More on the<i> New Republic</i> piece

Bleah. _The New Republic_, champion of Joseph Lieberman, scourge of Howard Dean, represents "The Left?" This is a tired string of right-wing talking points, with all the usual accuracy that implies.

Here's an idea. Why don't all the pro-evolution people start encouraging school boards to teach ID? We will include specific sections in the curriculum about all the known arguments against ID (or some other form of Creationism) to balance out the time we spend teaching students about all the arguments for evolution. This guarantees a teach the controversy approach that will provide mentally stimulating material for young students. Except we will call it "Critical Thinking."

Further proof that it is muscularly possible to roll one's eyes and yawn at the same time. First he gives the benefit of the doubt to Johnson, Dembski, and Wells that they aren't lying when they say ID isn't religious, then he pulls the classic tu quoque "baldness is a hair color" trick and redefines religion to mean "fixed belief", then implies that a certain subset of these "religious" beliefs are characteristic of the left.

What's the point? That some people believe some silly things because it flatters their political conceits? Stop the presses. And start them again when Ralph Nader and Barbara Streisand declare war on science, the enlightenment, and modernity, and seek to rewrite the constitution to institute an Ahmonsonite theocracy, and then we'll have some rough symmetry in the comparison.

I have to disagree. I thought Zywicki's article was crap.

So the leading lights of ID have (when the forum requires) denied that ID is religious (as distinct from when they are raising funds!) and Zywicki chooses to believe what they say when required, rather than everything else they say, and everything they DO, to the contrary? How very selective.

As for the list of silly questions Myers deconstructed, as far as I can tell Zywicki just trotted those things out as part of a general argument:

1) Those who disagree with me believe things.
2) All beliefs are religious.
3) Therefore, disagreement with me is religious disagreement.

If anything, this only emphasizes that the mind is as plastic as Myers says. For Zywicki as for any religious person, the way to make something come true is to SAY it's true.

There's so much wrong with this, yet there's also one thing that's fundamentally right. First let me clear up what's wrong with it...

1) The New Republic isn't "the left", unless the term "left" refers to everything except the extreme right.

2) Virtually no-one claims that women's brains can't possibly be different, on average, in some way, from men's brains. That's just an ill-constructed straw man. The point is that women who ARE good at and interested in math or driving a big rig or whatever should be allowed to pursue their interest to the extent that their ability allows, and not subjected to prejudice or discrimination solely on the basis of their gender.

3) The few people I have met who came close to subscribing to the straw man idea that women were neurologically identical to men were by no means on the "left", nor "liberal" in the American sense of the term. They have all been socially and financially upper class, and typically quite harshly judgmental of everyone else, economically right wing, intolerant of free expression of ideas, and in many cases, Republicans. This is relevant in that it disproves the idea that this mainly straw man position, even when held (more or less), is characteristic of the "left".

4) No-one likes being told that a group they identify with is in some way "inferior". If you go around saying that Danes are inferior in some way, you'll be ill-received in Denmark. A person who shows respect to others, as advised by Jesus and many other moral teachers, generally refrains from such comments, since they are useless, hurtful, and rarely stand up to skeptical scrutiny. Ultimately, it's more offensive when the comments are blatantly untrue, but even if they're mere over-interpretations of some complex contemporary social trend, they're still annoying. Lawrence Summers violated this simple principle of decency, albeit rather mildly, and the result was predictable. The persistent right wing whine that their bigoted, hurtful, racist comments are "true", while incorrect, is also irrelevant. EVEN IF the "average woman" is "less interested" or "less talented" in math for some biological reason than the average man (and we have absolutely no strong evidence to support this useless yet potentially offensive conjecture, but EVEN IF), there is no reason to go up to women who ARE good at math and tell them that their "gender" is "inferior". It just doesn't make sense.

However, there is also something very, very right about the Zywicki piece, and I'll be back to explain shortly...

Harold, waiting with bated breath for the needle in the haystack.

So the leading lights of ID have (when the forum requires) denied that ID is religious

The designer is clearly the benevolant and loving God of the bible!

We are of course performing science! ID needs no God we have a perfectly natural designer in space aliens which we can test for!

We don't know who the designer is and neither can we be bothered finding one!

Fortunately, the DSM-IV prescribes an active treatment regimen for MDCD: 800mg of arsenic, taken twice per day, until symptoms cease.

Okay, I'm back - remember, one has to wait a while between posts to PT (a rational rule designed to reduce alcohol-driven hyperverbosity and crude "shut down" attempts).

Here's what's RIGHT about the Zwyckli piece (no pun intended)...

ID is, as we have seen, running into problems in Pennsylvania and Utah. The problem, which Zwyckli seems to be unconsciously picking up on, is that it is a double deception.

Most PT posters assume that ID is religion disguised as "science". But it's really a bit more complex -

It's POLITICS disguised as phoney religion, with the phoney religion then "double disguised" as "science" in some special situations.

It goes like this. You start with a political stance - a commitment to a "laissez faire" or "robber baron" approach on social and tax policy and environmental regulations, a low threshold for war, and a weakening of civil rights, more or less - that doesn't have anything to do with religion, and may even be at odds with some religious systems (NOTE - I am not in any way attempting, in this post, to critique this underlying political stance, but rather, merely showing how ID is related to it).

To increase acceptance, you form an alliance with authoritarians who use religious language, and you adopt phoney "morality" on sexual issues. Now you have a winning system - God commands that you vote for me because I condemn abortion and gay marriage. As for social security, foreign policy, etc, well, you'll just have to take what I dish out, because the other guy is "unGodly".

But then it gets complicated. The ostensibly religious authoritarian part of your alliance wants politically-motivated religious dogma taught as "science" to school children. Their point is that otherwise, children may grow up to be tolerant of homosexuals and whatnot. That's an important point. Your whole system is based on provoking some people to vote against their economic and environmental opinions, by inflaming their bigotries. So you agree. But there's a problem. The courts don't allow dogma to be taught as "science" to schoolchildren. Even right wing judges can see that for Mormons and Catholics and Baptists to send their children to the same public schools, that can't work.

So you invent ID - a second mask, to be worn over the religious mask in court. You disguise your phoney, politically motivated "religious" stance as a "scientific" stance, in some limited circumstances. You attempt a complex dance. In court you deny that "ID" is religion, and in private, you claim that it is. But both stances are dishonest. It's politics. The problem is, the charade is now too complicated, and some of the actors start to get confused. They deny that ID is religious in private, or worse yet, say that is, in public.

Lest anyone doubt my analysis, let me offer some data to support it. The political views of sincerely religious people are variable, and the political views of sincere advocates of emerging scientific ideas are totally random. What are the politics of nuns, or string theory proponents, or even nuns who are string theory proponents? Hard question to answer. What are the politics of ID "proponents"? Easy question to answer.

It's not science versus religion. It's not science versus right wing politics, either - you can be to the right of Pinochet, and still not endorse the tactics of ID (and some ID oppenents are). It's science verus DISHONESTY. And that's what's making even a Zwyckli uncomfortable.

This post makes a lot of mistakes (some of which were just pointed out by another poster).

1. The New Republic is hardly "left", though it does occasionally publish work by people who might be broadly construed as "left liberal". At the same time, it has published a lot of neo-con stuff, and with respect to foreign policy, is pretty much indistinguishable from the neo-cons.

That said, I do not recall ever having read an article in The New Republic (not to say one was never published) that took the strong position that all differences between men and women were a result of culture, and that culture is entirely independent of biology. I would never identify The New Republic with that position.

2. I would say that the view that a) culture-at least since the agricultural revolutions starting around 10,000 ya-can be understood without reference to biology has been the default position of the vast majority of researchers in the social sciences-regardless of ideology b) the premise that culture presents a radical break with biology and that therefore humans are radically different from other humans has also been the premise of nearly everyone in the social sciences, regardless of ideology. Though I disagree with this position, if one takes the time to acquaint oneself with the history of the social sciences, it is clear that this was not a position that was adopted irrationally. Furthermore, significant valid claims to knowledge have come out of this broader research tradition. I regard it as incomplete-not irrational.

3. The much stronger view, that tends to mix relativist theories of knowledge with strong culturalist explanationsa and extreme cultural relativism, has been identified with one segment of the "academic left". I would concur that this camp has been vocal and presented itself as the "left" position. I would also agree that at least some people in this camp have been as much an obstacle to a scientific world view as many conservatives. They have had a largely negative (IMO) impact on academic discourse and the culture of academia.

4. There is still a lot of pseudo-biology and pseudo inheritance arguments circulating that receives serious consideration by conservatives. Exhibit A: Charles Murray.

5. The Bush administration has pretty much thrown in its lot with politicizing scientific inquiry and has given aid and comfort to forces in American society that wish to overturn a general scientific world view. In society at large, the clearer and more present danger to a scientific world view comes from the neo-cons and religious conservatives. They have largely drowned out the rational, secular right.

6. There is today, a significant body of scholarship emerging by people "on the left" (broadly construed) that reexamines the complex relationship between biology and culture. For an example of this type of work see the edited volume "Foundations of Human Sociality" (eds. Joseph Heinrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerra, Ernst Feher, Herbert Gintis) or "Not by Genes Alone" (Robert Boyd). Clearly, Sarah Hrdy must be considered broadly "left" and self identifies as a feminist. In economics, Geoff Hodgson has written voluminously on the Darwinian foundations of Institutional Economics. Hodgson would be clearly considered to be broadly "left".

7. One may accept the premise that evolution includes what happens above the shoulders as well below the shoulders, without necessarily accepting every hypothesis or conclusion of Ev Psych. Some of Ev Psych is good and interesting. Some of it exhibits all the higher virtues of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning.

The article sets up a straw man. But then again, at the risk of being accused of being snide, Tim seems to delight in linking to straw man critiques of the social sciences and has yet, never demonstrated to me, any real working knowledge of what actually goes on in the social sciences.

Virtually no-one claims that women's brains can't possibly be different, on average, in some way, from men's brains. That's just an ill-constructed straw man. The point is that women who ARE good at and interested in math or driving a big rig or whatever should be allowed to pursue their interest to the extent that their ability allows, and not subjected to prejudice or discrimination solely on the basis of their gender.

While I'm on my soapbox, let me make a more general point about Summers.

Summers' mistake (again IMO) was not in referencing biological differences between male and female patterns of reasoning. His mistake was offering this as a)established fact when it is still very much an hypothesis that needs to be pursued and better defined and b) jumping from hypothesis about biology to making a conclusion about labor market outcomes. The remarks came off as ill informed (which they were) and as sloppy reasoning. This gave the appearance of trying to justify a perceived climate of gender discrimination in Harvard's Sciences Department.

I don't dispute Summers' right to engage in speculative statements or his right to make generally provocative statements. Nor do I think all the response to him was entirely well thought out either. But I don't buy the premise that he is a victim of the PC thought police. More like a victim of foot in mouth disease.

For there *is* evidence that men's and women's brains are better.

Rob, I think the point is that it's irresponsible to say someone has better aptitude "as a result of biology," because it's never that simple. It is always a combination of biology and environment. I see your point, and it might very well be true that there could be a statistical correlation between certain aptitudes and gender, but it would be egregious to describe that as "biological" or "genetic," because there are so many other factors. Blame it on the bogus nature vs. nurture, dichotomous nature of the argument, but we need to move away from the idea that anything in the development of the mind is either black or white. Instead, it's a rainbow.

Of course, if we start using a rainbow analogy, the conservatives will have one more thing to hate about it.

harold:

By and large, I think you have missed it. ID is probably best viewed as the political action arm of creationism. But politics isn't the goal, only the path one must follow to get a theocratic government installed in the US. I think you have the strategy basically correct: take your religious goals and rephrase them in such a way as to do an end-run around legal restrictions (the head-on approach failed). With the legal oversight neutralized, we can use PR techniques to mobilize the evangelical population into political action. When these people should succeed politically, they can appoint (or be elected as) creationist judges, and the snowball can accellerate.

Politics is a tool more than a goal. The goal is to use political methods to enable the use of civil authority to enforce moral behavior as God demanded (in the opinion of those who fantasize about wielding that authority). Another nice side effect of political power -- if you have it, you can use it to make exceptions to moral behavior in the case of yourself and those useful to you. It's no coincidence that the US Senate routinely exempts itself from the workplace restrictions they enact on everyone else.

As for the "science", this is nearly an afterthought. Science has earned so much respect that if it can somehow be enlisted in support of the theocratic goals, the political skids are much more effectively greased.

Rob -

I still think Zwyckli is constructing a straw man.

It is true that, in American society, groups of individuals who feel or have felt a burden of discrimination will engage in reactive "positive discrimination". For example, it's widely believed that people of Irish descent helped one another get jobs on urban police forces during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Similarly, there are "women's" groups in most scientific and business environments, whose blatant and open goal is to promote women in the field, as aggressively as legally possible. It goes without saying that if women had not been, traditionally, excluded from science and business, these groups would not exist. It is clear to me that women still face some discrimination, and that the popularity of these groups is driven by this. Whether these groups will ever go away is an open question (my guess is they won't, not even if every member of the profession in question is a woman), but their level of activity and support is likely to reflect the degree of discrimination perceived by women.

However, despite all this, the document you link makes only a vague statement that "women" have equal "talent". The implication is that the "average" woman is about as likely to make a good astronomer as the average man, undeniably, but it's hardly like the nonsense Zwyckli would put into the mouths of imaginary "leftists". Strong statements that women could not possibly be neurologically different from men in any way, as Zwyckli implies we should find, are NOT present.

If someone were to declare that women are, on average, inferior as astronomers, it is undeniable that the group you draw attention to would probably barbecue that someone's cajones. As I point out, this is just the universal human response to such unkind and overgeneralized statements. Especially if one is a self-proclaimed Christian, but even if not, one should refrain from profitlessly insulting people with these kinds of remarks, which one would so dislike having directed toward oneself. One thing I intensely dislike about Zwyckli's article is his implicit defense of Lawrence Summers. It's just incompetent for a man whose role is president of a university to pointlessly insult a large group of faculty members. It's obvious that academic and professional disciplines show imbalanced gender and ethnic characteristics, but there's no logical reason to use this fact to make uncalled-for and illogical remarks. Summers' remarks were actually rather mild, but they predictably touched a very raw nerve, and he should have known better.

We need to distinguish between negative and positive discrimination. Negative discrimination is many orders of magnitude worse.

It's one thing to say "we need a qualified candidate, and if multiple equally qualified candidates are available, try to get a woman" (positive discrimination). That may be, in some ways, reprehensible. It's not really a debate for this forum. My general stance is pragmatic. I support "enforcing existing positive discrimination programs" but not creating any new ones. But again, this is not the forum for this debate.

It's another thing altogether to say "despite your excellent qualifications, you can't have the job because you're a member of a group we discriminate against" (negative discrimination). This type of discrimination is morally repulsive and appropriately unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, there are some people so immoral and cynical that they express intense opposition to "positive discrimination" (eg affirmative action) as a coded way of signalling that they secretly sympathize with the repellent and illegal concept of negative discrimination. Not everyone who opposes positive discrimination falls into this category, I hasten to add.

There is some concern that the "straight white Protestant males" of the population (a group to which I belong) may suffer, not merely from losing our supposedly desirable former status as the only group NOT being discriminated against (a status I am happy to have lost), but from the lack of "positive discrimination groups" working on our behalf (whereas some other categories of people do have such groups). Fortunately, all data indicates that we continue to do just fine, so I personally feel that this concern is exaggerated, to say the least. This concern is a major political factor in the US, however, and probably accounts for the voting patterns of "white men" to a large degree.

Most PT posters assume that ID is religion disguised as "science". But it's really a bit more complex - It's POLITICS disguised as phoney religion, with the phoney religion then "double disguised" as "science" in some special situations.

Flint -

I don't deny that manipulating some people who sincerely believe in a "theocracy" is part of the strategy, but for the most part, I really think that this is politics.

If the motivation behind all this is sincere religious belief, why are all these people lock step "conservatives" on economic, foreign policy, and non-sex related social issues?

My analysis explains this perfectly - it's about power and money, also known as "politics" - they're right wing first, and while a few of them may believe in some sort of religion, most of them are just hypocrites, pretending to be "religious" in order to advance their agenda.

If religion is driving them into politics, as you seem to be saying, then why isn't there a single voice saying "I believe in ID, but Jesus would want us to be nice to suffering people"? Why is every sponsor of an "anti-evolution" policy for public education, anywhere, at any level, always a "conservative" Republican?

I am NOT arguing against your perfect right to be a conservative Republican on other issues who supports strong scientific education, if that's the deal.

Liberal ID supporters - are you out there? I've asked individual creationists, before, whether they would support creationism if it were associated with "liberalism" instead of right wing politics, or if its advocates were Democrats. The answer has always been a "creationist no" - the sound of silence, that is.

Isn't it the case that bad religion (of the reality-denying, self-contradicting, me-me-me creationist/ID kind) is indistinguishable from politics. Hence the confusion over which comes first or is the driving force behind the other. I think the underlying cause is particularly scummy humans - whatever the overt movement to which they pledge their allegiance happens to be.

So maybe what we have here is either politi-gion or relig-itics?

On second thought, never mind.

Most PT posters assume that ID is religion disguised as "science". But it's really a bit more complex - It's POLITICS disguised as phoney religion, with the phoney religion then "double disguised" as "science" in some special situations.

We have a Left in the US?

Where has it been hiding for the past 90 years or so?

harold:

We may be agreeing here, but I'm not convinced yet. I understand that there is a general constellation of "conservative positions" in the sense of a religious rather than a fiscal conservative. After all, these people are not particularly concerned with the group of conservative platform planks like reducing taxes, eliminating much regulation and most regulatory agencies, paying down the national debt, making government less intrusive at all levels, etc. I'm not saying they do NOT hold these positions, only that I see them making no noise about them. In fact, I see some serious disagreement with the Religious Right about the wisdom of our foreign policies -- some love, others detest the Iraq war. Some are anti-NAFTA fanatics, others (the shareholder types) love it.

Instead, the hot-button noisy issues revolve around "conservative morality" -- mostly dealing with repressing sexuality, criminalizing homosexuality, denying AIDs (a sexually transmitted disease), denying evolution, opposing abortion (to the point of eviscerating American science programs across the board to kill embryonic stem cell research), defending "blue laws" and laws against any sexual practice imaginable (even including sunbathing), and getting creationists elected to school boards, state judiciary, and whatever.

And so I agree that the TOOLS are power and money, and these are the coin of politics. But the long-range application of the coveted power isn't just to line their pockets and enjoy high social status, but rather to use the engines of government to punish behaviors they dislike (mostly sexual, but evolution is another devil) when engaged in by people they don't like (but not the in-crowd).

Lenny is quite correct, this is a political battle. But it's a political battle to see who gets to impose whose moral absolutes on everyone else, who gets to decide which victimless activites are crimes against God. Science is just a thin disguise here; it's irrelevant. And I think you are also correct in saying that the motivation is not entirely "sincere religious belief". But there are important nuances here, nonetheless. Every politician has some idealism, some vision of what's best for society. Every politician runs for and holds office at least partly (and in my experience for the largest part) because in that position s/he can actually DO something good. And every politician is intensely aware that every OTHER politician feels the same way -- they just disagree on what's good and what's bad (and of course, since they all have constituencies, much of the political battle involves whose district the money is spent in. But that's another topic altogether).

In this sense, political power IS used to follow a religious agenda. Sure, Philip Johnson is profoundly hypocritical in much of what he says and does. But I deny he is hypocritical about his overall goals, or that those goals are to impose "moral behavior" onto an immature and confused public who (whether they know it or not) would be SO MUCH better off under Johnson's notion of God's Will. Did you read Stephen Crouse's url=http://www.facultylinc.com/personal/facoffice.nsf/Storys+By+Staff+ID/bulldog15?OpenDocument]personal material? If he follows any non-religious party line, surely it's because his church tells him to do so. He is not atypical of the people we're talking about.

(I also think your question to creationists is kind of meaningless. Liberals and Democrats don't tend to accept the religious view of the world, and doing so would require rather profound changes in their positions on countless issues. There's no coherent way to stick a creationist sticker onto a thoroughly noncreationist pattern).

I don't deny that manipulating some people who sincerely believe in a "theocracy" is part of the strategy, but for the most part, I really think that this is politics. If the motivation behind all this is sincere religious belief, why are all these people lock step "conservatives" on economic, foreign policy, and non-sex related social issues?

Bloody Plato! Why couldn't he have learned statistics, at least the bell-shaped curve? Oh yeah, it wasn't invented for a couple millenia. Well, it's been a couple hundred years since it did get developed, but clowns of various sorts represented by Zywicki are still thinking in terms of Platonic forms. (Except when they're lauding Charles Murray, who used the bell curve to demonstrate that he knew nothing of the phenomenon of confounding variables) It's time they got with the program.

If there is one thing that the Modern Synthesis (especially Mayr) ought to have taught us, it's that biology refers to populations, and that populations vary. And, if N is large enough, then there are a large number of the population that are several standard deviations above the mean of any trait. So there are plenty of accomplished women scientists, and they kick my butt every day.

If an undergraduate spouted such fatuous tripe as Summers did (that gender might determine scientific achievement) he would be corrected gently but firmly. Only the president of Harvard could be taken seriously when uttering such nonsense.

Rob, I think the point is that it's irresponsible to say someone has better aptitude "as a result of biology," because it's never that simple. It is always a combination of biology and environment. I see your point, and it might very well be true that there could be a statistical correlation between certain aptitudes and gender, but it would be egregious to describe that as "biological" or "genetic," because there are so many other factors. Blame it on the bogus nature vs. nurture, dichotomous nature of the argument, but we need to move away from the idea that anything in the development of the mind is either black or white. Instead, it's a rainbow.

Just a note -- conservatism isn't necessarily the enemy of evolution and science. Nor is liberalism necessarily the friend of science. Right now, the nutty fringe of the conservatives in the USA have more sway than does the nutty fringe of liberalism, but in reality, science vs. anti-science is an axis that's not parallel to conservative vs. liberal.

There are plenty of flaky anti-scientists on the left. From the relativists who assert that the scientific method is just a social construction of Western Civiliazation, and that there is no real truth after all, to the astrology/stars&crystals types, there are all kinds of people on the left who would tear down science. Yes, right now antiscientists have more sway in the Republican party than they do in the Democratic party, but I think it's important to keep in mind where the real dangers lie, and to find real allies where there are real allies.

I'm fond of David Brin's categorization of "romantics" and "modernists", the former being the anti-science types and the latter being the pragmatic types. You can find both romantics and modernists in the political Left and the political Right. If we managed to get away from identifying ourselves as being on the Left and seeing everybody on the Right as being a threat, we might have a more meaningful debate. Indeed, we might be able to wrest away people on the Right who don't like the antiscientific homophobic theocratic elements of their party. (Which, before our current president, included me; our current president pushed me fully out of the Republican party.)

-Rob

If we managed to get away from identifying ourselves as being on the Left and seeing everybody on the Right as being a threat...

— Rob Knop

Remember, according to the immensely popular "left/right" model, Nelson Mandela, Pol Pot, Stalin and the Dalai Lama are all "leftists", and consequently have identical beliefs and social policies.  mdr (who has met people in the USA who agree with that assertion)

> I think makes some good points.

Yet you were unable (or too cowardly) to name even one. Here, I'll do it for you; the one valid thing he wrote was "with respect to some participants, it is evident that they should be embarrassed."

> The Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy list as their very first "guiding principle" that "Women and men are equally talented and deserve equal opportunity."
>
> Of course, the first statement is dubious in and of itself because no two individuals, regardless of gender, are equally talented in all things.

Of course, the statement makes no claim about individuals. Sheesh.

> Summers' mistake (again IMO) was not in referencing biological differences between male and female patterns of reasoning. His mistake was offering this as a)established fact when it is still very much an hypothesis that needs to be pursued and better defined and b) jumping from hypothesis about biology to making a conclusion about labor market outcomes.

I've read Summers' comments, and he did neither of those. While I tend to be sympathetic to the politics of his critics, I believe he was treated outrageously, his comments have been misrepresented severely, and those who have criticized him have much to be ashamed of.

ts:

It would have been helpful if you had distinguished my remarks (which were overall critical of the article linked to by Tim) from the article. I'll defend my remarks.

As I stated, and as you quote:

>"Summers' mistake (again IMO) was not in referencing biological differences between male and female patterns of reasoning. His mistake was offering this as a)established fact when it is still very much an hypothesis that needs to be pursued and better defined and b) jumping from hypothesis about biology to making a conclusion about labor market outcomes."

Summers observes on outcome: occupational segregation. Women are disproportionately underrepresented in Harvard's natural sciences department. He offers three hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Overt labor market discrimination (which he rejected). I would, incidentally, agree, that as economists define overt labor market discrimination Harvard is unlikely to systematically discriminate against qualified female applicants.

Hypothesis 2: Women are unwilling to make the choices required to achieve a job as a top research scientist. Labor market outcomes reflect some innate "taste" women have for "nurturing" over research work. Summers gives this as partial explanation. I only agree halfway. He leaves the "taste" undefined and thus obscures the powerful roles of socialization and assignment of gender based tasks by society.

Hypothesis 2' is better: Women are occupationally segregated as a consequence of a) historical discrimination b) societal expectations and c) culturally defined and constrained choices open to women. I see hypothesis 2' as the dominant **PROXIMATE CAUSE** explanation.

Hypothesis 3 (to which Summers attributes the overwhelming portion of the observed outcome): Biologically based differences in brain organization and patterns of thinking make women better suited to some tasks and men to others.

What is wrong with hypothesis 3?
1. It is not well defined and too vague. It is difficult to test. The research on men and women's brain organization and patterns of thinking is still very much in its infancy. All we know is that there are **some** differences. We also know (or should know) from the synthesis (Mayr's and Dobzhansky's), that we need to think in populations and not essences. So, we do not know the probability distribution of factors that make women or men **better** research scientists and we do not know the probability distribution in men and women.

2. We do not know how given brain organization patterns in men and women interacts with the socio-cultural environment to create outcomes with respect to occupational choices.

3. Thus, we cannot simply state, on the basis of research in its infancy stage, that the observed outcome is a result of biology and we cannot know how much biology plays a role, or how biology interacts with sociocultural factors.

4. We can however observe women's changes in occupational choice as society's expectations of women change and as new opportunities open up for women.

So, we should not shrink from research on biology. But we should not use biology as an excuse to shrink from rigorous hypothesis formation and testing. Summers engaged in poor scientific reasoning, and as an economist, I'm offended he presented economists as being such poor and sloppy thinkers. I would have graded Summers' performance on a test at about a C to C-.

That said, I thought some of the reaction to him was over the top. But it is perfectly appropriate to criticize people for poor reasoning. Social scientists don't get a "bye" on hypothesis testing and critical thinking skills. If anything, we should be **more** sophisticated, not less sophisticated than our counterparts in the natural sciences because the process of trying to form testable hypotheses in the social sciences is immensely more difficult than in the natural sciences. Sloppy reasoning only compounds errors.

Summers stated "Let me just conclude by saying that I've given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong." That makes claims that he offered something as fact or jumped to a conclusion prima facie false, and I note that you offered no direct quotes to support your characterizations.

Chip, what do you think about Nancy Hopkins response to Summers? Is getting a case of the vapours and running to the Boston Globe the kind of thing a serious academic or scientist does when presented with propositions that conflict with one's own favored explanations? And what was all the blather about how he wasn't "sensitive" enough to the effects his remarks might have on women scientists? Are women scientists so frail that they will quail at the notion that men's and women's brains might be different? The feminists want to have it both ways: men and women are equivalent, but women deserve special "sensitivity".

I think you are ridiculously understating the case by implying that Summers was "criticized for poor reasoning" - having the faculty vote no confidence is an appropriate response for poor reasoning? Please. He was tarred and feathered by the PC thought police. Zywicky is quite right: some topics are off the table in large sectors of academia. Whether the underlying motivation is religious or just "religious" is irrelevant - it violates the primary function of higher education, which is the pursuit of truth.

ts:

As I stated above, Summers offered hypotheses and stated his conclusions as "best guesses". But his best guesses reflected poor economic reasoning. There is a paradigm problem here with Summers, but I'll leave that go. I think you are jumping to conclusions and reading into my response things that are not there. We'll have to leave it at that.

Mike S:
As I said, but perhaps should have stressed more heavily, the response to Summers was way over the top. I think that Hopkins and others should have responded as I did-by showing that Summers was engaging in poor scientific reasoning-even if one accepts (as I do) that there are probably biological differences in how men and women perceive the world (as long as we engage in population thinking and not essentialistic thinking) and we recognize a good deal of overlap at the same time. And of course as long as we recognize the complex interactions of biology and culture.

So no-I don't support the over the top reaction to Summers. That reaction inhibited needed dialogue on these complex issues.

That said, if Summers wanted to really start a dialogue, he could have done so in a more effective fashion.

I might add there is a long debate here in labor economics that Summers, as someone who is considered a top notch economist, should know well and yet showed no knowledge of the issues at all. It was pure foot in mouth.

> As I stated above, Summers offered hypotheses and stated his conclusions as "best guesses".

You never stated any such thing.

> I think you are jumping to conclusions and reading into my response things that are not there.

That's rich.

"there are probably biological differences in how men and women perceive the world (as long as we engage in population thinking and not essentialistic thinking)"

This is complete nonsense, apparently a misplaced attempt to not commit some sort of breach of PC. While there can be population differences between male and female performance, there cannot be population differences between ways of perceiving; it is individuals, not populations, who perceive. Either there are gender-related differences in brain structure or function that result in different ways of perceiving, or there aren't.

> I don't support the over the top reaction to Summers.... That said, if Summers wanted to really start a dialogue, he could have done so in a more effective fashion.

If you don't support it, then what's the point of this comment? It's closely akin to "If she didn't want to become pregant, she shouldn't have had sex". We can all be more effective in our actions, but Summers' comments were carefully hedged and offered in an intellectual forum. His biggest mistake, it seems, was to expect the sort of mature rational behavior appropriate to a civilized society based on reason-giving.

ts,

Firstly, of course everybody knows that individuals differ in abilities, perceptions, etc. The issue before us is whether or not when we compare population of individuals 1 and population of individuals 2, whether or not there is a mean difference between the two populations. That we need to engage in population thinking rather than a) essentialistic thinking and b) static comparisons of individuals is a basic point of modern evolutionary thinking.

If we take a sample of men and women and compare them on a number of traits, the population means will probably differ and we will probably have a lot of overlap. That was what I meant and that point was clear.

Men and women **on average** will differ in various traits. All individuals in a population will have some differences. What we are interested in here is population traits (or to put it more clearly the statistical likelihood that a randomly selected male will differ from a randomly selected female at a certain level of probability).

Secondly, if you go back and read the post, you will see the context of my remarks from start to finish. It is quite clear that I said Summers offered hypotheses.

>"Summers observes on outcome: occupational segregation. Women are disproportionately underrepresented in Harvard's natural sciences department. He offers three hypotheses"

I could not have been more clear. You are reading things into my posts that are not there.

> You are reading things into my posts that are not there.

You're a liar. I comment on what you write, via direct quotation. Had I read something into your posts that isn't there, you could identify an instance of same. Rather, I point out where *you* make claims that you don't support; garbage like "you will see" and "it is quite clear" doesn't cut it. These are the tools of intellectual charlatans.

This seems to be wandering off topic, and hence this is the last I will say. I respond one more time only because of ts' unprovoked resort to personal insults. Interested readers may compare what I said, what ts said, and Summers' full speech and decide for themselves. It is unfortunate that ts chooses not to address the substance of what I say. If this habit continues by ts, I'll just choose to ignore him in the future.

A direct quote from the text of Summers' speech-the full text is available here:

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

Larry Summers said:
>"There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference's papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the-I'll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are-the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described."

Now here is a direct quote from my post above:

Chip Poirot said in #37487
"Summers observes on outcome: occupational segregation. Women are disproportionately underrepresented in Harvard's natural sciences department. He offers three hypotheses:"

Now one can directly compare Summers' exact words and one can compare Poirot's summary of Summers. One can compare how Summers describes his hypotheses and one can compare how I describe them.

If you wish to disagree with me fine. I think calling me a liar is out of line. But after describing various outcomes of test results (which Summers attributes to biology) he goes on to say:

Summers:
"So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem."

Later in the speech he cites Becker's analysis of discrimination (which in fact dismissed discrimination as a significant factor for African Americans).

As an economist who has read some of this literature I think what Summers is saying is very clear. He is repeating Gary Becker's thesis that observed differences in labor market outcomes are due essentially to a biologically innate "taste" for specific jobs based on biologically innate differences in abilities. In short, he biologizes inequality. He mentions only in passing Claudia Goldin's work on occupational choice and entirely ignores the voluminous literature in labor economics on gender and race discrimination.

Again, as I said-the reaction to hims was over the top. Beckers' ideas are worth discussing without having people who advocate them being shouted down. Hopkins' reaction was especially counterproductive. There is a lot more I could say about Becker-but I think that would be going too off topic.

I just do not buy the hypothesis that Summers was being scientific and objective, while all his critics were simply emotionalistic. In fact, the more I read Summers full text the more negative my reacions become. This kind of shooting in the dark only makes it more difficult for people who think that biology does matter, but who oppose biologizing inequality to talk to our colleagues who are quick to argue that any discussion of biology automatically leads to biologizing inequality. There is a pseudo-scientific agenda here-that of misusing research into human behavior and biology- and it is being pumped continuously by the right.

I've always enjoyed reading those studies where newborns are dressed in blue or pink and pushed around in carriages through public places, while the reactions of people are noted. Their behaviors are hilariously different, and emphasize quite powerfully that the socialization of sex differences starts right from the moment of birth. By the time the child has gone through enough years of public school to encounter "generic" aptitude tests, these socialization disparities have had plenty of time to influence the children enough to muddy any possible conclusions about "biological" differences in abilities, interests and preferences. Not to say that these differences aren't "real" by this time, only that their underlying causes can no longer be reliably extracted.

Surely there can be mental (brain function) differences as biological as reproductive differences between the sexes. I just don't think we have tools currently capable of isolating them.

Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers' talk, saying later that if she hadn't left, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

BTW, the best southern accent in which to read the end of that last sentence, if you have your choice, is the one in Valdosta, Georgia.

I've always enjoyed reading those studies where newborns are dressed in blue or pink and pushed around in carriages through public places, while the reactions of people are noted. Their behaviors are hilariously different, and emphasize quite powerfully that the socialization of sex differences starts right from the moment of birth.

— Flint

Surely there can be mental (brain function) differences as biological as reproductive differences between the sexes. I just don't think we have tools currently capable of isolating them.

Firstly, of course everybody knows that individuals differ in abilities, perceptions, etc. The issue before us is whether or not when we compare population of individuals 1 and population of individuals 2, whether or not there is a mean difference between the two populations. That we need to engage in population thinking rather than a) essentialistic thinking and b) static comparisons of individuals is a basic point of modern evolutionary thinking.

— Chip Poirot

but who oppose biologizing inequality

Mike S.

If you're not careful, your position will bear an eerie similarity to those who look at life, wave their arms in helpless frustration at the blindness of everyone else, and sputter" but...but...but design is obvious!" You write "it is patently obvious that there are inherent behavioral differences between males and females." See the similarity? You write categorically "Many of the socialization habits have links to biological and evolutionary pressures"? See the similarity?

Yes, I readily agree that those who simply declare that "any differences in outcome must be a result of discrimination" are, like yourself, stating a policy position, not related to biology in any way whose proximate cause has been identified. Newborns (less than a few months old) have never even HEARD of guns or baby carriages. They can't yet even focus their eyes very well, much leas understand the abstract symbols those toys represent. Yet they are exposed to this kind of sex differentiation every day until they ARE old enough for behaviors to vary.

And so as I said, any actual biological differences in the brain that might translate into different interests and aptitudes are currently beyond us. I personally doubt that any such differences become "real" just because we might insist even louder that they are "patently obvious". The differences at the age you speak of are indeed obvious. The nature of those differences is far from obvious. Ruling biology either in or out at this time is a statement of preference, not a statement of knowledge.

My own policy position (as arbitrary as anyone's but does anyone want to bet against me?) is that the influence of exposure and education is far more responsible than the influence of biology for variation in these areas. If we could do controlled experiments, raising a dozen randomly chosen male and a dozen female newborns limiting their exposure to the current "opposite sex" expectations, I'd bet we'd see the boys pushing the baby carriages and the girls shooting the guns. I expect we will discover that biology plays little to no role in this regard.

And I think it's fairly well established that the policy of declaring women and men to be equals in traditionally male-dominated areas (from combat to championship bridge to the cutting edge of science) has had an effect. I'm only sad that it happened so recently -- I work with 50 engineers, only one of them female. She's recognized as one of the best, but more would sure be welcome.

I don't know what Summers' "intent" was in his statements. I assume his intent was, as he stated, to provoke discussion. But, by citing Becker Summers showed me what his ideological bias was. I don't think Becker's "intent" is to justify inequality. I simply think that his ideology (Nobel Prize notwithstanding) has led him down a particularly dogmatic view of labor markets and discrimination that is more obscurantist than scientific. I think the net effect is ex post facto ideological justification of the status quo and bad science. Becker resorts to biology as Deus ex machina to explain what he views as exogenously given "tastes" of people for particular choices. In effect, people according to Becker and Summers get the jobs in the labor markets they deserve-it is not because of social power, caste distinctions, socialization-because by definition according to Summers and Becker these factors are ruled out of consideration since "rational" market forces are assumed to "trump" the "irrational" blindness of social discrimination. Thus inequality is biologized.

Secondly, the problem with all these tests is that we still do not understand a) what they really are measuring (or trying to measure) b) the accuracy of what they are not sure they are measuring c) other factors that impinge on the tests and d) the extent to which many other factors may render some elusive quantified measure of "ability" in a particular area irrelevant in outcomes.

I do suspect that men and women differ in specific abilities at the tail end of the distributions (with a lot of overlap). But what I don't know is what these abilities are, really how to measure them, or how they translate into labor market outcomes, or how much (or little) socialization reinforces or undermines biology.

Undergraduate genetics students learn that outcomes are a product of a complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors, and that genetic factors are immensely complex.

So why oh why do we continue to get this harangue about biologically determined inequality in capacities as the primary factor in observed labor market outcomes. This is just pure post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning and it is what gives the strong adaptationist program a bad name. And I think of myself as a pretty strong advocate for adaptationism.

I do suspect that men and women differ in specific abilities at the tail end of the distributions (with a lot of overlap). But what I don't know is what these abilities are, really how to measure them, or how they translate into labor market outcomes, or how much (or little) socialization reinforces or undermines biology.

— Chip

My own policy position (as arbitrary as anyone's but does anyone want to bet against me?) is that the influence of exposure and education is far more responsible than the influence of biology for variation in these areas. If we could do controlled experiments, raising a dozen randomly chosen male and a dozen female newborns limiting their exposure to the current "opposite sex" expectations, I'd bet we'd see the boys pushing the baby carriages and the girls shooting the guns. I expect we will discover that biology plays little to no role in this regard.

— Flint

And I think it's fairly well established that the policy of declaring women and men to be equals in traditionally male-dominated areas (from combat to championship bridge to the cutting edge of science) has had an effect. I'm only sad that it happened so recently -- I work with 50 engineers, only one of them female. She's recognized as one of the best, but more would sure be welcome.

ts, while Summers did say he was making hypotheses, not firm statements, he's also quite definite that he believes his hypotheses are facts (or so he says in the transcript), not just idle intellectual speculation.

And while the woman who said she wanted to vomit got the most press, most of the subsequent discussion was pretty rational (certainly more so than some of the conservative pundits trying to spin it).

My own objection to Summers is that even if there is genetic bias, that hardly eliminates or disproves discrimination. There are plenty of accounts of women busting through into predominantly male fields and being treated like dirt (Frances Connelly's "Walking Out on the Boys" is a good example) for their gender.

As fore the volokh piece, it really bugs me that the writer claimed the "incest taboo" is one of the things about which mainstream science has no dispute. The term "taboo" in this context creeps me out: The implication is incest isn't really bad, it's just something we resist because of biology, rather than, say, it's a brutal form of rape (in the vast majority of cases) that should repulse any decent human being. The thought that fathers would jump their daughters all the time without the "taboo"--because, you know, everyone has a good time--that's just twisted.

As fore the volokh piece, it really bugs me that the writer claimed the "incest taboo" is one of the things about which mainstream science has no dispute. The term "taboo" in this context creeps me out: The implication is incest isn't really bad, it's just something we resist because of biology, rather than, say, it's a brutal form of rape (in the vast majority of cases) that should repulse any decent human being. The thought that fathers would jump their daughters all the time without the "taboo"--because, you know, everyone has a good time--that's just twisted.

My own objection to Summers is that even if there is genetic bias, that hardly eliminates or disproves discrimination.

What is the underlying basis for this position, and for the assumptions about the outcome of the experiment?

I fail to see, as a general assumption, how you can avoid the conclusion that evolution has shaped different instinctive behaviors for males and females.

What you are talking about is going from complete exclusion to a fair(er) playing field. It's one thing to say that no women at all are allowed to be scientists, or engineers, quite another to say that given the same opportunities, equal numbers of women and men will end up being engineers.

For example, what if there's a woman who is (or would be given the right training) just as good an engineer as the one you work with, but has decided that she would rather be a stay-at-home mom than an engineer? That would be a choice she made, not discrimination, and it would be in part due to biological factors.

Do you doubt that if you took 1000 equally talented male and female engineers that more females than males would make choices other than working full time as an engineer?

The underlying basis is, the human brain seems to be an amazingly flexible organ. Look at the sheer variation in what people have been able to discover, believe, and invent. I seriously doubt that most of this variation is biological in any significant way. Do you suppose Barry Bonds inherited a baseball gene or the functional equivalent? Tiger Woods a golfing gene? Or would you say (as I would) that these capabilities derive partly from athletic ability generally, and partly from intense training in their fields almost since birth?

— Flint

I'm saying that IF there is any difference between the sexes in aptitutes for math, science, or whatever, that difference is insignificant in comparison to the effects of a lifetime of training; it's lost in the noise.

Once again, I simply deny that these decisions can be considered biological in any discernable way, after a lifetime of steering.

In the US? Not at all. Socialized sex roles would skew the distribution. Note: socialized sex roles. Not biology.

Not necessarily. The husband of the one female engineer stays at home, does all the housework, raises the children, and is quite satisfied. There's nothing biological about this: they organized their lives this way because out of college she got the better job, and he found he enjoyed being housewife. It was a financial decision.

Take any random infant, either sex, out of the Borneo jungle and raise him/her to become a tax lawyer, and you'll have an equally competent tax lawyer (or pediatrician, or paleontologist) regardless of sex. Exchange that infant with one from the American upper class, and that person will faithfully replicate the social role expected in Borneo.

This is something a little bit different, and worth commenting on. You have switched from a discussion of relative maximum capability to a discussion of whether qualified people would choose to be engineers in the first place. I hope we can agree that social conventions are 100% responsible for career choices. This distinction can be subtle: we cannot know if, given a completely flat playing field, the sexes would differentiate much with respect to specific career choices. My point was that from birth, boys and girls are strongly and explicitly steered in different directions. After 18 years of steering, are we going to conclude that the resulting career choices are uninfluenced by it?

The position that I'm arguing against, which you seem to largely be defending, is that socialization is the only, or the predominant factor, in career choices.

Barry Bonds and Tiger Woods just make my point about how you can't separate nature and nuture: yes, both required a great deal of training to accomplish what they have. But without their starting genetic material they would never have achieved what they have.

Actually, your statement appears to agree with my position, since you explicitly state the combination of innate and environmental factors. Why doesn't this analysis apply to the career choices of men and women? There, you seem to be arguing for a solely environmental cause.

You have no basis for this assertion - it's just your opinion. I don't really have any data to back up my assertion, either, but I'm at least basing my claims on some arguments. You seem to be simply stating assertions without arguing why those assertions are true. I was just wondering why you assert the dominance of socialization in this sphere - you haven't offered any reasons (other than the fact that the brain is flexible), just restated the assertion.

But again, the point is not that any given individual is predestined to end up in a particular job, it's that women as a group will tend towards certain careers, and men towards others, in part due to biological differences between the sexes.

the best woman scientists are just as good as the best men scientists, but there are fewer of them in part due to biology.

You didn't really address my question about the biological basis for socialization

Mike S wrote:

"He (Larry Summers) didn't say he did (attribute all labor market outcomes to biological based definitions). He included discrimination on his list of reasons for the gender disparity. He was disputing the notion that it is the only reason for the disparity, or that it is the predominant reason. Arguing with that proposition is fine, but that is not what the Harvard faculty who voted no confidence were doing - they were playing power games, and trying to enforce the "taboo" against raising certain topics. Unfortunately, they succeeded." (I added the parenthesese for clarification).

No-he did not say that **all** the observed differences were explained by biology. If you go back and read post #37487 and if you follow the link to Summers' full speech http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html
you will see that I fairly represent Summers' position.

He believes that the predominant explanation for labor market outcomes with respect to males and females (at least as far as the academic labor market is concerned) is explained **primarily** by 1) biological differences in the abilities of men and women and 2)women's "tastes" for home life over lab work-perhaps itself a function of biology. He views overt labor market discrimination as an insignificant (statistically speaking) factor.

Again, if you go back and read my post 37487 you will get a clear picture of what I said.

Now, I read you as saying that we will sooner or later reach some point where women will for some reason stop taking advantage of equal opportunity, before such opportunites are populated equally by both sexes, for biological reasons not yet in evidence (because opportunity is not yet equal, and socialization is still strongly stereotyped from birth). I would predict based on broad trends easily visible today that where male and female participation is equal, opportunities are equal.

— Flint

I find this confusing. If biology is not influencing their skills, it must be influencing their preferences. That there's something about female biology that makes science less appealing to them. But we see today that there's no difference in the numbers of males and females getting science degrees or populating science classes. Times are changing, and the biological explanations are failing.

This all has taken place in the larger context of what conservatives call "the breakdown of the family" -- women leaving the kitchen and joining the workforce.

2)women's "tastes" for home life over lab work-perhaps itself a function of biology.

— Chip Poirot

He views overt labor market discrimination as an insignificant (statistically speaking) factor.

A couple more brief points.

On the Tiger Woods/Barry Bonds question, the issue is not whether Woods could have been a baseball player and Bonds a golfer, since both jobs require eye-hand coordination and swinging a stick. That's like saying whether someone could have been a good electrical engineer or physicist. A more apt analogy would be whether Woods or Bonds could have been an outstanding scientist, while some Nobel Prize winner could have been a multimillionire athlete.

It is not in dispute that biology, including evolution, has produced different average physical attributes for men and women (i.e. strength). Any given woman may be stronger than any given man, but on average men are stronger. The brain is a physical organ, and has clearly been shaped by evolution. Why is it so unthinkable that this has resulted in different average behavioral or cognitive attributes for men and women? That's basically the extent of my point, and I don't see how it can reasonably be refuted. The issue of the relative effects of socialization, discrimination, and biology is more complicated and not easily resolved. But all I'm trying to get is an acknowledgement that biology plays a role in career choices. If men and women's brains are different, I fail to see how it could not play some role.

Mike S.

. Think I'll stop. It hurts. If you go back and read my post #37487 and the link to Summers' speech http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html I really do think that my point will be more clear. That is because I believe I made it clearly the very first time. But since I have a bottle of Tylenol handy I'll try one more time.

1. I too reject the hypothesis of overt discrimination as the explanation for the existince of different outcomes in Harvard's science department. However, my reasons for doing so are vastly different from Summers' arguments. Summers' relies on Becker's analysis that attempted to show that labor market discrimination was unnstable in competitive markets. In my judgement, by normal scientific standards, Becker's theoretical position must be judged as a "degenerative problem shift" and simply put, does not save the phenomena. I think overt discrimination does not exist because legal and other institution factors now make overt discrimination prohibitive and Harvard (like any other University) has umpteen levels to deal with EEOC violations. Of course individual cases of gender bias can still occur.

2. Summers' thinks that women's "tastes" for home life over tenure track jobs is a product of biology. So too does Gary Becker. For both of them biology explains the differences in male/femal performance and biology explains the formation of different "tastes". It is "turtles all the way done".

I am arguing that even if women have any "innate" taste for homework over tenure track jobs, that is considerably augmented by:
1) socialization and other institutional factors;
2) historical patterns of labor market segmentation and occupational segregation that are path dependent remnants of a period when overt discrimination was stable;
3) social structures that put much tighter constraints on female choice with respect to male choice when it comes to balancing home and work responsibilities;

I am arguing that I would expect men and women to have **some** biologically different cogntive styles at a population level, but with considerable overlap. However, we do not have any real strong knowledge of what these are or how they might effect abilities. Let's take a common stereotype that might have a grain of truth as a generalization. Women are more detail oriented, men tend to be more abstract thinkers. Now, being detailed oriented in many fields of science will get you very, very far. In some fields it may be more important than abstract thinking. In other cases, abstract thinking may win out. But what it comes down to is we don't have enough evidence to assert that men's and women's different overall cognitive approaches really handicap one gender in relation to another.

Secondly, as any college sophomore genetics student knows: IT is gene-environment interactions that matter for development-not genes alone for chrissake! So why do people continue to use this bullshit "genes alone" shorthand? It is just plain sloppy reasoning.

What reason do we have to believe that with considerable emphasis placed on math science education for girls and with encouragement they cannot do as well as men? None whatsoever.

So my explanation for the observed outcomes in math and science between men and women is:
1. Socialization patterns;
2. Cultural expectations with respect to child rearing;
3. A mismatch between the needs of people who want to emphasize family responsibilities rather than pursuit of career goals;
4. Historical legacies of overt discrimination.

And I am not saying that there are no biologically based differences. Adjustment for these factors might not yield 50-50 ratios in every field. But that is no reason to not to try to improve the situation rather than relying on degenerative research programs in economics.

To what extent Harvard-or any other institution-can, should, does attempt to accomadate these issues is another question.

Now, have I at least made what I am saying clear?

In certain careers or fields, yes, I think there will always be fewer women than men, given equal opportunities (your last statement is backwards - of course where male and female participation are equal, opportunities are equal. The question is whether we can have equal opportunities, yet unequal participation.)

You find it confusing because you don't seem to understand statistical arguments.

Biology can influence the relative numbers of men and women that, e.g., are world-class in math. Socialization can change this gap one way or the other, but it's unlikely to eliminate it.

But the choice argument is also part of it: even if we had, say, equal numbers of women and men earning PhD's in physics, there will still be fewer women than men who want a career as a professor in Physics.

Generally speaking, men will always be more willing/more attracted to jobs that require long hours and/or lots of intense competition, while women will always be more attracted to jobs with fewer hours/more flexibility/less intense competition.

But the fact that Carly Fiorina can become CEO of Hewlett-Packard, when she couldn't have 30 years ago, is not the same thing as saying that until we have equal numbers of male and female CEO's, there is overt discrimination going on against women.

if what you and Flint are saying is correct, why aren't there any universities taking advantage of the situation and hiring all the talented female scientists that are being discriminated against?

Flint:

How do you propose to verify that "declaring as a matter of public policy that there ARE NO mental differences between the sexes" has eliminated all differences in male and female behavior caused by social influences? It seems rather unlikely that it will have that effect.

The case for biological causes of gender differences in mental traits rests on more than just observations of gender differences in behavior, of course. But observed differences in behavior that are large, persistent and common across most or all human cultures are likely to be caused in part at least by biological gender differences.

ts, while Summers did say he was making hypotheses, not firm statements, he's also quite definite that he believes his hypotheses are facts (or so he says in the transcript), not just idle intellectual speculation.

I respond one more time only because of ts' unprovoked resort to personal insults.

You are reading things into my posts that are not there.

Let me just conclude by saying that I've given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said.

Flint: How do you propose to verify that "declaring as a matter of public policy that there ARE NO mental differences between the sexes" has eliminated all differences in male and female behavior caused by social influences?

I don't dispute Summers' right to engage in speculative statements or his right to make generally provocative statements. Nor do I think all the response to him was entirely well thought out either. But I don't buy the premise that he is a victim of the PC thought police. More like a victim of foot in mouth disease.

How do you propose to verify that "declaring as a matter of public policy that there ARE NO mental differences between the sexes" has eliminated all differences in male and female behavior caused by social influences? It seems rather unlikely that it will have that effect.

The case for biological causes of gender differences in mental traits rests on more than just observations of gender differences in behavior, of course. But observed differences in behavior that are large, persistent and common across most or all human cultures are likely to be caused in part at least by biological gender differences.

I certainly wouldn't expect social influences to just up and vanish simply because a policy is declared that we would henceforth pretend to be blind to ALL differences.

This policy, over time, results in everyone showing up at the starting line who wishes to enter the race. Over more time, it results in more people actually realizing that they might wish to enter the race, rather than be convinced from birth that they are unqualified to compete.

But the same was said for many centuries about mental traits being due to racial differences. These differences were obvious, large, persistent, and more-or-less common

The case for biological causes of gender differences in mental traits rests on more than just observations of gender differences in behavior, of course. But observed differences in behavior that are large, persistent and common across most or all human cultures are likely to be caused in part at least by biological gender differences. But the same was said for many centuries about mental traits being due to racial differences.

"But the same was said for many centuries about mental traits being due to racial differences. These differences were obvious, large, persistent, and more-or-less common" Huh? Do please produce your evidence of observed racial differences in behavior that are large, persistent and common across most or all human cultures. If there were such evidence, it would indeed imply biological racial differences. I deny that there is any such evidence.

Right. So it's useless for the purpose you suggested.

But it might also induce to "enter the race" people who would not choose to do so if they were free of social influences. Your policy might simply replace the (alleged) socially-caused underrepresentation of women in science and engineering, with a socially-caused overrepresentation of women by promoting the possibly-incorrect factual claim that men and women are equally good at or partial to that type of career.

I think that making factual claims that we do not know to be true, and that we have considerable evidence are false, is bad public policy in any context.

Do please produce your evidence of observed racial differences in behavior that are large, persistent and common across most or all human cultures.

Flint's argument, such as it is, seems to be that the falsity of claims about race imply the falsity of similar statements about gender. No wonder he wants to legislate truth.

This bears very little if any resemblance to anything I have said. But I think you know that.

As ts points out, this was said to be true. But saying so, as I wrote, tends to be self-fulfilling where what is said is accepted as true whether it is or not.

Sorry, but that sort of ad hominem won't wash. I did and do believe that what I wrote is an accurate summary of the *true* implications of your statement.

I did and do believe that your primary if not sole interest in posting to this thread is to show that you have the biggest dick on the block. I have seen every effort to avoid good faith in all you have written.

Do you deny that our society imposes sex roles in countless ways? Do you deny that this has influence on our perceptions and understandings?

My argument is been that these things happen, and that they mean something.

How can you conclude this from what I said?

Yes, this is a risk. Having an opportunity available that was once closed, might tempt unqualified people to attempt it.

What we have, of course, is a tradeff. We do not know that women are biologically inferior at science, but we nonetheless followed a social policy of discouraging them from making the attempt. So what I am proposing is not making access for women *easier* than for men, but simply leveling the playing field in some ways.

As ts points out, this was said to be true. But saying so, as I wrote, tends to be self-fulfilling where what is said is accepted as true whether it is or not.

No, you didn't propose "levelling the playing field," you proposed taking the position, as a matter of public policy, that "there are ARE NO mental differences between the sexes." If you wish to defend that proposal, defend it. If you wish to withdraw it, then do that. But stop pretending that your proposal was something else.

No, you didn't propose "levelling the playing field," you proposed taking the position, as a matter of public policy, that "there are ARE NO mental differences between the sexes." If you wish to defend that proposal, defend it. If you wish to withdraw it, then do that. But stop pretending that your proposal was something else.

Please produce your evidence of observed racial differences in behavior that are large, persistent and common across most or all human cultures, if you think there is such evidence. There is certainly evidence of gender differences of this kind.

I already explained it to you. You said that your policy would allow us to "know that this [gender] inequality isn't because we engineered it through social convention." It would allow no such thing. You cannot eliminate socially-caused gender differences in behavior simply by declaring as a matter of public policy that there are no mental differences between men and women.

The policy proposal you made and that I am critiquing is not giving people opportunities that they were previously denied, but "declaring as a matter of public policy that there ARE NO mental differences between the sexes." That is the proposal you made, and that is the proposal that I am saying would be useless for your claimed purpose, and bad policy for the other reasons I explained.

If you wish to withdraw it, then do that. But stop pretending that your proposal was something else.

The hugely important difference between race and gender is that race is a social construct but *not* a biological category. While there is of course a large social construct around gender, gender is *also* a very real biological category.

Flint:

I agree with most of what you say above. But I think you still don't appreciate the importance of a scrupulous committment to honesty and integrity. The government simply should not make claims of scientific fact that it does not know to be true, that may very well be false, and that are potentially very harmful, regardless of the nobility of its motives. It's harmful not only in the direct sense that misinformation leads to bad policies, but in the erosion of public trust that inevitably follows the revelation that the government has been lying.

It is simply not necessary for the government to make the controversial, and probably false, factual assertion that there are no biological differences in mental traits between the sexes in order to justify a policy of gender neutrality--or, for that matter, gender-based affirmative action--with respect to education, training, employment, etc. If you have a public policy background you ought to know all this already.

I don't agree that "race is a social construct." Or, at least, it's a lot more complicated than that. There is a sense in which race is socially constructed, but the concept is also clearly linked to what are undeniably biological characteristics. The same applies to sex.

Jefferson famously held it as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Was he daft?

And declaring this as a general policy goal eventually does serve to reduce them.

public racial policy, as holding as a general principle that mental capabilities do not vary among races

"poverty is bad."

I *think* I have made the effort to recognize this repeatedly.

And also to point out that for at least a century, racial differences were considered to be biological

(and some are: skin color is not a social construct. If the skin is so different, why is the brain immune? That was the thinking presented.)

Until recently, people like Daniel were identified simply as black because of a peculiarly American institution known informally as "the one-drop rule," which defines as black a person with as little as a single drop of "black blood." This notion derives from a long discredited belief that each race had its own blood type, which was correlated with physical appearance and social behavior. The antebellum South promoted the rule as a way of enlarging the slave population with the children of slave holders. By the nineteen-twenties, in Jim Crow America the one- drop rule was well established as the law of the land. It still is, according to a United States Supreme Court decision as late as 1986, which refused to review a lower court's ruling that a Louisiana woman whose great-great-great-great-grandmother had been the mistress of a French planter was black--even though that proportion of her ancestry amounted to no more than three thirty- seconds of her genetic heritage. "We are the only country in the world that applies the one-drop rule, and the only group that the one-drop rule applies to is people of African descent," Daniel observes.

Flint:

By the way, it was "most of what you say" in your post of 10:04pm that I was agreeing with. Not your post of 10:14pm, most of which I think is wrong.

I don't agree that "race is a social construct." Or, at least, it's a lot more complicated than that. There is a sense in which race is socially constructed, but the concept is also clearly linked to what are undeniably biological characteristics.

The same applies to sex.

But why do we treat *those* characteristics specially, when they have little or no functional relevance, when we don't treat eye color, detached ears, hairiness, and so on in the same way? Why are the characteristics that Americans treat as extremely significant virtually ignored in many other societies? The social construct is of course based on *some* identifiers, but the identifiers in and of themselves have no biological significance.

The fact that racial characteristics have no functional significance doesn't alter the fact that they are biological characteristics.

If race A is defined to consist of people with biological characteristics X, Y, and Z, that is obviously a biological classification, regardless of its scientific merits.

... The growing realization in the middle of the twentieth century that most species had some genetic differentiation from local population to local population led finally to the abandonment in biology of any hope that a uniform criterion of race could be constructed. Yet biologists were loathe to abandon the idea of race entirely. In an attempt to hold on to the concept while make it objective and generalizable, Th. Dobzhansky, the leading biologist in the study of the genetics of natural populations, introduced the "geographical race," which he defined as any population that differed genetically in any way from any other population of the species. But as genetics developed and it became possible to characterize the genetic differences between individuals and populations it became apparent, that every population of every species in fact differs genetically to some degree from every other population. Thus, every population is a separate "geographic race" and it was realized that nothing was added by the racial category. The consequence of this realization was the abandonment of "race" as a biological category during the last quarter of the twentieth century, an abandonment that spread into anthropology and human biology. However, that abandonment was never complete in the case of the human species. There has been a constant pressure from social and political practice and the coincidence of racial, cultural and social class divisions reinforcing the social reality of race, to maintain "race" as a human classification. If it were admitted that the category of "race" is a purely social construct, however, it would have a weakened legitimacy. Thus, there have been repeated attempts to reassert the objective biological reality of human racial categories despite the evidence to the contrary.

(And I'm betting that there really are biological mental differences between men and women in science and math, but the differences are not "better" and "worse" or even "more competitive" and "less competitive". I think they sexes think a bit differently, and can bring different strengths to bear within all these areas.)

— Flint

The government simply should not make claims of scientific fact that it does not know to be true

It is simply not necessary for the government to make the controversial, and probably false, factual assertion that there are no biological differences in mental traits between the sexes in order to justify a policy of gender neutrality

The quote is "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". Nothing there about *biological* equivalence. Nothing there that's relevant to this discussion.

This is not an uncommon tactic, to characterize one's own arguments is merely a vague undisputed generality, as if none of the points at issue had ever been presented.

I'm not aware of any such public policy. Did the government prevent "The Bell Curve" from being published, or issue a public statement denouncing it?

You seem to have trouble distinguishing between normative and empirical claims.

your parallel argument between race and gender concerning "differences in behavior that are large, persistent and common across most or all human cultures" FAILS to recognize it, a point that Don made repeatedly and, as he has noted, you have been unresponsive to.

you, in your ad hominem fashion, said I knew wasn't your argument -- that if it was false for race, then it's false for gender. But I know that it *is* your argument, even if you don't know it.

Uh, because there's no correlation between alleles for skin color and the alleles for brain function? We don't have WN chromosomes the way we have XY chromosomes. These parallels between race and gender don't work because, again, gender is a biological category but race isn't.

Why are the characteristics that Americans treat as extremely significant virtually ignored in many other societies? The social construct is of course based on *some* identifiers, but the identifiers in and of themselves have no biological significance.

Now this is closer to something we agree on. I dispute that men are not more biologically inclined towards competition than women, but you've brought up an important point about the differences not being better or worse.

But you can't address this problem unless you're willing to stipulate that men and women think (or do research, or teach, or whatever) differently, which is mostly what you've been denying.

An extension of this idea is that having a career in upper management, or in elite academic institutions, is not "better" than being a stay-at-home mom (or dad). Your whole argument (and the traditional feminist argument) is basically predicated on this notion, though. Otherwise, we'd be arguing about how to get more men to be stay-at-home dads, rather than more women to become tenured professors.

And I'm glad to hear about your experience with statistics, but it rather flies in the face of your using examples of specific individuals that you know to counter a statistical argument.

I entirely agree, and I was being as careful as I could be not to make any such recommendation. Statements of general policy preferences are not claims of scientific fact. I was not saying the government should DECLARE men and women to be mentally equal as a matter of fact, but rather that appropriate polices should *treat* them as equals.

That's what you now claim you meant to say. It's not what you actually said. I can only respond to what you write. I cannot read your mind.

Also, you quote me as making a series of statements starting with "Now this is closer to something we agree on." I did not make those statements.

An extension of this idea is that having a career in upper management, or in elite academic institutions, is not "better" than being a stay-at-home mom (or dad). Your whole argument (and the traditional feminist argument) is basically predicated on this notion, though.

— Mike S.

On the contrary, my recommended policy position is explicitly a normative position

— Flint

Jefferson's understanding that "all men are created equal" - a normative statement

Summers was interpreted (and interpretations can vary) as telling an audience of female scientists that they were congenitally inferior at their profession. At the very least, this is undiplomatic.

Yet you seem to be supporting the position Summers took

But then you say my position in disagreement is nonetheless "undisputed".

My generalities and those of Summers are mutually contradictory.

And this is why I state my general framework. If you think Summers is right and yet belittle me for stating something "undisputed", it's hard to tell which side you are supporting.