Truth Fails to Triumph Again
You’ve probably heard that Larry Summers is leaving Hahvahd. It’s interesting to note that the BBC is still, obstinately, misreporting what he said about women and science. I did a comment on that ages ago, months and months ago, and I can’t believe I’m the only one; surely people must have written to them to tell them they got it wrong – but maybe not, because they’re still doing it. (Andrew Marr got it wrong in talking to Steve Pinker last year; Steve said ‘that’s not what he said,’ but to no avail; no one listened.)
Lawrence Summers lost the first vote in March last year after suggesting women had less “intrinsic aptitude” than men for science.
No he didn’t. That is not what he said. You can read what he did say – scroll down to the fourth paragraph. What he did say is considerably more complicated, and it certainly doesn’t boil down to that ridiculous, meaningless formula the BBC embarrassingly, incompetently gives. The Beeb’s version would have it that, oh, any woman physicist or cosmologist you’d care to name has less intrinsic aptitude for science than any random guy on the Clapham omnibus. It would have it that all women have less intrinsic aptitude for all branches of science than all men – which is ludicrous, and obviously ludicrous; so why can’t they get it right? It’s an important part of the story, so why can’t they get it right? Isn’t that their job?
There’s a discussion of Summers and his speech at Pharyngula with a lot of comments; I read them hoping to find a lot of people making the same point, and was disappointed to find only one – but one is better than none.
But not much better. See why I don’t think truth will necessarily triumph ‘in the end’?
I think what the BBC meant to say was “We could not really understand what he was saying, but IT SOUNDED TO US AS IF he was SUGGESTING….”.
Anyway, the BBC had already discovered the ‘truth’: that ‘Women are cleverer than men’ :- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4079653.stm
For the BBC, ‘truth’ = editorial policy.
bluejewel. gasp !
Bluejewel,
It’s a question of variance, not averages. ASAIK leading psychometricians claim that, while average IQ of both sexes is much the same, there are more men than women at both ends of the spectrum — more male imbeciles, more male geniuses. Women are more ‘spiked’ around the mean; men more ‘spread out’.
Example: approx. 99% of all 600 chess grand masters are male, and women chess players often have their own women-only clubs, because the gap in performance is so great.
Can that be ENTIRELY due to environment?
Ditto for Nobel prizes in physics — virtually all male.
Marie-Curie won half a prize, though.
This should be a purely empirical and not an ideological issue.
Fascinating book on wishful thinking in this and other areas by Steven Goldberg:
“When Wish Replaces Thought: Why So Much of What You Believe Is False”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0879757116/qid%3D1140686948/026-7592639-4326837
The problem with the variance point is that it seems really rather easy to test – identify your population of scientists, mathematicians and engineers and give them an IQ test – obviously we’d prefer a prospective study as mathematicians have rather a lot more practice at this sort of thing – and find out what sort of cut-off you reckon is necessary for being top-class (e.g. top 1%). Then you look at a population wide distribution and see if there is a statistically significant difference in the proportion of men versus women in your top 1%. There are a few tweaks you could do to make it better but that sounds like a reasonable research agenda – anyone know if it’s been done?
I absolutely agree with your comment. I too was disappointed that so few took PZ to task on this, but then I couldn’t be bothered to comment at Pharyngula. I think PZ is sometimes a bit too quick to go for his guns when feminist issues arise.
PM writes:
Then you look at a population wide distribution and see if there is a statistically significant difference in the proportion of men versus women in your top 1%.
Camille Benbow wrote something on that topic (re mathematical ability and gender, I mean) years ago in the American quarterly ‘Skeptic’. If I remember rightly, the difference is half a standard deviation and has remained constant over time. Hence bigger gaps at top end of the distribution (top decile, top percentile).
If or when I find the back number containing her article, I’ll post something.
Cathal, my point is that finding differences in the standard deviation is not the same thing as finding differences in the top 1%. You have to make a variety of assumptions about the shape of IQ distributions to extrapolate from an overall variance difference (since variance is primarily determined by all the people that sit in the middle of the distribution). I just find it odd that there doesn’t seem to have been much work reported that actually looks directly at the claim, certainly in comparison to the amount that has been written arguing about it.
Of course, the other side of this is that ‘genius’ is often one part borderline autistic focus, two parts psychopathic drive to succeed, and three parts willingness to let someone else pick up the slack for you not actually acting like a regular human being… No wonder they’re mostly men…
The best thing on that thread at pharyngula concerned the correct spelling of ‘just deserts’.
Ultimately didn’t Summers resign because he lost a power struggle, rather than simply his comments about how many fewer women possess this extreme mathematical ability he regards as necessary for academic science.
“the other side of this is that ‘genius’ is often one part borderline autistic focus” etc
Yeah, which is most of what PZ is saying. It’s not just ‘intelligence’ or IQ, it’s a complex of factors, social as well as innate.
PM, dunno, probably; all I’m discussing here is what he actually said and how it got and gets reported. I do find it interesting that the BBC gets it so drastically wrong, in such a damaging way – damaging to the debate and to women, not to Summers personally.
But given your previous commenter thinking that essentially most men were smarter than women (am I remembering that right?) it seems that is how everyone takes claims about gender differences in intelligence.
Just look at the people that peddle those awful corporate pesonality tests – score slightly one side of an arbitrary cut-off on some meaningless scale and suddenly you become the diametrically opposite person to what you’d have been if you scored a few points different.
I don’t think people understand continuous distributions and normal curves – it seems they’re more comfortable with absolutes – hell even scientists aren’t immune, just look at the massive over interpretation people can put on statistically significant differences that have an absolutely trivial magnitude.
“But given your previous commenter thinking that essentially most men were smarter than women (am I remembering that right?) it seems that is how everyone takes claims about gender differences in intelligence.”
I know! That’s exactly my point. Yes, you are remembering that right, and that’s why the constant mischaracterization of what Summers said drives me crazy (me and Irrational Point, who seconded me). It may be true that there are more off-the-chart men than there are women, but that doesn’t mean that – oh what am I telling you for, you just said that. But people think it does – lots of people, clearly, including people clever enough to work for the Beeb. It’s incredibly discouraging.
Yes, people are way more comfortable with absolutes. I keep noticing that even here – when I raise questions about an issue, and people who (one would think) should know better insist on reading questions as positive assertions. It’s very odd, and disconcerting.
Seems to have turned into a spelling bee over there.
>Can that be ENTIRELY due to environment?
>Ditto for Nobel prizes in physics — virtually all male.
>Marie-Curie won half a prize, though.
Actually it was a quarter of a Nobel prize for physics. Marie and her husband Pierre Curie shared half the Nobel prize for physics in 1903, the other half going to Henri Becquerel. But, some five years after Pierre’s death in an accident, in 1911 she was awarded the unshared Nobel prize for chemistry.
http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1903/
http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1911/index.html
http://nobelprize.org/physics/articles/curie/