PZ Myers. 2005 Jan 17. Some MAN needs to calculate the rotational velocity of MLK's corpse, immediately!. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/some_man_needs_to_calculate_the_rotation_velocity_of_mlks_corpse_immediatel/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Monday, January 17, 2005
Some MAN needs to calculate the rotational velocity of MLK's corpse, immediately!
It's Martin Luther King day, and the story that has me angriest today is about the perpetuation of the kind of inequities he fought against. And it's coming from the president of Harvard.
The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, sparked an uproar at an academic conference Friday when he said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. Summers also questioned how much of a role discrimination plays in the dearth of female professors in science and engineering at elite universities.
The article mentions that several attendees walked out on him, including Nancy Hopkins. I know Nancy Hopkins—she's a molecular geneticist who has done innovative work with zebrafish—and I'm not surprised that she left in disgust. She herself personifies exactly what is wrong with these stupid comments by Summers. I am surprised and disappointed that everyone didn't storm out.
I'll tell you how much of a role discrimination plays in limiting female professors in so-called "elite" universities: 100%. There is no shortage of brilliant women scientists (or brilliant male scientists), but there is a dearth of jobs and we still have bigoted ignoramuses like Summers standing guard over the gateways.
He offered three possible explanations, in declining order of importance, for the small number of women in high-level positions in science and engineering. The first was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks.
Point in Woman's favor: they aren't stupid enough to succumb to the ridiculous demands of the academic establishment.
But seriously, this isn't a problem with women. This is a problem with the culture. We have a culture that says it is OK for the boys to shirk family responsibilities and invest time in their careers, but women who do the same are bad mothers. Women are penalized in ways that men aren't for making a maximal effort in their careers, just as men are penalized for spending more time with their families.
Do you think Lawrence Summers looks on those high-level male scientists and engineers who are slaving away in the lab for 80+ hours a week, and wonders, "Why is that man neglecting his children?" Part of the problem is that we have administrators and peers who can gleefully apply that kind of career pressure without concern for their ability to function as well-rounded human beings.
The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. ''I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Summers said in an interview Saturday. "Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all.
This was the point that most angered some of the listeners, several of whom said Summers said that women do not have the same "innate ability" or "natural ability" as men in some fields.
Asked about this, Summers said, ''It's possible I made some reference to innate differences. . . I did say that you have to be careful in attributing things to socialization. . . That's what we would prefer to believe, but these are things that need to be studied."
Guess what, Summers? Boys don't have an "innate" tendency towards science and math. Leave them alone, and they don't grow up into natural engineers: they become animals who like to eat and screw and scratch themselves. The most important contributor to that predilection for tinkering and building and learning is education. Any possible inherited differences are miniscule compared to the power of education and cultural biases.
And don't try to pretend that socialization is minimal, when the president of Harvard can stand up and seriously suggest that many people are incapable of doing great science because they have ovaries. We don't do research with our gonads, or our skin pigments, for that matter.
Summers said cutting-edge research has shown that genetics are more important than previously thought, compared with environment or upbringing. As an example, he mentioned autism, once believed to be a result of parenting but now widely seen to have a genetic basis.
Grrr. Apparently, congenital idiocy is not a barrier to becoming a Harvard administrator.
"Cutting-edge research?" What research is that? While there are genetic biases that can skew an individual's preferences and behavior, none are so cleanly tied to sex or race that we can use them to legitimately discriminate on the basis of those irrelevant traits, and none of the gender/race associated correlations are within even an order of magnitude of the potency of education. How can anyone be so stupid as to stand in front of a room full of accomplished women, all walking, talking refutations of his claim, and suggest such a thing?
I also don't think that last attempt to salvage his thesis by comparing the possession of a pair of X chromosomes to a heritable, organic brain disorder does him any credit. I'm hoping a cabal of strong, smart Harvard women is going to rise up and fire his dumb, hairy scrotum.
(via Feministing)
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Well, there are academic feminists out there who believe exactly the same thing. _The Alphabed Versus the Goddess_, for example, argues that women do not think in terms of reason and logic but rather in terms of feelings and images. The conclusion is then that literacy, writing, and logic are tools of the patriarchy that oppress women.
#: Posted by Andrew Reeves on 01/17 at 02:39 PM
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PZ,
What do you think about the idea that women tend to be more auditorilly inclined and men more visually inclined?#: Posted by Reed A. Cartwright on 01/17 at 02:52 PM -
I’ll tell you how much of a role discrimination plays in limiting female professors in so-called “elite” universities: 100%. There is no shortage of brilliant women scientists ....but there is a dearth of jobs
Well, then, Myers, if you, as a beneficiary, if not promoter of these "100%" discriminatory practices, the Honorable thing for you to do is quit immediately so that a brilliant woman scientist can get the job, that you are wrongfully occupying.
When we can we expect your letter of resignation?
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 03:03 PM -
It's possible that women and men still retain some vestigial minor differences from our evolutionary history. Women bear and suckle young while men do not. This would suggest that in the course of evolution, women who perform tasks which require intermittent attention, i.e. what we might call parallel proccessing, might be more reproductively fit over those who engaged in long term, high concentration demanding tasks. (It would also explain why my wife can notice, with a single glance across the living room, a iny stain on my shirt, that went unnoticed at work and by myself, for the entire day.)
But yes, the individual variation, not to mention the effects of differential cultural factors, would have long since handily swamped out such minor inclinations on any person-to-person basis. Simple desire and stubborn perseverence alone, together with curiosity, fuels the fires of most scientific careers, men or women.
Short version; This guy surely he knows he fucked up royally. -
Andrew-- I recall a particularly maddening paper presented by Val Plumwood (a relevance logician of some standing) in which she argued that classical negation was both a tool of and the root of (much? all? It was hard to tell...) male bias and chauvinism. The argument was a simple 'guilt by association' quote hunt, with misogynistic remarks by various figures who had used classical negation in their work. Nice quotes, but not much of an argument.
Looking for root causes of the unalterable variety (with genes by far the favourite these days) is a mugs' game-- and a great way to deal with social problems you don't want to address. A convenient (supposed) cause is cited, so that other causes that we are both responsible for and in control of can be ignored.
More importantly, as PZ says, there's every reason to suppose that social factors like education and career structure/expectations play a far greater role than a slight overall sexual bias in ability might. It's disappointing to see such facile, thoughtless excuse making from the President of Harvard...but not really surprising, given my experience with university adminstrators.#: Posted by Bryson Brown on 01/17 at 03:35 PM - In terms of pure innovation, surely a desirable feature for scientists, if our closest relatives are any sign, it is mostly the females who seem prone to innovation. My recollection from basic primatology was that among chimps, the women are the ones who pick up on the novel solutions, and pass it on to their young, both male and female through association. The older males just seem more interested in playing politics and trying to keep from getting beaten to death by other males while joyously looking for handy targets to beat to death. ... I don't know how accurate that recollection is. Maybe someone here does.
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The most important contributor to that predilection for tinkering and building and learning is education. Any possible inherited differences are miniscule compared to the power of education and cultural biases.
An acquaintance of mine from my university days told me that she dropped out of being a high school physics teacher because her head of department told her to discourage girls from studying physics. Apparently places in the physics classes were limited, and he didn't want girls depriving boys of their rightful place in science.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 03:47 PM -
It should be possible to determine the basis of any sex differences in (here's the problem ... sex differences in what? The ability to add?). Oh well, I thought I had something useful to say, but apparently not. But I'll try: what can the HarPrez say about the women who have made it in the sciences? How to explain their successes despite their sex-related deficiencies? Perhaps the HarPrez should look into sex-related tendencies towards foot-in-mouth syndrome.
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 03:47 PM
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So is this article taking it on faith that there aren't any innate cognitive differences between genders? I was under the impression that studies showed males were statistically better than females at 3D rotation problems and whatnot, but maybe I've been misinformed. I'm sure these studies never indicate that males are capable of anything that females are incapable of, only that there are differences in predisposition. The female molecular biologist mentioned need not consider any discussion of male and female cognitive predispositions as questioning her abilities in her field. These ideas are built on probability distributions, not absolute limits on gender capabilities.
All that aside, if the gender gap in academics is sociologically driven then hadn't we better solve the problem at the socialization level early on? Concentrate on equalizing attention in the elementary science classroom.
I assume that if you gathered a random distribution of U.S. males and females of research position-seeking age you would find that the males had slightly greater propensity for at least 3D rotation problems, by extension physics or calculus. If this difference is because of socialization, it probably started in early education and we're too late. If the difference is because of inherent differences, then we're way too late. I say do as much as we can to eliminate the sociological variables but not complain if it turns out that there are genetic determinants too.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 03:50 PM -
Look, you boneheads, speak english! Speak common sense!
Women ain't good at math or science!
Everybody knows this.
Of course, there are exceptions (didn't that chick Franklin get shafted on the discovery of DNA), and those exceptional women ought to be groomed and permitted to get full and fair consideration for any and all academic jobs. And, (my sensitive side predominating) maybe even a boost here and there.
But, that don't change the facts on the ground. The applicant pool for scientific women (too busy shopping and listening to Britney Spears albums), ain't very large, and that's just how life works.
Myers -- the wimpy, indignant feminist -- cancel your future summer (no pun intended) gigs at Harvard! You ain't wanted
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 04:08 PM -
I am certainly not assuming there are no genetic differences between males and females -- that would be rather silly, don't you think? I also expect that there are slight physiological and cognitive differences between them. The point is, though, that the overwhelmingly most significant factor is education and training.
If there is a genetic difference that gives some males a slightly better ability to visualize 3D objects rotating in space, so what? There is a bit more to being a top-notch physicist than object visualization. And as a probability distribution, it's damned absurd to judge someone's object visualization skills by his or her gonads (why not, you know, measure their ability to visualize?)
I also expect that there are categories in which females have a slight edge, probability-wise. It's another example of cultural bias when we find Abstraction X in which some males excel, Abstraction Y in which some females excel, and then we decree that Abstraction X is the one that counts when doing Concrete Complex Task A.
The whole argument Summers was making is wrong and absurd on multiple levels. - Flynn, last warning: make an ass of yourself one more time, and you are out of here.
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Have pity on Summers: he's only an economist, after all. And he's a classic example of one of those unworldly people who's so smart they can rationalise saying the stupidest things about things outside their immediate field.
(Oh, and I think Bob Flynn is possibly being ironic. At least, I hope he is: he hasn't struck me as a raving misogynist to date.
Note also that great scientists like Terry Pratchett have pointed out in works of classical erudition like Truckers that 'if women learn to read, their brains overheat'. I think this is just possibly very significant, and proves that EINSTIEN WOZ WORNG and that THE EARTH GOES ROUND VENUS and THE SUN WAS EJECTED FROM SATURN.)#: Posted by on 01/17 at 04:41 PM -
His autism example is even sillier than it appears on the surface. People stopped blaming "cold mothers" for the disorder long before we had the vaguest clue what the genetics were (and hell, even now 'vague clue' is probably an optimistic assessment of what we know). It was just, ya know, umm, STUPID to think such a profound developmental disorder could be caused by bad parenting. It was, in short, a historic flub in the annals of psychiatry.
If he really thinks that it was some sort of reasonable, long standing theory that was suddenly undone by modern genetics, then no wonder he's such a yutz.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 04:44 PM -
I think Bob Flynn is possibly being ironic.
Now that's an interesting possibility. Flynn as the Pharyngula equivalent of Stalker Al at Political Animal -- showing that wingnut trolls are basically a self-parody.#: Posted by paperwight on 01/17 at 04:49 PM - That may well be in this case, but he's exceeded the boundaries of good taste. As a husband and as a father to a daughter and as a male who would rather not be judged by the great good fortune of possessing a pair of testicles, I was deeply offended by Summers...and I'm not in the mood to put up with some juvenile moron who thinks shouting "Women ain’t good at math or science!" is funny.
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I don't think that this quote from Summers is at all unexpected,
coming from him. The man has a reputation.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 05:11 PM - Growing up in Eastern Europe, I had a very different experience. The boys, throughout school, were treated as no-good know-nothing criminals-in-training, while the girls were all the best students in all classes. I remember being the only boy on the all-girl school team in math, physics and biology, year after year from 5th grade (when we started haveing physics, chemistry and biology as separate classes) all the way until the end of high school. At college level, it was about 50-50, but in general women did better on exams than guys. Do Serbs have reverse genetics of sex? I don't think so. Just a different culture, different priorities, different expecations, and different educational philosphies.
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"Leave them alone, and they don’t grow up into natural engineers: they become animals who like to eat and screw and scratch themselves."
Okay, no juvenile misogynist jokes, but what about juvenile engineer jokes? After such a prompt, they practically write themselves! -
"Boys don’t have an “innate” tendency towards science and math....The most important contributor to that predilection for tinkering and building and learning is education. Any possible inherited differences are miniscule compared to the power of education and cultural biases."
Do you have any scientific evidence to support your broad generalizations?
"I’m hoping a cabal of strong, smart Harvard women is going to rise up and fire his dumb, hairy scrotum."
Or the cabal of strong, smart, Harvard women could present arguments against his position. Your hostility to free speech, and free academic inquiry is apalling.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 05:27 PM -
My high school teaching experience was that females are well on their way to using the academic system to their advantage. This gives some hope that the Summers type is fading.
May I suggest that there be minimum levels of mathematical and scientific competence for elementary teachers, say up to the level of basic algebra on the math side. When I took my CBEST test a decade back the most difficult math was a couple of quadratic equations. Expecting 80% or better should be de riguer if we expect anybody to teach the necessary building blocks to allow ALL children to have a chance at success in technical disciplines at the high school and college levels.
Funding the training to bring our current teachers up to snuff is a vital part of this equation, as is the willingness to change the pedagogy of elementary ed (one teacher as expert at everything may not fly if we are serious about this).
First we have to decide this is important ...... I do not want my grand-daughters to think that they cant do math and science before they even try.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 05:35 PM -
Ya know, I was watching football this weekend, and, boy, it struck me -- there ain't no women in the NFL!
It must be 100% discrimination, I tell ya! That damn glass ceiling. Those insufficient affirmative action programs, the dearth of proper mentoring........
Also, I betcha 10 bucks you would never call Dean Summers a "hairy scrotum" to his face
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 05:37 PM -
I note coturnix's comment about specialist teaching in the 5th grade. I think part of our problem here is that we hang onto the 'teach the children, not the subject' paradigm way too long, especially for those subject where the average teacher does not have a strong background. The only subjects I have seem elementary students rotated away from their regular teacher for are PE and Music. I would be interested in hearing of different models used.
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 05:40 PM
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If it is assumed that Summers himself is smart in general, then there may be a more sinister reason. Summers is saying that Harvard has red-state values in order to pander to potential contributors and protect itself from the rabid rightwing.
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 05:44 PM
- PZ Myers, I love you. And I'll give you a feminist get-out-of-jail-free card so you can keep your job and some other, stupid asshole guy can step down to make room for a smarter (because neither stupid nor assholish) woman to take his job.
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Norman: Coturnix's comments, for example, point towards social reasons being more important than genetic differences towards disproportionate number of women in math and science.
Another point, there are more women graduate students than men in biomed program in my previous school (Georgia Tech). Now one might think that is because woment are more "suited" for bio than for math. But it isn't really so. Because at least 50% of the professors do theoretical/computational work, which requires as much knowledge and familiarity with math as engineering fields. For example, women who come in for the bioengg program do not seem to prefer biology/biochemistry professors more than mechanical/chemical engineering professors in this multidisciplinary program.
That doesn't mean genetics has no role to play: perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. But a wide amount of research so far suggests social reasons to be more paramount than genetic ones. Of course, a lot of this research has been done in social sciences departments (Eg. Professor Mary Fox in GaTech). If one proposes that genetics is indeed the reason, the onus rests on him/her to prove it is so; for quite some amount of research point to social factors. -
I'll tell you what, Norman. I'm raising my daughter to be well-educated and ambitious. You take one of your sons (if you are capable of fathering one), neglect him, and raise him to be a kitchen drudge. Then we'll compare and see who comes out smarter.
You're getting a really significant advantage, you know, since I'm letting you bring the kid with a whole great big powerful Y chromosome to the competition. -
The following statement is interesting:
Three other participants reached by the Globe also said they were not offended by Summers' comments, which they felt reflected mainstream economic theories. They were Sarah Turner, an economist at the University of Virginia; Paula Stephan, an economist at Georgia State University; and David Goldston, chief of staff for the US House Committee on Science
Personally, I think Summers was wrong about the innate differences part. But I do not see a sinister design. I do not see a prejudice either. I just see it as a reading into issues by a person who isn't equipped to talk about them (specifically, point #2 that Summers made).
The good thing is that the university isn't trying to push the issue under the carpet. I certainly won't come down as hard on Summers as has Professor Myers. -
The conclusion is then that literacy, writing, and logic are tools of the patriarchy that oppress women.
But I've also heard that women are better at language! Sexists are so confusing.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 06:01 PM -
I had to read kitchen drudge 3 times before it sunk in that you weren't talking about a relative of Matt Drudge...
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 06:03 PM
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Shame the Boston Globe could only find women to complain about Summers, so their concerns can be dismissed as "activist" by that Freeman character(what's wrong with "activist" anyway?). Things are also grim in the UK. Here's a quote from a 2002 Guardian report:
More girls take biology A-level [exam] than boys, and girls out-perform boys across all sciences at A-level. Girls are over-represented on bioscience degree courses, some of which are now 60% female. Yet of 770 professors of biological science in Britain, just 60 are women. In computing science, engineering and physics, where women, admittedly, are in a minority right from A-level onwards, the number of women academics is pathetically small. Industry
...The problems start at degree level. "Women tend to lose confidence in their ability to do science, no matter how well they are doing," says Carol Kemelgor, author of Athena Unbound, a study of the paucity of women in science. It's hardly surprising, given that those who storm the citadels of engineering or computing science may find themselves alone in a group of 90 men.#: Posted by Bartholomew on 01/17 at 06:04 PM -
If the ratios of males:females in science departments doesn't match the ratio of males:females in the general population, is this imbalance necessarily evidence of discrimination? I'm not sure, but we must take into account issues like the Vietnam War effect. Many males had a significant incentive to go on for graduate school that females, who weren't subject to the draft, lacked.
Maybe I'm naive, but my solution to the imbalance is to rigorously punish any proven cases of discrimination and treat everyone as individuals. If early childhood socialization is a problem, that must be addressed in early childhood, not artificially tweaked later by affirmative action.
Also, society must give females (and males) choices to reach their potential, and support them when they make that choice. If a selected female decides to be a stay-at-home mom, she should be supported in that choice, just as if she decided to become a zebra fish researcher.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 06:14 PM -
There have been popular reports of studies that show very young girls choose different toys from very young boys (dolls vs guns, for example). I have also read some popular reports of studies that purport to show that men may have better 3D visualization skills than women. The problem with these studies, or at least the popular reports, is that there is no particular reason to believe them until and unless they are repeated under the right conditions and with the same results. These results of these "studies" may have entered the popular consiousness because they seemed appealing, but they may not be valid. The idea of five stages of grief over the death of someone close is almost universally accepted in the popular mind, but there is virtually no real evidence that these five stages actually exist, or that most people go through them. The results which appear to show sex differences in very young children may be similar.
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 06:19 PM
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I don't think the presence of an imbalance is necessarily a sign of discrimination. There are social pressures outside the institution that could skew applicants, for instance, so that even a university that is completely above board and equitable might not have equal numbers of men and women. And of course there is the historical factor -- it takes years to clear the effects of past bias.
But this is a case where the president of the university has unambiguously expressed opinions that show that Harvard has some degree of internal bias. After those remarks, I would think many highly qualified women would avoid Harvard -- why work at a place where the guys above you are going to show you no respect? -
After those remarks, I would think many highly qualified women would avoid Harvard — why work at a place where the guys above you are going to show you no respect?
That's the first sensible thing you've said on this thread, Myers. Yes, if offended by Summers and Harvard's general sexist vibe, smart scientific gals should go elsewhere. Hey, do you think the women scientists already at Harvard will leave, too? Rotsa ruck
Out of curiousity, Myers, what is the male/female ratio of students and teachers in your biology department? Anything less than 50-50, and you, Sir, are a discriminator.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 06:48 PM -
The conclusion is then that literacy, writing, and logic are tools of the patriarchy that oppress women.
A bit OT, but I'd like to pipe up on this since I'm seeing it more and more often. It's a load of crap.
My mother has taught reading for 25 or 30 years. A lot of her work has been with very young children--she can have a three or four-year old doing basic reading within a few months, depending on an individual child's abilities. Most don't get extra help from parents (including reading to them; that's often why they're there), and my mom does really well with keeping the subconscious sexism to a minimum.
Her girls tend to read earlier. Certainly not always. It's pretty variable, and even with two completely normal kids the difference isn't much. Maybe two weeks, three at the most. But the difference is there. The descrepency seems to balance out after a few years in [usually public] school, although I can't point out a specific reason why.
So yeah, girls don't seem especially oppressed by patriarchal literacy. I love it. I use it all day long. And logic? It is awesome. I wish more people would use it, 'cause the ones who don't are driving me nuts.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 07:26 PM -
Wow, Bush really has brought us back to the Gilded Age.
And here I thought it would just be on Wall Street.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 08:08 PM -
As far as Computer Science goes, I have one anecdotal data point.
Last fall, I took two CS classes at a state university in Connecticut. One was undergrad level, one was graduate level.
There was one woman in the undergrad CS class, compared to about 29 or more guys. She was asian (Chinese, I suppose.)
The graduate CS class, while smaller, was at least half women. Two Americans (one white, one black, for what it's worth), one woman who, I think, was of Indian origin, and the remaining 5 were from China or thereabouts.
It seems quite likely that the imbalance Summers sees is an attribute of American culture, specifically, not genetics.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 08:25 PM -
If you look at science departments at top ranked European universities
you see a much higher fraction of women. Defenders of the notion
that the American ratio is genetically determined might want to think
about that a bit.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 08:36 PM -
It's only been 30 years or so since graduate departments of all kinds (even in the humanities) stopped explicitly discriminating against women in admissions and funding decisions. How could they give money to a woman who was "obviously" going to quit when there were men with families to support? We act like there's been a level playing field forever, so current results must reflect natural differences. There hasn't been -- and there isn't still. Men who were trained before things changed are still in charge of departments. Lots of them are wonderful people. They've all gotten used to having women as students and younger colleagues. But I think it's fair to say a significant proportion still have a hard time dealing with women as equals. They just weren't raised that way; our culture continues to support their view; they still have the power.
It takes time for things to change. You can't have 20 years of affirmative action and then give it up and presto, nobody discriminates ever again. Throw in the cultural changes wrought by militarism, right-wing fundamentalism, corporate ad campaigns designed to get women to stay home and have babies, Hollywood movies promoting ever more disgusting gender politics, and it's no surprise there aren't more women succeeding in more areas of our society. Some women -- like some men -- are able to take this kind of abuse and still succeed. Some can't.
Anyway, yeah, Summers is an ass. He doesn't understand history, he doesn't understand culture, and he doesn't understand science. -
The imbalance is greater in physics (at least in the US) than almost anywhere else in academics. And, in fact, it's much greater in physics than in (a) chemistry, or (b) mathematics. I defy anyone to come up with some innate cognitive difference that could explain that difference, since the physics community is basically something a lot like chemistry combined with something a lot like mathematics. There's clearly something culturally bound going on there.
#: Posted by Matt McIrvin on 01/17 at 09:25 PM
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"I’m raising my daughter to be well-educated and ambitious. You take one of your sons (if you are capable of fathering one), neglect him, and raise him to be a kitchen drudge. Then we’ll compare and see who comes out smarter"
There have been many males that came from poor backgrounds and suffered racism (in particular anti-semitism) but managed to overcome it to become scientists. Yet women from more priveleged backgrounds can't overcome the alleged biases of the science faculty of modern day Harvard University. What a joke.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 10:31 PM -
Yes, and it's hammered into us from an early age. We're all sexist. We all went through those phases in childhood where members of the opposite sex were first icky and covered with cooties, and then objects of lust and intimidation. We set up "us" and "them" categories early, and then of course we try to establish the superiority of "us"—that's only natural. It's hard to outgrow, and it's easy to lapse.
Summers lapsed. He is trying to justify his prejudices rather than overcome them.
There just aren't any grounds to support his claims about significant innate differences between the abilities of men and women in academics. Jeez, it was less than a century ago that men were blithely assuming that women's brains were grossly inferior, that they shouldn't be able to vote, that they needed a man's assistance in everything but changing diapers. Those are the kinds of nasty deep cultural biases that aren't shaken off in a few generations. -
You're ignoring a great many things, Norman.
Yes, many men have overcome prejudice to succeed. So have many women. You did notice in the article that there were well-known women of science there, right? They were offended, just as any Jews or African-Americans in the audience would be offended if he'd suggested that they were inferior.
You know nothing about the backgrounds of those women. I know some who have worked their way up from poverty, but even if you were right, and they were all the beneficiaries of wealth and privilege, what does that say about your argument? It means that there are even more brilliant women who can get nowhere because they are handicapped by the combination of less fortunate circumstances and the petty bigotry of entrenched male dominion. What a waste. What a crime against perfectly good minds.
That they can persevere when it is made ten times more difficult for them to succeed is to their credit. It does not justify the bigotry that makes it more difficult for them, and it does no credit to us white males who have an easier time succeeding than they do. A level playing field is to the benefit of all of us. Except, of course, to those marginal white boys who are coasting on their connections and the benefits of bigotry. -
I agree with most of the criticisms of Summers, namely 1) that evidence for innate cognitive differences relevant to women's participation in science is far from conclusive, and 2) that the existence of said differences would mean that there hasn't been discrimination in the past. The latter is especially egregious, given that discrimination has so often been totally explicit.
On the other hand, from what I've read, I don't see that Summers is using his misinformed belief to justify current or future discrimination against women. I don't see where he says that you should deny someone a job based on her sex without even looking at her skills.
Anyway, it seems like there's a reaction here that is decrying Summers for bringing up the idea of sex-linked cognitive differences, and I don't see why we should reject the possibility out of hand. It was idiocy to blithely assume that women's brains were grossly inferior, but that doesn't mean we should blithely assume that women's and men's brains are exactly the same. I think the real point is that even a proven statistically significant difference wouldn't justfiy discriminating against individuals on the basis of their sex.#: Posted by on 01/17 at 10:53 PM -
Paul, this is the last time I'll say anything like this. I got all nasty with you some months back and ended up being so disgusted with myself that I couldn't even sign on to READ your blog for a month or so, much less post comments on it. But ...
Why the fuck do you put up with Bob Flynn?
Look at what he writes -- it's sheerly for the attention, and about 95% of it is just stupid insulting shit. The little prick makes me avoid commenting here, every time I see him, for fear that I'll be the target of his sneering, leering jibes.
This is YOUR ball field, man, and here's this snotty little punk who shows up time after time not to play ball, but to throw dog shit and vomit on the field so the other players can't enjoy playing. All so he can be NOTICED.
Let me ask you to ask yourself this question:
Do you honestly have strong, clear, DEFINITE reasons for letting him continue to post here? -
Andrew Reeves: the academic feminists who claim what you say they claim are not the president of the wealthiest and most well-known university in the United States, and possibly the world. In large part, this is probably because the claims that you say they make (I'm relying on your characterization, which might or might not be fair) are stupid, causing them to not be hired into a position of such importance. (No, I cannot explain why Summers holds his position; possibly he doesn't usually say things that are that stupid.) Your implicit equation is not an equality.
(1) The objective is not to have fewer men in science, it's to have more women. It is true that men will over time make up a smaller proportion of science and engineering faculties, but that is a by-product of a sensible goal, not the goal itself. As PZ points out, there are more good candidates than good academic jobs. For this reason, some degree of unfairness and arbitrariness in the hiring process is unavoidable. The *relevant* question is whether we will do what is necessary to attract and retain outstanding faculty regardless of gender. A LOT of money is spent in the recruitment of science and engineering faculty. Is it a waste to spend a fraction of this money on things that will make it possible for ALL faculty - single dads, dads who actually do half the housework, as well as moms who have obligations at home - to be as productive as many of the men whose careers have been subsidized by stay-at-home wives who've kept the household running? Is it so wrong to bias tenure and advancement decisions more toward the quality of a scientist's scholarly output than the number of papers (sometimes misleadingly called productivity)? Is it unreasonable for women - who constitute more than half of the population - to expect that they might get to work among colleagues who almost entirely male? Is it unreasonable for female grad students and postdocs to want to work in departments that have a composition suggesting that their years of effort might possibly not be in vain? I don't think that any of these things are unreasonable. If you do, I sure hope you're not on any search or tenure committees, and I'm sure glad that you're not making hiring decisions in my department.
(2) As a matter of fact, I am willing to bet that Harvard almost undoubtedly will lose female faculty as a consequence of Summers's asinine remarks - if Harvard doesn't misplace Summers, first.
Norman Normal: you might want to take a gander at Swift's essay, "A Modest Proposal." I commend it to you as an outstanding example of just the sort of fearless, open, value-free inquiry that you appear to advocate. -
I supported the concept of giving BF slack last time Hank raised this issue, but experience shows that Hank was .... and is right.
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 11:29 PM
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This guy Summers is being viciously attacked for discriminating against women in Harvard. What he said is that he did all that could be done and yet, the difference in numbers remained. Something else must be happening, he reasoned, and it was not discrimination. Take autism: for long it was thought that the behaviour of the mother caused the children to become autists (or neurotic or homosexual or whatever), a message that ruined the life of many an unlucky woman. Now we know mothers were not guilty, mothers cannot induce autism. Ergo, stop harassing Harvard presidents about discrimination, it is not their fault. All the debate above misses the point, and PZ, we should be fair with our leaders, they are human beings.
#: Posted by on 01/17 at 11:35 PM
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Whoops. In my post above, comments (1) and (2) should have been directed to Bob Flynn. And a sentence in (2) should read:
Is it unreasonable for women - who constitute more than half of the population - to expect that they might get to work among colleagues who ARE NOT almost entirely male? - Jaimito: Summers did all he could and the problem got WORSE. That suggests environmental factors at play, no?
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Why aren't there more women in physics? Here's one woman's anecdote. As the only woman physics major of my year at a prestigious university, I heard one professor tell a circle of other students before class "Women can't be good physicists, because to be a good physicist you have to think about physics all the time, even on the toilet." This professor won a teaching award later.
My fellow classmates did their classwork in study groups at their dorms; I did mine alone.
Etc.
I am now in computer science.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 12:49 AM -
ada, it's interesting you choose computer science. At the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen, where I study, there are very few female students. Of the 200 new students that started this semester, only 6 were women.
This is a major problem, and in my oppinion makes for a worse study environment than if there was more equality.
The lack of female students lead some students to believe that women are less able to learn computer science, and the releatively few female professors doesn't help demolish this impression. However, the few female students are usually very good, and that makes it hard for those in contact with them to continue thinking such nonsense.
Me? My first programming teacher was female, and she is still the best programmer I've met, so I have never had any stupid impressions about gender being a issue.
At the departments of biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, nano chemistry and other science depertments there are higher percentages of women, often the female students outnumbers the male students.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 02:37 AM -
In my little corner of clinical biomedical sciences there are a lot more women than men at pretty much every level, from undergraduate degree through post-docs, until you hit lab head. Now that could partly be due to how long it takes to get to be a lab head (plenty of disrimination in the past will have wiped out a lot of the women), but many are actually pretty young, having done their major scientific work in recent times - which suggests that there is something else going on, and experience suggests that women drop out at every stage due to unsociable hours, the need to travel and move positions, the difficulty in having a family without it counting against you, and that ultimately there is still a bit of a men's club attitude to women in the upper echelons of science (lab heads like their eye-candy, but still mentor other men that reflect their image of themselves).
Which is not to rule out statistical gender differences in some cognitive domains (perhaps maths or spatial), although this is far from proven relevant to scientific ability - what about non-science subjects, how do gender differences at the top pan out?#: Posted by on 01/18 at 05:56 AM -
Looking over the comments above, I can see that I should modify
what I said about European science departments.
In my experience, which means astronomy and astrophysics, the
percentage of women at top ranked institutions in continental Europe
is much higher than in the US. This does not reflect a lower set of
standards abroad. Evidently, culture has a dramatic impact.
I should add that my only direct knowledge of Summers comes from
an incident where he singlehandedly prevented the hiring of a
leading female scientist to the Harvard faculty.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 07:47 AM -
I don't know if you're justified in saying discrimation is responsible for 100% of the difference. For all I know, discrimination is responsible for 120% of the difference, and on average women are innately slightly superior at science, but discrimination is so heavy that they can't break in anyway. Or maybe discrimination is responsible for 80% of the difference, but on average, women are innately slightly inferior at science, which is heavily reinforced four times over by discrimination. Do we really have the data to make such judgments?
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 08:31 AM
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BTW, anyone have thoughts on Toys for vervets?
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 08:40 AM
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while i do not necessarily agree with sommers' comments, it seems to me that his biggest mistake was calling the dogma of the blank slate into question...but as pinker has forcibly argued, our slate may not be as blank as many scientists, philosophers, anthropoligists, sociologists (etc.) pre-reflectively assume...is it that we have arrived at the theory of a mostly tabula rasa as the result of scientific inquiry or have we rather simply inherited the assumptions from empiricists such as Locke and then used it to fortify liberal ideals about equality, education, etc...why are sommers' remarks so outrageous? is it because there is a dearth of empirical evidence to back them up or because he has offended our moral and political sensibilities...if pinker is right, then there may be more empirical support for sommer's remarks than we would like to admit...i am undecided...but i think that it should minimally be an open question...and judging by the reaction to sommers' comments, most people do not treat it as such...which, by my lights, is the hallmark of dogmatic and unscientific thinking...
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 10:02 AM
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tnadelhoffer: Summers's biggest mistake was making these comments AFTER presiding over a decline in the granting of tenured positions to women @harvard.edu - the most well-known and richest university in the world, the university that Summers himself is President of.
A university president gets to take credit for successes under his watch and will be held responsible for failures. This is the nature of the job and Summers should know it. For him to make those remarks in that context has the smell of someone trying to not take responsibility for things that he should be taking responsibility for. It was entirely reasonable to expect that Summers would understand this, and entirely reasonable to conclude that he was being an ass.
Perhaps we should seriously entertain the possibility that something on the Y chromosome prevents the development of social intelligence, making men inherently less fit to hold positions of public responsibility [/sarcasm]. - tnadelhoffer: One more thing: you wrote forcibly when you meant forcefully. At least, I hope that's what you meant. The two words do not mean the same thing.
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Re tabula rasa -- my personal favorite statement (but I've forgotten the source): "It's 100% nature and 100% nurture." Anything more detailed than that and I don't believe it unless it's a rigorous cross-cultural (including non-Western, non-Indo-European-speaking cultures) study, including a time component. I've never seen any study complex enough to go much further than 100%/100%.
Another anecdotal data point -- I always assumed as a child that I'd be a scientist, fortunately having parents who would've been scientists or engineers of some sort had they been able to get an education beyond high school, and who fortunately always assumed that, like my older brothers, I could (and should) do whatever I wanted (except be a lawyer or bartender, but that was true for my brothers, too).
I was a straight-A student, including tying the high score on a statewide math test given to selected 8th graders in Wisconsin. I loved science, and I was good at math. I was on the high school math team, and won a bunch of trophies. I pissed off all the guys in my physics class by building a better electromagnet than theirs. I was nominated for a bunch of awards, blah blah blah.
By the time I was actually in college though, I ended up side-tracked to linguistics and anthropology. Why? Because I wanted to understand why I was good at science and math, but discouraged from studying it, why I was demonstrably the better student in many science courses, but the boys got the awards and kudos, why English teachers were surprised that I was good at math and science, 'cause I could write, too. (That one, in particular, is annoying -- the either/or of language and science/math.)
Anyway, there are many reasons that science ends up with fewer women at the highest levels, and still kind of regret the anthropology part of my major. Linguistics is infinitely more interesting and useful, and I would have had time to continue taking science courses. Oh well, now I might have a cool new taxonomy (information, not biology) job.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 10:37 AM -
And, hey, you wouldn't think you'd have to thank someone merely for not being an asshat, but thanks, PZ!
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 10:40 AM
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tnadelhoffer, I think the concept of the blank slate has not really been accepted for some time. While it's true that there is a politically correct notion in some circles that societal factors are the only factors that determine behavior, I think most people believe that there are innate differences between the sexes as well as among individuals of the same sex. The problem with the HarPrez's statement is that he seems to be accepting a popular notion as fact when there has not been enough investigation of the innate differences between men and women. It becomes all to easy to accept that the relative scarcity of women in math and sciences in the US is the result of nature, and, sorry, we can't do anything about it. That argument was made, and continues to be made in places, about black people. It seems to me we should be careful about making the same mistake when we talk about women.
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 10:41 AM
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I've got a couple of cents on this issue, being an American woman with a computer science degree. A lot of the stereotypes out there are just utter nonsense. "Women are more emotional than logical." It might be true that women are apparently more emotional, but it's because girls are not told to supress their emotions and aren't made fun of for ever expressing them. Think of John Travolta in Grease. When he sees Sandy he gets excited and happy, but then when he sees the other guys' reactions, he has to drop it and act like he doesn't care. I've never seen anything that makes me think men are more logical than women.
I'm not an overly emotional person. I'm very good at multitasking (whereas many men that I know have to focus on one task at a time and have difficulty resuming the task if their focus is broken). I can tell you the exact time I lost interest in math: freshman year in college, the professor was a newbie with a minty fresh PhD and he had some bizarre ideas about how to teach calculus. I made a B in that class, but I knew that if he'd had a more conventional teaching style, I would have made an A, but I was still turned off math enough that I didn't want to take anymore math for a while. Indeed, when I had the same professor for another class a few years later, he had evened out and I had no problems. It wasn't because I was a woman, it was because he was weird. Saying that women are genetically wired to dislike science is really offensive to the millions of women who are professional scientists, but also those who didn't choose to go into academia but still enjoyed math and science. -
Competitive science culture is now discrimination? By all means, lets allow those who can or will only spend 2 hours a day doing mediocre science into the top competitive ranks.
Kudos to Summer for suggesting that innate talent may have something to do with scientific success.
Or do you all believe that, given the right opportunity, we could all be Einstein or M. Curie?#: Posted by on 01/18 at 10:51 AM - eudoxis: were you born an idiot, or did you eat lead paint when you were a child?
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To revise and extend: eudoxis first ties success in science to hours spent on work, then prattles about innate ability and how great it is that Larry Summers is asking the really tough questions.
To eudoxis, as to Mr. Normal, I commend Swift's "A Modest Proposal" as an example of fearless discourse on a socially relevant topic.
But again: the relevant questions are how we avoid discrimination in education, hiring and promotion, how we nurture talent, and how we allow people (men and women) who do not have a professional stay-at-home spouse to keep a family running to be maximally productive at work. If one's goal is to create a vital scientific culture, addressing these issues will be a tad more productive than "resolving" the nature-nurture question. -
I question, as does Summers, the overwhelming role that people want to ascribe to discrimination, especially at the hiring and promotion level. Afterall, we are not talking about getting phds, a fairly easy task for a woman to do.
And it is precisely family that plays an important part in keeping women from devoting the time (and energy!) to science when the demands in a competitive environment are so high. One can wish for a science culture where nurturing the disadvantaged is a priority, but I think this is wrong for science. There are thousands of mediocre scientist plodders out there, but very few exceptional scientists. The exceptional ones who are women are not being kept out of favorable grant-attracting, post-doc attracting positions by discrimination.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 11:36 AM -
why English teachers were surprised that I was good at math and science, ‘cause I could write, too. (That one, in particular, is annoying — the either/or of language and science/math.)
Yes! I got the same kind of surprise from my freshman writing seminar professor. I tried to explain that the logic of engineering was the same sort of logic I applied to writing papers.
And, like you, I wound up in linguistics. Part of that was because my back suddenly crapped out and I missed a lot of classes, had my math grades drop, and wasn't accepted into the CS major. So I said "screw it", took a year off to figure out what painkillers would work, and went into linguistics when I got back, so I could start fresh.
But you know, women are more susceptible to autoimmune disorders, so maybe my bad grades in math ARE because I'm a woman!!! OMG!!!#: Posted by on 01/18 at 11:51 AM -
eudoxis: I have known, and worked under, female scientists and engineers in both academia and in the private sector. Their experience suggests that you simply are not correct.
A couple of years ago I had lunch with a female scientist who is a leader in her field. She started her career at one of the top four research universities in the United States. As an assistant professor there, she was asked to serve on many committees. It was not uncommon for the chairs of these committees to poll the members (including other assistant professors) for their input one at a time, and skip over her, the sole woman at the table. There was no ambiguity as to how these folks felt about female scientists. This was in the early 1990s. She left that institution due to its meter-thick glass ceiling (her words) and now heads a large research institute at a second-tier university.
Discrimination is alive and well in academia, and it operates at a number of levels. One of those levels is that people who haven't bothered to find out whether discrimination is a problem apparently feel free to claim that it is not. -
Re: Nature/nurture ... and again with my duffer understanding of science.
I've seen next-to-newborns sneeze. Examining my own sneezes from the inside, I can't help but marvel how complex the thing is. Deep breath, facial tension, throat and palate and facial movements -- even to the apparently-protective squeezing shut of the eyes -- and then explosive contraction of abdominal and diaphragm muscles to expel this powerful gust of air. Expelled not solely through the mouth, as a cough would be, but at least partly through the nose. And fortunately without blowing out your eardrums.
There must be at least a couple of different ways to clear dust out of your nasal passages. Horses, for instance, do it in a distinctly different manner. Dogs seem to do it in a way different-but-similar to us. Cat sneezes look almost human.
A sneeze is a PROGRAMMED event. It's complex, it's coordinated. I can't think that it's something you learn.
Ditto for yawning. Newborns yawn. So does everybody else, far as I know. I don't know exactly what a yawn is for (My suspicion is that it's at least partly a counter-movement to the constant clenching of jaw muscles, a stretch that keeps the muscles and tendons of the jaw from shortening.) But again this is a complex, coordinated, programmed event.
If we have these programs in our newborn heads, you can bet there are ten thousand others -- so familiar to us that we have the fish-and-water problem of not even noticing them. Complex coordinated actions we never learned, but do anyway. Breathing. Swallowing. Blinking. Smiling. Sleeping. Laughing. Dreaming. Hiccuping. Crying. Fearing.
And if yawns and sneezes and countless other behaviors are shared with critters around us (again with the dogs and horses: they both yawn ... and cats are well known for it), many of the programs that control them came along a LOOoooong time before there were humans.
Ain't no tabula rasa. The idea is a silly one, thunk up by somebody who was probably too early in the era of science to really get it right, but who probably also wasn't paying attention to things any farmer might know.
My own feeling is that well over half the people around us are SO run by these innate programs that they never really even get to be individuals in any real human sense.
Rather than tabula rasa, for most of us it's almost the exact opposite, and I wish I had the Latin to essay a term which meant "a slate so scribbled on that there's almost no room for unique new stuff" (dirty slate? full slate?) -- because with most of us, that's REALLY the way things are. -
Yoni: You certainly had the most resoned and extremely well-written post on this subject.
As for Dr. Myers, it seems you too can become mean-spirited when pushed. B. Flynn really does try hard to be an ass. He seemed witty and resonable for a while, but maybe his Gerbillus rectus died.
Desert Donkey: Thanks for the nicely rendered C. latrans gravatar.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 12:32 PM -
A postscript: One of the reasons I value science -- and reason itself -- is that I think these are some of the very few areas in which we actually get to be uniquely human. THIS is one of the small areas where the tabula is actually rasa -- and there's room to do some writing of our own.
For me, Pat Robertson and his dullard clones are such objectionable slugs mostly because they betray the most human-y of our traits. Their forceful hierarchical schtick is almost doglike (without the floppy ears and the engaging bright-eyed eagerness), and the brainless-automaton act of their followers looks to me more animal-y than human.
The lot of them run screaming from the use of their own rasa, and these days they seem to be violently opposed to fresh blank spaces in everyone else too. -
Speaking up as an academic feminist here: Andrew Reeves's characterization of the beliefs of (some) academic feminists is simply wrong. The book he cites, The Alphabet versus the Goddess, isn't part of any Women's Studies curriculum I know. Its central argument--that written language is oppressive to women because women are holistic, visual thinkers, while written language exercises the rational, masculine brain--begs the question by assuming that men are naturally abstract thinkers and women are naturally visual thinkers. The book's conclusion--that women will gain more power and status with the prominence of film, television, and cyberspace--is empirically false.
The characterization of academic feminists as simpletons is as common as it is sexist and absurd. -
Sez Mark: "There have been popular reports of studies that show very young girls choose different toys from very young boys (dolls vs guns, for example)."
A more telling study, in my mind, placed adults in a room to play with a baby for a five minute session. When they were done, the adults were asked to rate the child on certain traits (aggression, intellegence, motor activity, etc). numberof nature of vocal interactions was also recorded.
The result was that the ratings did not correlate at all with the sex of the child, but correlated strongly with what gender they were told the child was.
See:
POMERLEAU A, MALCUIT G, TURGEON L, et al. Effects of labelled gender on vocal communication of young women with 4-month-old infants. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 32 (2): 65-72 1997
also: ROGERS CM, RITTER JM; "The power of perception: Children's appearance as a factor in adults' predictions of gender-typical behavior"SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 11 (3): 409-426 2002.
There are many more. Study after study shows strongly that we treat boys and girls very differently from a very young age. Unless you can control very well for "nurture", one can't go making statements about the power of nature.#: Posted by Evan Murdock on 01/18 at 02:44 PM -
The idea that spatial perception is the most important faculty in math and science is hopelessly goofy. The capacity for symbol manipulation is as least as important. Research mathematics and physics is frequently so far from everyday life that you basically can't picture what's going on. Some people use spatial metaphors to help their understand, while other people rely on their familiarity with chains of reasoning to get to the right answer.
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 03:03 PM
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I've an 11 year old daughter who is in the gifted program in both math/science and language arts. I'm having a hard time not unleashing the Maternal Fist o' Death on some of the chucklenuts on this thread. Rest assured, if any school administrator tries to tell me my spawn can't succeed in the sciences because she's a girl, they will regret it. I got to watch my mother fight the same battle for my sisters and myself. You'd think 20 years would make some difference...
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 03:51 PM
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Ab_Normal: OK, so did you justify your mother's efforts by becoming successfull at math and science, and did you continue on in that subject field?
Studies by the military in the 70s-80s found that no matter how "macho" a field women trained for, they almost invariably drifted—mostly by choice— into "traditional" jobs for women in the military. I saw this on alimited basis in the early 90s.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 05:25 PM -
Has it really been so long since the numeric imbalance between liberals and conservatives in academia was explained by the latter group being weaker in science?
Now that the roles have been reversed, I would say that neither liberals or conservatives learned anything from that debate.#: Posted by on 01/18 at 09:27 PM -
What I see from this (and similar) discussion is that feminists are poor and somewhat "defective" beings, who are forced (by their own psychological complexes) to prove the things that contadict reality. Which means in turn that they are not fitted in this reality well.
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 10:34 PM
- Hey, PZ -- looks like the thread is getting traffic from some of those crude AI's that we used to run across on talk.origins. They could almost write sentences that almost made sense. Sure brings back fond memories.
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Can someone please point me to some specific comments Summers made? Given the confusion of data on questions like visual/spacial abilities, a non-specialist just posing the question "Are innate differences responsible for any of the disparity"? is not anything to get worked up over. Maybe someone out there can show me where he said something more than that. That's all i've seen, but I've only read three articles on it.
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 11:06 PM
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Nevermind. I found the NYT story about it. Overreaction.
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 11:09 PM
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PZ - hear hear.
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 11:10 PM
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Okay, I feel sorry for those conservatives who are pressured by their families to believe nonsense like creationism and anti-intellectualism, thereby hindering what might be a great scientific talent.
#: Posted by on 01/18 at 11:13 PM
- Yeah, Alex, but it looks like the AI has been upgraded with an auto-misogyny module. That, at least, is new.
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IK: I believe the imbalance of conservatives to liberals in academia is twofold. The first is that the more conservative scientists and engineers, etc, are working in industry or medicine and not in the classroom or university. Second, teaching is one of the last professions in the United States where you don't have to pass a drug piss test.
#: Posted by on 01/19 at 09:37 AM
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Of course, Richard is assuming that liberals do a lot more drugs than conservatives, in itself a bit of a biased stereotype.
#: Posted by paperwight on 01/19 at 10:11 AM
- Richard: are *you* working in academia to avoid drug tests? I've heard a lot of resaons for choosing an academic research career, but I've *never* heard that one. Bizarre.
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Right. And I'm one flaming liberal who has never even puffed on a cigarette, let alone take any of those other mind-addling drugs.
I will confess that I'm a caffeine-fiend, but that's about it. -
Well, dang. I'd been truly flattered to have someone praise my words as reasoned and well-written, only to see that same person later make a clean break from reasonable discourse with the piss test comment. I'd go on about how I disagree with it, but I'd be veering too far OT. And anyway, I'd prefer to give Richard the benefit of the doubt and think that he made said comment without expecting anyone to take it seriously.
#: Posted by