PZ Myers. 2005 Jan 21. Sexist Calvinism. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/sexist_calvinism/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Friday, January 21, 2005

Sexist Calvinism

No, not that Calvin, this one:

Calvin and Hobbes

The right wing has settled on a standard response to the Summers spectacle, I guess. I'm seeing the same thing over and over:

Here's a perfect example: not to pick on King, but it is an ideal synthesis of the standard, wrong, conservative response.

There's the usual expression of disappointment. I don't know, I think it's a good thing when someone apologizes if they say something stupid. Maybe Summers is learning, and that's always a good thing.

Then there is the usual statistical argument, that I've also seen come up in the comments here.

The distribution of natural endowments for math abilities for men show the same mean but greater variance than math abilities for women. Therefore, men will be disproportionately represented at the tails of the distribution relative to women. In other words, there are likely to be more men in society than women with unusually poor and below-average math skills.

To play the same game, though, there's another statistical fact: if there is even a slight, pervasive bias against one group, that shifts the mean a small amount in one direction, that also means you will have a disproportionate effect on their representation in the tail of the distribution.

But hey, guess what? Correlation is not causation, and you can't use these kinds of distributions to argue for innate differences—they can be equally well (better, to my mind) explained by environmental factors. Also, these statistical games may be correct, but if and only if the property of success in science and math is a simple one, with one quantifiable attribute that is an indicator of this mysterious parameter called "math ability". It's like IQ—one number, bang, we can take a complex human being and fit them into a slot on a histogram, and define and predict their performance. It's an assumption that there is a single optimum and a denial that there are multiple strategies for success in science and math. I know some few scientists and mathematicians, and they are all different; the simplistic reduction of complex properties to one-dimensional cartoons that support comfortable stereotypes is patently false.

A commenter at SCSU Scholars doesn't comprehend this, and makes a lovely straw man:

For anybody to say that given only the above two variables (not to mention dozens of others) - to maintain that the brains of individuals have to be identical - shows that person must either be hopelessly uneducated or worse must be disposed to a religious like fanaticism towards some highly questionable ideals.

He's got it backwards. We aren't saying men and women are the same, but that they may very well have some slightly different intellectual properties, and most importantly, all individuals are different. Meanwhile, people like Summers are trying to impose a single simplistic standard on scientists, modeled on a few extremes, all male. Summers even suggested that in his remarks about "80 hour work weeks"—if your ideals are pathologically freakish males, don't be surprised when few females fit the template. But don't think you are selecting for good scientists; you're selecting for freakish males, instead.

(Speaking of freakish males, one mathematical ideal would be Paul Erdös. If we selected for his peculiar set of traits in job searches for mathematicians, we might get some fine researchers, but very few women. But are all great mathematicians like Erdös? I would hope not.

By the way, Erdös also weighed in on this issue, in his own strange terminology:

Two of his brightest epsilons [children] once asked why there were so few female mathematicians. He explained that it wasn't a lack of ability: "suppose the slave children (boys) would be brought up with the idea that, if they are very clever, the bosses (girls) will not like them—would there be then many boys who do mathematics?" Both said well, perhaps not so many.

Pretty damn smart, that Erdös. But I wouldn't want to live like him.)

One extremely popular source among the defenders of chauvinism is Steven Pinker.

Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is "offensive" even to consider it? People who storm out of a meeting at the mention of a hypothesis, or declare it taboo or offensive without providing arguments or evidence, don’t get the concept of a university or free inquiry.

I don't think he's a very credible source, because he has a conflict of interest. If people started walking out on presentations of fact-free, unsupported hypotheses, Pinker wouldn't have a career.

Pinker is spinning the story. People weren't irate because Summers presented a tentative hypothesis, but because Summers, an administrator with much clout in hiring and firing, presented a badly formed hypothesis with no evidence to support it, that contradicted what we know about the complexity of biology, and he misrepresented it as the result of current, "cutting-edge research." This is exactly what we see from creationists, too. They will say that the idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old is simply a legitimate scientific hypothesis, supported by many top-notch researchers, and we're violating the spirit of free inquiry by rejecting it. But it's not. It's been considered and rejected, and is an utterly ludicrous idea. And if the president of my university smugly spouted off such garbage, I'd be outraged and looking to see him fired too, as someone patently incompetent to lead a research university.

Context matters. We consider hypotheses of innate differences all the time in science; that's very different from an administrator using half-baked ideas to rationalize away cultural stereotypes and prejudicial policies.

It just seems to me that the fact that women are subject to widespread, long-term bias against their scientific abilities, yet some still persevere and manage to make it, is convincing evidence that the "hypothesis" that they are innately inferior in these fields is bogus. You can come back and tell me about "distribution curves" and "long tails" when the playing field is level and you can actually legitimately provide appropriate data.

Posted by PZ Myers on 01/21 at 11:01 AM
Academics • Politics • 1 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
  1. "People weren’t irate because Summers presented a tentative hypothesis, but because Summers, an administrator with much clout in hiring and firing, presented a badly formed hypothesis with no evidence to support it, that contradicted what we know about the complexity of biology, and he misrepresented it as the result of current, “cutting-edge research.” This is exactly what we see from creationists, too. "

    Don't forget Hitler.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  11:33 AM
  2. Pinker's political stuff is really a sad disgrace. Hypotheses that fit the (local) data are easy to come by when it comes to big social issues: There are all kinds of facts about various distributions, and causal ideas that would explain them are a snap to invent. But it's a silly game if we don't impose more constraints than that. Which facts about which distributions are of interest? What kinds of hypotheses (why genetics and why gender)? How do we actually test them (what kind of controls or comparisons can we use)? Here we need contrasting tests of alternative hypotheses...! Opinion (in the pejorative old Greek sense of the word) dominates evidence and critical thinking here. And opinion operating beyond these constraints is just prejudice.

    I suspect the apology has more to do with politics than a real recantation-- but maybe a little learning is going on too. I'd prefer to be a little optimistic.
    #: Posted by Bryson Brown  on  01/21  at  11:56 AM
  3. Those people who keep taking the 'you are being too serious, and a hyperventilating feminazi too' approach are being obtuse. If Roger Clemens throws a ball high and inside and removes the top button on the batters uniform, it is because Roger Clemens meant to put the ball there. He is a professional, one of the best and ball control is assumed.

    Word control is just as much a part of the daily life of a university President.

    Neither Roger, nor Larry can afford to have too many accidents.

    As for Calvin, I hate to inform him that my wife likes interesting cars, motorycles, computers and power tools, just like I do.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  11:57 AM
  4. Here's a way to put it into context at an admittedly oversimplified neuroanatomical level. Yes, I know about all the bad arguments against using "brain size" arguments, but this puts it into a very simple context. In terms of neuroanatomy, male and female brains are virtually identical. There are some statistically significant differences, such as the anterior commissure, corpus callosum, and a few others, I'm sure. But again, thinking in terms of percentages, it's a very very tiny percentage of the total brain that is different between males and females. Researchers focus on these differences because, well, they're different (statistically), and perhaps studying their development and function can tell us something about males and females, in general. However, using a few small, characterized differences in a couple brain areas to explain differences in a complex behavior such as "math skills" requires an enormous leap of illogic. There's just no rationale to make that leap.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  12:08 PM
  5. Thank you for another excellent post on this subject. Sadly, there is at least one semi-prominent progressive blogger with the same attitude (Mark Kleiman).
    #: Posted by P. M. Bryant  on  01/21  at  12:09 PM
  6. Lovely about Kleiman. It's best not to refer to him as progressive, though. He's really not.

    Thanks for the roundup and excellent synopsis/rebuttal PZ. Hopefully this gets repeeated and linked to everywhere it needs to be.
    #: Posted by mattH  on  01/21  at  12:27 PM
  7. You can't spell sucks without scsu...
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  01:02 PM
  8. Meanwhile, people like Summers are trying to impose a single simplistic standard on scientists, modeled on a few extremes, all male. Summers even suggested that in his remarks about “80 hour work weeks”—if your ideals are pathologically freakish males, don’t be surprised when few females fit the template. But don’t think you are selecting for good scientists; you’re selecting for freakish males, instead.

    I'd like to refute this point. The 80-hour workweek is indeed freakish, but is how you succeed in the most selective professions. It's not just in science, but also in law and in performing arts, but actors of both genders don't usually complain about their 12-hour days and 6-day weeks. Given the choice between a Ph.D. who works 80 hours a week and therefore publishes 6 articles a year and a Ph.D. who works 40 and publishes 3, who do you think the head of department will choose to fill the latest assistant professor vacancy?

    I've read an article about how one of the reasons women succeed less than men in the academia is that they are more cooperative. The academia values competitiveness, and female Ph.D.s tend to have a mindset more geared toward doing things as a team, which screws them in the usual criteria for advancement. Furthermore, that article says, women are more likely to cooperate with their Ph.D. advisors in future research than men, whereas to get ahead in the academia you're supposed to challenge your advisor and overthrow existing theories. I've also read a similar article about how women are more likely to be cooperative in law, which again screws them with regards to things like the Socratic method in law schools.

    In both cases, I think it makes sense here for the academia to pass the buck along to the factors responsible to overvaluing cooperation and not working insane hours to get ahead.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  01:06 PM
  9. Word control is just as much a part of the daily life of a university President.


    And, seeing that "cutting edge research" has also shown that females have better verbal reasoning skills than males, perhaps males are just not cut out for the rhetorical complexity of the world of the college president...
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  01:23 PM
  10. Ron, do you have any reference for your statement that, "In terms of neuroanatomy, male and female brains are virtually identical"? I'd be thrilled to read about such a research.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  01:35 PM
  11. Hi Alon,

    The reference that I used is a textbook, "Brain Mind and Behavior" by Bloom Nelson and Lazerson (2001 Worth Publishers). It's stated in most basic neuroscience texts as well. It's outside my area of research, so I haven't looked at the primary research, but there's quite a bit of research that has studied detectable, statistical differences in certain brain regions. By deduction, thus, I am concluding that that means other areas show no detectable differences. For example, there are very few detectable differences in cortical structures (Planum temporale, an area believed to be involved in language processing, is more asymetrical in males than in females). Not surprisingly, several of these areas are also in the hypothalamus, dealing with visceral functioning/hormonal regulation. One area is even known as the "sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area" (Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell, 2001, Principles of Neural Science p. 1143).

    Bottom line: while there are anatomical differences, I am not aware of any specific research that links these anatomical differences to specific cognitive differences between males and females.

    Ron
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  02:00 PM
  12. Furthermore, that article says, women are more likely to cooperate with their Ph.D. advisors in future research than men, whereas to get ahead in the academia you’re supposed to challenge your advisor and overthrow existing theories.


    In the scientific fields I am directly familiar with, challenging your advisor was never a recommended career move. In fact, doing so was a good way to end your career before it even began.
    #: Posted by P. M. Bryant  on  01/21  at  02:05 PM
  13. In the scientific fields I am directly familiar with, challenging your advisor was never a recommended career move. In fact, doing so was a good way to end your career before it even began.

    Before or after you get a Ph.D.?

    Anyway, maybe challenge wasn't the right word - maybe "better" is better. It's been a while since I read the article and the earliest I'll be able to read it again and post a link here is Monday. Either way, the basic idea is that you have to compete by being independent of your advisor after you get a Ph.D. and being better than him/her by, for example, proposing a better theory.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  02:12 PM
  14. If people started walking out on presentations of fact-free, unsupported hypotheses, Pinker wouldn’t have a career.

    Indeed!

    It's a novelty in linguistics when someone actually cites Pinker. It's invariably something from before he was famous.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  02:12 PM
  15. Either way, the basic idea is that you have to compete by being independent of your advisor after you get a Ph.D. and being better than him/her by, for example, proposing a better theory.


    Man, if I ever get to the stage in my scientific career where I can truly "propose a better theory", I'll be in some pretty distinctive company!! Not even Ramon y Cajal is credited with a "theory." His work is simply stated as the "Neuron Doctrine", a mere extension of Schwann's Cell Theory to include the nervous system.

    Truly new theories don't come around that often.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  02:38 PM
  16. Ron,

    Okay, thanks for the reference. Though, to be honest, I'll have to take your word for it about what it says, because judging by your quote I'll only understand the function words if I read it, and there are no reviews of it on Amazon.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  02:39 PM
  17. For another, more readable reference for the layperson, Scientific American did an OK job (IMO) describing sex differences in the following article:

    Kimura, D. August 2002. Sex differences in the brain. Scientific American, vol. 12, issue 1.

    Reading between the lines in this article: Researchers are constantly looking for sex differences in brain areas. They are finding some subtle differences, but no "aha!!" differences that can explain the statistical cognitive differences between males and females.

    Another key point to take home from this. Whenever there is a difference between any two individuals on any task, one assumes that there are differences in the way the two brains of the individuals functioned to complete the task. So, if there is a measurable difference between males and females on a task, there might be a measurable difference in the function of some brain area. This still doesn't get around the original point of this whole thread. Which is why is there a difference? Is it innate, or is it due to experience? Our experiences change the way our brains develop, so any adult brain difference between males and females may be due, in large part, to different environmental influences on the brain.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  02:59 PM
  18. Alright... I'll try and find that issue of SciAm.

    By the way, I tried to look for the first article I mentioned on Google, and found something else that says the same thing: Barriers to Women in Academic Science and Engineering. This article talks in length about the "academic male model" of competition over cooperation.

    Unfortunately, this article has a common feminist hypocrisy, namely assuming that gender is socially constructed and then wanting the academia to accomodate to these social constructions, even when they result in absurdities.

    In particular, the policy suggestions: "acceptance of a female model of doing science in a collegial workplace accompanied by time for a private sphere of life apart from science; synchronizing the biological and tenure clocks by allowing a longer time span before tenure; rescinding exogamy requirements for career advancement thereby reducing the negative effects of limits on geographical mobility; provision of a signficant number of relevant role models so that younger women can envision a future in science" are absurd. The first three are a nicer way to say that the academia should tolerate mediocrity. The fourth is possible only after a critical mass of females have attained high-level positions in the academia.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  03:31 PM
  19. "Meanwhile, people like Summers are trying to impose a single simplistic standard on scientists, modeled on a few extremes, all male."

    Tipping over the edge; the whole scientist-engineering-mathematical-paradigm is western, white, and male.
    #: Posted by  on  01/21  at  11:53 PM
  20. "He’s got it backwards. We aren’t saying men and women are the same, but that they may very well have some slightly different intellectual properties, and most importantly, all individuals are different."

    He's got it exactly right. The comparison is made between people in very narrow life trajectories, not at all the general population. With so many variables held constant, the differences between genders are not drowned out by "all individuals are different".
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:03 AM
  21. Tipping over the edge; the whole scientist-engineering-mathematical-paradigm is western, white, and male.

    First, it's not Western - Chinese and Indian intellectuals had similar systems, which they produced independently. Second, just because virtually all human societies are traditionally patriarchal doesn't mean that everything they develop is patriarchal. Or do you believe that 1+1=2, things fall when dropped, and feminism (a product of the Enlightenment, a movement of males) are all patriarchal concepts?
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:03 AM
  22. Alan, I'm commenting on the backwardness of Paul's implication that Summers is trying to impose a freakish male standard to keep women out. On the contrary, Summers made the point that at the highly competitive academic ends (tails of the distribution or freaks, if you will) math and engineering are dominated by males and even if you recruit women, the pool is dimishingly small. I find it highly unconvincing to lay this at Summers' feet, and see this similar to unfounded antagonism of western, white, male progress in science.

    The flippant dismissal of suggestions of innate math and engineering capability, in a world where so many other talents are attributed in large part to constitutional differences is astounding and troubling. Afterall, the stratification along the institutional hierarchy has traditionally been maintained by an elitism that is soundly unegalitarian. Nobody seems to complain because, quite realistically, it's accepted that not every scientist can be at the top of their field. The frenetic huff about Summers's suggestion that sex differences may account for some of that stratification, when there is, indeed, empirical support for this, has been over the top.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:43 AM
  23. A lot of people here are failing stats 101. The key point to this whole argument, and the point PZ was making, is that while there are slight, predictable differences when you measure a large population in some abstract ability such as "math skills," this general effect has absolutely no value in predicting the abilities of any single individual in either group. The populations overlap entirely. Summers screwed up based on this very basic statistical misunderstanding.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  07:05 AM
  24. Eudoxis: alright, then. I thought that your comment about Western while males was serious. Sorry. By the way, my name is Alon, not Alan... native English speakers mispronounce my name as Alan all the time, though. Anyway, I think Ron's point about male and female cognition being identical but for social conditioning should completely refute Summers' suggestion. Whether the outrage about his comment was motivated by pure PCness or by knowledge that he was wrong and ignorant is another issue.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  07:56 AM
  25. Alon (sorry!), perhaps you can point us to a study that purports to show that "male and female cognition being identical but for social conditioning". There is a lot of handwaving and for good reason; it's very difficult to tease apart innate ability from ability modulated by culture. However, the persistent labor trends that correlate with empirical testing, despite changing culture, do imply a resistant feature to abilty. Funny isn't it, that when academic doors were thrown open to women that they populated the halls in predictive fashion.

    Strong claims about the effects of subtle social pressure are unsupportable. Reasonable people accept that a contribution of innate ability may play an additional role in life trajectory for individuals. The brain is not as plastic as the utopian idealists would like.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  09:34 AM
  26. A lot of people here are failing stats 101. The key point to this whole argument, and the point PZ was making, is that while there are slight, predictable differences when you measure a large population in some abstract ability such as “math skills,” this general effect has absolutely no value in predicting the abilities of any single individual in either group. The populations overlap entirely. Summers screwed up based on this very basic statistical misunderstanding.

    I have no idea what the hell you are saying--this looks like more fluff and/or mendacity to me. If there are two similarly shaped distributions, and one distribution is farther to the right that the other, there will tend to be significantly more people from the distribution with the higher mean at the high end of ability.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  10:43 AM
  27. I also feel compelled to cut-and-paste a comment of mine from another thread:

    PZ: You’re talking about a complex function with multiple dimensions. Your beloved bell curve doesn’t apply. Imagine that one important ability in the climb up the academic ladder is bootlicking, and men are 2% better at it than women. Another important parameter is schmoozing, and women are 2% better at that. Which sex is more likely to succeed? I’d say you can’t tell. What will determine it is which individual better implements the complex array of skills they have.

    Me: Utter BS. To give an example, a point in 3D space can be only be specified with 3 coordinates—for example, {x,y,z}. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a linear measure for say, distance from the origin, with some points being farther away than others. What is called ‘mathematical ability’ may have more than one component, and there may not be a perfect linear measure of everything encompassing mathematical ability that everyone could fully agree on, but that *doesn’t* mean the idea of a linear measure of mathematical ability is completely invalid. “Imperfect” and “useless” or “meaningless” are far from the same thing. The fact that ability in some area—whether it be mathematics or basketball or anything else—is based on a variety of traits does not mean that everyone is magically equal, or that a distribution in said ability does not tend to be fatter towards the middle than towards the ends.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  10:47 AM
  28. It's quite clear that you have no idea what people are saying.

    The point is that while one parameter of the problem might fit your sacred Bell Curve, solving the problem requires and takes advantage of multiple strategies. You've got tunnel vision: you're refusing to look at any but your one predetermined best strategy.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  10:57 AM
  29. I'm curious. Would all you blank slaters* say that mens' far greater liklihood to be incarcerated, greater mortality, greater drug use rates, etc. are all socially caused? Because it's not like I hear to much from blank slaters and rabid feminists about the hugely disproportionate number of men in prison being a result of "discrimination."

    *When I say blank slater, I'm not saying that this person believes that people could go without food or water for a year, or that if we were conditioned differently, we could go on 5 hours of sleep a week. When I say 'blank slater,' I (and others who use the term like Pinker) mean specifically one who denies human nature and denies human differences in any area where these things are not so blantantly obvious that they couldn't be seriously denied by even the most strident ideologue.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  11:08 AM
  30. No one is denying that there are sex differences!! The question here is whether intrinsic sex differences in brain function can explain differences in higher cognitive functions, such as math (or verbal) skills, and that this difference leads to the different capabilities and successes of males vs. females in different fields.

    Here is the simple, empirical, disproof of that hypothesis. If males are more successful in math and science careers because of the slight, measurable, population-wide achievement on some arbitrary math test, then females should be more successful in careers that require verbal reasoning for the very same reasons. Across the population, women score, on average, better than men in certain verbal reasoning tasks. Yet women do NOT exhibit disproportionate success in fields like law, politics, literature, etc. So therefore, these sex differences based on performance on arbitrary cognitive tests do not represent differences in success in different careers. Period!! Other factors play a much much much greater role.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  11:30 AM
  31. You're in the wrong place, then. No one here denies human nature or denies human differences.

    Look! Not a single crow in the sky!
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  11:31 AM
  32. By the way, I'm a male, and I'm not in jail, nor am I using drugs. Was I just lucky enough to get the good boy genes, or is it more likely that who I am was shaped by my upbringing?
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  11:34 AM
  33. Like I said before:
    "When I say ‘blank slater,’ I (and others who use the term like Pinker) mean specifically one who denies human nature and denies human differences in any area where these things are not so blantantly obvious that they couldn’t be seriously denied by even the most strident ideologue."

    I'm not contending here that people completely deny human nature or human differences--just that they deny these things when they aren't painfully obvious (like height differences between (and within) the sexes, or skin color variation between racial groups).
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  11:55 AM
  34. And like I said, no one here answers to that description.

    But keep it up. The crows are all gone.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  12:03 PM
  35. Other factors play a much much much greater role.

    No, you're simply wrong, because...

    Yet women do NOT exhibit disproportionate success in fields like law, politics, literature, etc.

    They are increasingly, though. Women are already the majority in the university population, and still increasing in percentage. In fact I would say that this is even *could* be due to biases (I wouldn't necessarily say "discrimination" becuase I don't think such biases exist to screw over males, they just happen to be representative of educational philosophies that are not terribly male-friendly) in the education system against males--for example, females seem to generally be more willing to do busy work than males. Classes that put a lot of weight on creative projects and tedious homework put males at a disadvantage--I know from experience. Many of my (male) friends would not do or not spend much time on tedious homework assignments (like chapter outlines--ugh, or relatively contentless but time-consuming "creative" projects), while many females worked hard on these things. Thus, my friends often did poorly in classes in spite of having a solid grasp of the material, as could by attested by how well they did on tests. I had a friend who got an F in AP U.S. history even though he aced almost all the tests and got a 5 (the highest score) on the AP test, because he wouldn't do the chapter outlines.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:07 PM
  36. And like I said, no one here answers to that description.

    But keep it up. The crows are all gone.

    Then why are you so quick to say that 100% of societal disparities *must* be due to discrimination? That seems awfully close to a blank slate-derived viewpoint to me. The above could not possibly make sense unless you believe we are pretty close to being neurologically clones.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:11 PM
  37. So the fact that you are unimaginative and undisciplined means other men are, too? Perhaps it makes you feel better to place the blame for your shortcomings on your gender, and simultaneously take advantage of your gender to dismiss half the competition in domains at which you do excel, but that simply does not impress me.

    Maybe if you and your peers would spend more time telling each other that it is important to buckle down and get your work done, rather than throwing down the books and saying, "Welp, we boys don't have the attention spans for this tedious homework...brewskis and xbox, fellas?", you might be able to accomplish something.

    Have you ever heard the phrase, "self-fulfilling prophecy"? That comment was a perfect example of how to rationalize a predicted result into reality.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  12:18 PM
  38. So the fact that you are unimaginative and undisciplined means other men are, too? Perhaps it makes you feel better to place the blame for your shortcomings on your gender, and simultaneously take advantage of your gender to dismiss half the competition in domains at which you do excel, but that simply does not impress me.

    Oh, nice. Finding evil under every rock. You really do remind me of a religious fanatic; you are every bit as quick to call everything you think of as distasteful a result of human evil, divorced from the physical world, rather than nature. Of course because something is natural does not mean it is desirable, but I really don't think always looking for *some person* of *some group of people* to blame for being eeeevillll is a good way of going about life.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:26 PM
  39. I say 100%, not because I believe men and women are 100% identical (please...the people who claim that that is the position of these so-called "blank slaters" are idiots), but because

    1) I know these jobs are not monodimensional tasks that can be reduced to a single score in a single dimension.

    2) I know women have experienced pervasive discrimination...and people like yourself and Summers confirm that it is still going on.

    3) The fact that men and women each have such extensive variation within their genders that most people of either sex are not qualified for these positions means that gender is an absolutely worthless parameter to consider. Even if there prove to be slight differences that are relevant, the frequency of false positives and false negatives makes it a useless criterion.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  12:27 PM
  40. Eudoxis: read Ron's posts.

    Dude: same comment as to Eudoxis. In addition, about your jail point, nobody's saying that differences are solely due to discrimination. Researches show that part of the problem female scientists have is female predisposition toward cooperation over competition, which in turn is due to gender roles. Similarly, the reason men are in jail more than women is aggressiveness, a trait that is again socially conditioned. Discrimination has nothing to do with this. As for your "I know from experience" comment, what part of "anecdotal evidence is a logical fallacy" don't you understand?
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:31 PM
  41. The fact that men and women each have such extensive variation within their genders that most people of either sex are not qualified for these positions means that gender is an absolutely worthless parameter to consider. Even if there prove to be slight differences that are relevant, the frequency of false positives and false negatives makes it a useless criterion.

    But we are not talking about absolute differences here, nor are we talking about considering sex in admissions. We are talking about explaining some statistical disparity, and citing a statistical difference in this context makes perfect sense.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:33 PM
  42. Evil? Whachoo talkin' about, Eeeevillll?

    You said,
    Classes that put a lot of weight on creative projects and tedious homework put males at a disadvantage—I know from experience. Many of my (male) friends would not do or not spend much time on tedious homework assignments (like chapter outlines—ugh, or relatively contentless but time-consuming “creative” projects)


    You are arguing that men are naturally uncreative and undisciplined, and you're trying to tell me that I'm putting all the blame on "evil"?

    Your entire argument rests on saying that males as a group are disadvantaged by tasks that demand creativity and tedium, and you're accusing me of trying to blame "some group of people"?

    Are you nuts?
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  12:33 PM
  43. My point is that the idea of "blame" rests on the idea of free choices. If some group has a higher/lower average ability at X, there is no blame here because free choices are not involved. It would make no more sense to blame a group of people for their average ability than it would to blame ethanol for alcoholism.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:38 PM
  44. Or maybe a better way of putting it: it would make no more sense to attribute evil to a group of people for their average ability than it would to attribute evil to ethanol because of alcoholism.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  12:41 PM
  45. I am shocked and disgusted at what you said about Pinker's comment-- do you or do you not believe in The Scientific Method?
    #: Posted by jinnderella  on  01/22  at  01:00 PM
  46. If some group has a higher/lower average ability at X, there is no blame here because free choices are not involved.

    Choice is a pretty hard concept to nail, considering that when you get to the hard sciences it doesn't exist at all. As long as you restrict yourself to psychology, sociology, and ethics you're fine, but once you get down to biology you find that choice is an illusion.

    Still, both you and PZ are operating under the assumption that what you said is true. Till you provide evidence for that - real evidence, not "my experience tells me" - this is hot air.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  01:11 PM
  47. I use the scientific method all the time. You are aware that many people have a very low opinion of Pinker's speculations, right?
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  01:14 PM
  48. Who's this Pinker anyway?
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  01:16 PM
  49. PZ: "By the way, I’m a male, and I’m not in jail, nor am I using drugs. Was I just lucky enough to get the good boy genes, or is it more likely that who I am was shaped by my upbringing? "

    Are you saying that boys suffer worse upbringing than girls, leading to greater criminality and drug use?

    Then again, most people don't understand the first thing about multifactorial phenomena. How often have we heard: "Well, I'm 85, don't have lung cancer, and I've smoked all my life!"

    ---
    Pinker has detractors and fans among his peers, as do most researchers.

    ---

    Alon, Ron: A major point is missed attributing all innate sex differences to a certain cognitive ability. There are myriad sex related differences that lead to highly variable career success, not least among them the demands of child-bearing and -rearing. Summers spoke to this but it's being conveniently ignored.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  01:34 PM
  50. Who’s this Pinker anyway?

    Pinker is a recent refugee from MIT with a strange fascination with the conversion of irregular to regular verb forms in maturing languages.

    My position is that I distrust all scalar characterizations of complicated phenomena.

    I have no idea what the hell you are saying—this looks like more fluff and/or mendacity to me. If there are two similarly shaped distributions, and one distribution is farther to the right that the other, there will tend to be significantly more people from the distribution with the higher mean at the high end of ability.


    However, what pertains to the narrow statistical argument is that if there are two Gaussian distributions with exactly the same mean, given any number z greater than that joint mean, the distribution having the larger variance will have more area above z than will the one with the smaller variance.

    Putting aside the gross oversimplification in any measure like IQ for the moment, the other statistical problem is that Gaussians, Cauchy, Pareto, and Binomial distributions are theoretical, they don't fit perfectly to actual data, and these discrepancies are most in evidence on their distributional tails. Thus, extreme values are often modelled by themselves, and their character can be quite revealing about the system being studied. In other words, in actual data, extreme values are often distributed differently than the rest of the population.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  02:07 PM
  51. A major point is missed attributing all innate sex differences to a certain cognitive ability. There are myriad sex related differences that lead to highly variable career success, not least among them the demands of child-bearing and -rearing. Summers spoke to this but it’s being conveniently ignored.

    Child rearing is entirely social/cultural. Child bearing can hardly contribute to the discrepancy, when it can at most delay a woman's career by about eighteen months - in the first world getting pregnant or more is rare, especially among educated women. In fact the delay is much less than that because women can and do work part-time during pregnancy. The article I linked to in reply 18 mentions 50% as the figure, so every pregnancy delays a female A/P's tenure by four and a half months. Everything beyond that is socially constructed.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  02:27 PM
  52. Uh, I mean, "in the first world, getting pregnant thrice or more is rare."
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  02:29 PM
  53. "suppose the slave children (boys) would be brought up with the idea that, if they are very clever, the bosses (girls) will not like them—would there be then many boys who do mathematics?”

    Pretty much exactly what Mill said on the same subject.
    #: Posted by Ophelia Benson  on  01/22  at  03:32 PM
  54. Hello all; new here. Thanks for the blog and forum, Mr. Meyers. I will now show my gratitude by attacking the host.

    PZ:
    You are arguing that men are naturally uncreative and undisciplined, and you’re trying to tell me that I’m putting all the blame on “evil”?


    Aversion to tedious, redundant "makework" = uncreative and undisciplined?

    PZ:
    You are aware that many people have a very low opinion of Pinker’s speculations, right?


    Argument from popularity? Just what is so bad about this Pinker guy, anyway? I've read an article of his in The Skeptical Inquirer and I don't remember the taste of snake oil lingering on my palate, but he may have slipped it in. I don't think he was asking me to consider Amway, Atkins, ID or the Promise Keepers. A source, link, or argument against his theses is appreciated.

    A graph at http://www.cpst.org/STEM/STEM2_Press.doc has the percentage of women's professions increasing slightly for all STEM (Science, Technical, Engineering, Mathematical) professions except in Computer Sci and Mathematicians. Largest Gains are in the Biological Sciences. Women outnumber men in the Social Sciences and Urban Planning professions.

    So the argument is, is a social force or genetic predisposition selecting against women in the Comp Sci and Mathematical fields? Perhaps because of the high demand for these professionals in the last two decades more men have flocked to those professions, and in their aggressive, selfish way have elbowed out the ladies. But those professions require not only a lot of abstract thought but also a lot of time sitting alone in an office or cube. Maybe women have a harder time at that mode of work. Please don't find chauvinism in that last statement where it isn't. If that mode of work is the mode our society celebrates most the Cylons have already won. Men make better ditch-diggers, too.

    The argument that women are kept out of high-hour professions by family and career, etc. would be weakened somewhat by the prevalence of women in the soc sci fields as well as nursing (oh - stereotype slip... must redact!), er, medical professions. I asked my wife, also a mother, and she said that it is hard for a woman to go back to a career, because even with daycare a child demands so much time, and that a woman's thinking can never separate itself completely from her child, at least while the child is growing up. She doesn't think men have this same problem. They can disconnect and go hunt, er, work sixty hours a week at a job, and the social system supports them at that.

    And I'll pour myself a little more scalding bathwater here by stating that the hyperfeminism philosophy that states that women can work a successful career and be a good mother is dangerous, especially if the father is not willing to stay at home to compensate for the time the mother is away. It's akin to saying that anyone can be a master cellist and a master chemist. A few people can (polymaths), but not everyone can: both vocations take up many hours in a day. Most people do not have the time or ability to pursue both. A mother by psychology and physiology must spend time with the child during its earliest stages. I don't apologize for the following equation: daycare+career is not equal to spending time with the child yourself. It doesn't mean they're bad people, but it's not doing one's best at being a parent. And I'm perfectly willing to lay some of this blame on society: parenthood is not celebrated enough. It doesn't sell on Wall Street, either. It's damaging in some respects to equate salary levels with the total good one brings to society. I'm not letting the father off the hook here either: At some point his career will probably need to be toned down or made flexible. There is an equilibrium point to this, a non-zero-sum solution. I cite the example of a lawyer featured in the film Affluenza who was demanded by his wife to work no more than 40 hours a week. While this may sound (to a lawyer) like the death of a career, said man was able to keep pace with or outperform everyone else in the firm. He kept a good home life as a result. And definitely some blame is due to academia: my sister in law is a Chemistry PhD and she told me that she was somewhat grumbled against during her post grad years because she always left in the early evening (most postgrads are studying until the witching hours, I understand) to go home to her children and family. She did not pursue a university academic career in part for reasons similar.

    In response to an earlier post, does reducing the amount of time expected of post grads/post docs/academics in order for them to pursue family time necessarily result in mediocrity for the institution?

    Cheers All, John
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  04:27 PM
  55. It's odd how so many ouststanding male mathematicians and physicists in the 20th century managed to make enourmous contributions to science despite being persecuted by the Nazis, or the Communists, or sometimes both, but the girls at Harvard can't succeed because they are victims of Larry Summers comments at a private conference.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  05:24 PM
  56. Child rearing is entirely social/cultural.

    No, it isn't, period. How come amongst animals (particularly mammals) it is generally the females who are primarily if not exclusively involved in caring for their offspring? Do you really think that this evolutionary history has had no effect on humans at all?
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  05:33 PM
  57. Maybe women have a harder time at that mode of work.

    The original computer programmers were deliberately chosen to be women, for reasons we would consider to be quite chauvinistic today. We are looking at a tail of a distribution again, but there are some major players in computing who are women.

    In physics and aeronautics, the names Millie Dresselhaus and Sheila Widnall command some significant respect. Professor Dresselhaus may win the Nobel some year soon.

    Finally, MIT did a significant study of this entire business, which you are welcomed to read, and determined, in part:
    A study completed several years ago in the School of Science found that tenured women faculty often experienced marginalization, and with it, inequities in terms of resources for research and compensation. Inequities can be difficult to detect in the absence of a systematic study. To ensure the equitable treatment of women faculty, Provost Bob Brown asked that studies similar to that in the School of Science be performed in the other Schools of MIT. Committees on the Status of Women Faculty, appointed by the Deans, analyzed data and conducted interviews, and prepared reports on their findings. Edited versions of these Reports follow this overview. Strikingly, the studies reveal that the issues that can negatively impact the professional lives of women faculty are similar in different Schools and similar to those identified in Science. They include marginalization, which can sometimes be accompanied by inequities; the small number of women faculty in many departments; and the greater difficulty of balancing family and work for women faculty. Despite generic similarities, specific manifestations of these problems differ among Schools, and even in different departments within a School. Identification of the specific concerns of women faculty has led to prompt corrective actions. It has also led to new policies to facilitate institutional change to prevent such problems from arising in the future. The collaboration of tenured women faculty with the higher administration has substantially improved the professional lives of many women faculty. If sustained, this interaction should ultimately impact the continued under-representation of women, particularly in many fields of science and engineering. Similar efforts may also help to address the almost complete absence of women of color from the MIT faculty.

    Not surprisingly, the Committees found that most female and male faculty fully appreciate the many advantages of a faculty position at MIT, with its access to exceptional students, colleagues, and resources for research. Nonetheless, across many departments and probably in all Schools, the experiences of male and female faculty differ, with women more frequently reporting negative experiences. The most striking finding from the four new reports is that many of the issues that differentially affect the professional lives of women faculty are shared in all five Schools of MIT. This might not have been readily apparent in the absence of these detailed studies.

    Generic issues that differentially impact the professional lives of female vs male faculty are: marginalization; isolation resulting from small numbers of women faculty; residual effects of past inequities, particularly around salary and access to resources; and greater family responsibilities. Marginalization accumulates from a series of repeated instances of disadvantage which compound over an academic career.

    1. Specific manifestations of marginalization and the inequities that can arise from it:

    * ... marginalization in different Schools [of study]

    * The under-valuing of women and of certain fields of research

    * Women faculty can often earn less than male colleagues

    2. Small numbers of women faculty and the prospects for increasing the numbers

    * Women of color are the most under-represented faculty

    3. Family-work issues for women faculty, and increasingly for male faculty

    MIT then went on to establish a program to address these issues, also covered in the report cited.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  05:35 PM
  58. ... the girls at Harvard can’t succeed because they are victims of Larry Summers comments at a private conference.

    NN, the "girls at Harvard" are in my view quite capable of succeeding, thank you very much, as are they at other major schools and programs. I think that in addition to all the fine things written here and before about why Dr Summers comment even if he thinks what he said is so out of place, it's entirely possible that finally women in academia have gotten enough political power to safeguard their place and role. Dr Summers is simply and properly feeling the heat.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  05:45 PM
  59. Jan, the representation of women in different fields has been followed for some time by, among others, the NSF. Is there a breakdown in findings of marginalization at MIT that follows this trend?

    Also, there is no distribution that would predict there to be no outstanding women mathematicians or engineers.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  06:09 PM
  60. eudoxis, read the report. I believe the Web site has other links. I don't need to do your work for you.

    I'm not sure what was meant by your Also, there is no distribution that would predict there to be no outstanding women mathematicians or engineers, but the discussion here keeps hitting at the absence of "outstanding" scientists and engineers, their scarcity at the "tails", and so on, per the original Summers comment. My point is that there's plenty of representation of women on "outstanding" tails, although they may be unrepresented (even) there.

    If a comparison of representation of women on the tails of these distributions needs to be made, it can't be made using the normal (or Gaussian) model of the main distribution. I don't think an extreme value analysis of this kind has ever been done.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  06:17 PM
  61. Fair enough. The report is a loose overview of findings. It does not give information that indicates that departments with smaller representations of women, had greater incidence of "marginalization". So, there doesn't seem to be support for the issue at hand.

    "the discussion here keeps hitting at the absence of “outstanding” scientists and engineers"

    The complaint is the relative scarcity, not absence, of women in math, physics, and engineering.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  07:05 PM
  62. Fair enough. The report is a loose overview of findings. It does not give information that indicates that departments with smaller representations of women, had greater incidence of "marginalization".

    So, eudoxis, are you saying, then, that MIT is supposed to prove for you their administrative actions are justified? Are you saying, then, you believe their conclusions are wrong? If so, what evidence have you? Do you think the people at MIT are making this all up?

    The complaint is the relative scarcity, not absence, of women in math, physics, and engineering.

    Are you saying that is your complaint, Larry Summers' complaint, or evidence for some fundamental cognitive weakness in women?

    My take is that noone's studied the distribution on the tails there so there's little concrete to conclude scarsity or not.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  07:25 PM
  63. Sorry, "scarcity".
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  07:25 PM
  64. Just a general comment: sex differences have nothing to do with "weakness" or "reduced capacity".
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  07:38 PM
  65. eudoxis, I'm not making an argument for differences or weakness or anything. I'm not interested in there being differences in cognitive functions or capacity between genders since, in my personal experience, if they exist they are small, dwarfed by differences between individuals, and hugely affectable by personal experience, study, and training.

    What I do and must get agitated about is trying to base discrimination in practice based upon some specious claim of difference (or weakness or reduced capacity), particularly when the statistical arguments are flawed.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  07:53 PM
  66. In fact, the distributions between sexes of certain cognitive measures are very similar. But there is resolution at the high tail end in the numerous studies of the highly gifted. (see, for example, the work of Camilla Benbow).

    The "statistics" are not flawed. They are weak. But so are statistics about discrimination (or marginalization) or various forms of bias. PZ is right that these issues are very complex. Yet, whole swaths of social policy in gender parity are based on an a priori acceptance of absolute innate equality.

    I disagree that acknowledging innate differences (such as they may be) as one contributing factor in highly specific life trajectories has anything to do with discrimination. But I suspect that it could be construed as such--anything can be wrongly construed.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  08:40 PM
  67. People weren’t irate because Summers presented a tentative hypothesis, but because Summers...presented a badly formed hypothesis with no evidence to support it, that contradicted what we know about the complexity of biology, and he misrepresented it as the result of current, “cutting-edge research.”
    ---
    Very nice. And I'd add, people were irate because of the INTERACTION of his comments with his dismal record of hiring women (4 of 32 tenured positions at Harvard last year went to women). Then there's the fact that the dismal science has an even more dismal record than other mathematically macho sciences in terms of hiring and retention of women.
    #: Posted by south(west)paw  on  01/22  at  09:25 PM
  68. PZ Meyers:
    This is what Pinker said--I know you read it because you quoted it.
    Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is “offensive” even to consider it?
    WTF does his work have to do with that statement? It is true whether you said it or I said it, isn't it?
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  09:33 PM
  69. Can anyone point me to where I can find more about the problems with Steven Pinker?
    #: Posted by Aaron Swartz  on  01/22  at  09:36 PM
  70. Yet, whole swaths of social policy in gender parity are based on an a priori acceptance of absolute innate equality.

    Are they based upon innate equality or simply upon being as equitable as possible, and giving everyone every opportunity?
    But so are statistics about discrimination (or marginalization) or various forms of bias.

    My concern is that I've not seen good statistical analyses of these matters. Perhaps I'm just not familiar enough with the subject matter and perhaps I don't care enough about it to dig in properly. By "good statistical analysis" I mean one which makes no distributional assumptions, deals with small sample sizes, and properly treats things like Simpson's Paradox all at once. Good statistical analyses are, for example, the methods urged by Ronald Christensen in the 1990 edition of his LOG-LINEAR MODELS, Exercise 2.6.1, pages 53-54, and Exercise 3.6.4, page 96. These concern an analysis of a probably hypothetical set of data for graduate admissions and rejections subtabulated by gender and assessing the null of no bias or, in other words, of "explainable by random variation". At that level of precision, it's really difficult to make general policy-coupled statements.

    So I think leveling the playing field is the best thing to strive for here, as well as being creative about measures of fairness. I mean, why is it so unreasonable to expect the distribution of female faculty in the sciences to match that of the students in the same subjects at the beginning of sophmore year, using chi-square tests if you like? Surely a university isn't going to lower its academic standard for students just because they are women, is it? Why shouldn't its faculty match?
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  10:50 PM
  71. I should have added that I am ordering copies of Camilla Benbow's papers but it will of course be a while before I digest them. I'm doing so less out of interest in this discussion and debate and more as a parent of two mathematically gifted kids.

    Thanks for the reference, eudoxis!
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  10:56 PM
  72. Aaron: The problem with Pinker is that he is a tenured professor at Harvard, lured over at great expense from MIT, as well as being a popular author. This incites hatred and envy in lesser academics who are unable to get tenure even at obscure midwestern vocational-technical schools.
    #: Posted by  on  01/22  at  11:04 PM
  73. Heh. Yeah, that's why we incompetent peons also hate Lewontin and hated Gould: popular authors tenured at Harvard. All that drives us is envy.

    I'm very upset that you've managed to see right through us so easily.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/22  at  11:45 PM
  74. Anyone know if the Camilla Benbow 20 year longitudinal study of SAT-M was corrected for the significant changes made to SAT-M during that time? Also, anyone know of another Benbow study limited to SAT-M scores in excess of 790?

    I've looked and can't find using the usual search things, like Blackwell-Synergy and the APA site and AAAS Highwire Journals.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/22  at  11:57 PM
  75. Steven Pinker is a gifted writer and an excellent popular expositor of science. The problem is that he pushes a very particular view of psychology, and caricaturizes the positions of those who disagree with him.

    Norman Normal: Emmy Noether was a German mathematican who could not get a professorship because she was a woman (for a decade she gave lectures under David Hilbert's name), and once she actually got the professorship was forced to flee Germany once Hitler came to power. Yet she still managed to be one of the most influential mathematicians of the century.

    Anyway, I don't see male mathematicians and physicists giving up their tenured jobs just to be more like their heroic forebears.
    #: Posted by  on  01/23  at  12:14 AM
  76. But there is resolution at the high tail end in the numerous studies of the highly gifted.

    eudoxis, can you provide a more specific reference to this? I've had a quick look at Benbow's MPY and apart from tracking gross distributional categories, there's little address of the high end of that scale. Or did you mean that the population or cohorts in Benbow's MPY taking the SAT-M were already "highly gifted"?

    Seems to me there's little resolution of people who for instance score above 700 SAT-M. What I think would be interesting is a comparison of the abilities of all genders who make it into that statistical bucket, with the argument that any innate gender difference per SAT-M findings in MPY ought to still be expressed in the set of folks scoring 700-800. After all, that's a "more stressful" niche demanding higher performance. If there proves to be no statistical difference there by gender, it's hard to imagine gender has anything at all to do with mathematical ability.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/23  at  12:17 AM
  77. Benbow [Journal of Educational Psychology, 1992. Vol. 84, No. 1, 51-61] claims:
    Yet it was distressing to note that gender
    differences in mathematics/science achievement exist even
    among students in the top quarter of the top 1% in SAT-M
    ability; at the graduate school level, the gender differences were even larger in the top quarter than in the bottom quarter of the top 1%

    I don't know where she gets that based upon the evidence presented in her paper. I may be missing another publication where the evidence was presented. I'm also a little uncomfortable with the apples and oranges comparison here: Her conclusions about graduate school are based upon a completely different measure than SAT-M, and the calibration between the two has not been specified. The result makes a good story.

    I continue to dig.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/23  at  12:32 AM
  78. I don’t know where she gets that based upon the evidence presented in her paper.

    That could have been said better. Where she gets it is simply by counting the relative numbers of men and women who get into the top quarter of the top 1% of SAT-M. That's it.

    There's an awful lot of weight being put on SAT-M there in increasingly high performance categories. What's the variance of a single SAT-M score? It would be nice to have an independently confirming measure.
    #: Posted by Jan Theodore Galkowski  on  01/23  at  12:38 AM
  79. No, it isn’t, period. How come amongst animals (particularly mammals) it is generally the females who are primarily if not exclusively involved in caring for their offspring? Do you really think that this evolutionary history has had no effect on humans at all?

    These are social roles determined by evolutionary factors that are no longer applicable. The human body and mind are perfectly adapted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In a complex society, giving birth no longer has to make you the caretaker of the family.
    #: Posted by  on  01/23  at  02:50 AM
  80. social roles determined by evolutionary factors that are no longer applicable How old is current "complex" society? Venerable antediluvians like me tend to resist abrupt changes, such as your radical discarding of 4 - 5 million years of human evolution. Lets wait a little more...
    #: Posted by  on  01/23  at  06:19 AM
  81. PZ:

    I’m new as well. Could I just go back a little? Much of this discussion, though valuable in itself, is irrelevant to the Summers case. He was talking, not about the whole range of differences between genders but about the paucity of women in top jobs at Harvard – jobs that he and his audience no doubt regard as selecting out the best and brightest, those who ought therefore to be at the top of the score range in texts of mathematical ability. Summers cited research that might be relevant to that issue.

    Might be. Bear with me if I briefly recap.(It’s partly that I want to demonstrate that I’m paying attention.) Tests of mathematical ability may not capture all the cognitive requirements for the higher achievements in maths. (BTW it would be helpful to know which tests and their reliability and validity, in particular their predictive ability.) Jan Galtowski’s statistical points are outside my competence, but they look checkable and worth checking. Then again, supposing there were innate differences, they don’t look anywhere like large enough when set against the acknowledged environmental barriers. (It was good to have the MIT study’s conclusions to reaffirm those.) And so on.

    Now to business. PZ’s starting piece has this.

    People weren’t irate because Summers presented a tentative hypothesis, but because Summers, an administrator with much clout in hiring and firing, presented a badly formed hypothesis with no evidence to support it, that contradicted what we know about the complexity of biology, and he misrepresented it as the result of current, “cutting-edge research.


    Has PZ a transcript? The available accounts of the meeting don’t indicate to me we have any such precise knowledge. By omission, PZ distorts the context. Summers cited research avowedly to be provocative; he did that together with advancing several other possible reasons for the phenomenon. If it is the role of a chair to stir, he stirred.

    What has outraged me (and others) is not what Summers did or didn’t do. It is the response of one Professor in particular, others who spoke out later, and the committee at Harvard that got together to denounce their president. If in a private meeting – it was the breathless Professor who alerted the Press – a research finding cannot be put up for discussion, where the hell are we? And those who think Summers must take responsibility for saying something the Press can distort need to think about the costs of such a strict consequentialism. Can anything at all be said anywhere that New York Post journalists can’t morph into garbage?

    These were not powerless women. They were senior Professors amongst whom surely there was sufficient expertise to respond to Summers as some have done here. That would have been, in my view (as in Pinker’s) the right thing to do in as university gathering. That it has come to this suggests yet again that SOME feminists are now in the grip of a dogmatic belief system of a markedly theological character. Their mo