias. There's no need to be surprised about that, considering that conservatives have been at the forefront of ignoring science for 2300 years.

#31195: pough — 07/08  at  09:52 AM
"Are there biological differences between the sexes?"

Pull down your pants, Todd, so we can get a good look at your mangina.

#31197: — 07/08  at  09:56 AM
"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?"

Answer: neither. They'll just say that bioscience is an unimportant activity. And salaries will go down--it always happens when a field feminizes.

#31198: — 07/08  at  09:59 AM
My apologies to Leiter. I stand corrected.

#31213: Amanda — 07/08  at  10:59 AM
Man, that guy's so dumb I'll bet he thinks he has ovaries.

#31214: Amanda — 07/08  at  11:02 AM
What's funny to me is all these men assume that if we determine intelligence is a sex-related genetic trait, that men will be the ones that are found more intelligent. I guess the best way to get them to calm down is to point out that if one sex is "naturally" smarter than the other, there's a 50% chance that it's women. Do they want their pathetic arguments about their right to dominate to be determined by a coin flip? I don't think so.

#31217: PZ Myers — 07/08  at  11:17 AM
I think instead they'll just try to redefine "intelligent" to mean "thinks like a man". No coin flip required.

#31219: — 07/08  at  11:24 AM
Just curious but what do you think of the differences between men and women's "spatial memory" and other mental differences? Some elaborate social mechanism borne out of the 1950's or a significant scientific finding that men and women approach the same issue from different points of view?

In reality it is likely unethical to thoroughly test this and many other hypotheses/theories, since it would require setting up a society that forcibly made both sexes as perfectly the same as possible from a social stand point.

#31222: PZ Myers — 07/08  at  11:32 AM
I have no problem with accepting that measurement may reveal statistical differences in specific cognitive abilities...just don't try to tell me that they are "genetic". They are built upon a biological substrate that is both genetic and environmental, and it's silly to say something as abstract and highly derived as "spatial memory" is simply innate.

#31227: jayinbmore — 07/08  at  11:59 AM

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.

It always amazes me that the people who stand the most to lose from a "scientific" understanding of intelligence are always the ones who insist we accept one.

#31232: — 07/08  at  12:53 PM
Zywicki has responded to your post.

Update:

Oddly, Pharyngula says that I critique a straw man--while turning my argument into a straw man. Obviously there is an interaction between nature and nurture, which I thought was quite clear in my post and in my article linked in my post. And if the left is willing to acknowledge this fact, then that is great. Then we are left with an empirical question of understanding how nature and nurture interact. On the other hand, my impression is that there are many on the left who continue to deny any role for nature and instead adhere to a model of social construction of many of these traits and attributes.

Pharyngula also says:

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.

***

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.

Now this is quite a sweeping indictment of the field of evolutionary psychology--the entire field is "a load of poorly done hokum." I am not aware of of any substantial disagreement among knowledgeable scientists on the following concepts in evolutionary psychology (just to name a few): Hamilton's theory of kin-group selection, Trivers's theory of reciprocal altruism, the innate ability to acquire culture, the unusual degree of plasticity of human minds relative to other species, the parent-child bond, certain types of aversion and disgust, the incest taboo, an innate ability to detect intentionality, that our brains neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history, the specialization of different neural circuits for solving different adaptive problems--just to mention a few.

It is my understanding that there is little disagreement, much less "vigorous" disagreement, among knowledgeable scientists on these particular points. Perhaps Pharyngula is aware of raging debates over Hamilton's kin-selection theory, fo instance, of which I am unaware. If so, it would be useful for me at least to see some actual critiques of the specifics of some of these core concepts in evolutionary psychology, rather than a blanket dismissal of a straw-man version of evolutionary psychology with little more than a dismissive hand-wave and tired appeal to a purported authority.

There are also certainly plenty of other issues in evolutionary psychology around the periphery on which there certainly is disagreement (which is why, where relevant, I conditioned my claims accordingly). But it is just as erroneous to assume that all questions are unsettled as it is to deny the presence of unsettled questions. To suggest that the entire field is "hokum" or that it is all up in the air or subject to disagreement is simply inaccurate.

#31238: PZ Myers — 07/08  at  01:28 PM
He's squinking madly, isn't he?

I am not aware of of any substantial disagreement among knowledgeable scientists on the following concepts in evolutionary psychology (just to name a few): Hamilton's theory of kin-group selection, Trivers's theory of reciprocal altruism, the innate ability to acquire culture, the unusual degree of plasticity of human minds relative to other species, the parent-child bond, certain types of aversion and disgust, the incest taboo, an innate ability to detect intentionality, that our brains neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species' evolutionary history, the specialization of different neural circuits for solving different adaptive problems--just to mention a few.

That semi-random list of principles is not the same as EP. It's like saying that because Michael Behe understands and agrees that natural selection has occurred, Intelligent Design is therefore the same as accepted neo-Darwinian theory. Picking a few points of concordance while ignoring the points of divergence between two ideas to imply a unity of support that is not there is, well, dishonest.

Nah, I'm plainspoken. He's lying. There is substantial disagreement in the biological community on evolutionary psychology, and to imply that this question has been settled in his favor is either gross ignorance on his part or simple fraud. Of course there is currently an ongoing battle over EP; check out the last link in my article.

I'm actually being kind by conceding that there is a legitimate debate on the subject. I know very few scientists who don't think Pinker is full of shit.

#31240: Rana — 07/08  at  01:43 PM
Good take-down, PZ.

I just have to remark on the women have lesser "spatial abilities" or "mechanical abilities" or "math skills" thing. Even if you place it in the context of 1950s gender roles, it still doesn't wash, as anyone who has ever had to repair and maintain a sewing machine, design a kid's costume from scratch, or knit a complicated garment using five different yarns, one stitch at a time, would know.

Gender and sexual differences certainly exist, but to my perspective they are far less compelling than the differences between individuals, including between individuals of the same sex. I mean, hell, the category of "male" includes both Lance Armstrong and Michael Moore, jockeys and football players and basketball players, musicians and firemen, professors and coal miners, pundits and eggheads, drag queens and pro wrestlers, Woody Allen and Jesse Ventura. If you can tell me what special qualities these people have that make them distinct as a group from an equally varied group of women, aside from a Y chromosome and a penis, I'll give you a cookie.

#31245: — 07/08  at  02:10 PM

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.

"Neck-down Darwinism" doesn't go far enough: though I agree with Zywicki that evolution can't explain human mental faculties, I also refuse to accept that natural selection is capable of shaping any physical component of the cranium, pectoral extremities, or upper thorax. I am an adamant Xiphoid-down Darwinist.

Moreover, as Zywicki suggests, I emphatically reject the existence of any biological differences whatsoever between the sexes. I am also currently working on formulating a theory of reproduction. It is very hard.

#31251: coturnix — 07/08  at  02:37 PM
On the difference between Evolutionary Psychology and evolutionary psychology, this is useful:
http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/06/evolutionary-psychology-vs.html

#31253: Chris — 07/08  at  03:08 PM
Having had previous encounters with Volokh's Todd "I don't know shit about it, but I'm going to comment on it like I was an expert anway" Zywicki, and I've learned from those encounters (which included long, and incredibly frustrating email conversations in which he would fall deeper and deeper into a well of ignorance while, at the same time, becoming more and more convinced that he was right). Based on my experience, I can give you two pieces of advice:

1. Ignore him.
2. Ignore him some more.

When scholars are so blatantly unscholarly as Zywicki regularly is, especially where issues of science are concerned, on the Volokh blog, it's best to just pretend they don't exist.

#31268: saurabh — 07/08  at  04:45 PM
Err... at least as far as Trivers and reciprocal altruism goes in that litany, I'd say there's plenty of debate on extending the concept to human altruism. Blood-sharing in bats is great, but that sort of behavior bears almost no resemblance to the sappy sentiment most people think of when we say "altruism", and it's extraordinarily unlikely that they have a similar mechanism of origin.

#31273: Chris — 07/08  at  05:09 PM
Rana (as in frog?), the spatial reasoning ability differences between males and females are the only real cognitive difference that stands up across different parts of the curve (in the middle and at the ends), and over several related tasks. It's small, of course, but it's difficult to dismiss. What it means, exactly, and why it exists is unknown. It also shows up fairly early in development (you can't do a mental rotation task with an infant, so it's not clear exactly how early). Differences in math abilities, however, don't show up until about high school, and only exist in parts of the curve, in some test-taking contexts, and for secondary math skills. There is some evidence that differences in spatial reasoning ability account for a significant portion of the variance in secondary math skills (if I recall, it's around 15-20%, but it could be less), but the exact relationship between these two types of skills is unknown, and thus the innateness of gender differences in mathematical ability has only limited and indirect support.

There is also a great deal of evidence for social and individual psychological factors in gender differences in mathematical ability, including the context effects (different test-taking situations) and the fact that things like stereotype threat account for some (small) portions of the variance. If conservatives and liberals were both being honest, they would note that we just don't know to what extent differences in mathematical ability are due to innate factors, and how those factors (if they exist) interact with the environmental factors that also influence these differences. They'd note that the only difference we can be relatively sure of is in spatial reasoning, and that it's a very small difference that may or may not be related to math differences.

But as is often the case, people lose the science when it gets thrown in the stew with politics. Of course, Zywicki has never found the science, so he can't lose it.

#31283: — 07/08  at  06:17 PM
Reading the full Zywicki post and his follow ups I "get" what he's trying to say, but I just don't think it's worth saying. There's a big difference between mushy areas of current science that bump into socio-politics and long dead, ideologically driven pseudo-science. The whole post just sounds like "sure our guys are totally wrong, but some of your guys are sort of confused".

#31284: Richard B. — 07/08  at  06:21 PM
There seems to be an epidemic on this blog of loudly claiming victory in any debate in which the Pharyngulist has clearly lost. DarkSyde did this after claiming Iran and Iraq are model democracies, and P. Z. does it here after Ziwicki has clearly handed him his ass on a platter. I admire Myers' photographic memory and minute knowledge of flatworms, the larynx, and hormones but he doesn't seem to possess the kind of analytical reasoning skills that would enable him to make sensible conjecture at the boundaries of knowledge.

Ziwicki makes a apt analogy between the conservative conflict over creationism and the left's anguished rejection of EP and any other assertion of significant differences between men and women above the neck. In order to make meaningful statements about this subject on the basis of science, one would have to be armed with correlational knowledge from the broad fields of sociology, anthropology, and gender studies, knowledge that Myers clearly lacks (as he's demonstrated several times on this very blog.)

It's a shame that conservatives are so soft on creationism and the efforts to re-introduce it into science curricula under the guise of ID or "teaching the conflict". It's equally shameful that people like Myers approach the topic of sexual differences from the standpoint of a straight-jacketed ideology that insists on the politically correct answer independent of the facts.

It's also shameful to see Myers slandering Larry Summers over and over. Those of you who appreciate Myers' battling the ID menace should not encourage him in his gender folly. One reason conservatives are inclined to give the ID'ers a pass is the belief that for all their folly they're not as destructive to the culture as the doctrinaire feminists.

#31286: — 07/08  at  06:44 PM
Richard B, you don't seem to have actually read anything that PZ had to say. Whatever the "left" may or may not think about gender differences, and whether or not those folks are constrained by PC allegiances, and however you and Ziwicki may characterize any of that, nothing that PZ had to say is remotely aligned with any of that.

Instead of coming back at Ziwicki from any sort of "leftist" perspective (or from your caricature of same), PZ flanked your boss-man and totally demolished his antiquated and rigid nature-nurture stereotype of how any such differences may develop.

Was this point too subtle for you: even if there are some genetic or developmentally driven differences of this kind, the differences WITHIN members of a gender on any such axis overwhelm any differences BETWEEN genders.

Good grief!

#31287: Richard B. — 07/08  at  06:54 PM
This isn't a meaningful statement, even though it looks like one: "even if there are some genetic or developmentally driven differences of this kind, the differences WITHIN members of a gender on any such axis overwhelm any differences BETWEEN genders." It's the statement of one who's afraid the fully and completely analyze the nature of sex differences because he's afraid of what he might find.

Differences in height and upper body strength are greater among women than between women and men, apparently. What a shock.

And then there's the Summers point, that certain mental apttitudes are distributed differently among men and women, which is based on the interaction of the genes on the X and Y chromosomes, basic biology, but the mere mention of which causes the Rainman Myers to fly into a rage.

Yes, do go on.

#31289: Pinko Punko — 07/08  at  07:14 PM
PZ we gave you some love over at our place, click through for a prize!

#31290: — 07/08  at  07:22 PM
"that certain mental apttitudes are distributed differently among men and women, which is based on the interaction of the genes on the X and Y chromosomes,"
"that certain mental apttitudes are distributed differently among men and women, which is based on the interaction of the genes on the X and Y chromosomes,"

What evidence do you have to back this claim? For example, are any genes related to brain development expressed on the Y chromosome? (Men and women both have at least one X chromosome...as you presumably know instinctively being a man and therefore naturally science-oriented and all;) Have testosterone, estrogen, or any other sex hormones been shown to effect neurons differentially (ie does estrogen stimulate the neurons in the Broca's or Wernicke's areas, leading to improved verbal skills)? Is regulation of neural genes on the X chromosome affected by sex hormones or perhaps by genes on the Y chromosome? In short, which genes and what interactions are you talking about and how do they add up to average differences in behavior between men and women?

#31295: Rana — 07/08  at  08:09 PM
Chris, yes it is as in frog.

Without seeing the studies in question, I can't respond to how reasonable their assumptions or testing protocols might be.

All I can offer is anecdotal; the fact that I know several men who have trouble with spatial orientation (as in the form of assembling IKEA furniture, say) and several women to whom thinking in three dimensions while looking at two-dimensional plans, however, suggests to me that if there are indeed hardwired differences, they are so small and so easily shaped by training and experience as to not be significant enough to matter. It's a bit like claiming that women have better color sense because they have a larger vocabulary of color-description words. It's so much that women are or are not more sensitive to color variation, but that the ways we use to determine color sensitivity it are themselves socially constructed.

What I was getting in the second half of my comment at is less that differences may exist and more at the anecdotal evidence that variations within sexual groups are as of equal or greater significance than those between them. A minor tendency in one direction, especially a tendency that is identified within a cultural context (and thus probably influenced by unspoken cultural assumptions), doesn't necessarily mean all that much when looking at the ramifications for day to day functioning and/or success.

#31297: — 07/08  at  08:23 PM
Chris: The problem with any study seeking to demonstrate that men and women have different innate mental abilities is that it is virtually impossible to eliminate environmental influence as a factor. Studies looking at how people interact with babies suggest that people begin treating boys and girls differently at birth--and the differences in how boys and girls are treated only increases with age. Given all the confounding factors, it is nearly impossible to get a reliable result. It may be that men and women have, on average, different spatial abilities, but the evidence currently available is far from conclusive.

#31300: PZ Myers — 07/08  at  08:55 PM
I'd agree with Chris that there is a well-established statistical difference in this property called "spatial memory". The problem, though, is that cause has not been established, and as Dianne says, it's pretty much impossible to test for an intrinsic difference, and as Rana says, the variation means you can't reasonably judge a person's ability from their sex. I imagine different hormonal environments for male and female embryos do impose some differences on the brain, but I don't see any data that suggests the differences are significant, and certainly aren't sufficient for someone to assess career potential on the basis of sex.

One other thing I'd add is that we don't even understand what the biological substrate for this parameter "spatial memory" might be, and as is usual when examining emergent properties like higher level cognitive functions or gene activities, it may very well be that what we've labeled "spatial memory" because that is what the convenient test measures might actually be something entirely different.

#31301: PZ Myers — 07/08  at  08:58 PM
Pinko Punko, I don't think I want to admit what those larvae reminded me of.

#31303: — 07/08  at  09:20 PM
I think you proved Volokh's point for him...

1. An ad hominem attack on conservatives like Jonah Goldberg

2. A kneejerk attack on evolutionary psychology with no reasons given for the rejection or explanation of whether you reject the whole concept or merely the current thinking in the field.

3. Refusal to address the question of whether "differences between men's and women's aptitudes" are caused by nature and nurture by rejecting the dichotomy. Note that this is, in itself, a statement about your opinion of nature vs. nurture in this context - after all, I am sure that you would not claim that it is impossible to talk about whether nature or nurture cause sickle cell anemia or lack of arm pit hair. We all understand that it is possible for medical treatment (in other words nurture) to ameliorate (and perhaps soon eliminate) sickle cell anemia and that a woman could be born without armpit hair rather than choosing whether or not to shave it and that the choice of whether or not to shave under the arms could be influenced by genes, but by and large the first is nature and the second is nurture. The reflexive unwillingness to draw similar conclusions about sex differences indicates that you have exactly the kind of taboos that Volokh was talking about.

4. The resort to anecdote to argue that there may not be a difference between men's and women's aptitudes.

5. The use of a strawman - implying that Volokh has somehow claimed that there are no brilliant female scientists.

6. Your refusal to address the question about whether "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". As we all know, these issues have to be addressed in schools because children demand answers and the schools do address them. Avoiding the question indicates that you are afraid of the answer.

7. Resort to anecdote to argue that Summers was wrong - the presence of any number of brilliant female scientists has no bearing on the question he was addressing - whether innate sex differences are part of the reason why there are fewer female scientist than male scientists. It's easy to see how silly your argument is if we turn it around... would you use the same argument to claim that we don't need to do anything to make the sciences more welcoming to women by, for example, better accommodating family life, because the presence of smart, accomplished, successful women in Summers' audience proves he is wrong?

Maybe you should go back and rewrite this post... this time providing real arguments instead of poorly reasoned hysteria.

#31304: — 07/08  at  09:21 PM
PZ Myers wrote: "I have no problem with accepting that measurement may reveal statistical differences in specific cognitive abilities...just don't try to tell me that they are "genetic". They are built upon a biological substrate that is both genetic and environmental, and it's silly to say something as abstract and highly derived as "spatial memory" is simply innate."

A question about terminology: Is there anything you would call "genetic"? It seems to me that if environmental influences disqualifies something from being "genetic", then close to nothing is really "genetic".

#31306: — 07/08  at  09:22 PM
"There is some evidence that differences in spatial reasoning ability account for a significant portion of the variance in secondary math skills..."

And I think the same result is made on music skills and math. Perhaps a wider skill set help even in areas where they are not directly applicable?

But I would not think it a requirement because there are good mathematicians who doesn't do well on either skill. (Sorry, no reference handy.)

"...not as destructive to the culture as the doctrinaire feminists."

Feminism is a diverse collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies. (Wikipedia.)

Exactly what are their doctrine?

#31309: — 07/08  at  09:33 PM
"Your refusal to address the question about whether "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"."

I think PZ adressed that - we can't put the answer in either of those two categories.

Maybe you should go back and reread this post...

#31311: coturnix — 07/08  at  09:43 PM
Erik 12345:

Is there anything you would call "genetic"? It seems to me that if environmental influences disqualifies something from being "genetic", then close to nothing is really "genetic".

Actually, there is nothing I would call "genetic". As PZ stated, everything is 100% genetic AND 100% environmental. It is the interplay of the two during development (so everything is also 100% developmental), even for traits for which we know a lot about the actualy changes in the DNA sequence, e.g., sickle cell anemia.

#31313: — 07/08  at  09:52 PM

"Your refusal to address the question about whether "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"."

I think PZ adressed that - we can't put the answer in either of those two categories.

Torbjorn, get real. He avoids the question.

We all know that schools are addressing these questions but he just says that we shouldn't teach the issue because it isn't yet settled.

#31316: — 07/08  at  10:09 PM

Coturnix:

Actually, there is nothing I would call "genetic". As PZ stated, everything is 100% genetic AND 100% environmental. It is the interplay of the two during development (so everything is also 100% developmental), even for traits for which we know a lot about the actualy changes in the DNA sequence, e.g., sickle cell anemia.

How can something which is both 100% genetic AND 100% environmental, not be genetic? This seems to violate the logical principle that the conjunction P & Q entails P.

#31317: — 07/08  at  10:12 PM
I'm not to impressed with EP. It suggests that men are driven to mate with young nubile women? Have you seen what the average hunter gather looks like by the time she is 25-30? Usually she doesn't look so young. Personally I hope my ancestors were the ones smart enough to mate with these slightly older but still quite fertile women, while male EP idiots were busy clubbing each other to death in a fight over a seventeen year old.

#31318: coturnix — 07/08  at  10:12 PM
Yes, but your are asking for something that is "purely" genetic and nothing else, don't you? Correct me if I am wrong.

Such a trait does not exist. Nature does not work that way. EVERY trait is a result of the interplay between many genes, developmental trajectories (susceptible to noise) and environmental cues.

#31319: coturnix — 07/08  at  10:15 PM
cont'd

Which also means that "nature vs. nurture" argument is a fallacy, not an opinion. That was laid to rest 50 years ago in the debate between Konrad Lorenz and Daniel Lehrmann. Everything since then is just fine-tuning. Mentioning additivity of nature and nurture rightfully provokes signs of anquish and/or boredom, similar to the claim that evolution is "just a theory" - debunked soooo long ago.

#31320: — 07/08  at  10:32 PM

Yes, but your are asking for something that is "purely" genetic and nothing else, don't you? Correct me if I am wrong.

Strawman alert... no one has asked for any such thing.

Mentioning additivity of nature and nurture rightfully provokes signs of anquish and/or boredom,

Strawman alert... no one has mentioned any such thing.

Coturnix, if you really have cogent responses to our arguments why do you feel the need to put up these silly and poorly done strawmen? Try knocking down our real arguments.

PS. Some traits are clearly purely environmental. For example, if an invading army kills a pregnant woman it is hard to see how any genetic change in the fetus could prevent it from exhibiting the trait "Dead as a doornail".

In contrast, it is always possible to imagine a medical intervention that can change any genetically set trait so I suppose no traits are 100% genetic, but don't you think that arguing that sickle cell anemia is environmental because a bone marrow transplant could prevent it is pushing things a bit?

#31321: coturnix — 07/08  at  10:38 PM

1. An ad hominem attack on conservatives like Jonah Goldberg

Goldberg deserves a fate much worse than an ad hominem from a blogger. How about losing his job and soapbox and relieving us from his inane rantings? Anyway, it was not PZ's job in this post to provide a detailed analysis of each concervative pundit's track record. He actually stated openly that he is evaluating them exclusively according to their responses to the TNR questions. If you want to know what's wrong about Goldberg, thousands of bloggers have dissected him over the months and years and a quick search can give you an insight.

2. A kneejerk attack on evolutionary psychology with no reasons given for the rejection or explanation of whether you reject the whole concept or merely the current thinking in the field.

PZ has written about Evolutionary Psychology (capitalized) before and need not go into details within this post. I bet he has no problem with evolutionary psychology (lowercase), though. No biologist I know has a problem with that. See the link I provided on p.1 of comments for definitions.

3. Refusal to address the question of whether "differences between men's and women's aptitudes" are caused by nature and nurture by rejecting the dichotomy. Note that this is, in itself, a statement about your opinion of nature vs. nurture in this context - after all, I am sure that you would not claim that it is impossible to talk about whether nature or nurture cause sickle cell anemia or lack of arm pit hair. We all understand that it is possible for medical treatment (in other words nurture) to ameliorate (and perhaps soon eliminate) sickle cell anemia and that a woman could be born without armpit hair rather than choosing whether or not to shave it and that the choice of whether or not to shave under the arms could be influenced by genes, but by and large the first is nature and the second is nurture. The reflexive unwillingness to draw similar conclusions about sex differences indicates that you have exactly the kind of taboos that Volokh was talking about.

Dichotomy has been rejected a half a century ago. It is not a matter of opinion. Insisting on a neat division between nature and nurture betrays one's naivete about biology (at best) or ideologically-based need for such a dichotomy (as in Gene Expression blog folks).

4. The resort to anecdote to argue that there may not be a difference between men's and women's aptitudes.

Where's the anecdote? I love anecdotes yet I don't see any. He is not arguing that there are no differences, just that the current research is incapable of stating anything on the matter with anything close to certainty. On the other hand your certainty on the matter is based on what?

5. The use of a strawman - implying that Volokh has somehow claimed that there are no brilliant female scientists.

Besides the point. Completely. You completely misunderstood the whole argument.

6. Your refusal to address the question about whether "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". As we all know, these issues have to be addressed in schools because children demand answers and the schools do address them. Avoiding the question indicates that you are afraid of the answer.

You are providing a false dichotomy and PZ, of course, rejects it. The state of science on this matter is still in flux and it is not appropriate to include it at levels lower than college senior classes. On the other hand, evolution is a settled deal and a basis for all biology and HAS to be taught if we are going to teach biology in high schools at all.

7. Resort to anecdote to argue that Summers was wrong - the presence of any number of brilliant female scientists has no bearing on the question he was addressing - whether innate sex differences are part of the reason why there are fewer female scientist than male scientists. It's easy to see how silly your argument is if we turn it around... would you use the same argument to claim that we don't need to do anything to make the sciences more welcoming to women by, for example, better accommodating family life, because the presence of smart, accomplished, successful women in Summers' audience proves he is wrong?

The Summers saga has been trashed over and over again back when it happened, including on this blog. Do a search for details and you will see that this is not an anecdote. This post was not a proper place for including another 3000 words on something that has already been settled on this blog and elsewhere long time ago.

Maybe you should go back and rewrite this post... this time providing real arguments instead of poorly reasoned hysteria.

Your comment is an excellent example of poorly reasoned hysteria.

BTW, dead as a doornail is NOT a trait. You just invented it.

#31322: — 07/08  at  10:40 PM

Coturnix:

Yes, but your are asking for something that is "purely" genetic and nothing else, don't you? Correct me if I am wrong.

No, I am asking a question about terminology.

#31323: coturnix — 07/08  at  10:46 PM
"Genetic" means written in the DNA sequence.
"Environmetal" means NOT written in the DNA sequence.

If you look at ANY trait, you will see that the question is posed wrongly. No trait is determined entirely by the DNA seuqnce, nor by eth envitonment. Traits develop. During development many facotrs, including seuqences of many genes, patterns of expresssion of many genes, developmental noise, direct effects of environment, environmental cues (for which responses have evolved), etc. all work together. The various facotrs always ALL play a role and it is impossible to assign them %-points, e.g., 30% genetic, 70% environmental. This is just very BAD biology.

#31324: coturnix — 07/08  at  10:47 PM
Sorry for bad spelling. I have a fever and need to go to bed right now.

#31325: coturnix — 07/08  at  10:49 PM
Here's a book to read before you continue this conversation, so you do not dig youself deeper:
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/06/books-biased-embryos-and-evolution-by.html

#31327: John M. Price — 07/08  at  11:11 PM

PZ:
<blockquote> 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.
</blockquote>

He very well might have stepped in it as spoken, however I think the issue itself does need further analysis. Men and women ARE different. Saying that these differences cannot include the mental arena is ridiculous. Period.

For my money, kids of either sex should be encouraged in their dreams, aspirations, talents, etc. as they discover them. The feminists who think that mathematics (for example) should be represented by a 50/50 sex mix are perhaps seriously mistaken. However any instructor suggesting to a math interested female student that she should not study the field is not doing the field, the student, or themselves any good whatsoever.

#31328: John M. Price — 07/08  at  11:15 PM

Japanese QuailThe various facotrs always ALL play a role and it is impossible to assign them %-points, e.g., 30% genetic, 70% environmental. This is just very BAD biology.

So, in essence, you are saying that the entire field of behavioral genetics is in error or a fraud or not biology?

#31330: — 07/08  at  11:23 PM
Coturnix:

If you look at ANY trait, you will see that the question is posed wrongly. No trait is determined entirely by the DNA seuqnce, nor by eth envitonment. Traits develop. During development many facotrs, including seuqences of many genes, patterns of expresssion of many genes, developmental noise, direct effects of environment, environmental cues (for which responses have evolved), etc. all work together. The various facotrs always ALL play a role and it is impossible to assign them %-points, e.g., 30% genetic, 70% environmental. This is just very BAD biology.

Straw man again... no one claims you can say that a particular trait is "30% genetic, 70% environmental". What we do claim is that it is possible to say that X% of the variance of this trait in a particular population is caused by genetics and X% by environment.

Do you reject the whole concept of twin studies? After all, the whole point of twin studies is to compare traits in identical vs. fraternal twins to attempt to draw conclusions about to what extent a particular trait is genetic vs. environmental.

If you don't think this is a meaningful question then twin studies seem to operate on a totally flawed premise... but in that case, if you claim that all traits are 100% environmental and 100% genetic, how do you explain the fact that some traits seem to be more more strongly correlated between identical twins than fraternal twins whereas others show much more similar correlations between identical and fraternal twins?

In my world model the first trait is strongly genetic whereas the second is strongly environmental. But you reject that whole concept. So what's your explanation?

#31331: — 07/08  at  11:32 PM
Coturnix says "BTW, dead as a doornail is NOT a trait. You just invented it."

Umm... hate to break it to you, but there have been people who were dead as a doornail since people existed... or I suppose you could argue since doornails existed.

It's clearly a trait and I didn't invent it.

#31332: coturnix — 07/09  at  12:07 AM

Men and women ARE different. Saying that these differences cannot include the mental arena is ridiculous.

Nobody here is saying that. That is a straw man. I study sex differences in the brain and behavior, as well as inidividual phenotipic differences along the feminine/masculone axis within each sex. Why would I do that if I did not believe that difeferences exist?

So, in essence, you are saying that the entire field of behavioral genetics is in error or a fraud or not biology?

Mush of it is really bad. There have been good studies recently, though, mainly because they became more sophisticated about stuff like epigenetics etc.

Straw man again... no one claims you can say that a particular trait is "30% genetic, 70% environmental".

Excuse me? No one?

Do you reject the whole concept of twin studies?

Twin studies are notoriously bad and inconclusive.

If you don't think this is a meaningful question then twin studies seem to operate on a totally flawed premise...

They do.

It's clearly a trait and I didn't invent it.

It is NOT a trait. This is ridiculous....

#31333: coturnix — 07/09  at  12:38 AM
Here is one example from the original TNR interview:

Whether intelligent design or a similar critique should be taught in public schools: "I think people should be taught ... that there are various theories about how man was created."

Do you see what I see? The question was about the overarching theory that explains the diversity of life on Earth and the curious adaptations of millions of species. Yet the answer was reframed as if the question was about the human origins. Later in the interview they even changed the questions to specifically ask about human evolution.

When I teach evolution, I do not use humans or even mention the word "evolution" until the very end. By the time I get to the end, the elegant logic of the mechanism is so obvious that the students cannot help it but agree. I have heard the response "Ah, THAT is what evolution is. I thought it was the sequence of ever-more upright apes turning into humans".

So, can someone explain to me why this sick infatuation with humans? Ever since I was a little child I found human biology and human evolution boring. Humans are also the WORST laboratory animals ever: it is a general-type mammal with no cool adaptations to strange environments (sure, it is intelligent, but it is not certain that it is an adaptation ot a particulat environment, or an adaptation at all - could be exaptation....), it has a very long generation time, it eats a lot, it cannot be selectively bred, it cannot be kept in uniform environments for long periods of time, it cannot be surgically, pharmacologically or genetically manipulated, it has not living close relatives for comparative studies (i.e., within the genus). Why on Earth would anyone want to use humans as a laboratory model? There are so many exciting species on this planet that can teach us something about biology, so why choose the very worst species for the task?

Serious biologists study sex differences as well as many other behavioral traits. However, the (capitalized) Evolutionary Psychology, as exemplified by the work of Cosmides, Tooby, Barash, Buss, Pinker, Desmond Morris, Thornburg, etc. has many deep flaws. Rejecting their science does not in any way mean rejection of the fact that sex differences exist, including in mental traits.

However, their methodology will not lead us to any answers. Their understanding of evolution is uneducated. First, it is genocentric, i.e., they still live in the prehistoric times when the nature/nurture dichotomy was accepted. Second, they only look at a single selective environment, that of the African savannah 150,000 years ago and assume that all human traits are adaptations to that one particular environment. They ignore the evolution that happened since then - only a small subset of the humen population has managed during the past 100 years or so to somewhat isolate itself from the forces of natural selection (and not at all from sexual selection). Even worse, they ignore billions of years of evolution that happened before our ancestors roamed the savannah, as if many of our traits, including behavioral, do not have precursors in reptilies, fish and invertebrates. EP (capitalized) is just bad science, while ep (lowercase) is a legitimate study of evolution of behavioral and mental traits.

So, why such focus on humans? And, within the whole ranges of human behavior, why such focus on sex differences? It is a red flag that ideology is behind such insistence. Femiphobia anyone? Racism perhaps? Why does the Right wing keep harping on this so much? Deep emotional and existential questions? Is it the emotional same reason that creationists need to be creationists?

Which brings me back to what Zywicky did. Ashamed at the poor performance of conservative pundits, most of whom waffled on basic questions about reality, he switches to a completely unrelated topic. The creationism question was essentially meant to see who lives in the real world and who lives in the la-la land (and who refuses to answer for ideological/political reasons). The sex-differences question is a question that does not test for reality. It is a question about a hotly debated current research - something that does not belong in high school textbooks. Once there is enough research and there is a consensus about the results, and then wait 5-10 years for textbooks to catch up to it, then perhaps....

The liberal pundits, as I said in the previous thread, were expected to stand firmly for reality. Alun provided several examples that this is true. Nobody expects pundits to be able to explain the fine points of evolution, but one can expect them to know that evolution has been the consensus for the past 150 years. Conservatives failed even on this basic question. Asking pundits on either side to weigh in on a complex and fluid field of research as is evolutionary psychology is dishonest.

Another note: Models by Hamilton, Trivers and other stuff mentioned by Zywicky are not contested. What is contested is their application. Ask David Sloan Wilson if this is un-controversial.

#31337: — 07/09  at  03:43 AM
<blockquote>It's a bit like claiming that women have better color sense because they have a larger vocabulary of color-description words.</blockquote>Poor choice of example, Rana. Women can have better colour sense than men because of colour receptor genes being on the X chromosome (so men are more likely to have only a defective copy). What's more, there are 2 common versions of the red receptor with slightly different frequency responses and a woman can have both, leading potentially to more subtle discrimination between colours.

However, I'm not disagreeing with the principle of your remarks.

#31344: — 07/09  at  05:08 AM
Interesting that people who talk about women being worse at mathematics than men never seem to mention the Swedish study that shows that among home students (i.e. students that study alone), girls learn mathematics better than boys. Now, the study's authors thinks it's inconclusive (or rather irrelevant), but it does put the whole concept of men being inheritly better at mathematics to a rest.

#31349: — 07/09  at  06:00 AM
Just out of curiosity, how is the question of whether or not women are better or worse than men at mathematics relevant to the question of whether certain liberals, including PZ Myers, have kneejerk religious objections to evolutionary psychology?

I think the answer to that question may throw some light on the emotional reactions here...

#31355: — 07/09  at  08:01 AM
I don't know which is scarier--intelligent design theory or the modern-day Lysenkoism of people such as Myers, Leiter, and the lynch mob that mindlessly follows him on this board.

I have been a professor of evolutionary biology for 17 years, the last 4 as Chair of my department. Unlike Myers, who seems to know almost nothing at all about evolutionary psychology, I have studied this issue closely. The truth is that is that Zwyicki's description of the state of the science is largely correct, and Myers's incoherent sputtering to the contrary betray a deep desperation to avoid that fact.

It is clear why 20 years after receiving his PhD, Mr. Myers is still nothing more than an untenured Assistant Professor at an obscure and mediocre university in the middle of nowhere Minnesota. His bitterness is palpable.

My personal concern as one who had dedicatd her life to this enterprise, is that that when politically-motivated researchers such as Professors Leiter, Myers, and other Lysenkoists focus on a withch-hunt against those that deviate from the approved political orthodoxy, this not only discredits the scientific enterprise in general, but efforts to beat back the rise of intelligent design theory and other pseudo-scientific theories.

#31356: Arun — 07/09  at  08:12 AM

Do you reject the whole concept of twin studies? After all, the whole point of twin studies is to compare traits in identical vs. fraternal twins to attempt to draw conclusions about to what extent a particular trait is genetic vs. environmental.

We would expect similarly constituted bodies/organisms to be more closely correlated in their behavior than less similarly constituted bodies. So, when identical twins correlate more closely in IQ tests scores than fraternal twins, we assign this to the greater similarity, and ultimately it boils down to genes, so it seems. But suppose it turns out that under the stress of an IQ test, the blood flow to the brains of identical twins are more closely correlated than that of fraternal twins, should we assign the correlation of scores to this fact? Or some other fact? What twin studies give is indicative, not proof. Ultimately, you have to show that people with genetic trait A and varying genetic trait B are more correlated on IQ than people with varying genetic trait A and some particular genetic trait B; and then you can say perhaps that A is a cause.
Twins don't prove all that much.

(That is, ideally, to establish a cause, you want to vary one parameter at a time.)

This is also applicable to any difference in abilities in physics of men and women. Why are we assuming that causative factors are more highly correlated within the same gender than say, between siblings?

#31357: — 07/09  at  08:25 AM
<blcokquote>I have been a professor of evolutionary biology for 17 years, the last 4 as Chair of my department. Unlike Myers, who seems to know almost nothing at all about evolutionary psychology, I have studied this issue closely. The truth is that is that Zwyicki's description of the state of the science is largely correct, and Myers's incoherent sputtering to the contrary betray a deep desperation to avoid that fact.</blockquote>

Ohhh.... an argument from authority, and hiding behind a pseudonym. Very impressive.

I don't know anything about evolutionary psychology, but if you feel PZ is wrong, explain why, don't just state that you know more about the subject and that PZ is wrong.

Insulting people by calling them Lysenkoists doesn't help your argument, and shows a clear lack of understanding of history.

#31359: Alon Levy — 07/09  at  08:40 AM
Two things, science gal:

1. If you check PZ's about page, you'll see that he's an associate professor; if I remember correctly he has tenure, but don't quote me on it. If you want to bash someone, at least do it right.

2. Some people within the neo-Darwinian framework are sociobiologists or evolutionary psychologists. I'll defer to coturnix's distinction between e.p. and E.P. Some people think that E.P. (here I'm ignoring the distinction) is bunk; say what you want about Stephen Jay Gould, but he was a serious, mainstream biologist. Note how E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins are both liberals and see no contradiction between their political beliefs and their sociobiological research.


On the other hand, coturnix makes some utterly wrong arguments himself, often conflating the question of whether a biological view is true with the question of which ideologues tend to like it. Maybe genocentrism aids anti-abortion; the article provides impeccable arguments why it should but no shred of proof to support them, just like E.P. But that has no bearing on whether the gene-centric view of biology is correct. But this doesn't mean that E.P. is a serious field or even that the opposition to it is ideological.

#31360: Arun — 07/09  at  08:51 AM
If e(E)volutionary p(P)sychology is not one's field of specialization, then one's knowledge or lack of knowledge of it is irrelevant to one's academic career. Any bitterness would be only if some e(E)volutionary p(P)sychologist took away the opportunity that one wanted. The illogic is not worthy of a chair of a science department.

#31363: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  09:04 AM
Hmmm. She can mangle my credentials all she wants, but UMM is not a mediocre university -- it's actually a very well-regarded liberal arts university. Small and relatively obscure are fair cops -- we are located in a remote part of the state -- but we are an academically demanding place. It's also very strange that she would claim I'm palpably bitter about being here, since I love this place and was very, very happy to land the job.

I also think she is confused. Is there no "substantial disagreement among knowledgeable scientists" on EP, as Zywicki claims and which she claims is correct, or does EP "deviate from the approved political orthodoxy" as she avers? It can't be both the dominant dogma and a persecuted minority, you know.

The reality that Zywicki and Science Gal are denying is that there are two distinct camps within biology on the EP issue. There is the EP gang, represented by people like Pinker and Cosmides and Tooby, and there are the wise and intelligent pluralists and moderate selectionists, represented by the late Gould and Lewontin and Rose and Coyne and Orr...and then, of course, there are many who try to take a middle ground. Trying to claim that the issue is settled in their favor, as Zywicki does, is ridiculous. And trying to claim that a small-time professor at a small university is a Lysenkoist working to lynch a big-time Harvard professor like Pinker is idiotic.

#31365: — 07/09  at  09:18 AM

And trying to claim that a small-time professor at a small university is a Lysenkoist working to lynch a big-time Harvard professor like Pinker is idiotic.

No, no it's your horde of brainwashed followers that is doing it. Take me for example, I am using my powerful position as a student of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen to ensure that the entire US scientific community rejects EP. Next step will be to ensure that anyone who continues believing in EP will be sent to Sibiria Alaska.

#31368: pough — 07/09  at  09:32 AM
When you consider that your witch hunting consists of sitting back with a (decaf) coffee in a small town in Minnesota and writing in your personal blog, it's a huge surprise that nobody's burning. Those are some pretty damn effective means of overpowering your opponents in an agressive, Lysenkoist fashion!

I'm pleased to be a part of the PZ Lynch Mob (great band name). I'm also part of the mindless, can't think for myself brigade at such sites as KvR Audio ("Tell me what music plugins to install next!") and Suicide Girls ("Whose pierced nipples should I look at?"). Thanks for doing all my thinking for me. Because, you know, two people can't think the same thing unless one of them is mindless. That's what the blogs have taught me.

#31369: — 07/09  at  09:45 AM
If this is Brian Leiter's idea of a persuasive argument, then Leiter is even more of a hack than I thought, or he is going to need to get a new butt-boy to do his bidding for him because you, my friend, simply are not up to the job. Not only are you obviously ignorant of evolutionary psychology, but you are even illiterate in basic statistics. Dude--you can't have a "room full of counterexamples" as a response to a claim about a statistical distribution. Statisticians refer to "those in the room" as "observations" or "data points" in the distribution, not "counter-examples." Michelle Wie is not a "counterexample" to the statistical observation that men, as a statistical generalization, can hit a golf ball further than women. With this sort of basic ignorance, no wonder your professional life is where it is (and your bitterness comes through is pretty clear in many of your posts, by the way).

Now, if this is Leiter's idea of a persuasive "takedown" of evolutionary psychology, then I too look forward to his article on the topic, which promises to be a howler. Surely he'll be citing some of the incisive analysis here--"Pinker is full of shit," "So-and-so is a moron"--wow, this is first-rate philosophical gold. No wonder Mr. Leiter is so dazzled by your brilliance and rhetorical skills. (Typically, Mr. Leiter is too much of a coward to allow Comments on his blog--nothing more courageous than a hit and run job, no?).

What I'm wondering is did Leiter have to give you something more than a mere link to get you to display your ignorance in such a public manner, or were you willing to do it for a pathetic little link? And what about the hacks all over your board here following you like the Pied Piper--are they really just embarrassing themselves for free?

Since Leiter is afraid of Comments, I'll leave this one here--Mr. Leiter might do better to stick to his ruminations on his imaginay philosophical world of Nietzsche and his other irrelevant philosophical cogitations and leave the real world to the grown-ups. At least in his imaginary philosophical world the rest of us can ignore him and his hack rationalizations. Here, however, his hack rationalizations for attacks on academic freedom can have real-world consequences.

Maybe next time it would be more productive to engage in an intellectual debate with those with whom you disagree, rather than tenedentious name-calling.

#31371: Alon Levy — 07/09  at  09:53 AM
Maybe next time it would be more productive to engage in an intellectual debate with those with whom you disagree, rather than tenedentious name-calling.

It's interesting that you say this, considering that I've read and participated in numerous debates on race, gender, and EP on Pharyngula; in fact the race/gender issue is discussed here more than any other issue except evolution vs. creationism.

#31376: pough — 07/09  at  10:12 AM
Why is it always the bitter, insulting and dismissive posters who take PZ Myers to task for being bitter, insulting and dismissive?

I'm also enjoying the oh-so-typical "mindless sycophant" accusation appearing right after I mentioned that I thought it was a very, very stupid thing to say. That makes me particularly happy. If I ever go to a place where people discuss a subject they're interested in and tell them that none of them can think for themselves, please hurl some much-deserved abuse at me. Or is it true that disagreeing when you agree is the proper definition of thinking for yourself? Tell me what I think!

#31377: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  10:18 AM
You don't seem to understand the point. When you are hiring individuals, you don't get to resort to poorly used statistics to exclude people on the basis of irrelevant issues like gender. The "room full of counterexamples" isn't to say that the statistics are necessarily wrong, but that the interpretation, that women aren't as good at science, is obviously false. I know nothing about this Wie person, but would you go up to her and tell her she can't be as good a golfer as a man? Would you wait until she had put the club down to say it?

Speaking of clueless failures who don't get the point, it's damned hypocritical to whine about "tendentious name-calling" while using the insults "hack", "butt-boy", and "coward", and expressing bizarre contempt for my professional position.

#31378: Pinko Punko — 07/09  at  10:20 AM
It is true, after the larvae went up in all their glory I though maybe that some larger creatures had been divorced from their glory by some scalpel wielding scientist. Have slice, will dice as we say in the business.

#31379: — 07/09  at  10:29 AM
Ok here's another question. Are differences between geniuses and the average laypeople true mental and possibly physical differences, or is it some kind of social problem?

There are differences. They do matter in the long run. Women bring unique ideas and thinking to a subject that would be sorely missed if they were excluded from a field of study. Men also bring unique ideas and a way of thinking to subjects of study. These differences are a good thing. Just like if we ever figure out a way(or already have) of interacting with animals and learning from their motivations. Anyone that sees something bad about innate biological differences has a horrible political motive that I wouldn't want near the Sciences with a ten-foot pole.

#31383: — 07/09  at  10:55 AM

There are differences. They do matter in the long run. Women bring unique ideas and thinking to a subject that would be sorely missed if they were excluded from a field of study. Men also bring unique ideas and a way of thinking to subjects of study.

See, I don't believe it's a gender thing - I think it's an individual thing. Some individuals bring unique ideas and ways of thinking to a subject, and all of these should be included - as long as they operate within the same basic parametres - a ID Creationist shouldn't be included in studies of evolution, as they don't operate within the bounds of science.

#31384: — 07/09  at  10:59 AM

(Typically, Mr. Leiter is too much of a coward to allow Comments on his blog--nothing more courageous than a hit and run job, no?).

Said by a true brave person hiding between a three letter handle and a yahoo email adress. Brian Leiter publishes his views openly, and everyone is free to post their opinion of those views if they want to. PZ Myers also published his views openly, and even allows people to comment on them on his own site (within bounds). This doesn't mean that Leiter is a coward for not doing so.

#31385: — 07/09  at  11:01 AM
Oh, and my last comment shouldn't be taken for me saying that everyone who posts anonymously are cowards - there can be plenty of good reasons for doing so. However, anyone who blogs under their own name, and even makes it clear where they work, are obviously not cowards in the sense that the three-letter acronym tried to imply.

#31388: — 07/09  at  11:21 AM

Insulting people by calling them Lysenkoists doesn't help your argument, and shows a clear lack of understanding of history.

While I certainly agree that "insulting people" is inappropriate (perhaps a useful general lesson for everyone to take to heart--although "flaming moron" seems like more of an insult than calling someone a "Lysenkoist"), if it is true that certain questions are closed off by the restrictions of feminism or "political correctness," or as Richard B. puts it in his post, a "straight-jacketed ideology that insists on the politically correct answer independent of the facts," why isn't Science Gal exactly correct to use the term "Lysenkoism" to describe this?

Here's a few definitions for the term "Lysenkoist" that I found on-line:

"Under Lysenko's guidance, science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology." (from http://skepdic.com/lysenko.html).

Glossary--Lysenkoism: "Lysenkoism has come to represent the devestating consequences of marrying science to ideology." (from http://www.galafilm.com/afterdarwin/english/glossary/lysenkoism.html).

"The term [Lysenkoism] survives as a metaphor for other beliefs challenged by empirical evidence but preferred for ideological reasons." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism).

Interestingly, two of these three definitions also discuss creationism as potentially being modern-day examples of Lysenkoism. Assuming these definitions are correct (and they seem to comport with the standard understanding of the term), why wouldn't the term "Lysenkoism" apply with equal force to scientific research constrained by a feminist or politically-correct ideology, as suggested by Richard B., as it would to creationist research?

In fact, rather than demonstrating a "clear lack of understanding of history" isn't the term even more appropriately applied to an ideologically-motivated left-wing science than it is to creationism? Like modern Lysenkoism, Lysenko himself misused science to justify Marxism. Similarly, the Lysenkoist assault described by Science Gal also emanates from the left, not the right. Moreover, the agenda of modern leftist science, like Lysenkoism, is to use the authority of the universities to block the study of particular ideas, unlike the study of creationism or Intelligent Design, which although wrongheaded (and Lysenkoist in its own right), seemingly do not contemplate the exclusion of teaching standard scientific understanding as well. Sure, there are no gulags for deviationist scientists (as under Lysenko), but as events at Harvard have shown, there are show trials, abject apologies for deviationism, and public shaming rituals reminiscent of Lysenko's assaults on scientific inquiry.

So why isn't "Lysenkoism" the correct term to apply to both creationist "science" as well as the problem of politically-correct science raised by Richard B. and Science Gal?

#31389: — 07/09  at  11:31 AM

Elizabeth R.:

So why isn't "Lysenkoism" the correct term to apply to both creationist "science" as well as the problem of politically-correct science raised by Richard B. and Science Gal?

Because you shouldn't trivialize very serious matters by lumping them together with much less serious matters.

#31390: — 07/09  at  11:35 AM
Erik:
Is Carl Sagan incorrect to refer to American creationists as "Lysenkoists" as well? (see Wikepedia entry previously posted).

#31392: — 07/09  at  11:44 AM

PZ Myers:

You don't seem to understand the point. When you are hiring individuals, you don't get to resort to poorly used statistics to exclude people on the basis of irrelevant issues like gender. The "room full of counterexamples" isn't to say that the statistics are necessarily wrong, but that the interpretation, that women aren't as good at science, is obviously false. I know nothing about this Wie person, but would you go up to her and tell her she can't be as good a golfer as a man? Would you wait until she had put the club down to say it?

Lawrence Summers didn't tell any particular woman that she couldn't be as good a scientist as a man. Nor did he say that women cannot be as good scientists as men. What he did say is that there is a difference in the standard deviation in science aptitude, which leads to differences in the number of high-end performers and which probably accounts for a substantial part of underrepresentation of women:

"The second thing that I think one has to recognize is present is what I would call the combination of, and here, I'm focusing on something that would seek to answer the question of why is the pattern different in science and engineering, and why is the representation even lower and more problematic in science and engineering than it is in other fields. And here, you can get a fair distance, it seems to me, looking at a relatively simple hypothesis. It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined. If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it's not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it's talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I'm sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper-looked at the book, rather-looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those-they're all over the map, depends on which test, whether it's math, or science, and so forth-but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates."

Lawrence Summers, http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html

I agree both with Diane Halperns remarks on the Pinker vs. Spelke debate to the effect that greatest factor is probably the career loss due giving birth to and raising children and with Amandas previous comment here that it might well be women who on average have higher science aptitude than men. However, I don't see how the "room full of counterexamples" us anything of the sort, at least if the discussion concerns statements made by Summers.

#31393: — 07/09  at  11:46 AM
I forget the link to Halperns remarks:
http://www.edge.org/discourse/science-gender.html#dh

#31395: — 07/09  at  11:48 AM

Is Carl Sagan incorrect to refer to American creationists as "Lysenkoists" as well? (see Wikepedia entry previously posted).

Yes.

#31396: — 07/09  at  11:49 AM

(perhaps a useful general lesson for everyone to take to heart--although "flaming moron" seems like more of an insult than calling someone a "Lysenkoist"), if it is true that certain questions are closed off by the restrictions of feminism or "political correctness," or as Richard B. puts it in his post, a "straight-jacketed ideology that insists on the politically correct answer independent of the facts," why isn't Science Gal exactly correct to use the term "Lysenkoism" to describe this?

Ok, first of, calling someone a flaming moron is not on teh same level as calling someone a Lysenkoist. The Panda's Thumb there is a good explanaition of who Lysenko was, and what his influence cost the Soviet/Russian scientific community. Saying that a biologist is a Lysenkoist is on par with calling a German a Nazi. If you don't realize that, you don't know much about what Lysenkoism is.

Lysenko did not only close of certain questions to scientific inquiry - he promoted pseudo-science which cost many lives. On top of that, his regime ment that real scientists were killed or deported to Sibiria.

The fact that some scientists have scientific problems with certain areas of research and believe they are founded not in science but rather in politics, and thus should be abandoned, doesn't in any way equalize what Lysenko did.

#31397: — 07/09  at  12:01 PM
For a good description of life under Lysenko, see Mark Perakh's personal account in the paper he coauthored with Wesley R. Elsberry: [url="http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/eandp.pdf"]How Intelligent Design Advocates Turn the Sordid Lessons
from Soviet and Nazi History Upside Down[/url] (pdf)

#31399: — 07/09  at  12:23 PM
PZ Myers:

You don't seem to understand the point. When you are hiring individuals, you don't get to resort to poorly used statistics to exclude people on the basis of irrelevant issues like gender. The "room full of counterexamples" isn't to say that the statistics are necessarily wrong, but that the interpretation, that women aren't as good at science, is obviously false.

You seem to be making novel use of the English language. The statement "women aren't as good at science" is usually taken to mean that on average women are not as good at science as men. The existence of a room full of counterexamples therefore proves nothing.

If you think it means "All women are worse than all men at science" then it's an obviously absurd statement. Do you really think that is what Summers was saying?

If it's neither of the above interpretations then what do you think the statement means?

#31404: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  01:21 PM
Summers is responsible for hiring practices at Harvard.

Harvard has been notoriously biased in its hiring practices.

Everyone wonders why. Women organize to ask why.

Summers gets in front of a group of women scientists and announces that one explanation, and one he favors, is that women aren't as good at science.

Now a number of people are splitting hairs and quibbling over the English language to argue that he really wasn't trying to claim that they should favor the male applicant pool over the female. He was just talking about average women, who are inferior to average men. No harm in that, no sir. Why, that's just truth!

Of course, it's no such thing. It doesn't matter how much you wriggle and try to helpfully interpret Summers' statements for him. He's wrong in detail, and he's wrong in context, and he's wrong in general.

And seriously, if you think slight sex differences in the distribution of some abstract ability are a significant factor within the pool of applicants for research positions at Harvard and MIT and Princeton, you're just nuts. Those applicants must be reviewed on the basis of individual qualifications, not some bias about irrelevant properties, like what flavor of gonads they might have.

#31406: Arun — 07/09  at  01:50 PM
A minor quibble:

Summers said

It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.

I can understand height, weight are measured objectively. Propensity for criminality is presumably reasonably objectively measurable. IQ and the ability to pass a standardized math test can also be measured, and this last might be a reasonable measure of mathematical ability.

But what is "scientific ability" and what is a measure of it? Is it not typically known only after the fact? (Who predicted that Einstein would make a good scientist, for instance?) Moreover, e.g, perhaps a Dembski or Behe would score high in some hypothetical "scientific ability" test, but do they make good scientists?

#31407: Daniel Newby — 07/09  at  01:52 PM
Chris said "They'd note that the only difference we can be relatively sure of is in spatial reasoning, and that it's a very small difference that may or may not be related to math differences."

It is a small difference at the mean, but technical professionals are from the upper tail of the statistical distribution, far from the mean. Suppose men were 0.25 standard deviations more intelligent than women. (A piddling four IQ points!) At average intelligence (IQ=100), there would be about 5 men for every 4 women. That's noticeable but not important. However, up in scientist territory at IQ=130, there would be 23 men for every 12 women.

Rana said "I just have to remark on the women have lesser "spatial abilities" or "mechanical abilities" or "math skills" thing. Even if you place it in the context of 1950s gender roles, it still doesn't wash, as anyone who has ever had to repair and maintain a sewing machine, design a kid's costume from scratch, or knit a complicated garment using five different yarns, one stitch at a time, would know."

There's a big difference between repairing a sewing machine and blithely using calculus in five dimensions (which is just enough to make you a worker bee in physics).

PZ said "... any intrinsic biological differences in the operation of the adult brain are overwhelmed by social and cultural factors."

Congratulations, PZ, you just blamed women with menstrual migraine for not having enough willpower. Migraine, a disorder of neuron excitability, is strongly influenced by gender. (Slight male prevalence before adrenarche, shifting to a 3:1 female to male ratio after puberty. Changes in sex steroid level often have a huge effect on the course of the disorder.) Likewise with sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (2:1 male to female ratio, although the data are rather sparse and poorly studied). Or autism spectrum disorders, which have a 3:1 male to female ratio; autistic savants have a famously high male prevalence. The onset and severity of schizophrenia are noticeably influenced by gender. The bipolar disorders have small gender predilections. Research is uncovering that a variety of gender-related hormones such as oxytocin have big effects on cognition.

The evidence is overwhelming that gender has huge effects on the activity of neurons.

#31408: — 07/09  at  02:13 PM
PZ is losing it...

Harvard has been notoriously biased in its hiring practices.

Says who? This is certainly not a generally accepted fact unless, of course, you are referring to their extensive affirmative action efforts to include women in applicant pools.

Summers gets in front of a group of women scientists and announces that one explanation, and one he favors, is that women aren't as good at science.

This is just a plain old lie. Summers made a number of comments about aptitude distributions between the sexes, but one thing he emphatically did not say is that women aren't as good at science.

Now a number of people are splitting hairs and quibbling over the English language to argue that he really wasn't trying to claim that they should favor the male applicant pool over the female.

Now you're verging into slander. Are you seriously claiming that Summers was trying to "claim that they should favor the male applicant pool over the female"?!? I see no way that any fair person could read his comments and draw that conclusion.

He was just talking about average women, who are inferior to average men. No harm in that, no sir. Why, that's just truth!

Well, actually, that's another statement he didn't make. Did you even read his comments before spouting off about them?

Of course, it's no such thing. It doesn't matter how much you wriggle and try to helpfully interpret Summers' statements for him. He's wrong in detail, and he's wrong in context, and he's wrong in general.

Mind providing a specific quote from his speech (not what you wish he said but what he actually said) and explaining how he's wrong?

And seriously, if you think slight sex differences in the distribution of some abstract ability are a significant factor within the pool of applicants for research positions at Harvard and MIT and Princeton, you're just nuts.

Please explain your reasoning. For example, as Summers pointed out, it doesn't take a very large difference in the standard deviation of the scientific capabilities of males and females to result in a very large difference in the percentage of males and females among the top .01% of the population, which is presumably the group that forms the applicant pool for research positions at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton.

Those applicants must be reviewed on the basis of individual qualifications, not some bias about irrelevant properties, like what flavor of gonads they might have.

Sure. But if there is a real difference in scientific aptitude (or the standard deviation for that aptitude) between men and women then when we analyze the results of that individual review we will find that significantly more members of one sex than the other make the cut.

You can certainly argue that men and women have identical scientific aptitudes and that the standard deviations of the aptitudes of men and women are also identical but the rest of the analysis is not really disputable.

#31409: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  02:18 PM

Congratulations, PZ, you just blamed women with menstrual migraine for not having enough willpower.

Good grief, are you seriously suggesting that women are less fit for science because they menstruate? Or that perhaps we should discriminate against men because they have a higher frequency of schizophrenia?

Please do not put words in my mouth. The only person who has mentioned menstruation as a mark against women is yourself.

#31410: — 07/09  at  02:23 PM

Ok, first of, calling someone a flaming moron is not on teh same level as calling someone a Lysenkoist.

Ok, Kristjan, thanks for clearing that up. In that case Myers is not a Lysenkoist, but a "flaming moron" who doesn't even understand the most basic grasp of statistics. And Leiter is not a Lysenkoist either, but a "flaming moron" who thinks this ill-informed ranting is persuasive (I wonder if he even read this before he endorsed it on his blog?). I'm sure they both feel better now to know that they are both just incomprehensively stupid and not evil.

Seriously, I think its time for Myers to admit he's busted on Summers. "Individual hires on the merits" clearly has absolutely nothing to do with what Summers was talking about. Summers was providing a possible explanation for the observed statistical disparities between men and women at top universities. Indeed that was precisely Summers' point--if you hire on the merits, and you are pulling from the very, very top end of the relevant distribution (4 or 5 deviations above the mean), you may pull more men simply because there may be more there to be pulled.

This is not a complicated argument. So either you truly are a flaming moron who doesn't understand an extremely simple statistical argument or you are a liar who deliberately misrepresented what Summer said and is now trying desperately to dig back out of your hole by further mischaracterizing what Summers said.

Instead, you just dig deeper and deeper and deeper. Really now, don't you think it's about time to stop digging?

#31413: — 07/09  at  02:32 PM
Given the fact that Summers has appologized for his remarks, and admitted they were not backed up by science, I can't see why PZ should think he was busted.

#31414: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  02:51 PM
Nor do I misunderstand statistics. What ewp and Friedman and these other dingleberries migrating over from Volokh are doing is making the odious error of freely flipping back and forth from a statistical argument to the assessment of the individual. I don't care what the average properties of males are when I am on the job market or aspiring to promotion: evaluate me, not Larry Summers or Lance Armstrong or Bill O'Reilly or some fuzzy average of every person with a testicle or two on the planet. That is also what women are asking for, and what Summers was making clear that they would not get—that they would be able to apply for a job without the existence of their ovaries as a factor in their hiring.

And don't bother trying to worm around Summers' words. He was suggesting that innate differences between men and women could be a reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers, making excuses for the gender disparity in his institution. The idea that it's just a reflection of a difference in the high end of the distribution is ridiculous: another conflation you guys are perpetrating is this flaky idea that performance in something as complex as science can be encapsulated by a single, one-dimensional parameter.

Your bell curve and bogus statistics are fictions. If IQ or spatial memory were predictors of ability to that degree, we'd just assign jobs on the basis of performance on the Stanford-Binet in high school. It is a complex argument, and insisting that it is simple and predictable from a simple measurement is where you people are digging yourself deeper into fantasy land.

#31415: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  03:00 PM
Friedman: Harvard's diminishing investment in women faculty is a matter of record.

Since Summers became president in 2001, the number of women granted tenure, or a permanent faculty position, has fallen to 12 percent of all appointments in 2003- 2004 from 26 percent in 2001-2002.

In case you hadn't noticed, about half the population as a whole are female, and over half of all graduate students completing a degree are female.

12% is much less than 50%.

#31427: — 07/09  at  04:09 PM
Well, gosh, RichardB, now you've made it obvious that you didn't read Ziwicki EITHER--"Differences in height and upper body strength are greater among women than between women and men, apparently. What a shock." Did you not manage to notice that we are talking about alleged differences in mental aptitudes, y'know, the "above the neck" stuff? Even the incoherent Mr. Z. managed to get THAT bit across to MOST of his readers.

But, OK RB, let's now factor upper body strength and height into Harvard's employment practices with regard to women scientists; yep, that makes LOADS of sense!

Nobody is saying that there may not be "average" statistical differences on certain axes traceable ultimately to genetic differences (if only somehow you could "correct" for all the developmental, environmental, cultural and other epigenetic effects--and maybe someday we'll even be able to do that little thing).

But that's utterly beside the point when we're talking about individual hiring/advancement decisions. Basing those on the hazy research conclusions of an area that's still very much "under construction" would be ridiculous and pernicious enough. Basing such individual career decisions on nothing more than the most broadbrush stereotypes, unsupported by ANY science whatsoever, is active cupidity.

I'm tempted to proffer some free career advice--if you can't follow the threads any better than you've shown here, please don't seek a position as a weaver. But I'd hate to impose a stereotype based only on your inability to track the barest bones of THIS one dicussion.

#31436: Amanda Marcotte — 07/09  at  05:04 PM
I love these discussions because it's just so frustrating for those that want to argue that there's scientific proof women are dumb. There's always two underlying assumptions:

1) Wanting not to be condescended to by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about--like Larry Summers telling biologists about biology--is highly irrational and emotional. Grasping at the thinnest of straws (the ability to rotate 3D objects in your head slightly better=menfolks is smarter!) to bolster your belief that you are somehow born superior is the height of rationality.

2) That if somehow we proved that one sex was smarter than the other, it would definitely be men.

Anti-feminist men who troll this blog and want to prove that women are born dumb, I suggest that you are your own worst enemies. Because if we are to judge the intellectual capabilities of men by yourselves, one would wonder if it's really men who are stone cold retarded. You should thank god there's men like PZ out there proving that men are perfectly capable of logical thought, thank you very much.

#31437: Pinko Punko — 07/09  at  05:07 PM
If I weren't listening to the delightful Aimee Mann right now (Calling It Quits) I'd seriously start ripping people new *ssholes. I would like to note that the Volokhian android has accomplished his programmed mission in that we are discussing Larry Summers' ill-advised remarks instead of the freely given idiocy of America's conservative tastemakers.

To recap:

Is it possible that women and men differ coginitatively?

Answer: Yes.

Do we have any good evidence for this?

Answer: No.

Until all environmental variables are ruled out, we cannot possibly know the answer to this question.

Techinically, the Flying Spaghetti monster might be real, do we have any evideence for this?

Answer: No.

Why don't we equally waste our time talking about that? These conservative pundits' remarks were quoted IN CONTEXT, let's talk about them, instead of constructing false logical contingencies based on the truth of evolution. That is complete Cobaggery. Term defined at Three Bulls! Gender and ethnically neutral insult to be used in debates with illogical entities.

#31438: Echidne of the snakes — 07/09  at  05:14 PM
Is it ok to return to something from a previous page? I hope so:
My personal concern as one who had dedicatd her life to this enterprise, is that that when politically-motivated researchers such as Professors Leiter, Myers, and other Lysenkoists focus on a withch-hunt against those that deviate from the approved political orthodoxy, this not only discredits the scientific enterprise in general, but efforts to beat back the rise of intelligent design theory and other pseudo-scientific theories.

What makes it so that people who wish to find or fervently believe in innate gender differences aren't as politically motivated as those (if they exist) who believe in none or wish to find none? It seems to me that studying gender differences is a field in which none of us can avoid being also a subject of the study, and as such it is inconceivable to me that a researcher could be totally unbiased or uninterested in the results. Also, as the right and the left both very much wish such research to support whatever their ideological positions are, all research in this field deserves to come under the most intense scrutiny possible.

An unrelated point: Evolutionary Psychology suffers from one major problem, and that is the lack of any real data from whatever prehistoric periods various changes supposedly happened. Instead, the studies use data from either the present (which is conflated by the effect of culture) or from various animal populations (which may or may not be relevant). This means that the only real criterion we can use to evaluate the models is logical consistency (at least until some far future date when genetic research is much advanced from what it is today), and the problem is that even I, no expert in the field, can make up logically consistent models of the causes of various things I see around today. Especially if I define the problem narrowly enough. By the way, something that cannot be tested against the necessary type of data is by definition a pseudo-science, too.

In general, I find it of interest that the discussion of various cognitive ability tests here focuses only on those in which men/boys have either higher means or larger standard deviations around the mean. There are tests which show higher averages for girls/women, but for some reason the right never explains why almost every famous writer has been a woman by the fact that women score much higher, on average, in essay-type tests.

#31440: — 07/09  at  05:32 PM

Amanda Marcotte:

1) Wanting not to be condescended to by someone who doesn't know what he's talking about--like Larry Summers telling biologists about biology--is highly irrational and emotional. Grasping at the thinnest of straws (the ability to rotate 3D objects in your head slightly better=menfolks is smarter!) to bolster your belief that you are somehow born superior is the height of rationality.

I think the actual differences in opinion are inflated by misinterpreting the other side's arguments. No one is arguing that men are born superior. What people are arguing is that e.g. the effects of sex hormones contributes to the statistical distributions of different abilities/preferences being different among males and females. Some go further to claim this could or does account for much of what may look like unfair gender discrimination.

While I wouldn't want to make too much of the different statistical distributions of verbal or spatial ability, I think one should be careful not to dismiss them as the thinnest of straws either. Here's some comments from Halpern on the significance of the latter:

"Some, but not all, quantitative tasks also show large sex differences. Consistent with a cognitive processes model, the research is easier to interpret if the nature of the cognitive task is examined rather than the fact that numbers are used. Females have a clear advantage at quantitative tasks in the early elementary school years when math tasks involve learning math facts and arithmetic calculations (Engelhard, 1990; Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990). These math tasks require rapid and efficient learning of math facts and their retrieval from long-term memory. Sometime before the start of puberty, when the nature of the mathematical tasks changes and becomes more visuospatial (e.g., geometry, trigonometry, and calculus), the advantage shifts to males who maintain their superior performance into old age. Thus, the size and direction of the effect depends on developmental stage and type of quantitative task with retrieval of math information from memory favoring females and transformations of representations favoring males. Of course, these are average differences and there is considerable within-group variability for all of the cognitive tasks. One of the largest differences occurs on the mathematics portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT-M) which shows a substantial advantage for males at approximately d 5 .33 to .50 (Halpern, 2000; U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Disproportionately more males than females score in the very highest ranges of the SAT-M (Benbow, 1988, 1990; Willingham & Cole, 1997). This is a large difference with important social policy implications because the SAT-M is used in determining college admissions. The largest differences are found in the tails of the distributions."

D. F. Halpern & U. Tan (2001) "Stereotypes and steroids: Using a psychobiosocial model to understand cognitive sex differences", Brain and Cognition, 45(3):392–414

#31442: Echidne of the snakes — 07/09  at  05:42 PM
I wrote quite a lot on Lawrence Summers' speech right after it took place and also after I got the transcript. This is what I found insulting about it:
1. President Summers gave a speech in which his scientific evidence pretty much consisted of an anecdotal tale about his own child and a reference to autism (from a truly dreadful book by Simon Baron-Cohen) as a possible form of the "extreme male brain". This in front of an audience which contained several experts in the field.

2. His treatment of the economic models of discrimination, surely an area in which he as an economist should be well versed, was perfunctory and included the discussion of only one theory, that of Gary Becker, which Summers used to argue that discrimination on the basis of gender can't be widespread because if it were, the nondiscriminating universities and research institutions would simply snap up the good women and either outperform the other institutions or save money by paying the women less. But Becker's model is based on assumptions which do not apply to nonprofit institutions like universities. They also include the idea of perfect information on the abilities of each job applicant, not true in reality and competitive markets, also relatively rare. Many other economic theories predict that competitiveness in markets which are imperfect and suffer from lack of information may in fact require discrimination. Moreover, even Becker's basic model fails to make this prediction if ones colleagues are bigots, not just ones employers. Summers surely knew better than this. Therefore, he had to have made the choice to use only Becker's model on a political basis. In other words, he was not giving neutral advice or scientifically discussing alternative theories: he was trying to make a point.

#31443: Echidne of the snakes — 07/09  at  05:52 PM

"Some, but not all, quantitative tasks also show large sex differences. Consistent with a cognitive processes model, the research is easier to interpret if the nature of the cognitive task is examined rather than the fact that numbers are used. Females have a clear advantage at quantitative tasks in the early elementary school years when math tasks involve learning math facts and arithmetic calculations (Engelhard, 1990; Hyde, Fennema, & Lamon, 1990). These math tasks require rapid and efficient learning of math facts and their retrieval from long-term memory. Sometime before the start of puberty, when the nature of the mathematical tasks changes and becomes more visuospatial (e.g., geometry, trigonometry, and calculus), the advantage shifts to males who maintain their superior performance into old age. Thus, the size and direction of the effect depends on developmental stage and type of quantitative task with retrieval of math information from memory favoring females and transformations of representations favoring males. Of course, these are average differences and there is considerable within-group variability for all of the cognitive tasks. One of the largest differences occurs on the mathematics portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT-M) which shows a substantial advantage for males at approximately d 5 .33 to .50 (Halpern, 2000; U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Disproportionately more males than females score in the very highest ranges of the SAT-M (Benbow, 1988, 1990; Willingham & Cole, 1997). This is a large difference with important social policy implications because the SAT-M is used in determining college admissions. The largest differences are found in the tails of the distributions."

I have two comments about this. First, what happens with age in general to these results? I seem to recall that the differences disappear at some point and that women in fact score better in old age. If this is true, why is only the case where the male advantage remains mentioned here? And if it is true, at what age do the differences depict the reverse change? Could it be that what we are observing here is a different time pattern of learning the concepts by gender?

My second comment has to do with the larger male tails on many tests. This would also come about if men are willing to take more risks in test-taking, even if the sexes had no real difference in the underlying ability distribution of some skill.

#31447: — 07/09  at  06:08 PM

Echidne of the snakes:

I have two comments about this. First, what happens with age in general to these results?

"[...] the advantage shifts to males who maintain their superior performance into old age."

My second comment has to do with the larger male tails on many tests. This would also come about if men are willing to take more risks in test-taking, even if the sexes had no real difference in the underlying ability distribution of some skill.

Can you be more specific? What kind of risks are you thinking of and how do they increase the number of males that end up with scores in the highest range? Why would the effects of increased risk-taking kick in some time before puberty, when the nature of the math tasks changes?

Trackback: Volokh correction #7 Tracked on: Backseat driving (72.9.234.70) at 2005 07 08 09:16:52
I'm outsourcing this correction.... The one place I'd differ with Pharyngula is with Harvard President's off-hand wondering .... it was little more than a question.... this whole issue supports my argument that creationism is a wedge issue for the le...

#31450: Echidne of the snakes — 07/09  at  06:27 PM
Erik, I wasn't clear on the first point. My reference was to studies about quantitative tests in general, not the one in the quote. I have read elsewhere that as we keep on testing individuals across their lives the test findings change in the way I depicted.

On the second point, my thought was that in multiple-choice type tests boys might guess more than girls. If this was so, the guesses would increase the dispersion for boys. Does this dispersion increase at the time the mathematical tasks change? The quote suggests that the averages change, though of course the dispersion might change, too.
---
Two additional points :

One, are "transformations of representation" the types of problems which are couched in verbal terms with possibly superfluous information included? If so, one thing worth thinking about is that verbal skills here may work against the mathematical tasks, because in verbal communication the message requires all parts to make sense.


Second, I was trying to find a study I have somewhere on the computer about the timing effects on the learning of mathematics and verbal skills. It suggests that boys and girls have different times of maturation on these, and that comparing the sexes only at one particular age can be very misleading. This sort of ties back to the idea that the results develop differently over the lifetime for men and women.

#31454: Echidne of the snakes — 07/09  at  06:46 PM
Erik, I should have made myself clearer on the first point: I have read in other contexts that over time women catch up on these kinds of tests, or at least some of them, and that they may outperform men in old age, on average. The quote you provide appears to contradict this or singles out certain tests in which this does not happen.

On the second point, the riskiness idea has to do with the possibility that boys guess more in multiple-choice tests, which could fatten the distribution tails for them, at least in certain types of grading (where not answering carries a smaller punishment than answering wrong). I don't see from your quote that the standard deviation changes when the quantitative task changes, though I notice that a change in averages is referred to. Does the standard deviation change at a certain age for boys?

#31457: Echidne of the snakes — 07/09  at  07:04 PM
I apologize for the two answers. I got a phone call in the middle!

#31472: coturnix — 07/09  at  08:30 PM
Leiter has updated his post with a good explanation of why EP is wrong:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/07/pharyngula_chew.html

#31480: — 07/09  at  09:15 PM
PZ, you're continuing to put up straw men...

What ewp and Friedman and these other dingleberries migrating over from Volokh are doing is making the odious error of freely flipping back and forth from a statistical argument to the assessment of the individual. I don't care what the average properties of males are when I am on the job market or aspiring to promotion: evaluate me, not Larry Summers or Lance Armstrong or Bill O'Reilly or some fuzzy average of every person with a testicle or two on the planet.

I challenge you to find a single contributor to this discussion who has suggested that we should judge individuals based on any perceived characteristics of the groups that they are a part of.

You won't find it because no one is arguing for anything that stupid and inane.

Why don't you try knocking down our real arguments. Of course that might be harder.

That is also what women are asking for, and what Summers was making clear that they would not get—that they would be able to apply for a job without the existence of their ovaries as a factor in their hiring.

Slander again... Summers never made any such statement. I challenge you to find a real quote.

And don't bother trying to worm around Summers' words. He was suggesting that innate differences between men and women could be a reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers, making excuses for the gender disparity in his institution.

Ah... so do you mean that this is not a possible reason why fewer women succeed in science and math careers?

I think you've just proved Zywicki's point again about religious objections on the left against certain kinds of scientific research.

I think any honest scientist who is not blinded by ideology has to admit that this is a real possibility and something that should be studied.

The idea that it's just a reflection of a difference in the high end of the distribution is ridiculous: another conflation you guys are perpetrating is this flaky idea that performance in something as complex as science can be encapsulated by a single, one-dimensional parameter.

More examples of how you don't understand statistics... even if performance in science is encapsulated by 2 parameters... or 2,000... or 2,000,000, the analysis still holds - it is quite possible that the distribution of capabilities is different for women and men and that this is one of the reasons why there are not as many women as men in the sciences.

It is also possible that the reverse is true - that the distribution of capabilities is such that women would be more prevalent in the sciences and math than men if it were not for overriding cultural factors, but there is certainly less evidence for this than for the opposite theory.

Your bell curve and bogus statistics are fictions. If IQ or spatial memory were predictors of ability to that degree, we'd just assign jobs on the basis of performance on the Stanford-Binet in high school.

More statistical ignorance.

Being black is a predictor for high blood pressure... but no one suggests that we just dose all blacks with high blood pressure medication.

In the same way, just because IQs are valid predictors of ability in many intellectual persuits that does not mean that it would make sense to just assign jobs or do college admissions based on IQs.

#31483: — 07/09  at  09:26 PM
PZ Myers:

Friedman: Harvard's diminishing investment in women faculty is a matter of record.
<blockquote>Since Summers became president in 2001, the number of women granted tenure, or a permanent faculty position, has fallen to 12 percent of all appointments in 2003- 2004 from 26 percent in 2001-2002.

</blockquote>First off, let me note that Myers is now retreating from his previous claim:

Harvard has been notoriously biased in its hiring practices.

Secondly, I don't see how tenure decisions automatically correlate to investment.

Thirdly, you are ignoring a vast number of other possible explanations for this decline that have nothing to do with discrimmination of any kind against women including:

1. Normal random fluctuation (does Harvard grant tenure to enough faculty per year to make this difference significant?)

2. Changes in the departments that were hiring. For example, if the English Department was expanding in 2001 - 2002 and the Physics Department was expanding in 2003 - 2004.

3. Harvard has terminated or reduced preferences for women that were resulting in hiring unqualified candidates.

4. Stronger attempts by other universities to recruit female faculty are resulting in fewer women accepting offers from Harvard because they are getting more attractive offers from other universities.

I'm sure with a bit of effort you could think of a dozen reasonable reasons for this. I think that if you want to quote this claim then at minimum you should include Harvard's response, if any.

#31488: — 07/09  at  09:40 PM
Echidne has a very interesting point...

My second comment has to do with the larger male tails on many tests. This would also come about if men are willing to take more risks in test-taking, even if the sexes had no real difference in the underlying ability distribution of some skill.

I can think of two ways this could be true.

On multiple choice tests that penalize wrong answers so a random guess is on average the same as a blank then people who guess would have a wider distribution than people who left the items blank. On the other hand, on such tests you can usually eliminate at least one item so guessing gives you a higher score on average. At what point does taking a calculated risk correspond to higher intelligence?

Another example is strategic test taking. When I took the History AP back so many years ago we needed to pick two essay questions out of five. But I only knew one really well. I did that one and then instead of doing the one I could do second best I rolled the dice... I did the obligatory black history question.

I know nothing about black history other than the obligatory cultural literacy that educates us all about MLK, Harriet Tubman, Malcom X, and the Black Panthers, but I put it all down and made it adulatory and crossed my fingers hoping that affirmative action would let me squeak by - the examiners wouldn't see my name so they wouldn't be able to tell I was Jewish... they would probably guess I was black.

I was hoping for a 4 out of 5 - enough for credit in college. I actually got a 5 out of 5 that I totally did not deserve.

OK... now thinking about your hypothesis - let's assume that scientific capabilities are equal but men take more risks... wouldn't we then predic that more men would be on both ends of the achievement curve while more women would be in the center?

#31492: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  10:08 PM
Do you know anything about Harvard? They churn through a lot of faculty. It's not unusual to get hired in a tenure track position, but it is very hard to actually get tenure--they prefer to hire faculty with an established record directly into tenured positions.

Tenure decisions are the best measure of Harvard's hiring practices. That you would have difficulty seeing how granting tenure is an investment by the university in the individual...well, I guess that makes you obtuse.

I'll also add that your thought that it wouldn't matter if 2,000 parameters defined scientific ability destroys your whole premise. Do you think that a majority of the 2000 would support a bias towards males? Do you think there is even a single best path to being a good scientist? Do you think it is legitimate to outright invent parameters for which you have no evidence and use them to validate a bias?

#31493: Arun — 07/09  at  10:14 PM

Being black is a predictor for high blood pressure... but no one suggests that we just dose all blacks with high blood pressure medication.

Sorry to nitpick but that should read "being black in the United States is a predictor for high blood pressure".

Also

the world's worst high blood pressure prevalence wasn't seen in a black population. Instead, it was middle-aged German men of European origin, 60% of whom had high blood pressure.

It may also be worth pointing out that prediction, in all these cases, is an indication of a correlation, it is not causation as in "Newton's Laws of Motion predict the orbit of Uranus".

#31494: — 07/09  at  10:29 PM
When you're in a hole stop digging!

PZ, however, continues...<blockquote>I'll also add that your thought that it wouldn't matter if 2,000 parameters defined scientific ability destroys your whole premise. Do you think that a majority of the 2000 would support a bias towards males? Do you think there is even a single best path to being a good scientist? Do you think it is legitimate to outright invent parameters for which you have no evidence and use them to validate a bias? </blosckquote>
1. You don't need a majority of the 2,000 to support a bias towards males. If 1,999 were gender-neutral and one had a bias towards males then you would have an overall bias towards males.

2. I don't see how the number of paths to being a good scientist is relevant - as long as you have more wider paths being biased towards men and fewer narrower paths biased towards women you would get a result biased towards men.

3. You're the one who invented the additional parameters, not me.

4. Please explain why you think it's legitimate to consider cultural factors that cause more scientists to be men but not legitimate to consider genetic factors that cause more scientists to be men.

#31495: coturnix — 07/09  at  10:36 PM

1. You don't need a majority of the 2,000 to support a bias towards males. If 1,999 were gender-neutral and one had a bias towards males then you would have an overall bias towards males.

2. I don't see how the number of paths to being a good scientist is relevant - as long as you have more wider paths being biased towards men and fewer narrower paths biased towards women you would get a result biased towards men.
~~~~~~~

4. Please explain why you think it's legitimate to consider cultural factors that cause more scientists to be men but not legitimate to consider genetic factors that cause more scientists to be men.

You have revealed your true colors now (speaking of digging oneself deeper into the hole). Let's rewrite it:

1. You don't need a majority of the 2,000 to support a bias towards females. If 1,999 were gender-neutral and one had a bias towards females then you would have an overall bias towards females.

2. I don't see how the number of paths to being a good scientist is relevant - as long as you have more wider paths being biased towards women and fewer narrower paths biased towards men you would get a result biased towards women.

~~~~~~~~
4. Please explain why you think it's legitimate to consider cultural factors that cause more scientists to be women but not legitimate to consider genetic factors that cause more scientists to be women.

Does that hurt the very core of your being?

#31498: coturnix — 07/09  at  11:12 PM
Meanings of words can be found in dictionaries. However, some of the meaning of those same words are not found in dictionaries. They are part of an oral wink-wink tradition.

Some of those meanings are part of "phatic language" - meaningless chatter meant to defuse aggression and strengthen community ties (as in saying "Nice weather today" to a big burly stranger).

Others are used as "code" words in place of words and concepts not appreciated by the wider society, thus meant to propagate unpopular ideas below the surface of public scrutiny.

For instance, when Bush mentioned "Dred Scott" during a debate last year, that was a coded message to the bottom-feeders of his base that he will use the Roe vs. Wade litmus test for nominations of Supreme Court judges. "Tax burden", "ownership society", "war on terror" etc. are also codes for something very different from Webster's definitons of those words and phrases.

Likewise, Creationists use the phrase "intelligent design" as a synonym for "God" because they are trying to re-introduce a regressive, outdated and rightfully eliminated theory of life's origins into schools and the broader society. They have invented meaningless, but sciency-sounding phrases like "irreducible complexity" in order to put a veneer of science - thus respectability - to their atrocious ideas.

Racism and sexism are also universally rejected by modern society. How can racists and sexists find each other (secret heandshake?) and organize in their regressive, outdated and righfully eliminated theories of moral hierarchies within the human species? Well, of course, they use code words. They are trying to appear scientific, reputable, respectable and legitimate by using the language of science. Hence, they took the lingo of roughly 1940s population genetics and keep talking about variances and "genetic" traits, and "genetic" differences between racial/ethnic/geographical populations, or between sexes, or between straights and gays (the three -fobias are intimatelly connected).

When such lingo appears on a site like this, PZ and the rest of the PZ Lynch Squad immediately spot it. Huge red flags pop up. We've seen it many times before, e.g., from Razib and Co. from GeneExpression blog. It is easy for you to say "Straw Man. I've never said that". But in reality, you DID say that, just in other terms - in your own ilk's code-words - that we have only translated into Webster's English for the edification of the casual readers here.

Similarly to creationists that come over here sometimes, your comments here suggest one of the three hypotheses must be true:

1) You have not read the post, any of the comments (except your own), any of the links provided in the post and comments, or links within links.
2) You have read it all, but you have not undestood any of it.
3) You have read it all and understood it all, but persist in ignoring it and trying to push your points anyway.

If 2) is true your ignorance can be excused. I can give you a list of books to read before you come back to continue the discussion. If 1) is true, you are just arrogant. If 3) is true, I would like to know what is your motivation for such behavior.

As Alon mentioned, I have compiled over the past year or so many instances of strong correlations and links to interesting papers attempting to explain such correlations between political conservatism, sexism, racism, homophobia, religiosity, creationism, Dobsonian childrearing practices, xenophobia, propensity for violence, superpatriotism (nationalism) and curious insistence that obedience is a positive trait. He says I am wrong. Perhaps I am. But I am stating those hypotheses strongly because this is a blogging medium in which mealy-mouthiness is a recipe for oblivion. I want both pro and con responses because I want those hypotheses tested.

Thus, telling me which of the three of the above hypotheses is true will be of help to me. If it is, as I suspect from previous experiences 3), please tell me what is your motivation for coming here, ignoring everything written on this thread and pushing your agenda nonetheless. You see, for me, you are just a data-point. I am curious to understand what motivates people to hide behind quasi-scientific language in order to push reactionary ideology. I think understanding such motivations is an important first step in fihgting against such movements as they are a serious threat to the Enlightement.

#31507: — 07/10  at  12:57 AM
Michael Friedman spake thus,
"Now you're verging into slander. Are you seriously claiming that Summers was trying to "claim that they should favor the male applicant pool over the female"?!? I see no way that any fair person could read his comments and draw that conclusion."

Well, I consider myself a fair person- albeit, I am a philosopher-in-training (grad student) and therefore live in an exceptionally deluded fantasy world (so I've been told). For me to draw this conclusion has nothing to do with what he said exactly- but it has everything to do with the context of the comments. Here is a guy whose record at increasing the diversity at Harvard has paled in comparison with his immediate forebearers, who is in charge of overseeing the hiring practices at Harvard, who has the nerve to make a wild conjecture in a public forum that what accounts for the hiring gap in the sciences are "issues of intrinsic aptitude, [...] reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization." I'm pulling that quote a bit out of context, but it seems fair to cite Summers for taking a dubious swipe at a biological explanation when he has ample reason to be distressed about his own record on this issue. Its a cop-out against taking a critical look at Harvard's hiring processes or widespread discrimination in the field, affirming that if there is some gender gap, there's nothing he can/should do about it.
As far as his actual record is concerned, I would refer to recent data from the Task Force on Women Faculty at Harvard. The percentage of women faculty had been growing steadily at Harvard until Summers arrived- then the growth stalls. See: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2005/05/data.pdf

Furthermore, his comments about discrimination, the bit from Gary Becker, are rightly dismissed, as they seem (to me) to presume that discrimination is a conscious, intentional choice on the part of employers rather than a widespread, entrenched set of implicit assumptions about what kind of person makes a good hire, both on the part of the would-be employer _and_ on the part of the job candidate. It takes more work to counteract those than to simply say, "Well, we're no longer going to discriminate in our hiring practices," and reap the benefits of the untapped candidate pool. He also talks about departments pushing ahead by attempting to hire more from the female applicant pool, without taking into account that in many fields- Philosophy these days is one (thanks, in no small part, to Leiter)- the quality of a department depends to a huge degree on its reputation in the field. If one's field is a boy's club, the chances of any department boosting its reputation in a short span of time (say, 5 years) by hiring a bunch of young women, however brilliant, seem to me to be fairly slim. In general, he seems to have a fairly weak grasp on the concept of discrimination, if you ask me. But he's not alone in that, of course.

Honestly in somebody else's mouth, some of the comments would have my eyes rolling, but not much more. It was the fact that it came from someone in such a high-ranking administrative position in academia, sporting a poor record on the issue and very tenuous arguments, that made the broad, dismissive conjectures so irresponsible.

#31510: — 07/10  at  01:29 AM
Coturnix thinks he's putting one over on me. Frankly, I don't understand the point he is trying to make...

You have revealed your true colors now (speaking of digging oneself deeper into the hole). Let's rewrite it:

1. You don't need a majority of the 2,000 to support a bias towards females. If 1,999 were gender-neutral and one had a bias towards females then you would have an overall bias towards females.

Yes, of course. This doesn't seem to apply to math and the sciences given the relative numbers in those professions, but for example it would certainly apply to secretarial positions.

Note, BTW, that at this point we aren't talking about nature vs. nurture - I am not trying to make any points about whether the parameters that determin whether someone is likely to be a secretary and their relative strenghts for men vs. women are determined by genetic or cultural factors.

2. I don't see how the number of paths to being a good scientist is relevant - as long as you have more wider paths being biased towards women and fewer narrower paths biased towards men you would get a result biased towards women.

Ditto above.

4. Please explain why you think it's legitimate to consider cultural factors that cause more scientists to be women but not legitimate to consider genetic factors that cause more scientists to be women.

Ditto above, except of course that most scientists are men. Again, if you want to apply this to female majority professions such as nurse, secretary, Woman's Studies professor, etc. I have no objections to examining both genetic and cultural factors.

Does that hurt the very core of your being?

Um... no. Why should it?

#31511: — 07/10  at  01:49 AM
Instead of keep debating the Summers remarks, which we have already discussed at length here and here, I think it's better to focus on the questions made by Todd Zywicki, and compare them with the actual questions asked of the right-wing hacks pundits.

I guess the progressives should be flattered that Zywicki believes that the progressive pundits have a much higher level of knowledge about Evolution than the right-wing pundits have. Of course, I'd love to think that he is right, and the quotes digged up shows that he is right. However, he is asking questions that's still debated among scientists, instead of asking questions about subjects where there are overwhelming concensus, and while doing that he makes some pretty handsome strawmen.

#31512: — 07/10  at  01:50 AM
Coturnix continues to tell us more than he intends to...

Racism and sexism are also universally rejected by modern society. How can racists and sexists find each other (secret heandshake?) and organize in their regressive, outdated and righfully eliminated theories of moral hierarchies within the human species? Well, of course, they use code words. They are trying to appear scientific, reputable, respectable and legitimate by using the language of science. Hence, they took the lingo of roughly 1940s population genetics and keep talking about variances and "genetic" traits, and "genetic" differences between racial/ethnic/geographical populations, or between sexes, or between straights and gays (the three -fobias are intimatelly connected).

In short, you don't need to think about any scientific ideas about differences between races, sexes, and people of various sexual identities because anyone who studies these is actually just a closet racist / sexist / homophobe.

Now, I must admit that I haven't been reading every paper in these three fields, but one thing I do happen to remember is that some of the scientists doing some of the more interesting studies on the biological roots of hetero and homosexuality are openly gay. I bet it would surprise them to hear that they're actually closet homophobes using coded language to reach out to other bigots. But I guess they must be represses self-hating homosexuals or something, huh?

your comments here suggest one of the three hypotheses must be true:

1) You have not read the post, any of the comments (except your own), any of the links provided in the post and comments, or links within links.
2) You have read it all, but you have not undestood any of it.
3) You have read it all and understood it all, but persist in ignoring it and trying to push your points anyway.

How about:

4) I've read it all, I think I understand it all, and I am profoundly unconvinced because you have made it clear that you are responding not to the arguments that I and others have made but to arguments that you think we would like to make that we actually find quite ludicrous.

I have compiled over the past year or so many instances of strong correlations and links to interesting papers attempting to explain such correlations between political conservatism, sexism, racism, homophobia, religiosity, creationism, Dobsonian childrearing practices, xenophobia, propensity for violence, superpatriotism (nationalism) and curious insistence that obedience is a positive trait.

I think we've got more silly wishful thinking here.

1. Most of the sexism and racism in US politics today is on the left - you don't see conservatives pushing for employers or universities to take race into account in admissions or employment decisions.

2. Violence is certainly more correlated with radicalism than conservativism.

3. Religiosity seems to be about equal among conservatives and liberals - look at Unitarians, witches, etc. The main difference is that conservatives, as you might expect, tend to be affiliated with more traditional religions.

4. Xenophobia seems more prevalent among liberals - most conservatives are in favor of globalization. I personally converted a two week business trip to Hong Kong into a permanent move first to Hong Kong and then 5 years ago to Shanghai. I've spent the last 5 years working for companies where I was the only non-Chinese. Hardly xenophobia.

5. I'm not sure where you get the idea that conservatives are more in favor of obedience than liberals... curious to see where this comes from.

6. I certainly agree that conservatives are more likely to be nationalistic and patriotic than liberals. BTW, have you told this to Howard Dean and the other Democrats who keep screaming blue bloody murder every time people on the right point this out?

#31513: — 07/10  at  01:52 AM
McKinney,

Can I summarize your long and vague statement as:

I withdraw the allegation that Summers was trying to "claim that they should favor the male applicant pool over the female"

After all, you admit that

For me to draw this conclusion has nothing to do with what he said exactly...

#31514: — 07/10  at  01:59 AM

1. Most of the sexism and racism in US politics today is on the left - you don't see conservatives pushing for employers or universities to take race into account in admissions or employment decisions.

Oh God, the old Affirmative action=racism canard. Trying to make up for past racism is not racist. It can be debated whether AA is the best way to do so, but it's not racism, and saying that it is, shows that you have absolutely no knowledge of the true nature of racism.

2. Violence is certainly more correlated with radicalism than conservativism.

True. Right-winged radicalism like the militias have showed a dangerous level of willingness to use violence.

3. Religiosity seems to be about equal among conservatives and liberals - look at Unitarians, witches, etc. The main difference is that conservatives, as you might expect, tend to be affiliated with more traditional religions.

Nonsense. Pat Buchanon and the rest of that group are not traditional religious people - the Rapture is not a fundamental concept in traditional religions. Also, most liberals, as you would probably define them, are mainstream Christians. People like Clinton, Carter, Kerry, Gore, etc. are all Christians.
Mention one prominent liberal who belongs to a non-traditional religion (Atheism doesn't count, as it isn't a religion).

4. Xenophobia seems more prevalent among liberals - most conservatives are in favor of globalization. I personally converted a two week business trip to Hong Kong into a permanent move first to Hong Kong and then 5 years ago to Shanghai. I've spent the last 5 years working for companies where I was the only non-Chinese. Hardly xenophobia.

If you had said the far left is affraid of Globalization, then I would have agreed with you, but saying liberals are, is just moronic. It wasn't Clinton who tried to make steel tariffs.

#31515: coturnix — 07/10  at  02:21 AM

In short, you don't need to think about any scientific ideas about differences between races, sexes, and people of various sexual identities because anyone who studies these is actually just a closet racist / sexist / homophobe.

It is not who is studying it, it is who is misinterpreting the data for ideological reasons. If you have read the thread before, you would have known that I study sex differences, as well as individual differences that some might call "sexual orientation", or perhaps "gender". Of course that does not make me sexist or homophobic. Your language reveals where you stand on the issue, though.

4) I've read it all, I think I understand it all, and I am profoundly unconvinced because you have made it clear that you are responding not to the arguments that I and others have made but to arguments that you think we would like to make that we actually find quite ludicrous.

You have not made any arguments yet, but you keep asking us to repond to them. Can we see them, at last?

I certainly agree that conservatives are more likely to be nationalistic and patriotic than liberals.

Nationalistic is the OPPOSITE of patriotic.

Thank you for your detailed responses. You have now openly revealed to everyone who you really are.

#31516: — 07/10  at  02:51 AM
It occurs to me that no-one has pointed out the changing nature of science. It used to be (100-200 years ago) a fairly individual activity - thus suiting the stereotypical grandstanding loner male. However, modern science involves large amounts of teamwork - which ought to be favouring the stereotypical co-operative communicative female. I think the prejudice about science is as much caught in the past as the prejudice against women is.

#31517: — 07/10  at  03:52 AM
Kristjan Wagner joins the other proponents of Newspeak on this blog in attempts to redefine the meaning of common English words.

Oh God, the old Affirmative action=racism canard. Trying to make up for past racism is not racist. It can be debated whether AA is the best way to do so, but it's not racism, and saying that it is, shows that you have absolutely no knowledge of the true nature of racism.

Excuse me, but including race as a factor in decisions about hiring, promotions, admissions, etc. is racism - there's nothing in the definition of racism that says "It's only racism if it's in favor or whites."

There is an argument to be made that affirmative action is moral racism as opposed to the immoral racism of Jim Crow, etc. but calling it anything other than racist is absurd.

True. Right-winged radicalism like the militias have showed a dangerous level of willingness to use violence.

Interestingly, I'm not aware of any significant violence by "militias" in the US. Certainly nothing that compares to the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, or other radical left wing groups.

(And no, to cut off the usual silliness, Timothy McVeigh and his friends were not part of a militia. In fact, if I remember correctly, some of them tried to join a militia and got kicked out because the militia couldn't decide if they were whackos or agents provocateur.)

Nonsense. Pat Buchanon and the rest of that group are not traditional religious people - the Rapture is not a fundamental concept in traditional religions. Also, most liberals, as you would probably define them, are mainstream Christians. People like Clinton, Carter, Kerry, Gore, etc. are all Christians.

Um... I'm not Christian but doesn't the concept of the rapture come straight from the Catholic bible?

Also, although many liberals are part of mainstream denominations few are part of traditional denominations. After all, you're going to have a hard time arguing that things like support for female priests or gay unions is a traditional Christian religious value.

If you had said the far left is affraid of Globalization, then I would have agreed with you, but saying liberals are, is just moronic. It wasn't Clinton who tried to make steel tariffs.

Look at NAFTA, CAFTA, and almost every trade agreement ever ratified by Congress. The overwhelming majority of the yes votes came from Republicans.

BTW, speaking of xenophobia, the majority of expats in China seem to be Republicans. This is very different from what I hear from my friends who are expats in Europe where Democrats are apparently much more common. Suggests that conservatives and right wingers are much more comfortable with very different cultures than left wingers.

#31518: — 07/10  at  03:59 AM
Coturnix says:

Nationalistic is the OPPOSITE of patriotic.

Damn, Newspeak lives!

I could understand if you argued that nationalism is excessive and counterproductive patriotism, but arguing that it is the opposite is just silly.

You can find Google's list of definitions here. I think some of the good definitions are:

A sentiment based on common cultural, poltical and geographic characteristics, that binds people to a territorial state. In extreme forms it can lead to xenophobic behavior.

The belief that one's greatest loyalty should be to one's own country

An intense pride in one's country leading to actions that would serve their country's best interest.

Hardly seem like the opposite of patriotism.

#31519: — 07/10  at  04:17 AM

Excuse me, but including race as a factor in decisions about hiring, promotions, admissions, etc. is racism - there's nothing in the definition of racism that says "It's only racism if it's in favor or whites."

Try to look two words up in the dictionary:
1) racism
2) descrimination
You are talking about discrimination, not racism. Racism is the belief that one or more races are inherintly inferiour to one or more other races.

There is an argument to be made that affirmative action is moral racism as opposed to the immoral racism of Jim Crow, etc. but calling it anything other than racist is absurd.

You obviously don't know what racism means. Again, you are talking about discrimination.

Interestingly, I'm not aware of any significant violence by "militias" in the US. Certainly nothing that compares to the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, or other radical left wing groups.

Really? Try to read David Neiwert's <a href="http://dniewert.blogspot.com">site</a<, and you might get an idea of how much violence there is planned and/or committed by right-winged militias. They don't necessarily get much coverage, but it happens. Oh, and as far as I know, bot the Weather Underground and the Black Pathers don't exist any more. It would be like bringing up The Order as an example of right-wingd violence today. For more historical episodes of right-wing violence, I'd suggest readin ADL's Beyond Anthrax: Extremism and the Bioterrorism Threat, which can be found at ADL's website - interestingly enough it concludes that it's unlikely that the anthrax letters were sent by right-winged extremist (a conclusion I can't see how they can reach).
(And no, to cut off the usual silliness, Timothy McVeigh and his friends were not part of a militia. In fact, if I remember correctly, some of them tried to join a militia and got kicked out because the militia couldn't decide if they were whackos or agents provocateur.)

Um... I'm not Christian but doesn't the concept of the rapture come straight from the Catholic bible?

Not in the sense it is preached in the US.

Also, although many liberals are part of mainstream denominations few are part of traditional denominations. After all, you're going to have a hard time arguing that things like support for female priests or gay unions is a traditional Christian religious value.

If we goonly by traditional Christian religious values, then no. But then, neither is science, or womens' right to vote. Slavery is though.
Most Christian organizations have moved on, so there is nothing conflicting in holding those opinions, and being members of a traditional denomination.
You are trying to pull the "true scotsman" argument on us.

And I am not going to continue debating the Globalization issue, as it's silly. I will just point out that in the rest of the world, the UN is considered part of the Globalization effort. The same UN that large parts of the conservative movement in the US is against.

#31521: — 07/10  at  05:08 AM

Try to look two words up in the dictionary:
1) racism
2) descrimination
You are talking about discrimination, not racism. Racism is the belief that one or more races are inherintly inferiour to one or more other races.

OK... I'll bite.

From the inestimable Google:

Any attitude, action or institutional structure which systematically treats an individual or group of individuals differently because of their race. The most common form of racism in North America is in the form discrimination against African-Americans. However, it occasionally is manifested as preferential treatment for blacks. A secondary meaning is the belief that one race -- normally caucasian -- is inherently superior to other races.

is a phenomenon in which people mistreat, discriminate against, dislike or even hate, have disdain for, or regard as inferior other people based on their real or perceived race. The term is almost always used pejoratively, with accusations of racism being very common but with few describing themselves as racist.

Racism has historically been defined as the belief that race is the primary determinant of human capacities, that a certain race is inherently superior or inferior to others, and/or that individuals should be treated differently according to their racial designation. Sometimes racism means beliefs, practices, and institutions that discriminate against people based on their perceived or ascribed race.

I think the preponderance is on my side.

MF: Interestingly, I'm not aware of any significant violence by "militias" in the US. Certainly nothing that compares to the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, or other radical left wing groups.

Really? Try to read David Neiwert's site, and you might get an idea of how much violence there is planned and/or committed by right-winged militias. They don't necessarily get much coverage, but it happens.

I did a search... looked at the first 10 references to "militia" on his site. Not one described an act of violence arguably organized or even endorsed by a militia. Mind providing a specific link?

PS. Did find one interesting thing... did you know that some militias are lead by women? Certainly doesn't match my image of them...

Oh, and as far as I know, bot the Weather Underground and the Black Pathers don't exist any more.

No... but ALF sure does... Another good example (although not in the US) is the IRA.

I'd suggest readin ADL's Beyond Anthrax: Extremism and the Bioterrorism Threat, which can be found at ADL's website - interestingly enough it concludes that it's unlikely that the anthrax letters were sent by right-winged extremist

Interesting... I always assumed they were... but anyway, what's this supposed to prove? That militias are acquiring bio-weapons? Get real.

MF: Um... I'm not Christian but doesn't the concept of the rapture come straight from the Catholic bible?

Not in the sense it is preached in the US.

Sorry. I'm not a theologian and hairsplitting about the number of angels on the head of a pin or particular senses of the preaching of the rapture leaves me as cold as first millennium debates about the nature of the realtionship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

It's enough for me that contrary to your original claim, the "rapture" is not somehow unique to Pat Buchanan and his ilk but has direct descent from the Catholic bible.

If we goonly by traditional Christian religious values, then no. But then, neither is science, or womens' right to vote. Slavery is though.
Most Christian organizations have moved on, so there is nothing conflicting in holding those opinions, and being members of a traditional denomination.
You are trying to pull the "true scotsman" argument on us.

I don't know what the true Scotsman is.

But I think it's pretty silly on its face to call religious denominations that support female priests and gay unions "traditional".

And I am not going to continue debating the Globalization issue, as it's silly. I will just point out that in the rest of the world, the UN is considered part of the Globalization effort. The same UN that large parts of the conservative movement in the US is against.

That's silly. The UN is usually seen as a counter-balance to globalization - a tool to ameliorate the dislocations caused by globalization by slowing down cross-border integration and imposing rules to limit the free flow of goods, investment, and jobs.

I don't think anyone denies that some of that counter-balancing is necessary, but it's also pretty unreasonable to deny that the UN's foot is on the brake pedal, not the accelerator.

#31522: — 07/10  at  05:44 AM
Google is a good research tool, but it's not a very reliable tool. AA is not racism, unless it's founded in the belief that either Blacks can't get into the university without help, becuase their race is inferiour, or that Whites shouldn't go to university because they are inferiour.
Otherwise, no matter how much you try to turn AA into a issue of racism, it's not.
You could argue it's discrimination, but so is legacy points when applying for college.

I'm not going to find all the links, as I simply don't have time for linkhunting right now.

Interesting... I always assumed they were... but anyway, what's this supposed to prove? That militias are acquiring bio-weapons? Get real.

The report is documenting some cases of right-wing militias acquiring bio-weapons, but they also document violence commited by right-wing organizations. Who do you think bomb abortion clinics? They are members of the militia movement - they might be representative of them all, but they are representative of a large fraction.

It's enough for me that contrary to your original claim, the "rapture" is not somehow unique to Pat Buchanan and his ilk but has direct descent from the Catholic bible.

You obviously haven't understod what I've said. The rapture is in the Bible, but it's not a core theological issue, as it is for Buchanon and his ilk. It's something that happens after judgment day, but it's not part of the core of the religion. So it is unique to Buchanon and his crowd, in the sense that it has become part of the very fundament of their religion - something it's not in the traditional religions.

But I think it's pretty silly on its face to call religious denominations that support female priests and gay unions "traditional".

Really? Go outside the US much? Plenty of traditional denominations that supports one or both of those ideas. The Catholic Church is not the only traditional denomination out there.

That's silly. The UN is usually seen as a counter-balance to globalization - a tool to ameliorate the dislocations caused by globalization by slowing down cross-border integration and imposing rules to limit the free flow of goods, investment, and jobs.

That's interesting - can you mention to me how the UN can influence the free flow of goods, investments and jobs? If you haven't studied up on the subject, I can tell you it's not part of the UN's agenda. Such issues belongs solely under organizations like the WTO.

And, as I said, outside the US, the UN is considered part of the Globalization effort. For someone who reportly is very international minded, you seem to have an amazing inability to not be US-centric.

#31523: Amanda Marcotte — 07/10  at  06:33 AM
No one is arguing that men are born superior. What people are arguing is that e.g. the effects of sex hormones contributes to the statistical distributions of different abilities/preferences being different among males and females.

Suuuuuuuuuuure. And it's just a coincidence that the differences that they expect to find always point to men's inherent superiority, though, to be fair, I've never heard a wannabe EP scientist argue that men are better at everything. Just "important" things. Women are born better at sewing and tending babies, that is generally agreed upon.

#31526: — 07/10  at  06:44 AM
Amanda,

Are you sure that you aren't accepting a phallocentric point of view that declares that things that men are better at are automatically more important than things that women are better at?

Personally, I think tending babies is far more important than being able to write your name in the snow without using your hands.

#31527: Arun — 07/10  at  06:45 AM
The Rapture is a 19th century creation. The URL below seems to be a reasonable history:

http://www.rusearching.com/leftbehind/leftrapturehistory.htm

#31529: PZ Myers — 07/10  at  06:51 AM
Friedman, you are babbling. Quit declaring victory and announcing that everyone is digging themselves deeper--it makes you look like an idiot when you continue to advance absurdities. You've thrown out so much noise now that it would be a waste of time to try and deal with it all, so I'll just address one rather fundamental error.

Please explain why you think it's legitimate to consider cultural factors that cause more scientists to be men but not legitimate to consider genetic factors that cause more scientists to be men.

Because science is a complex social construct with a great many successful strategies for its execution. While you might be able to find studies that support the idea that males on average have better spatial memory than females, that means nothing. You don't know whether that actually is innate, even if it is it is not exclusive to males, and most importantly, very few scientists do their work by sitting down and visualizing 3-D objects rotating in space. Top-ranking scientists have to be good at technical writing, politicking, managing people, administrative work, PR, money management, time management, patience, persistence, and must have talent in their discipline, which again requires a variety of traits, which will vary immensely from field to field. Most neurophysiologists I know have excellent fine motor and math skills, while molecular biologists...eh, not so much, although they tend to know their chemistry better (and those are generalizations that break down all the time, too).

When someone declares that males might just be intrinsically better at science, and bases that on some fuzzy statistical difference derived from some particular section of the SAT or whatever, I know that I'm dealing with someone pretty clueless about how science actually works. Summers did a very stupid thing: he revealed that as a high-ranking administrator of a major research university, he knew nothing about a) half the population and b) science. As are you.

#31530: PZ Myers — 07/10  at  06:54 AM
So, you're planning on staying home and raising the kids? Good for you.


Oh, here's a hint: Amanda put "important" in quotes. You might notice that "important" is one of those things that is often defined as "the stuff I want to do".

#31532: — 07/10  at  07:00 AM
Kristjan Wagner says:

And, as I said, outside the US, the UN is considered part of the Globalization effort.

I suppose I could be wrong... but in that case can you, for example, point to an anti-globalization protest that targeted the UN?

That's interesting - can you mention to me how the UN can influence the free flow of goods, investments and jobs?

In many ways. One simple one is the varioud child labor treaties negotiated under the aegis of the UN. There are significant arguments in favor of not allowing trade in goods made using child labor as well as arguments against.

I might as well forestall the usual outraged squawking by giving an example.

I visited a resistor factory in Guangdong about 4 years ago that used 14 and 15 year old girls to do QC. The manage told me that after a year or so on the job their eyesight was no longer good enough and they were moved to other jobs.

Sounds horrible, right? Maybe... on the other hand, we were less than 100 miles from Zhuhai, which is well known in Hong Kong as the best nearby place to go if you want to fuck 14 or 15 year old girls.

Now, obviously, the ideal solution would be for these girls to be in school, not in a factory or a whorehouse, but for many rural children that's not a realistic option in China today. For example, on a different trip into rural Yunnan I stopped off in a little village where the local people were all pissed off... seems McDonalds had come to town and paid for a new school that was supposed to be free for all the kids in the village. But as soon as the photographers, reporters, and McDonalds reps left the local government imposed an illegal school fee that was so high that half the families in the village couldn't afford to send their kids to school.

As long as the Chinese government continues to maintain its hold on power by operating what is, in effect, a corrupt MLM enterprise (each levelis allowed to collect illegal rents as long as it doesn't get too greedy) you're going to be faced with the choice of letting little girls work sitting down in factories or lying down in bordellos. So are you really doing anyone any favors by discouraging child labor?

#31533: — 07/10  at  07:09 AM
You know what Friedman, given the fact that you are unable to write my name correctly, even though it is repeated on top of every one of my comments, shows me that you are an extremly sloppy reader. But then, that I already knew.

You are putting up the sex industry as the only real alternative to child labour, which it only is, if there is not an effort to make sure that the educational level is impoved. Something that's part of the attempts to reduce child labour. Just because there are worse things out there, it doesn't mean that child labour shouldn't be stopped.

#31535: — 07/10  at  07:13 AM
PZ says:

MF: Please explain why you think it's legitimate to consider cultural factors that cause more scientists to be men but not legitimate to consider genetic factors that cause more scientists to be men.

Because science is a complex social construct with a great many successful strategies for its execution. While you might be able to find studies that support the idea that males on average have better spatial memory than females, that means nothing. You don't know whether that actually is innate, even if it is it is not exclusive to males, and most importantly, very few scientists do their work by sitting down and visualizing 3-D objects rotating in space. Top-ranking scientists have to be good at technical writing, politicking, managing people, administrative work, PR, money management, time management, patience, persistence, and must have talent in their discipline, which again requires a variety of traits, which will vary immensely from field to field. Most neurophysiologists I know have excellent fine motor and math skills, while molecular biologists...eh, not so much, although they tend to know their chemistry better (and those are generalizations that break down all the time, too).

Maybe I'm missing something... but how do the points you raise demonstrate that it is legitimate to consider cultural factors that cause more men than women to be scientists but not genetic factors?

For example, why should cultural factors be more likely to make a woman less able to manage her time in a way suitable for a top scientist than genetic factors?

Seems to me that both are possibilities. For example, for a combination of cultural and genetic reasons most women will take a significant amount of time between the ages of 20 and 40 to bear and raise one or more children. Seems like something that is very likely to impact their ability to manage their time appropriately and I certainly don't think you will claim that women's child bearing is not at least partially genetic.

#31536: — 07/10  at  07:20 AM
Kristjan,

Don't you think that you should start by stopping the worse things first?

I remember back in the 90s someone did an expose on child labor in Sri Lankan factories making jeans for some of the big US jeans brands. It was bad publicity so they hired audit firms and told the factory managers that the kids had to go.

The WSJ sent a report there to do a followup a few months later. He tracked down a bunch of the former child workers in brothels.

There is a real cause and effect to these things and the people who oppose sweatshops and child labor are responsible for the results of their actions.

How do you plan to solve the problem in China so there is a real alternative for these kids? Send in the Marines?

I've been living here for 5 years and I don't see an answer other than the long term solution of increased trade raising living standards, creating a larger middle class, and eventually destroying the current system.

#31537: Alon Levy — 07/10  at  07:21 AM
Let me just make a few unrelated points, considering that I had three pages of comments to catch up with:

The statement that "Nationalistic is the OPPOSITE of patriotic" is wrong. In connotation nationalism conjures associations of Hitler and patriotism conjures associations of your nation's heroes, but in denotation these two terms are nearly identical. When nationalism had a more positive connotation, politicians used it exactly in the same way modern politicians use patriotism: as a way to stifle dissent, promote conformity, and cause people to be loyal to the state. As used by ordinary people, patriotism is as meaningless as freedom, because almost everyone supports it; as used by political scientists, it is the most common variety of nationalism.

The argument that people who disagree with Summers are Lysenkoists lacks evidence. To prove that they are, you must produce clear evidence that the motivations for this opposition are ideological, which is easier said than done. For example, a statement by a leading biologist that studying innate differences is a hallmark of racism, or attacks on studies of innate differences that concentrate on ideology rather than the facts count as evidence. Alan Sokal has produced guidelines for legitimate political criticism of science - in a nutshell, the idea is to first criticize a scientific position purely on the evidence, and then show how bias caused researchers to reach erroneous conclusions. So far you're violating the guidelines.

About differences in variability, if they were responsible to underrepresentation of women in mathematics and science, we'd see a strong negative correlation between the quality of an institute and the percentage of female scientists it employs, after controlling for bias in hiring. However, we don't (for a semi-anecdote demonstrating that, Stanford's science faculty is 19% female whereas the USA's at-large figure is 13%).

#31539: — 07/10  at  07:37 AM

T.W. McKinney:

For me to draw this conclusion has nothing to do with what he said exactly- but it has everything to do with the context of the comments.

[..]

I'm pulling that quote a bit out of context, but it seems fair to cite Summers for taking a dubious swipe at a biological explanation when he has ample reason to be distressed about his own record on this issue. Its a cop-out against taking a critical look at Harvard's hiring processes or widespread discrimination in the field, affirming that if there is some gender gap, there's nothing he can/should do about it.
As far as his actual record is concerned, I would refer to recent data from the Task Force on Women Faculty at Harvard. The percentage of women faculty had been growing steadily at Harvard until Summers arrived- then the growth stalls.

There seems to be good evidence for Summer's having been involved in unfair gender discrimination. There seems to be little reason, though, to characterize what Summers said in the way PZ Myers did.

It is one thing to argue that O.J. Simpson is guilty of murder. It is quite another to characterize something O.J. Simpson has said as an admission of being guilty of murder.

Similarly, it is one thing to argue that what Summers' said in his talk is just a pretext for avoiding to seriously address unfair gender discrimination. It is quite another to characterize Summers as, e.g., "trying to claim that they should favor the male applicant pool over the female".

#31540: — 07/10  at  07:50 AM

Amanda Marcotte:

Suuuuuuuuuuure. And it's just a coincidence that the differences that they expect to find always point to men's inherent superiority, though, to be fair, I've never heard a wannabe EP scientist argue that men are better at everything. Just "important" things. Women are born better at sewing and tending babies, that is generally agreed upon.

I don't think this is a fair representation your opponents' views. It is generally accepted that there are differences in the distribution of certain kinds of cognitive abilities, but also that there is considerable within-group variation and overlap in the statistical distributions.

Can you give an example of an actual statement which, rather than concerning real or imagined differences in statistical distributions, can be fairly characterized as you have done above?

#31543: — 07/10  at  08:46 AM
Alon Levy says:

About differences in variability, if they were responsible to underrepresentation of women in mathematics and science, we'd see a strong negative correlation between the quality of an institute and the percentage of female scientists it employs, after controlling for bias in hiring. However, we don't (for a semi-anecdote demonstrating that, Stanford's science faculty is 19% female whereas the USA's at-large figure is 13%).

This makes sense. It would apply if there were differences in average capability as well, right?

Also, it should apply even if the factors preventing women from doing well in the sciences are cultural - there's nothing specific to genetic factors in this argument, right?

So what could explain this observation?

1. Stanford is an anomaly - if we did the suggested study over a larger sample we would see the predicted result

2. Stanford has made cultural changes that reduce the cultural handicaps that women scientists face.

Do you know anything relevant to this possibility?

3. The reason there are few women scientists is crude old fashioned gender discrimination - hiring committees just don't hire the best qualified candidate if that candidate is a woman. Stanford has reduced or eliminated this problem.

Most people who study the question of women in the sciences don't believe that the low percentage is caused by this kind of crude sexism. What do you think?

4. Stanford makes highly competitive offers to qualified female scientists so it gets a disproportionate share of the small pool available at the expense of other institutions that have less money or that are less willing to make disproportionately attractive offers to women.

5. Stanford has such highly qualified male scientists that it is able to maintain its high standards despite being dragged down by disproportionate numbers of less qualified female scientists.

I suppose the best way to test this hypothesis would be to look at quality measures of male and female scientists at Stanford and see if there are any significant differences between the sexes.

Do you see a sixth option?

Which do you think is the most likely reason?

#31544: — 07/10  at  08:52 AM
PZ,

Your plainspokenness is blurring some very important distinctions:

1. You say "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." Yes, but this topic is about software, not hardware. The premise of evolutionary psychology is that the human psyche is the product of evolution too. I'm sure you don't believe that human behavior poofed into existence magically, which is the only alternative explanation to its evolution, an idea that you apparently just dismissed. So which is it? Does psychology come from evolution or something else?

2. You say "Opponents of evolutionary psychology do not dislike the field because of some political bias, but because we think it is poor science." But in this very article, David Buller is very careful to distinguish the "evolutionary psychology" of point 1 above and "Evolutionary Psychology," which seeks an evolutionary explanation of some observed human behaviors, explanations that are both scientifically controversial and fall on the fault line between Liberal and Conservative political ideas. Liberals don't have a good track record remaining intellectually neutral about sociobiology, so any suspicion from the Right on this subject is not without warrant.

3. You say that Pinker is full of shit. I'll presume that we both agree that psychology comes evolution, not magic, so let's focus on EP, not ep. I don't know yet and you don't know yet if EP's most controversial hypothesis are valid or not, but I find it difficult to dismiss many of them out of hand. A simple question: The mating behavior of our closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, has been described as "organized gang rape." Do chimps acquire this rape behavior from their evolutionary history, or learn it socially? Certainly ep, EP too, must apply to chimps—why not humans? What special feature of humans allow them to transcend the evolutionary history of their consciousness? Pointing to the plasticisity of the human brain as a way to overcome our inherited psychology sounds to me like whistling in the dark.

4. I completely agree that it's stupid, tendentious argument to compare Liberal resonance with one side of a scientific debate to the Conservative embrace of know-nothing irrationality like Intelligent Design creationism. That said, professionally scientists must put allegiance to science ahead of their individual political allegiances. I'm not convinced that opposition to EP/ep isn't inspired by no small part of the latter, and if we want credibility in the criticism of the political implications of the many other scientific debates currently in play, it would be good to keep this in mind.

I could be wrong and in need of enlightenment, but it does seem to me that you've run roughshod over some valid points made by ep/EP-ers and suggested by Conservatives who enjoy pointing to Liberal queasiness about ep/EP.

#31547: Arun — 07/10  at  09:25 AM
Friedman, your questions on Stanford are good ones. Let's ask Summers, shall we, he ought to know the answers, after all, such things are a major part of his professional responsibilities, aren't they? Who better than him to answer?

Anyway, google gives links like these:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/provost/womenfacultyreport/

#31548: Arun — 07/10  at  09:35 AM
One question to ask Summers is - has Harvard met its commitment outlined in

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/gender.html ?

"Institutions of higher education have an obligation, both for themselves and for the nation, to fully develop and utilize all the creative talent available. We recognize that barriers still exist to the full participation of women in science and engineering. To address this issue, we have agreed to work within our institutions toward:

"1) A faculty whose diversity reflects that of the students we educate. This goal will be pursued in part by monitoring data and sharing results annually.

"2) Equity for, and full participation by, women faculty. This goal will be pursued in part by periodic analysis of data concerning compensation and the distribution of resources to faculty. Senior women faculty should be significantly involved in this analysis.

"3) A profession, and institutions, in which individuals with family responsibilities are not disadvantaged.

"We recognize that this challenge will require significant review of, and potentially significant change in, the procedures within each university, and the scientific and engineering establishment as a whole.

"We will reconvene to share the specific initiatives we have undertaken to achieve these objectives."

January 29, 2001

The 184-word statement was approved by university Presidents David Baltimore of the California Institute of Technology, Charles Vest of MIT, Lee Bollinger of the University of Michigan, Harold Shapiro of Princeton University, John Hennessy of Stanford University and Richard Levin of Yale University; Chancellor Robert Berdahl of the University of California at Berkeley; and Provosts Harvey Fineberg of Harvard University (representing President Neil Rudenstine) and Robert Barchi of the University of Pennsylvania (representing President Judith Rodin).

#31556: — 07/10  at  11:10 AM
I had to catch up on 4 pages of comments, so I will jump all over this.

Michael:
"Torbjorn, get real. He avoids the question.

We all know that schools are addressing these questions but he just says that we shouldn't teach the issue because it isn't yet settled."

Reading more of your posts you are making strawmans and noise all over. (I can provide examples.) This is no different; you continue to not read PZ.

As coturnix said:
"You are providing a false dichotomy and PZ, of course, rejects it. The state of science on this matter is still in flux ...".

Which is what you could teach your students, as PZ said.

Kristjan:
"... the Swedish study that shows that among home students (i.e. students that study alone), girls learn mathematics better than boys. ... it does put the whole concept of men being inheritly better at mathematics to a rest."

No, it doesn't. As the rather silly discussion about SAT scores mention the aptitudes and their use change over age.

One thing that has been forgotten here is that most mathematicians do their seminal work in their early twenties (or so we are told). Old age may be too late for positions.

Michael:
"There is an argument to be made that affirmative action is moral racism as opposed to the immoral racism of Jim Crow, etc. but calling it anything other than racist is absurd."

Of course it's not racism. You wouldn't call a cop a lawbreaker because he uses violence to arrest a thief.

On that topic, the use or 'race' seems to be US. If Pharyngula doesn't already had that discussion, how do one propose that 'race' is a useful concept, outside medicin, when gene spread in a group apparently is larger than between groups? Even granted that "Genes don't work alone, they always interact with their environment,..." I think it must be shown first.

Michael:
" "And, as I said, outside the US, the UN is considered part of the Globalization effort."

I suppose I could be wrong... but in that case can you, for example, point to an anti-globalization protest that targeted the UN?"

Kristjan is not wrong. Where I live (Sweden) UN is officially seen as one of the main players.

BTW, the press here put over the feeling that since US is in favor for uni- or bilateral action and disfavors UN multilateral action, US is a factor against globalization. (Much use of protective custom tariffs doesn't exactly help.) I don't think that is an official view, but you certainly get the feeling that our politicians agree in closed chamber.

The anti-globalization nuts go after G8 first.

#31557: — 07/10  at  11:26 AM
That should have been "in favor of" of course.

While I'm at it, another thing that is muched worded on by both our press and politicians re US and globalization, is US trying to weasel out of paying the preagreed amount of dues to UN. Taking it ransom for change may seem proactive for, but is held against, globalization - but who said the world was fair?

#31570: — 07/10  at  12:09 PM
Hey, going through these comments, I was wondering if Evolutionary Psychology had done any research into why guys ARGUE EVERYTHING TO FUCKING DEATH?

Thanks much for any pointers.

#31634: Echidne of the snakes — 07/10  at  07:55 PM
he mating behavior of our closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, has been described as "organized gang rape." Do chimps acquire this rape behavior from their evolutionary history, or learn it socially? Certainly ep, EP too, must apply to chimps—why not humans? What special feature of humans allow them to transcend the evolutionary history of their consciousness? Pointing to the plasticisity of the human brain as a way to overcome our inherited psychology sounds to me like whistling in the dark.

Can you provide a source for this, please? In general, I find it hard to see how we can determine what the chimpanzees are doing without antropomorphising to an extent that is not normally allowed. Also, what about the bonobos and their sexual habits? They are equally close relatives to us.

MoXmas, I can answer your question:

Hey, going through these comments, I was wondering if Evolutionary Psychology had done any research into why guys ARGUE EVERYTHING TO FUCKING DEATH?



In the far distant murky prehistory, men sat around wanting to get laid at night. But it was dark and the women couldn't find them. Some men started arguing and grumbling and the women heard them, grabbed them and sat on them. Hence, only the arguing men were able to breed and now all men are just like the guys here! !
(Joking)

#31635: Daniel Newby — 07/10  at  08:34 PM

PZ said "... any intrinsic biological differences in the operation of the adult brain [between the sexes] are overwhelmed by social and cultural factors."

To which I replied "Congratulations, PZ, you just blamed women with menstrual migraine for not having enough willpower."

To which PZ replied "Good grief, are you seriously suggesting that women are less fit for science because they menstruate? ... Please do not put words in my mouth."

I was refuting your absurd claim that gender has no significant control over adult brain function. The data clearly show that it does.

As to whether menstruation affects science ability via a migraine-related mechanism, I said nothing. It is not obvious what effect neuron excitability has on mental abilities. One might reasonably guess that it could raise intelligence, or lower reading speed, or whatever. (In fact, the dose-response curve for steroids and psychometric parameters would be a good PhD topic.)

PZ said "The idea that it's just a reflection of a difference in the high end of the distribution is ridiculous: another conflation you guys are perpetrating is this flaky idea that performance in something as complex as science can be encapsulated by a single, one-dimensional parameter. ... Your bell curve and bogus statistics are fictions. If IQ or spatial memory were predictors of ability to that degree, we'd just assign jobs on the basis of performance on the Stanford-Binet in high school."

You do not understand. The "bell curve" claim is that IQ is necessary, not that it is sufficient. Possession of an ability is not destiny, and neither is a modest shortcoming of it.

You also have the causation backwards. The "bell curve" folks claim that people should be objectively and fairly evaluated. This is why they are hated by the social justice movement, who wants jobs doled out by beancounters running through a ticklist of things like race, economic background of parents, culture, religion, and so forth, and to hell with personal accomplishment.

#31640: — 07/10  at  09:51 PM
Michael Friedman,

A lovely dodging of my point- which was, I'm sure, not too sophisticated for you (in spite of its wordiness)- followed this
"Can I summarize your long and vague statement as:"

The answer is no, you cannot. My point was simple: you can say whatever you want about the finer points of Summers' conjecture; the point is he had no business making the conjecture in the first place. Furthermore, that Summers chose to make his conjecture all the while dismissing the possibilty of discrimination (with a *ridiculous* argument, no less) strikes me as incredibly irresponsible coming from someone so high up in academia. Look, he's smarter than to say, "we can continue to favor the male applicant pool over the female" in so many words-- I can give him that much credit. But his offhand dismissal of the possibility of discrimination, coupled with his poor record on the issue, are enough for me to question his commitment to increasing diversity. He didn't say they were going to continue to favor the male portion of the applicant pool- but in light of what he did say, he might as well have. Period.

#31647: — 07/11  at  12:36 AM
STSmith,

I think PZ grasps the distinction between Evolutionary Psychology (with caps) and evolutionary psychology. I don't think he's denying that there may be some selection pressures involved in the formation of the human psyche-- of course there have to be _some_ pressures, it ain't magic, after all. But it is a question of what kind of pressures, and to what extent they account for the whole of the human behavioral fabric.

The business about liberals not having a good track record remaining neutral on sociobiology sounds like a *very* suspect claim, in light of how its formed. People were suspicious of Evolutionary Psychology/Sociobiology for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the fact that they were liberals (unless you're making the obnoxious claim that they disagreed with EP because they were smart, and smart people are usually liberals, j/k). I think it is fair to say, with little controversy, that people have had substantive grounds for taking issue with EP. That doesn't mean that EP is wrong, per se, but the people reacting to EP ostensibly weren't rejecting out of some leftist political impulse. They were rejecting it because they were suspicious of its theoretical integrity.
Also, I'm baffled as to what on Earth makes a conclusion of evolutionary psychology "fall on the fault line" between Liberal and Conservative? In virtue of what is it political at all? We are talking about science... aren't we? Of course, given my commments in an earlier topic, I would be contradicting myself if I thought that scientific results don't lend credence to existing sociopolitical ideologies from time to time, but what exactly leads you to claim that EP would do this if it were not, as it were, registered as an independent?

Finally,

"What special feature of humans allow them to transcend the evolutionary history of their consciousness? Pointing to the plasticisity of the human brain as a way to overcome our inherited psychology sounds to me like whistling in the dark."

I have a highly speculative answer to this, but its so long-winded and outrageous that I decided to post it on my own damn blog. On reflection, I think its pretty bad as bedtime stories go. But you can take a look if you like.

#31654: Raven — 07/11  at  04:47 AM

This is why they are hated by the social justice movement, who wants jobs doled out by beancounters running through a ticklist of things like race, economic background of parents, culture, religion, and so forth, and to hell with personal accomplishment.

You totally misrepresent the movement--it's simply about providing a level playing field for competition for jobs and opportunities other social goods such as education and health care. Perhaps to a zero-sum mindset, it looks like the things you enumerated, but that's just your perception. Unless, of course, you think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the ticklist of the medical school professor who refused to teach my mother biology because she was a woman* and got away with it, and that we should go back to those days--in which case, we really don't have enough common basis for any rational discussion of social justice issues anyway. Because in that case, you're not objecting to ticklists in general, just to particular ticklists you don't like.

(*despite his crap, and that of some other profs, she graduated, and had a long and successful medical career. I am proud of her that she did so--her accomplishment of doing the normal medical school load plus dealing with the sexism and succeeding anyway proved her merit vis-à-vis those guys in her class who just got in as legacies. I would think that people who claim to be meritocracy-based would be indignant at the substantial obstacles placed in the way of people with merit who happen to be minority or female, but there you are.)

#31656: — 07/11  at  06:22 AM
Opponents of evolution do not dislike the field because of some political bias, but because we think it is poor science.

I see that all too often. The VC post doesn't buy into that.

What he does refer to is the statistical testing that reflects that:

(a) women are generally slightly smarter than men.
(b) men are more likely to be extremely smart or extremely dumb.

Then he discusses rejection by the left of both the statistical facts and any theories that might explain them.

All you have to do is go over to http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/ to see a leftist in complete denial (and completely afraid to allow comments).

Everyone has their passions that seem to overwhelm their ability to think, that could use some analysis too -- why do the people posting here and others (such as Leiter) have such a blinding hate for some on the right who are winning debates with them? Sore losers?

#31657: PZ Myers — 07/11  at  06:38 AM
Oh, dear.

If you think performance on a subsection of a standardized test is a measure of how smart or dumb a particular sex is, there's little hope for you.

The only blind, hating losers here are the people who are affronted that people see through their games and recognize that these silly IQ scores and testing artifacts are refuges for them to hide in, where they get to pretend to a superiority they do not possess in real life.

#31658: Arun — 07/11  at  06:54 AM
#31330, Michael Friedman wrote:

If you don't think this is a meaningful question then twin studies seem to operate on a totally flawed premise... but in that case, if you claim that all traits are 100% environmental and 100% genetic, how do you explain the fact that some traits seem to be more more strongly correlated between identical twins than fraternal twins whereas others show much more similar correlations between identical and fraternal twins?

In my world model the first trait is strongly genetic whereas the second is strongly environmental. But you reject that whole concept. So what's your explanation?

In this context, perhaps the biologists will answer this question - how much is the development of the fetus influenced by external cues from the maternal womb environment? How much is the development program solely dependent on the genes of the fetus? How determinative is the first nine months of development of the person's later "potential"?

Suppose we took the potential twins soon after conception, separated them and implanted them in different wombs, then the amount of correlation we destroyed would depend on the answers to the above questions as well as how sensitive the particular trait is to what happened during the initial development.

Unless we know the answers to the above (and perhaps someone does, but I bet neither I nor Michael Friedman knows the answers) then all we can say about twin correlations is that is what they were born with, which is rather different from caused by genetics.

#31660: — 07/11  at  07:46 AM
Arun, you really don't know what twin studies do, do you?

They compare identical and fraternal twins.

Fraternal twins have the same maternal womb environment as each other.

Your objection totally doesn't apply.

If it were that simple don't you think someone else would have noticed before now?

#31662: — 07/11  at  08:15 AM
> The conservatives may be in bigger trouble than I thought.

You have no idea. Take a look at http://www.conservativebookclub.com/
to see who the intellectual leaders of the conservative movement are these days and what they are producing.

Trackback: Nature vs. Nurture Debate Moot Tracked on: Genetics and Public Health Blog (70.85.208.98) at 2005 07 11 08:15:40
The separate influences of nature vs. nurture came up last week in the discussion of my post, Terrorism Genes. The idea that either our environment and our genes battle it out in determining who...

#31663: Arun — 07/11  at  08:24 AM
Michael,

I'm seeking the cause of something, not the effect - which is the observed correlation. Yes, fraternal twins also share the same womb. But suppose identical twins show a correlation on some trait of 0.7, fraternal twins of 0.5 - and it turns out that if we do this womb-separation experiment, the correlation for identical twins drops to 0.3 and fraternal twins drops to 0.1. How much of this trait is can then be said to be "strong genetic" (your words)?

#31664: coturnix — 07/11  at  08:24 AM
Twins influence each other via hormones. Monozygotic twins are always either both male or both female. Dizygotic twins are, half of the time, different sexes sharing the womb and the hormones have subtle effects on each other's brains. From what I have seen, twin studies have NEVER taken this into account as their a priori bias is that everything is coded in the genes. There is a big difference between "genetic" (what is written in the DNA sequence), "inherent" (what has been inherited from parents via various mechanisms, including but not limited to the DNA sequence), and "biological" (a somewhat murky term that includes interaction between genes and environments - including embryonic environment, physical post-partum environment, socialisation and learning).

#31665: Arun — 07/11  at  08:28 AM
Oops, typo - I meant to say "strongly genetic".

#31667: — 07/11  at  08:45 AM
Coturnix says:

From what I have seen, twin studies have NEVER taken this into account as their a priori bias is that everything is coded in the genes.

This is ignorant nonsense.

The whole point of twin studies is to try to figure out what is encoded in the genes and what is not.

There would be absolutely no point to twin studies if we took as a give that everything is coded in the genes.

#31668: Amanda — 07/11  at  08:54 AM
Can you give an example of an actual statement which, rather than concerning real or imagined differences in statistical distributions, can be fairly characterized as you have done above?

Sure! Here we are discussing the theory that men are better at math and therefore suited to high paying jobs in that field. And there's no end in sight to theories that women are less courageous, less competitive and more nuturing than men because of our ape ancestors. Like here for instance. I've even read about a study where a Japanese man theorized that women are built to do small, repetitive tasks (gatherers, you know) and that women should peel apples to keep their brains sharp. It just so happens that peeling your husband's apples is the traditional Japanese way for women to show deference. It gets really silly how "evolution" always tailors itself precisely to the preferences of fans of male dominance.

#31670: — 07/11  at  09:06 AM
Arun says:

I'm seeking the cause of something, not the effect - which is the observed correlation. Yes, fraternal twins also share the same womb. But suppose identical twins show a correlation on some trait of 0.7, fraternal twins of 0.5 - and it turns out that if we do this womb-separation experiment, the correlation for identical twins drops to 0.3 and fraternal twins drops to 0.1. How much of this trait is can then be said to be "strong genetic" (your words)?

I'm confused.

Do you think that there is something special about the influences of the maternal womb environment as opposed to the influences of the family upbringing, for example?

The statistical tools used to analyze twin studies are based on the assumption that both kinds of twin share a common environment but that identical twins also share a common genotype whereas fraternal twins have the normal 50% relationship.

I don't see how the shared maternal womb environment invalidates this.

#31676: John M. Price — 07/11  at  09:40 AM

Michael Friedman: Fraternal twins have the same maternal womb environment as each other.

No, not so all the time. There is work in placental sharing, etc. It is not as clear cut as you want it to be here.

Additionally, the mere presence of a twin of the opposite sex alters the situation greatly. (That effect is greater in some species than others.)

#31677: Alon Levy — 07/11  at  09:45 AM
But suppose identical twins show a correlation on some trait of 0.7, fraternal twins of 0.5 - and it turns out that if we do this womb-separation experiment, the correlation for identical twins drops to 0.3 and fraternal twins drops to 0.1. How much of this trait is can then be said to be "strong genetic" (your words)?

Even without womb separation, we can know the trait isn't strongly genetic, because fraternal twins' relatively high correlation will show strong environmental influences.

#31681: Arun — 07/11  at  10:11 AM
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/308/6924/298

(Life is complicated )

#31683: Arun — 07/11  at  10:20 AM
Also found this, ain't google wonderful? Let me be clear.
I don't take the following to be scientifically validated. I'm more interested in the logical structure of the twin study arguments. It may well turn out that what Michael Friedman wrote is perfectly justified. I want to understand however, what things have to be considered before we can know that.

"..implications for the equal environments assumption –

some studies have found that monochorionic twins are more similar to each other than dichorionic twins in personality,
cognitive ability, etc., while other studies have failed to find any differences

- DZ twins are always dichorionic, so greater similarity in MZ twins than in DZ twins may be due to more shared prenatal influences in MZ twins (given that 2/3 of them are monochorionic)

- on the other hand, some researchers have found that monochorionic twins may have greater differences between them because of prenatal competition for resources (e.g. some have found greater birth weight differences in monochorionic twins than in dichorionic twins; the text states that MZ twins show greater birth weight differences than DZ twins)

----
And now I'll be silent.

#31700: — 07/11  at  12:12 PM
I've always thought that our host was a bit too hard on EP and Pinker (who I tend to disagree with, but think is generally an honest guy trying to do good work).

But reading this thread I now see where PZ's coming from. Holy moly.

In fairness, I don't think even the EP/ep distinction really captures everything. I can't imagine Pinker, Cosmides or Tooby, etc. would be terribly impressed with a lot of the people who seem to think they're fighting on the same side.

#31714: — 07/11  at  02:33 PM

Arun:
... Propensity for criminality is presumably reasonably objectively measurable.

?!? The history of this sort of "science" is a minefield of racism, ethnocentrism, classism and social bias in general.

Given that the definition of "criminality" is intrinsically political, being defined as breaking of laws written by politicians in a political institution, how could it be otherwise?

E.g.: a chronically violent person who enlists in the military and confines his or her inclinations to targets approved by superior officers, and otherwise keeps them below a given threshold, is entirely legal; whereas a devotee of non-violence who refuses military participation is likely to punished as a criminal in many societies (see http://www.wri-irg.org/).

If you, or Summers, or Friedman, or anyone, has found a measure of "propensity for criminality" that significantly surpasses predictions based on class, race, economic factors, geographical location, etc, etc, please share it with us.

#31715: Eh Nonymous — 07/11  at  03:12 PM
Hey there everybody!

Some good comments, some flaming trolls, some brilliant comments.

I liked Chris' suggestion, all the way back on p.1 of the comments, about what to do with Todd when he's being addlepated.

Here was me, coming to the same conclusion: Why I've got to stop reading Volokh Conspiracy.

Also: the nutjob who commented on here about Harvard Boy's silly comments: if you're still around six raging pages of comments later, go see Leiter. He'll set you straight. Not politely, but then you probably don't deserve it, for that bit of ignorance/malice.

#31719: Richard B. — 07/11  at  04:06 PM
Leiter? What a joke.

What this discussion proves to me is that conservatives are the only ones who can destroy the Intelligent Design scam, as liberals are too compromized by political correctness to ever be credible on science.

#31721: Chris Clarke — 07/11  at  05:04 PM
"Political correctness" being of course used here in its original sense, meaning "the temerity to object when I say something offensive, stupid, and contrary to fact."

#31726: Richard B. — 07/11  at  05:23 PM
I wouldn't put it that way, but as you're indifferent to fact, you may very well think so.

#31727: Chris Clarke — 07/11  at  05:36 PM
My goodness. What an utterly devastating response.

Do people move away from you on the bus?

#31730: Richard B. — 07/11  at  05:44 PM
What's a bus?

#31732: Chris Clarke — 07/11  at  06:05 PM
OK, that was pretty funny.

#31733: Richard B. — 07/11  at  06:19 PM
You liberals live in your own little world, unlike we sophisticated snake-handling conservatives with our 4000-year-old planet, our faith healing, and our ranch-style homes with central air conditioning and RV parking.

#31736: Chris Clarke — 07/11  at  06:38 PM
Who the fuck are you calling a liberal? I'm a goddamn leftist.

#31746: — 07/11  at  07:50 PM
Straw man here. Hullo everyone! You rang?

#31748: coturnix — 07/11  at  08:02 PM
Ah, Straw Man! Finally! Richard saw you everywhere, yet nobody else could see you...I guess he was pointing at empty space. And he did not even notice how many times you came along with him whenever he entered this room.

#32109: The Countess (Trish Wilson) — 07/14  at  11:34 AM
Amanda: "I've even read about a study where a Japanese man theorized that women are built to do small, repetitive tasks (gatherers, you know) and that women should peel apples to keep their brains sharp. It just so happens that peeling your husband's apples is the traditional Japanese way for women to show deference. It gets really silly how "evolution" always tailors itself precisely to the preferences of fans of male dominance."

You read that on my blog. Japanese women are balking at marriage because they don't want to be treated like servants. Here's the post about Japanese marriage. One of the things complained about was that Japanese husbands expect their wives to even peel their apples for them. (Note: the link to the Foreign Policy article no longer works, and I haven't taken the time to search for the updated one.)

<a href="http://trishwilson.typepad.com/blog/2004/01/chutzpah_alert_.html>This is the link</a> to my post about the "study" about women being better suited than men to do small, repetative tasks. As I noted on my blog, "Researchers at the Tsukuba-based National Food Research Institute said the complicated actions of controlling a dangerous knife while moving the apple stimulates the prefrontal cortex." Here's a link to the news article about the "study".

Sometimes "science" is conducted that only reinforces gender stereotypes.

#32672: coturnix — 07/23  at  12:41 AM
The difference between nationalism and patriotism is qualitative, not quantitative. More here and follow the links within for background. It also describes the difference between the liberal and conservative use of the word "globalization".