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.

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.

How do the following graphs fit in with the “innate differences” hypothesis to explain the paucity of women at the top in science disciplines?

Figure 1 here:
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000103
I guess that’s some pretty fast evolution of women’s abilities in physics…

Women on physics faculty by country, previously re-posted on Sean’s Preposterous Universe blog
http://www.hypatiamaze.org/laura/bassi_p6.html

Regarding Umno’s comment:
” Inded [sic], if you are a women that is reasonably talented, that is if you can land a post-doc in one of the top groups, you are more or less guaranteed a faculty job, while the same is not at all true of the men. If people don’t believe this, they can check out the research records of people who got hired say in particle theory in the last 10 years.”

Check out the 1997 Nature paper by Wenneras and Wold (”Nepotism and Sexism in Peer Review”) which studied the grant reward system. It showed that women had to be 2.5 times more productive than men to be ranked the same “competence” as men. These were funds from Swedish Medical Council for biomedical research. There could be differences in different disciplines and in different countries, but if you, Umno, have actual data or a study backing your claim that any “reasonably talented” woman can land a job, you should post it or cite a specific study. It would certainly run counter to the bias that is documented by actual DATA on this topic.

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.

And speaking of the chilly climate, I’m posting these comments anonymously (which I don’t usually do here, or anywhere else). I’m afraid that what happened to David Deming (for example) could happen to me.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12003

I suppose that none of us participating in comments read the report. But other people did, and in today’s column in NYT one of those people John Tierney writes:

“I never thought the National Academy of Sciences was cynical enough to publish a political tract like the new report on discrimination against female scientists and engineers…” (the full text requires subscription).

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?

By the way, Banaji’s Implicit Association Tests are very clever and quite eye-opening. It’s interesting to probe what attitudes we all have that we won’t admit ourselves.