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From the Washington Post’s article…

Others question his commitment to diversity and point out that the number of tenured professorships offered to women has dropped sharply over the past four years. Of the 32 offers of tenure made by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences last year, four went to women.

…

Some women who attended the meeting said they felt that Summers was implicitly endorsing the notion that there are genetic differences that inhibit girls from excelling in math and science. They cited a story Summers told about giving his daughter two trucks as an effort at gender-neutral parenting. The girl soon began referring to one of the trucks as “daddy truck” and the other as “baby truck.”

The point of the truck anecdote, said Hopkins, a Harvard graduate, seemed to be that girls have a genetic predisposition against math and engineering. “That’s the kind of insidious, destructive, un-thought-through attitude that causes a lot of harm,” she said. “It’s one thing for an ordinary person to shoot his mouth off like that, but quite another for a top educational leader.”

Summers described the truck story yesterday as “a misguided attempt to provide some humor” at an otherwise dry academic conference. He noted that the meeting was meant to be off the record.

Next time, why not link to the actual story… unless you’re just trying to make a political point by omitting context and some important info about the situation?

It’s the old Bell Curve fallacy- confusing intelligence test results with innate capabilities, then generalizing from prejudice based on that. There is a brilliant book by Steven Jay Gould called The Mismeasure of Man that you should read concerning this subject. Long story short, standardized tests are more pseudo-science than the real thing, especially when you want to draw racial or gender related conclusions from it.

You’re trusting education to that dim lens of human performance. You think learning and understanding is something that easily measured? Standardized testing, by its nature is mostly rote learning, mostly about learning isolated information then putting it to work.

The Testing regimes are taking the human element out of teaching, which is a problem because learning is a fundamentally human, fundamentally messy act. Good educations does more than give ephemeral knowledge and barebones frameworks of ideas, it fosters the instincts, the intuition and the methods of those involved. You think testing is saving public schools, when in fact it exacerbates the weakness in public education towards assembly line learning, with uninvolved teachers and disinterested students. The truly standardized test of the effectiveness of our teachers and educators will not be the results on some scantron, but instead what happens in real life to those who have been put through the system.

Truth is, Standardized testing is a limited tool. Used as the basis of public education in general, it is an orderly mask for the decay of the very system it’s supposed to save.

Education has elements of science in what it teaches, but it is an trade and an art in it’s most essential sense. It is about human interaction, and there is something about any such enterprise that defies such easy reduction. You cannot take the human part of the equation out of education. At some point you just got to get the right teachers in there and then get out of their way.

Additionally, from nytimes.com

Not all reactions were negative. Some female academics and the organizer of the two-day conference that Dr. Summers addressed on Friday at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit economic research organization in Cambridge, defended the remarks as a well-intentioned effort to speak candidly about the persistent underrepresentation of women in university departments of mathematics, engineering and physical sciences.

and:

Dr. Hopkins said, “I didn’t disagree, but didn’t like the way he presented that point because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know a lot of women who work that hard.”

Notice that Dr. Hopkins states that she doesn’t disagree with Summers’ assertions that there is a possible genetic difference, but that she doesn’t like him pointing out that she is a part of a minority of women.

Dr. Summers claims that he was merely pointing out the research and prompting attendees to study why the data comes out the way it does.

Stephen -

Absolutely. Standardized tests are horrible measuring sticks, not to mention, who makes them? I imagine that if the question writers are primarily men, they will be writing questions that make sense to them, perhaps thusly gender-biasing results?

I haven’t kept abreast of it, but, in getting my psych. degree back in the late 70’s, early 80’s, there was already a body of evidence supporting differences in the way males and females process information and problem solve overall. The research then did not indicate one way was better than the other, just different.

I am sure with brain imaging technology, a good deal of new data is available on this subject. But the simply fact that there are physical, physiological, and hormonal differences between the sex groups, it is fairly obvious that brain chemistry and function would be measurably different in some ways as well. Those differences will likely favor men in some learning tasks and women in other learning tasks, as large populations.

Such evidence however, cannot be used to predict individual capacity from either sex group since variability within each sex group is going to be very high as well. In other words, there will be women who would make far better mathematicians and engineers than most men, and vice versa, there would be some men who would make better mothers than many women. Such studies, anecdotal experiences, and even empirically observeable trends have no predictability for a given individual who must be assessed on the basis of their individual set of qualities and assets.

I certainly don’t think this is a problem of who has the right brain matter when it comes to working math problems.

Many of us female type people love math and science and do very well at them.

I recall times when I was in school that girls were ‘reminded’ that they couldn’t do as well in certain subjects. That they should take something easier like Home Ec, typing, or art classes.

If a person is told that they can’t do as well because they are of a certain ‘type’ of person it turns into one more mountain to climb and all of us aren’t always up to that. If the person does not have the support at home and is looking to the wisdom and support of the adults in their school …. you get the picture.

Our culture may claim to be equal and fair to all - or at least claim to be striving towards this - but the underlying problems are still there, where they matter, and will be for years to come.

(Maybe it is because women are better at mutlitasking than men - scientifically proven - the math problems aren’t interesting enough due to the fact that only one is worked at a time and one has to sit still to do it.
Just thought I’d throw that in there….)

My point was not to argue whether or not men were better at math.

We have in our blog been talking a lot about science. I just wanted to point out that there are whole sections of science that are effectively off limits for politically correct reasons.

An especially tricky issue is innate abilities or predispositions. The mention of the subject makes many people uncomfortable. It is clearly true that both nature and nurture are at work in human events.

We generally accept the notion that athletes and musicians require some innate talent that then must be developed through hard work and training. Without training, the best natural athlete will not be a champion, but unless an individual has the innate ability the best training will be wasted.

Why do we have so much trouble accepting this reasonable idea – a combination of training and ability - when it comes to the use of the mind? Some people can do more things than others. Remember, we are talking statistical probabilities. You can’t say anything about particular individuals based on statistics. But you can see the effects on a large number of people. What I read of the distribution of women and men on the skills level is that they have similar abilities at the mean, but that the shape of the distribution is different. Women are concentrated closer to the mean. The distribution of men is wider. That means that you have more really dumb men and more really smart ones. Society tends to bear this out. Men are more likely to be dropouts or end up in prisons. They are also more likely to end up very successful.

We should study this so that we can make better choices. However, whenever anyone brings it up, it is dismissed. Discrimination is the only acceptable explanation. Discrimination may exist, although it is hard to understand how having more HS dropouts and people in prison is a sign of privilege.

Ceejayoz

I wasn’t interested in telling the story. I figured it was well known or could be easily found. Only in making the point about science and political correctness. One problem with things on the web is that they include too many links and references. We sometimes can lose the point among all the information.

Jack,
“Without training, the best natural athlete will not be a champion, but unless an individual has the innate ability the best training will be wasted.”

When we compare anyone (male and/or female, the one comparison that is left out is desire. All the talent and training good, bad, or otherwise, doesn’t matter a hill of beans, if there is no desire to excel. Conversely, the desire to excel will sometimes carry you further than talent or training.
Desire or “Heart” is the one intangible that can’t be measured, or tested.

Rocky

I agree that desire or heart is essential. It is necessary, but not sufficient and that doesn’t take away from the fact that heart is little use to someone without training or natural abilities. We all have known the plucky little guy who tries harder than anyone else, but still can’t make the varsity team. I have also met people who are just smarter than I am. I could study twice as much and they still get better grades.

In fact, the belief that desire can overcome all obstacles is a big problem today. People sometimes have self esteem not justified by their objective abilities. It leads to misunderstandings and heartache. I watched American Idol yesterday. All those people think they have musical talent. Most do not. No amount of heart will get them over that.

And Mike Tyson will always beat me in the boxing ring, no matter how much I want to win.

…there are whole sections of science that are effectively off limits for politically correct reasons…

There are also certain belief systems - like racial prejudice - which seem to systematically attract pseudo-scientific justifications. (Remember the “Bell Curve”? people wrote whole books on how the science in it was wrong.) You can’t blame people too much for being disgusted when one more creeps out of the woodwork.

Jack,
Perhaps you missed my point, or perhaps I misstated my point.

If a person has the talent, but little desire to succeed, the result would be the same as having little or no talent.
I belive that a person with a bit of talent, and a greater desire, would have greater success.

You can’t give someone self esteem. Trying to do so only sets up the poor fool for greater failure down the road.
Self esteem is earned just like respect, by succeeding.

I think we agree. I like to make a distinction between self-esteem and self-respect.

A lot of people have high self-esteem and maybe shouldn?t, but they don?t have much self-respect. Self esteem means you think you are valuable. Self respect means you think you are good.

A recent Scientific">http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000CB565-F330-11BE-AD0683414B7F0000”>Scientific American article shows the pitfalls of high self-esteem not based in reality. Apropos our subject, high self-esteem is negatively correlated with skill in math.

William

Men and women are different in many ways. This doesn?t mean that you can infer anything about a particular woman or man, but we should not be surprised if large groups of men have different outcomes than large groups of women. Pretending it is not true or getting disgusted by the mere insinuation doesn?t change reality and it is as unscientific as opposing evolution because you don?t want to believe it.

Re the Bell Curve, books came out proving it was wrong before it was even published. I read the book. Most of it is not about race at all. It is simply about statistics of large populations. The science isn?t wrong, although you can attack some of the extrapolations. That is how it is with most policy/science books. It shows that identifying a problem is often easier than proposing a solution.

Jack

Did I understand you right?

I have also met people who are just smarter than I am. I could study twice as much and they still get better grades (emphasis added).

This cartoon version of intelligence belies a lot of discussion on this blog. If I can make a series of statements that would “get a good grade,” then I must be right.

From your other utterances, I think you have clearly demonstrated that you are very intelligent and not of this school in practice, so this statement coming from you baffles me. Tell me you just misspoke.

You are right about grades being only one measure, but I have met people who I judge by a variety of standards to be plain smarter than I am across a wide range of cognitive abilities. And everyday I meet people who are better at learning math or languages or any number of measurable subjects. I have come to understand both my weaknesses and strengths. There are many things I should just stay away from. Of course, I emphasize what I can do and not what I cannot do, as successful people must. But I have thumped up against the solid limits of my cognitive abilities on several occasions. Math is a good example. It proves both our points. I have studied and managed to pass fairly advanced math with decent grades. I never understood what I was doing and still do not, but I have met many people for whom all these equations make perfect sense. Suffice it to say that if these guys and I were engineers you would not want to cross the bridge that I designed.

We know for a fact that men are physically stronger than women. That they can run faster and jump higher than women. They are taller than women. If we can accept the fact that men and women are different physically, why can we not accept that men and women’s brains might also work differently? My (very liberal) sister-in-law gave her first-born (a 2 1/2-year-old boy) a baby doll in anticipation of the birth of his sister. The boy, who does not watch television and who had not had much exposure to “traditional roles,” started to drop-kick the doll around the room. His sister, now 4, loves dolls, dresses, hair ribbons and jewelry. All this is despite her mother’s efforts to steer her towards the race cars and trucks her brother plays with. Oh, by the way, said sister-in-law ended up quiting her job as an attorney so she could stay home to raise her children.

We are different. And I, for one, have no problems with this.

Anne,
I am happy that you and your (very liberal) sister-in-law have accepted what you see as you roles in life. I’m sure you both will be very happy.
Now think for a minute, is it possible that some women might more? Is it possible that some women might have the desire to strive for things that you and your (very liberal) sister-in-law can’t possibly relate to?
It would appear that both you and your (very liberal) sister-in-law, have chosen for yourselves a life which you feel fufilled.
Fine.
Please allow other women to seek they’re own choices of fufillment, and hopefully, when the time comes, your (very liberal) sister-in-law will allow her daughter to make those choices for herself as well.

There are difference between the bodies of men and women, and corresponding neurological differences as well. With human beings, though, biology is not destiny. It is merely the starting point.

Some people are trying to push that biological starting point as the first cause of whatever test results are out there. But they neglect other influences on the way people think, like culture, educational background, and family experiences. In science, one must always be careful to rule out or account for other causes before making claims about the causative strength of one particular influence.

Take Alcoholism. A gene may predispose somebody to such an addiction, but personal discipline or a culture that rejects drinking can prevent it.

Also, when we speak about the differences between female and male thought, we speak of something that may manifest itself more in approach and angle than capability and capacity. As for child rearing, the truth is simply one of practicality. Somebody has to take care of the child. Many would prefer to do it themselves, and the cultural bias is greater in the direction of females taking the childrearing role than it is towards the males.

Personally, I’ve seen my own mother do well at both. With her as the model, I’d say women should be free to make the choice for themselves, rather than have society or tradition dictate it.

You missed my point Rocky. Nowhere did I say that biology is always destiny. Nor did I say that women do not have choices. I did, however, say that bioogy is SOMETIMES destiny.

Men cannot have babies. Their biology will not alow them to do this. Therefore, they are destined never to be mothers. The very fact that women CAN have babies means that they do look at the world differently. Their physiology DOES affect their psychology.

The more we learn about the brain and how it works, the more we learn about the differences between men and women. And the more we learn that these differences are innate.

The people who complain the most about the possibility of women not being as good in math and science than men seem to have no problems with stating that women are more verbal than men. Girls walk earlier than boys. They talk earlier than boys. They mature earlier than boys. Boys have more learning disabilities than girls. Dyslexia is more common among boys than girls. So is autism. Liberals not only accept these facts, they revel in them because they celebrate ANYTHING that females do better than males. But they cannot bring themselves to admit that there are some things in which males are better than females.

My point was merely to point out that there ARE things that males do better than females, regardless of whether or not it’s politically correct to discuss it.

Anne,
Just as an asside. Women cannot hit a golf ball as far as a male, that’s a given. However, a golf pro will often tell a male student to study a female’s swing because, what men can get away with on strength alone, a woman must use finese. As a result a trained woman’s swing is virtuely perfect.
Now before you argue that I made your point, read what I wrote earlier in this thread.
It is not always about physiology. What I am talking about is not just intellegence.
Since the womens movement, new roles have opened up to those women with the drive and desire to accept them.
Look, you want to be a mom. I don’t have a problem with that as long as you don’t try to pigeon hole other females into beliving that is all they can be.
Women have been in the Sciences for quite a while. Women are just as capable as men in business. Women have made great doctors. Women have made great leaders.
Nothing motivates my wife of 24 years, more than someone telling her she can’t do something.
Just because women CAN have babies, doesn’t mean that they HAVE TO have babies.
Women have been forced into these roles for millenia, telling a woman that she might have to accept less because she is a woman is a concept that is totally unacceptable to me.

This thread has drifted from the original point, i.e. both left and right ignore science when it doesn’t fit their preconceptions. But let me address the new direction.

The problem always comes when we mix large numbers and individuals. Nobody in this thread has said that individuals should not get to choose or that biology determines (beyond some obvious size and strength issues) what a particular individual should do.

In populations, however, group differences may be easier to see. In comparing a population of a million women and a million men, you would certainly find that the best mathematicians were male and that a majority of those choosing to care for children full time are female. This would be the product of thousands of personal choices, informed perhaps by biology but not determined by it.

The problem has been that when we see these variations, over and over again across time and cultures, some people refuse to accept them and contend that any differences in outcomes must be the result of discrimination. While some discrimination is no doubt present, it does not cause most of the variation today. What disturbs liberals is that there is no reason to address the problem politically, since there actually is not a problem, only a misreading of the science.

As a society, our only duty is to address the rights and choices of individuals. If individual rights are protected, group rights follow to the extent they are legitimate. But the group has no rights of its own and group rights should never be asserted or protected in a just society. When we forget that simple principle or choose the expedient of judging by the group, we get in trouble. And such things are judged harshly by subsequent generations.

“The problem has been that when we see these variations, over and over again across time and cultures, some people refuse to accept them and contend that any differences in outcomes must be the result of discrimination.”

Jack,
While I can’t see this as an act of discrimination, I can see this as a psyhcological problem.
Over the milllinia women’s roles have been defined, not just by biology, but also by culture as a result of that biology. It has only been in the last century that these roles have been redefined.
Likewise black’s roles in “civilized” society have changed over the last century.

Jack, if you have never smelled a rose, how can you miss the smell?

Rocky

We have a cause and effect problem and some deeper issues of happiness and what causes it.

I don’t know what causes women and men to make different choices. I suspect it is a combination of nature and nurture, as most human behavior. The question is what should we do about it. If women and men are making the choices that seem to make sense for them, why should the government try to impose something different based on aggregate numbers? We have a duty to fight discrimination against individuals, not try to make aggregate numbers sum up to what we guess is their nature level. That is unscientific.

There is an often-commented on phenomenon of men and women revert to certain roles. When we were growing up, it was fashionable to say that all women wanted to pursue careers just like men. Now it is in style among better off women to become stay-at-home moms when they can afford it. What should we do about that? Deny them the choice? Those kinds of choices will mess up the aggregate numbers.

Your rose metaphor implies that women (and men) are not making choices based on the full range of options. This is probably true, but what do we do about that? Are women, as a group, less happy than men? Are career women happier than stay-at-home moms? Are childless women happier than mothers? Do mothers WANT to work when they have small kids? I don’t know the answers to all these things, but when people imply that the aggregate numbers are wrong they implicitly answer all these questions because all these choices affect the numbers.

Jack, the only thing we can do is to make sure that children know that the world is full of possibilities. That you can be anything you want to be, whether male or female, white, green, blue, etc.
I couldn’t care less if a woman wants to be a mom, more power to her. I do though think that women should have their children earlier than late thirties and fourties. Let’s make damn sure that the children we raise are healthy and happy.

Rocky, you still fail to address my main point. The point that LIBERALS REVEL IN THE FACT THAT THERE ARE THINGS WOMEN DO BETTER THAN MEN, BUT REFUSE TO ACCEPT THAT MAYBE, JUST POSSIBLY, THERE ARE THINGS MEN DO BETTER THAN WOMEN.

And, for the record, I have no interest whatsoever in being a mother. But biology still destines me to bleed for 5 days every month, and (whether or not you like it) it gives me a brain that is affected just as much by the hormones that course through my body as my body itself is.

Studies have shown that, in all-women’s colleges, the proportion of women who play sports is not significantly greater than it is in co-ed colleges. But nobody wants to discuss this because it is not politically correct to do so.

Anyone who has lived with a person of the opposite sex knows full well that men and women don’t think the same way. And, since this phenomenon transcends time and place, it is not possible that these differences are simply societal in nature.

The IWF, a prominent women’s organization that does not toe the liberal party line, has issued a press release defending Mr. Summers:

A friend of mine who trains combat troops tells me that the average woman cannot toss a grenade far enough so that she is out of the explosion’s range. This is a big disadvantage. He tells me that this is not something he is supposed to talk about because it is against equal opportunity. Combat is not an equal opportunity workplace, yet we have to pretend it is only discrimination that would keep women out.

“The point that LIBERALS REVEL IN THE FACT THAT THERE ARE THINGS WOMEN DO BETTER THAN MEN, BUT REFUSE TO ACCEPT THAT MAYBE, JUST POSSIBLY, THERE ARE THINGS MEN DO BETTER THAN WOMEN.”

Anne,

You want me to address your point so here we go.

SO WHAT!

Have a great day.

Anne,
Just as an aside. The sad thing is you realy belive what you write.

Yes women are different than men.
Does that make you happy?

Jack and Anne-
The Republicans are quick to remind everybody else about what they believe in terms of affirmative action and programs meant to promote equality, quick to say that they believe people should not make excuses for themselves, tell themselves that they are inferior and then depend on others to support them on those grounds. But where is this self-determination when it comes to setting up programs and policies that encourage people to break through such barriers? If women have less innate strength and muscle power than men, we don’t throw them away, we train them in a way that elevates their performance to its highest level, and then compensates for whatever deficits are left over.

That should be the way anywhere. We are a not a eugenics society, but a competitive one. We give people the chance to do their best for their country before we tell them their best isn’t good enough, not pre-empt them entirely. If there is a problem in how far the average woman can throw a grenade, you don’t sit there and sulk, you figure out ways to extend the throwing range of these women through strength training, technique and technology. Anything else is just lazy.

We have not gotten to be the power we are now by underestimating the talents and strengths of our people. We should use those to the best of our abilities, optimize our strength as a nation.

Stephen

WE don’t train them. We allow people to make choices and give them options as are possible. But we don’t expect the same outcomes from different inputs.

There is a fundamental tension between open choice and equal outcomes. “you figure out ways to extend the throwing range of these women through strength training, technique and technology. Anything else is just lazy.” No. It is just silly to do some things. The battlefield is not equal opportunity. Do you advocate giving women smaller grenades and getting them killed faster?

I have lifted weights for most of my life. Sometimes I stop for awhile and then start again. I end up with the same maximum weight. Beyond a certain amount, I begin to strain my joints and get injured. I am much stronger than if I had never trained at all, but there are limits set by my body. I have trained other people. Some become strong faster than others, but they all reach the point of diminishing returns and then they don’t progress. Most men can lift more than 200 pounds on a bench press after a couple of months of serious training. I know that there are women who can do it, but I have never seen any. They are uncommon. The vast increase in the total numbers of women in weight rooms has not increased this number very much because it is beyond the range of most women. It is not discrimination. This is so obvious that everyone would see it except that we have been conditioned by political correctness not to look.

Men and woman are different. The two groups overlap so that some women are stronger, faster etc than some men. But if you take a random group of 1000 men and 1000 women and choose the 10 most flexible without regard to gender, you will certainly get 10 women and no men at all. If you take the 10 who can lift the most over their heads, it will be all men. No amount of training of the women will let them catch up. It is not discrimination. The only way you could make them more equal would be to discriminate against the men.

Free choice and diversity mean unequal outcomes. If you want equal outcomes you have to abandon choice and diversity. If you keep choice and diversity, you can’t have equal outcomes. Which do you value more?

You can take a sampling of a large number and derive a probability. You cannot extrapolate that to a certainty in an individual of either sex.

I am male. There are women who can better me in the physical, the mental, and in any endeavor

But the odds are I have the edge in some areas and they in others. Times have changed, and women do have more choices, but the old limitations of the role in society still exert a force. There is a reason they existed, and they are generally played out, but they are not set in concrete.

So, who is this god, the great leveler, that says we all must be the same?