Comments on: Pharyngula on Larry Summers

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 19:56:50 +0000

Good lord, how bitter Myers is. Has he ever read Pinker’s work? How The Mind Works is full of evidence, including examples of visual illusions which provide evidence about how our eyes interpret the world right there on the very page of the book! If that’s not supporting your hypothesis what exactly would count for Myers? One must infer that anything short of a full mathematical proof is presenting a “fact-free, unsupported hypotheses”? How does Myers think people figured out how to build the house he (presumably) lives in? And Pinker’s The Blank Slate, while not as good as How The Mind Works, does contain plenty of reference to studies of twins, adopted and biological children, etc, and as others have stated, is very careful to distinguish between the arguments that biology has some effect, and that biology is the only effect, and that he is proposing the former and not the latter. Which is rather better than Myers post does. Also, any hypothesis that all the differences in the ratio of men to women in maths or engineering or physics is entirely due to sexism is rendered a bit weaker by the way in that women have flooded into law and medicine once the second wave of feminism started. Why have women being able to overcome sexism in those fields but not others? By the way, I am female and have a degree in electrical engineering, which requires a little ability in maths. I am not a practising engineer, but my change of plans was not due to any overt act of sexism – and I notice that the vast majority of men also are not practising engineers, and a majority of my male friends from engineering school are also not practising engineers now. We’re not talking about major differences between averages of the sexes here.

By: Carleton Wu

Carleton Wu — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 06:47:10 +0000

SamChevre, The “evolutionary basis for greater variance among men” has to do with the patterns we observe among other large mammals. A very successful female and one who does OK will have about the same number of offspring; however, a very successful male will have 10 times as many offspring as an average male(or more—there are numerous large mammals where the median number of offspring for a male is 0). You should not attempt to draw any conclusions from this whatsoever. Both humans and bison are “large”, but our breeding strategies are very, very different. Take, for example, our very close relative the gorilla (closer than a bison, anyway). Male gorillas are about twice as massive as females; homo sapiens males are about 25% more massive than females. So, even with this close relative, the sexual dimophism (and, presumably, other aspects of sexual selection and breeding strategies) is very different. Point being, you cannot examine random large mammals and conclude anything about primitive h. sapiens’ breeding strategies. Which, given the parental care needed to raise infants, was almost certainly nothing like bison at all… (the hunter-gatherer societies Ive read about were monogamous or mildly polygynous; they didn’t have harems or other methods for the massive male breeding success you suggest). One other point- you only mention the number of offspring, but what we should be concerned with here is the number of offspring raised to reproductive age. The ‘spread sperm everywhere’ strategy might not be a good one when parental care is very important.

By: wood turtle

wood turtle — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 22:19:50 +0000

Thanks to “the linguist” for the insider’s look at the Harvard prez. I learned a new word too “assholosity”. Should come in handy. The nature/nurture debate over the assholosity of economists is one that I am sure is on the front burner of CT issues. Regarding women’s math skills. I was told that the reason that women have trouble with math is because men are always telling them that this is six inches, and this affects their numerical and spatial capabilites.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 10:01:55 +0000

“Also note that some of your argument seems to rest on the assumption that performance is age-invariant. In Harvard-level math anyway this is not reportedly the case.” This is a good point when it comes to math… There may be real differences. I find that very easily to believe in math, where the 3D vis thing really seems to matter and really seems to be sex distributed and skills really seem to peak just when women are having kids. It’s just hard to sort that out from the frankly disgustingly widespread eagerness to believe that of course it’s empirically proven than women are dilettantes or mediocrities or god knows what else. “What is the relevance? Someone hiring a young postdoc who will carry out a research program and gain influence for the institution wants to know a) is this person smart/well-trained and b) will this person put in the unreasonable hours at the lab (maybe in another country) to beat the other bright young postdocs.” Yeah, I would not suggest they hire someone who announces an intention to have a kid that year for a postdoc, actually. That’s not really the issue, though. Well, I’m done with this discussion. It’s just putting me in an awful mood, as I tend to be rather naive and assume there’s not much discrimination or sexism. In general, I do think the “junior professors are treated like crap” factor is underrated…which would explain why it’s worst at schools like Harvard, where junior professors are treated extra super duper crappy. I wouldn’t assume that treating junior professors like crap is necessary to the pursuit of knowledge….not having co-education for centuries is not so great for the pursuit of knowledge either.

By: Cranky Observer

Cranky Observer — Mon, 24 Jan 2005 02:17:10 +0000

I’d much rather see a stern and explicit warning to young women about having children and making choices early regarding careers rather than implying that this is a matter of accommodation from the top. Too many women are being misled into thinking that the effects of child-bearing and ~~rearing are so much socially influenced that they can be overcome it with something like dilligence, social justice, and accommodating men.~~

Funny thing I have noticed about those men: just when they finish spending all that time fighting their way to the top rank with the 100hour weeks, no time with family, accolades, etc; just about the time that the institutions supporting them start to think about substantial payback – age 45 or thereabouts – they start to to take 2-3 mornings per week off to visit the cardiologist and prostate doctor. And then take 6-8 weeks off every five years or so for bypass surgery etc. And never quite recover the spunk they had at 25. While the women just keep plodding along until at least 60 or so.

Yet no one seems to complain about this. (for the record, I am a male engineer and have observed enormous amounts of explicit and implicit discrimination against women in technical fields – more than enough to overwhelm any biological differences).

Cranky

By: Mary Hope

Mary Hope — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 21:47:44 +0000

The “liberal pieties of the Academy” have never been very women friendly in any discipline. If women and men are different, then women are destined to be better at some things than males. In how many disciplines do women dominate at Harvard?

By: David Velleman

David Velleman — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 20:45:52 +0000

The Pharyngula piece is just a string of cheap shots and non sequiturs. I’m not defending Summers. He was wrong to think that the President of Harvard can set aside his title and make careless remarks on controversial topics—especially topics that bear directly on his duties as the ultimate decisionmaker in hiring and promotion at Harvard. But Myers’s tirade just shoots at a parade of straw men. Yes, there is institutional bias against women in math and science (did Summers’ deny it?). Yes, it would be foolish to think that there is a simple, quantifiable property called “math and science ability” (does that mean we shouldn’t look for subtler properties that can be quantified?). Yes, individuals vary within groups (does that mean there aren’t group differences?). Yes, correlation is not causation (you mean, Summers committed that fallacy, too?). Merys’s bottom-line position is this:

It just seems to me that the fact that women are subject to widespread, long-term bias against their scientific abilities, yet some still persevere and manage to make it, is convincing evidence that the “hypothesis” that they are innately inferior in these fields is bogus.

That’s just blatantly fallacious reasoning. The fact that women are subject to widespread bias—a fact that is not in dispute here—proves nothing one way or another about cognitive differences between the sexes. And some people are trying to investigate the possibility of those differences, in research that may have signficant payoffs—for example, in our understanding of child development. (Both autism and delayed language development are more prevalent in boys than in girls.) The backlash against Summers harms the prospects for scientific progress in the se areas. Myers profess to be an advocate for science, but in this case he is anything but.

By: rilkefan

rilkefan — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:42:57 +0000

katherine: “It is not fair to assume that you are any less devoted to your research because you are also devoted to having a family.” What is the relevance? Someone hiring a young postdoc who will carry out a research program and gain influence for the institution wants to know a) is this person smart/well-trained and b) will this person put in the unreasonable hours at the lab (maybe in another country) to beat the other bright young postdocs. Also note that some of your argument seems to rest on the assumption that performance is age-invariant. In Harvard-level math anyway this is not reportedly the case.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:26:22 +0000

Eudoxis posted this while I was writing my other post. “What ought Summers to have suggested? A dilettante track for those who are unable to commit their lives? I’d much rather see a stern and explicit warning to young women about having children and making choices early regarding careers rather than implying that this is a matter of accommodation from the top.” This attitude is the problem. Exactly this. Sexism dressed up as devotion to the search for pure knowledge. It is fair enough for women to have their progress delayed by the amount of time they take off to have kids. But in a fair society, it would cause minor delays on the same set set of tracks. It would not show that you are a dilettante who is not serious about your career or your research. It is not fair to assume that you are any less devoted to your research because you are also devoted to having a family. It is not fair to assume that because you need to work shorter hours than your husband when the kid is 6 months hold, you will also work shorter hours than your husband when the kid is 5 or 14 or away at college. It is not fair to assume that the woman in front of you is going to take time off and have kids because that’s what girls do—for all you know she may have no desire to have children. (This is true of most of the women in my husband’s Ph.D. program.) All of those assumptions are sexist, and incredibly common, and stupid. But people like Summers don’t see it. Instead, they tell themselves that it’s unfortunate that men and women aren’t equally represented, but that’s just the way things are, and Harvard must value the search for pure knowledge and truth above all—and anyway tests show that women aren’t likely to be real geniuses and aren’t as good at math. When actually the tests are really inconclusive. And actually, you don’t do the search for pure knowledge any favors by artificially excluding women who want to have children from it. Quite the opposite.

By: rilkefan

rilkefan — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 18:20:15 +0000

katherine – the rest (or anyway more) of the theoretical variance argument comes from the fact that (as mammals) human males have basically a missing X chromosome (plus a little extra) – so anything wierd on an individual’s X won’t be regressed towards the mean.

By: john s

john s — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 18:13:09 +0000

Chris, “I’m certainly not going to discuss my colleagues or my department’s hiring history on CT”. Fair enough, but isn’t it a bit unfair then to criticise the hiring history of Harvard and Larry Summers. Sure, being head of a Bristol University dept is not the same as being President of Harvard. But can your vice chancellor tell you who to hire? Do you think Summers can specify to Harvard’s philosophy department who they can recruit? Maybe Summers could try to change the incentives. But is a university there to lead the way in gender balance or in pushing out the boundaries of knowledge? Would he be doing his job if he pushed the former at the expense of the latter?

By: washerdreyer

washerdreyer — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 18:11:37 +0000

Avoiding the difficult topics and moving on to the fun one. The linguist asks about differences between ascribing the trait of prickishness and asshole (I don’t know what suffix to add here). I think this is the same distinction drawn in the Royal Tenenbaums between being a sonuvabitch and an asshole, where sonuvabitch is taken as obviously better.

By: uglytruth

uglytruth — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:49:15 +0000

From today’s NYTimes. More fringe scientists like President Summers. Should the flaying of Ms. Judson begin now? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/opinion/23judson.html?hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position= … The interesting questions are, is there an average intrinsic difference? And how extensive is the variation? I would love to know if the averages are the same but the underlying variation is different – with members of one sex tending to be either superb or dreadful at particular sorts of thinking while members of the other are pretty good but rarely exceptional. Curiously, such a result could arise even if the forces shaping men and women have been identical. In some animals – humans and fruit flies come to mind – males have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome while females have two X’s. In females, then, extreme effects of genes on one X chromosome can be offset by the genes on the other. But in males, there’s no hiding your X. In birds and butterflies, though, it’s the other way around: females have a Z chromosome and a W chromosome, and males snooze along with two Z’s. The science of sex differences, even in fruit flies and toads, is a ferociously complex subject. It’s also famously fraught, given its malignant history. In fact, there was a time not so long ago when I would have balked at the whole enterprise: the idea there might be intrinsic cognitive differences between men and women was one I found insulting. But science is a great persuader. The jackdaws and spoon worms have forced me to change my mind. Now I’m keen to know what sets men and women apart – and no longer afraid of what we may find. Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London, is the author of “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex.”

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:41:21 +0000

John S: If you thing being HoD in a British academic department amounts to “having the top position”, then you ought to wise up. Anyway, I’m certainly not going to discuss my colleagues or my department’s hiring history on CT. What I will say, is that in the UK, hiring decisions are often dominated by the contribution the hiree might be expected to make to the next Research Assessment Excercise. And making a big contribution there may not sit very well with career breaks and family commitment. I guess the point of turning the question on me was to suggest that I’m somehow in the same position as Summers: reponsible for the functioning of the system. But I’m not: I have to take the incentives as given. people like Summers, or in the UK Vice-Chancellors and the civil servants at the DfES, are the ones who are reponsible for the incentive structure being there in the first place. They ought to be asking whether that incentive structure is seriously damaging to women’s prospects.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:36:48 +0000

Here’s one key problem: women tend to have children and have primary caretaking responsibility for young children, such that it’s harder for women to work full time than men in the most egalitarian and feminist household in the world, because of simple biology. Women are the ones who get pregnant, give birth, and store the food in their boobies—and so it is more reasonable that they take care of the night feedings. Of course raising children will require much time and effort for many years to come. But in later years, it is at least possible that men and women share responsibilities evenly. In those early years—it’s theoretically possible, as long as you have a very easy pregnancy and use breast pumps or formula and what have you. But pregnancy and giving birth are not easy things, and breast pumps are apparently godawful, and formula is not nearly as healthy for the child. If you have two kids, which is the average, this is only true for a very small % of your total career. It really should not change how far you rise, just delay it a few years. But the years when you do this, fall precisely when you are establishing yourself in your career. And if you cut way back on your work hours, you are going to have problems. If you got tenure three years later, that would be one thing, that would be fair enough. But that’s not what’s likely to happen. It’s not “oh, we can’t give her tenure, she’s a girl“—though there is some of that; there’s a chemistry prof at Harvard who doesn’t like to take female grad students into his lab because they “cry or get pregnant.” But it is an unfair disadvantage. It’s fair for it to delay your career a few years to take time off to care for yound children, but it has much more effect than it ought too. Institutional sexism, if you like. And having kids is expensive. And women taking time off leads to both a short term reduction in salary, and a risk to their long term career prospects, so you still sometimes have an expectation, in the most feminist liberal egalitarian marriages in the world, that the man is going to be the primary wage earner. So you live near the best grad school that accepts him, not the place where your career prospects are best—and later on you only apply to the law schools in that city. And maybe you ace the LSATs and get into one of the top schools in the country anyway. And maybe you are willing to live apart for a year so you can both pursue the best career opportunities available…but only for one year. And on top of the fact that he’s going to be the primary wage earner it’s harder to get academic jobs than even public interest law jobs, so after that he’s going to pick the city once again. And you will be the one to work half-time or take time off to have kids. This isn’t even really a complaint—there are compensations. You expect it will be a very rewarding thing to spend more time with your kids in early childhood. And as far as your career goes, it frees you up to work in public interest and not a firm, which is an unbelievable compensation….it’s not a coincidence that the public interest crowd at your school is so disproportionately female, and it’s not primarily because they’re better people, either. All in all you prefer your path to his. But there are plenty of other women who would prefer his path to yours, and don’t get the option, or only get the option by not having kids at all. And it’s not fair, and yes, sexist, that you may never get your dream job because of this, instead of getting it a few years later. And it’s sure as hell not because he’s smarter than you—he may well be, in this case, but that has very little to do with it.