I can’t remember any such people myself. I don’t remember anyone suggesting, for example, that Steven Pinker ought to lose his job or funding at Harvard for raising such questions.

However, I can’t give any specific examples, but at the time there were a number of people who argued — and I was and am still one of them — that given the obvious institutional and social biases against women in science, the President of Harvard University should not be “even asking the question” whether biological differences between men and women were the primary cause of the low percentage of female scientists at Harvard University.

I’m all for freedom of speech and free scientific inquiry. I just happen to think that the “President of Harvard University” is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week job, the holder of which needs to show some restraint in the sort of scientific questions he or she muses about in public forums set up to address issues at the university.

I am not in the Summers fanclub but at the time of the controversy I didnt pay it all much attention. I was under the impression that he said studies were required to determine if gender and intelligence had an intrinsic relationship. But you are implying otherwise.

The reason why most of us were upset by Larry Summers is that he was wrong, in a spectacular and potentially damaging kind of way

What exactly did he say?

here’s an address for the precise transcript:

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

There’s controversial, provocative, and most likely wrong things said, but I am of the opinion that it isn’t quite as inflammatory as the initial response might have suggested.

He said that “availability of aptitude at the high end” was more important than discrimination in determining the representation of women, in contradition to many efforts to actually look at the data.

I just don’t get it. Here’s a scientific report with studies and data to support its conclusions. So, reading these comments (and remembering others from previous posts on this topic), just why is it so difficult for you males to comprehend that us women might just be intellectually equal to you all? Why are you so threatened by this concept?

JoAnne, to take an honest stab at this, I suspect that the biggest factor isn’t really that men want to feel intellectually superior to women (although there’s certainly some of that). It’s more that people generally, even if they are happy to fight against discrimination and injustice elsewhere, are extremely reluctant to admit that they themselves (or whatever group they belong to) might be behaving unfairly. Same reason why some Japanese want to believe that they were forced to invade Manchuria, or some Turks don’t think anything bad ever happened to the Armenians, or some Southerners think that blacks were treated really well in the Confederacy.

You see some people getting annoyed when others bring up discrimination, because they are really nice guys who would never treat people differently on the basis of their sex or anything else. (I’ve done it myself, it’s a natural reflex.) Some of these guys would then turn around and say something blatantly misogynist, but not all of them. So it’s easier to think that the present temporary (and obviously changing) condition is part of an eternal natural order, especially if it gives them an opportunity to be deliciously politically incorrect. It’s much easier to deplore the sad state of the world when it’s all somewhere else.

I’m sure you’re right. I guess I was thinking particularly of those people who we really would like to think should know better.

It’s not just that he was *wrong* (according to you), but that he was wrong in a “potentially damagaing kind of way,” as you said. If he had been wrong in some harmless way, nobody would be so upset. That is where the violation of free-inquiry comes in. Some conclusions cause one to lose one’s job; other conclusions don’t. Is one’s inqury really “free”? This problem exists at some scale in all fields, and is, for example, the reason for the tenure system. The women in science thing is just is a spectacularly extreme example of the usual situation, and so defenders of free-inquiry call upon people to restain themselves back to normal. You may claim that the different evaluative standards for different claims are fully justified given the danger of one kind of claim (those defends would disagree), but you can’t claim that conclusions are only judged only on their truth or falsity. Again you wouldn’t be upset if he had been wrong harmlessly. Freedom of inquiry is certainly significantly violated; you just think that’s the right thing to do in this case. And that’s an okay opinion to have.

@Sean in #7
All right… so, thats what this is about. I agree with you guys then. That is indeed wrong and damaging. That kind of an attitude is actually dangerous. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

I think people may ask questions regarding gender-based cognitive differences, people may ask whatever questions they like, but I don’t think scientific studies in that area should be funded. It is equivalent to studying cognitive differences between black people and white people. I am not afraid of what such studies will find, but I am afraid of how they will be used. The results are always means and distributions of certain quantities derived by studying large groups of people. They are then used to justify continued discrimination against certain groups. Let’s get this straight: no matter what such a study should find, women should be afforded the same opportunities in math and science as men are. It simply does not matter how your average or “out-on-the-tail-of-the-bell-curve” woman performs on certain tests. The point is: some women are good at science, and they ought to have the same right to a career in science as men do. And I honestly believe that discussions about cognitive differences between the genders are distracting and harmful. It is another way for departments and institutions to avoid making necessary changes to the boys’ clubs that are most physics departments.

Another M, I share your concern but if we do not fund research into gender-based cognitive differences, someday somebody with an agenda will and that can only be bad. In fact, we should get these things done and over with and establish once for all policies that mandate that such differences may not influence the opportunity afforded to an individual. We will need a law some day that makes discrimination on these basis illegal. The sooner the better.

Oh….a helping hand…that must be why women are paid less in academia!

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7880036
“Explicable differences amounted to 77% of the overall pay gap between the sexes. That still left a substantial 23% gap in pay…”

Sorry to further disrupt the progressives’ back-patting party, but here’s an idea. Were one really interested in uncovering the fact of the matter regarding the contribution of innate (or at least intrinsic) cognitive differences to success in quantitative academe, one might do the following.

1. Get solid data on sex-specific IQ distributions.

2. Assuming normal distributions, and assuming perfectly IQ-determined performance and rewards, calculate the expected penetration of women into various categories of high mathematical achievement/recognition.

3. Compare the predictions to the data.

4. Dismount the PC hobbyhorse.

Well, maybe you need to do 4 first. Fortunately, one brave soul has already supplied the requisite intellectual apptitude and effort for this task. See:

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm

A sneak preview. Predicted number of female mathematicians in the National Academy of Sciences: 7.1. Actual number: 7.

It doesn’t, nor was it intended to. What it accounts for is the recognition that the current huge male/female disparity in a couple highly relevant categories is exactly what one would expect from the known IQ differences, sans sexism.

I don’t know if IQ diffs are stable on the relevant time scale. I do know they are not stable over ~50yrs. I don’t know about IQ time-dependence in different countries. I do know that none of that is relevant to my point, and I do know that waiting won’t help you. You’ve got to dismount. Nice chatting with you though.

Brett, I can understand why people might not want to raise the issue of gender-based cognitive differences in elementary-school classrooms (although I’m not necessarily sympathetic). There are lots of things that we don’t bring up in elementary school. I was actually wondering whether anyone was against academics doing research into the question. I’m sure that some people are, but I’d like to see some specific non-anonymous example, to better understand what their position really is.

“I was actually wondering whether anyone was against academics doing research into the question. I’m sure that some people are, but I’d like to see some specific non-anonymous example, to better understand what their position really is.”

The problem with ‘doing research into the question’ is that research produces results and results don’t always go the way you want.

I think there may be a lot of people who don’t actively oppose doing research but would react strongly against published results that differed from what they personally ‘knew’ to be true.

If you are against research that finds a particular result (assuming that the researchers have followed proper and honest procedures), then actually you are against research, period, and you might as well come out and say it.

Sean, perhaps you should ask professors who are against doing such research to email you. They may not want to expose themselves to the whole world by posting here.

Why? Have I set up a straw man by accusing “professors of Women’s Studies who have publicly stated that they welcome research into gender differences” of some dastardly deed?

Women’s Studies programs are full of people who study gender differences for a living. Start with Carol Gilligan and go from there.

To be fair, it was a straw woman. I googled for a half hour and found many articles angry at feminist critics of science…but none of them cited/identified any of these critics. I’m sure it can’t be an entire army of combat boot-wearing, Ani DiFranco-listening, short-fingernailed straw women that are being cited. Right? Because that would be paranoid.

Back to Google.

Regarding item (3), do you want someone who didn’t take a position on this issue before the Summers incident, and then took that position after it? Or do you just want someone who took that position after it, as well as possibly before? If the second, you could imagine someone reasonably not going through the trouble of stating their position if they had already stated it before. And I would guess Chomsky would be such an example. (Sorry to keep bringing him up.) If the first, you would hardly expect to find (m)any such professors, even if you thought lots of them were against such research.

jb, it has been widely claimed that a chorus of voices spoke out after Summers’ speech to decry the fact that he would even raise the possibility of gender differences in cognition. I would just like to find actual examples of people in that chorus. If it was powerful enough to force the president of Harvard to resign, it can’t be that hard.

Fellow blogger Nigel Cook has written a post on the role of women in physics that is so nice that I can only recommend it.

Sean, how about this quote from Harvard psychology professor Mahzarin Banaji?

“In this day and age to believe that men and women differ in their basic competence for math and science is as insidious as believing that some people are better suited to be slaves and other masters.”

Source: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=505409
(scroll down to the last paragraph).

Now, Banaji does not say specifically that research should not be done, but clearly this is the implication. No research is necessary because the facts are already known. Anyone who thinks these facts may not yet be clearly established is to be demonized.

It took me less than 5 minutes to find this.

“Pretty close”??!! You asked, “was there any respectable academic who really came out against even asking whether there were gender-based cognitive differences?” It seems to me that Banaji’s remark clearly satisfies this criterion. The unmistakable implication is that no one should ask whether there are gender-based cognitive differences, because we already know the answer with such absolute certainty that anyone who does not accept it is not only wrong, but beyond the pale. This goes far beyond a statement to the effect that “the evidence convinces me, and here’s why”, which is what I would expect from an honest scientist.

You seem unaware of the irony of your dismissal of Banaji’s remark. Don’t you think it might help to create a “chilly climate” for such research?

Dan, yeah, I’d say it’s pretty close. And I don’t agree with Banaji’s comment — although, from experience, I know how careful one should be in interpreting interview snippets bereft of context. Obviously, even if she had given detailed reasons for believing that the question had already been answered, it wouldn’t have made it into the interview. I personally don’t think we know everything there is to know about gender and cognition, and I think it’s an empirical question rather than a moral one (as the slave/master business is). But really I was looking more for someone to say we shouldn’t be asking these questions because they are politically out of bounds, not because we already know the answer.

Joanne, I am personally acquainted with a number of female physicists who I am quite certain are my intellectual superiors. I have no problem at all with this. I think it’s good that there are brilliant women, smarter than me, who have chosen to do physics. I wish there were more of them.

I do, however, think that it is *possible* that differences in male and female brain physiology *may* account for *some* of the relatively few women in the upper eschelons of physics and math.

According to Professor Banaji, this is an “insidious” notion comparable to support of human slavery.

Feminists in attendance at Summers’s speech had a great response. Some walked out. Some broke into tears over Summers’s oppressive suggestion. Some asked for his resignation. Could not Summers see, argued even others, that some issues are beyond the pale of discussion? Reasonable minded people see the feminist reaction to Summers’s speech as incredibly immature. But, reasonable minded people would be wrong. Can they not see that part of the oppression of women is the suggestion that women and men could be different?

I believe that if mankind is ever to awake from its patriarchal disease, then each person must come to grips with his oppression of the fairer sex. Man must move quickly to remove any and all potential or perceived traits of sexism he still has. We must create a world where no person will look at his surroundings through a sexist lens. Man must fight to stamp out any and all suggestion of gender differences any place he sees it. Any professor who suggests that boys are more interested in sports than girls must see his tenure revoked. Any thinker who suggests that males prefer action movies and females prefer romantic films should lose his credibility. Any person who suggests that females are more naturally inclined to be nurturers and males more naturally inclined to be warriors must have his sensitivity questioned. Any social scientist who suggests that heterosexuality is normative (even if he grants homosexuals their rights) ought to have pen, typewriter, or computer confiscated. Man cannot rest until he creates a gender inclusive and gender neutral world for all mankind.

It is interesting to review the comments in this discussion months after the report form the National Academy (“Beyond Bias and Barriers”) was released. The theme that runs throughout the Summers episode, the reactions to the report, and the press coverage of both is that people prefer to muse and postulate than to dig into research and study the data. And the press prefers to cover hot controversy and wild speculation more than it cares to cover rationale argument and scholarly dissection of a topic.

First, no one that I heard said that Summers shouldn’t have said what he said because it was politically incorrect, but some did say he should not have spoken as he did because his speculation is blatantly wrong; a responsible leader with the visibility of Harvard’s president shouldn’t be spreading wrong information. If he had mused that someone really should take a look at whether the Earth is flat, he would seem foolish and people might argue that the comment was irresponsible (what if it were taken as seriously by the press as his comments about gender were — can’t you see the headlines: “Harvard President Suggests World if Flat” or “Columbus was wrong? asks Harvard president”). Because few people who covered or read his comments examined the facts, and thanks to the press-worthiness of the comments, the possibility that women are held back in science primarily by their lack of aptitude appeared to have the credibility of a great scholar and many responsible newspapers behind it. In fact, this absolutely cannot be the driving force for the position of women in science because, as Sean pointed out, the numbers of women in science have changed much faster than the genetics of a human population can change. We have 35 times more female engineers today than we did 25 years ago. Is that because women’s average IQ has changed so much in one generation? No, it’s because legal and social factors have reduced certain barriers dramatically. So the objection to Summers’ comment was that despite being baseless and wrong, because it was issued by the president of Harvard, it garnered quite a lot of coverage and therefore had an effect that was disproportionate to itsvalidity.

Second, it was striking that when the NAS report was released, people complained about the very thing that so many of you have begged for: let’s have data on the subject. The report contained a long analysis of the available research on gender differences and concluded that innate ability could not explain the current situation. However, John Tierney’s editorial in the NY Times, for example, included a complaint about having to “slog through” the report, which was too full of data. What does he propose? Should we have written a report based on conjecture and opinion just like Summers’ comment? Sure. That would have had a big influence.

Third, the press. Sigh. Why was the Summers event covered on the front page of the NY Times quite a few times and the NAS report was buried on page 17? And why were op-ed pieces offered only days after the release of the report rejected by the NY Times because it was now “old news.” The Summers furor was promoted by the press for many months.

It’s a sad reality that most people in our society would rather not hear the facts or attempt to understand the arguments — it’s hard and it’s boring. It’s better sport to lap up the inflammatory comments that are based on nothing — it’s easy and it’s exciting.

Sean, I have also searched for people who argued that the question shouldn’t be asked. Every time, I reach a dead end. I believe your hypothesis about the straw man is supported by the data.