Pinker makes some good points in this article, and explains how much of Summer's ideas are being taken too far. People are making assumptions that are not based upon fact. A quote from Pinker's article,
"Summers's critics have repeatedly mangled his suggestion that innate differences might be one cause of gender disparities (a suggestion that he drew partly from a literature review in my book, The Blank Slate) into the claim that they must be the only cause. And they have converted his suggestion that the statistical distributions of men's and women's abilities are not identical to the claim that all men are talented and all women are not--as if someone heard that women typically live longer than men and concluded that every woman lives longer than every man. Just as depressing is an apparent unfamiliarity with the rationale behind political equality, as when Hopkins sarcastically remarked that, if Summers were right, Harvard should amend its admissions policy, presumably to accept fewer women. This is a classic confusion between the factual claim that men and women are not indistinguishable and the moral claim that we ought to judge people by their individual merits rather than the statistics of their group."
The rest of the article makes many more good points.
Eric Lonergan
This article, written for Salon.com, looks at the situation of women in the sciences. The author argues that sex discrimination does not explain away the fact that less women are entering the sciences. She concludes that differences are at least partly explained by innate differences between the genders. I will link to the fifth page, which is a sort of conclusion. Sex and science
Another article that also gives an opposing viewpoint is at Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head.
An important quote I think,
"You'd expect some of these differences to show up in the brain, and they do. A study of mice published a year ago in Molecular Brain Research found that just 10 days after conception, at least 50 genes were more active in the developing brain of one sex than in the other. Comparing the findings to research on humans, the Los Angeles Times observed that "the corpus callosum, which carries communications between the two brain hemispheres, is generally larger in women's brains [than in men's]. Female brains also tend to be more symmetrical. … Men and women, on average, also possess documented differences in certain thinking tasks and in behaviors such as aggression."
Let's be clear about what this isn't. It isn't a claim about overall intelligence. Nor is it a justification for tolerating discrimination between two people of equal ability or accomplishment. Nor is it a concession that genetic handicaps can't be overcome. Nor is it a statement that girls are inferior at math and science: It doesn't dictate the limits of any individual, and it doesn't entail that men are on average better than women at math or science. It's a claim that the distribution of male scores is more spread out than the distribution of female scores—a greater percentage at both the bottom and the top. Nobody bats an eye at the overrepresentation of men in prison. But suggest that the excess might go both ways, and you're a pig."
Both the articles relate to the question about how politics should influence science. Neither of these authors insist that we shouldn't scrutinize science that shows that gender differences exist, but they agree that we should be open to the idea that innate abilities explain some of the differences. Perhaps scientists should approach these studies in the same way that the courts approach some consitutional cases. We might subject such studies to 'strict scrutiny', ie, a higher standard.
This commentary was published in Nature. It attacks a previous editorial that was published, which argues that Summers is an asset to Harvard. This author, however, focuses on the fact that Summers completely disregarded social factors when discussing gender discrimination in higher education. That is, differences between genders is not necessarily biological but may be socially caused. This relates to the previous article I posted, which at one point claims that even the biological differences between genders could be caused by differences in the relavent social situations of the genders.
Nature 434, 697 (7 April 2005)
Arrogance imperils plans for change at Harvard
Ben A. Barres
Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine
Sir:
I was disappointed by your recent Editorial ("Why Harvard needs Summers" Nature 434, 1; 2005), published in the aftermath of Harvard president Larry Summers' suggestion that women fail to advance in science because they are innately less able than men. His comments have done incalculable harm, contributing greatly to the hostile environment that causes women to leave science.
Summers' views are opposed by an avalanche of data showing that women are as capable as men in science, but often cannot succeed by merit alone because of prejudice. One study (C. Wennerås and A. Wold, Nature 387, 341−343; 1997) found that women applying for a research grant needed to be 2.5 times more productive than men in order to be considered equally competent; for many more, see Why so Slow? by Virginia Valian (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999). No wonder women are not succeeding! Summers' views amount to blaming the victim.
As Stephen Jay Gould's wonderful book The Mismeasure of Man (Norton, New York, 1996) shows, theories about the supposed innate inferiority of women and minorities invariably derive from social prejudice. Many well-meaning people have these biases and are unaware of them. We all need to be more aware of our social biases, and we all need to speak out and confront sexism and discrimination whenever we encounter them.
For this reason, I have been disappointed by the failure of our, largely male, scientific leadership to speak out about the inaccuracy of Summers' comments. "Qui tacet consentire videtur : he who keeps silent is assumed to consent" — and the silence has been deafening. It is difficult for women scientists: if they speak out, they are viewed as asking for undeserved benefits, whereas if they keep silent, progress cannot be made. That's why I think the MIT professor who brought Summers' comments to public attention, Nancy Hopkins, is a hero.
At this point, Summers' arrogant and unscholarly approach has so deeply antagonized the Harvard faculty that there is little chance he can achieve the positive changes enumerated in your Editorial.
I read an interesting article from Pinker's perspective on some of the comments Summer's made. It's not very long, so you might want to read it for yourselves.
Basically Pinker thinks that everyone is getting mad at a hypothesis that men may have a "higher statistical distribution of spatial abilities than women". However, this, Pinker believes, should not drive or enforce the discrimination of women at an individual level. He's not saying it's proven to be true, but there is enough evidence to consider the hypothesis.
There's a pretty terrific article on sex differences in the brain from 1985 available on JSTOR. The print citiation is Joseph S. Alper, "Sex Differences in Brain Asymmetry: A Critical Analysis" Feminist Studies, Volume 11: 7-37. You can search for it on JSTOR or, if you are on a university computer, you can click on this link, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0046-3663%28198521%2911%3A1%3C7%3ASDIBAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4
One of the faults of the article is that it is older, before brain imaging became powerful and popular. However, I think that the criticisms the author makes about the theory behind the science of studying sex differences are important.
The article is long, so I will summarize some of the main points. The author tries to point out that sex differences are more salient within groups than between groups, and that between group differences are very small. This leads to a discussion of the social implications of reporting sex differences. Scientists need to exercise caution when reporting their studies. They do not want to claim that one gender is better at certain tasks, because the differences are extremely small and based on the average of the group. They also do not want to claim that the differences are due to genetics because they might be due to environmental differences. (Discussed in 'Social Implications Section')
He also discusses four methodological problems with most research. (1) There is a problem with sampling. At the time the article was written most subjects were medical patients who had suffered strokes, etc. Now most participants are university students. (2) Cognitive abilities are often measured by cognitive tests. Differences in cognitive abilities may be due to differences in motivational factors across genders rather than brain differences. (3) Confounding variables can have a profound effect on the research. Determining why there are differences is different from determining that differences exist. Social factors may have an influence on brain sizes, lateralization, etc. across genders. That is, something other than gender might explain the differences. (4) Statistical analysis might show that the research is statistically significant but the difference might not be actually significant outside of the laboratory.
Those four factors tie into the earlier problems with social implications of the research. The rest of the article talks about problems with actual studies. Anyway, I think the author raises some good points for discussion.
Thanks for setting this up, Michael (Mike?)... In several conversations during class, it has seemed as though the best way to put this together is to cut it into manageable chunks, avenues of exploration, which we can all bring to the discussion. As long as everyone has read the Time article, we are all at the same place... does everyone already have an idea for what piece of the pie is theres, so to speak? - eric penniston