A Sane Take On Summers
MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins claims she was in danger of blacking out or throwing up after hearing Harvard president Lawrence Summers speculating as to why there aren't more women in math and science. This proves what...that women, in general, are hysterical and in poor health? Not any more than Summers proved or probably even intended to even suggest that any one woman is unqualified to be a math or science prof. Jacob Sullum approaches Summers' address from a more rational point of view:
This controversy is ostensibly about the ability of women to excel in math and science. But it says more about the ability of academics to engage in rational debate when confronted by views that contradict their cherished assumptions.Speaking at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers, an economist and former treasury secretary, suggested three factors that may help account for the scarcity of women on the math, physical science, and engineering faculties of leading universities. In addition to discrimination (the explanation favored by Hopkins) and the reluctance of mothers to put in the long hours required by top math and science positions, he mentioned sex-related differences in ability.
Summers' remarks may have failed the Hopkins Nausea Test, but they hold up better when judged by more scientific standards. Decades of testing have shown that boys and men tend to do better than girls and women on tasks that require spatial reasoning (e.g., mentally rotating objects) and advanced mathematical abilities. These differences are especially pronounced at the upper end of the distribution, where future scientists and mathematicians congregate.
"It has been fashionable to insist that these differences are minimal, the consequences of variations in experience during development," wrote University of Western Ontario psychologist Doreen Kimura in a 1992 Scientific American article. "The bulk of the evidence suggests, however, that the effects of sex hormones on brain organization occur so early in life that from the start the environment is acting on differently wired brains in girls and boys."
Since then, the evidence has become stronger. "A variety of data collected throughout the 1990s show that gonadal hormones...have demonstrable effects on the cognitive abilities of women and men," wrote psychologists Diane Halpern of California State University in San Bernardino and Mary LaMay of Loma Linda University in a 2000 Educational Psychology Review article. "Converging evidence from a variety of sources supports the idea that prenatal hormone levels affect patterns of cognition in sex-typical ways."
The precise contributions of early brain structure and subsequent experience are still a matter of controversy. Halpern and LaMay, for instance, suggest initial differences in aptitude may be magnified by their impact on interest, encouragement, and self-esteem. But Summers never implied the matter was settled; to the contrary, he called for further research and debate.
His critics took it personally. A Harvard senior told the Times "it's disconcerting that the man who is supposed to have your best interest in mind and is the leader of your education community thinks less of us."
Yet average group differences in ability do not imply a judgment about any particular individual, since there is still much overlap between the sexes. Although men predominate in the upper echelons of math and science, that doesn't mean the women who make it are any less qualified. The situation could change, of course, if the demand for gender balance leads universities to select faculty members based on their sex.
Given the implications for attempts to achieve faculty "diversity" (a goal to which Summers pledges allegiance), it's not surprising that the subject of sex differences in math and science aptitude provokes strong feelings among academics. But that is not all it should provoke.
"I think if you come to participate in a research conference," Georgia State University economist Paula Stephan told the Times, "you should expect speakers to present hypotheses that you may not agree with and then discuss them on the basis of research findings." Surely that is not demanding too much of people who consider themselves scientists.
“Initial differences in aptitude may be magnified by their impact on interest, encouragement, and self-esteem. But Summers never implied the matter was settled; to the contrary, he called for further research and debate.”
Fair enough. Unfortunately, Summers didn’t make his call for further research in the conclusion of a peer-reviewed journal article, thus denying himself the opportunity to get rigorous advice on how to express valid speculations in a less careless way.
“The precise contributions of early brain structure” on math and science performance is indeed an unanswered empirical question. So why the hell doesn’t Summers just hunker down in a lab and get to work? Any fat-assed university administrator can speculate about the causes of gender-based differences in analytic skills. It just so happens that this particular fat ass works at Harvard. So when Summers stops to scratch his ass and fart, the world stands at attention with a microphone.
Lena at January 22, 2005 4:49 PM
McArdle came through like a sister on this one... A *big* sister.
http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005134.html
Cridland at January 22, 2005 8:10 PM
Quite a few Continental Europeans – and older expatriate Americans - look at all this with a mixture of bemusement and perplexity, of course.
Why ? It's quite simple: accrued academic luster that Harvard and other Ivy League schools had has been sadly tarnished, and "debates" such as this – whatever their intrinsic merits - are frequently considered so much hot air, because of the origin.
Serendipitously, USA Today posts this morning:
"…/… At other Ivy League schools, the percentages of A's in undergraduates courses ranges from 44% to 55%, according to Princeton's Web site. At Harvard University, 91% of seniors graduated with some kind of honors in 2001."
at
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-22-princeton-grade-inflation_x.htm
91% ?!
This is hardly the case in Continental Europe, fortunately, where, at least in France, grading practices are severe. For example, in France, only 50% of first-year undergraduate medical students are passed into second year. Period. In French universities, about 66% (depending on major) of undergraduate students overall simply do not graduate. They are flunked out in first and second year (the undergrad program is three years).
Of course, this might have as much to say about the entry level of French university students - and the parallel Grande Ecole system - as it does about grading practices, but at the end of the day … the system certainly doesn't award honors as though they were party mints. How can Harvard University justify 91% ?! How can it expect its graduates, or researchers, or administrators, to be taken seriously ?!
In a public forum (and not a semiconfidential journal) Summers, from Harvard, called for more research. Good. Let's find out more, without prejudging the results. Everyone will benefit.
He has been pilloried by the politically correct. Shame. Jimmy the Greek, wherever he is, must be shaking his head in sympathy.
L'Amerloque
L'Amerloque at January 23, 2005 8:46 AM
"the system certainly doesn't award honors as though they were party mints."
Very well put, and quite right. People in America are so busy pillorying the French that they neglect to recognize that they could actually learn a thing or two from them.
"How can Harvard University justify 91% ?! How can it expect its graduates, or researchers, or administrators, to be taken seriously ?! "
How indeed?
Amy Alkon at January 23, 2005 9:05 AM
Let us pray....
Arnie Zuckman at January 23, 2005 4:10 PM
> ...didn’t make his call for further research in
> the conclusion of a peer-reviewed journal...
Demanding that every social observation be verified by lab studies is not just lefty foolishess, the complement of Biblical literalism. It's the quintessence of technocratic obstructionism, sitting on things until they can't breath.
The days of her widest fame seem gone, but I was thinking this week about why I still admire Paglia so much. It's because she's humble: She knows that the great thrusts of humanity, in every sense, are delivered outside the realms of the intellectual and academe. Any number of 'thinkers' might scratch out a living saying funny things about the world (eg Sontag), but that doesn't mean they have anything to do with making it go.
Very few people with tenure, or a column in Vanity Fair, or a name in the index of the New York Review of Books, can admit this fundamental truth without weeping poignant (yet saltless) little tears of resentment.
PS- Amy, what do you want America to learn from the French? Put it in a sentence.
Cridland at January 23, 2005 6:05 PM
gb2
Gregg Sutter at February 5, 2005 12:18 AM