Back at the old blog we used to occasionally chat about the notorious speech by Harvard President Larry Summers, in which he suggested that intrinsic aptitude was a more important factor than discrimination or bias in explaining the dearth of women scientists. Examples here, here, here, here, here, and here. There was a lot of posturing and name-calling and oversimplification on either side of the debate, of course, which tended to obscure the basic fact that Summers was, as far the data goes, wildly wrong. Two favorite goalpost-moving maneuvers from his supporters were first to pretend that the argument was over the existence of innate differences, rather than whether they were more important than biases in explaining the present situation, and then to claim that Summers’ critics’ real motive was to prevent anyone from even talking about such differences, rather than simply trying to ensure that what was being said about them was correct rather than incorrect.
It was a touchstone moment, which will doubtless be returned to again and again to illustrate points about completely different issues. Here’s an example (thanks to Abby Vigneron for the pointer) from Andrew Sullivan:
DAILY KOS AND LARRY SUMMERS: It’s a small point but it helps illuminate some of the dumbness of the activist left. “Armando” of mega-blog/community board, Daily Kos, takes a dig at Larry Summers, and links to a new study on gender difference. I’m not getting into the new study here, but I will address Armando’s description of Larry Summers’ position. In a bid to be fair, Armando writes:
NOTE: Yeah I know Summers didn’t say men were smarter than women, he just said they had greater aptitude in math and the sciences than women. Huge difference.
This is one of those memes that, although demonstrably untrue, still survives. Read the transcript of Summers’ now infamous remarks. His point was not that men are better at math and the sciences than women, as Armando would have it. His point was that there is a difference not in the mean but in the standard deviation:
Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I’m sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper – looked at the book, rather – looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those – they’re all over the map, depends on which test, whether it’s math, or science, and so forth – but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates. From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%. And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations. If you do that calculation – and I have no reason to think that it couldn’t be refined in a hundred ways – you get five to one, at the high end. (My italics.)
Summers was addressing the discrete issue of why at the very high end of Ivy League math departments, there were too few women. His point, as the Harvard Crimson summarized it was that, in math and the sciences, “there are more men who are at the top and more men who are utter failures.” Armando is wrong; and he needs to correct the item. In fact, this is a good test of leftist blog credibility. Will he correct? I’ll keep you posted.
Ah yes, the good old standard-deviation argument. It’s the absolute favorite of those in the intrinsic-differences camp, since (1) it sounds kind of mathematical and impressive, and (2) they get to insist that it’s only the width of the distribution, not the mean, that is different between men and women, so really the argument doesn’t privilege men at all, while it manages to explain why they have made all the important contributions in human history. In a debate with Elizabeth Spelke at Edge, Steven Pinker rehearses the argument somewhat pedantically.
But let’s look at what the argument actually says, both explicitly and implicitly.
- Standardized tests scores reflect innate ability.
- Boys’ scores on certain tests have a larger standard deviation than girls’ scores, leading to a larger fraction of boys at the high end.
- The dearth of women scientists is explained by their smaller numbers on the high end of these tests.
Now, everyone who is familiar with the data knows that point 1 is somewhere between highly dubious and completely ridiculous; Summers himself admits as much, but it would ruin his story to dwell on it, so he soldiers on. But point 3 is interesting, and deserves to be looked at. It’s a nice part of the argument, because it’s testable. Is this difference in test scores really what explains the relative numbers of men and women in science?
Summers’ data comes from the book Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes by Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shauman. Interviewed shortly after his remarks, both Xie and Shauman were quick to criticize them, using words like “uninformed” and “simplistic.” We were fortunate enough to have Kim Shauman herself as a speaker at our Women in Science Symposium back in May. She pointed out that the studies Summers refers to can indeed be found in her book, right there in Chapter Two. But if you wanted to know whether the standard-deviation differences were actually what accounted for the dearth of women in science, you would have to read all the way to Chapter Three.
Here’s the point. By the time students are in twelfth grade, there is a substantial gap in the fraction of boys vs. girls who plan to study science in college. So it’s easy enough to ask: how much of that gap is explained by differing scores on standardized tests? Answer: none of it. Girls are much less likely than boys to plan on going into science, and Xie and Shauman find that the difference is independent of their scores on the standardized tests. In other words, even if we limit ourselves to only those students who have absolutely top-notch scores on these math/science tests, girls are much less likely than boys to be contemplating science as a career. Something is dissuading high-school girls from choosing to become scientists, and scores on standardized tests have nothing to do with it.
Now, looking at Sullivan’s post above, there’s nothing he says that is strictly incorrect. He is simply characterizing (accurately) what Summers said, not actually endorsing it. Still, he is certainly giving the wrong impression to his readers, by repeating a well-known allegation without mentioning that it is demonstrably false. It’s a small point, but it helps illustrate some of the disingenuity of the activist right. Sullivan is misleading, and he needs to correct the item. In fact, this is a good test of quasi-right-wing blog credibility. Will he correct? We’ll keep you posted.
“…a slightly lower expected position…”
Actually, in my country, girls do better than boys in the mathematical sciences.
One more clarifying sentence to the previous comment: if there is a universal error in determining the math score, and there always exists one, it is absolutely clear that the role of this error will be greater for the group that has a (much) smaller representation in the group with the highest score. What I want to say is that it is reasonable to expect that the ratio of boys vs. girls in a group with the math score in some very highly placed interval is going to be underestimated by every individual test simply because the group that is less likely to appear in this category (girl, in this case) is more likely to appear there as a consequence of a statiistical fluke or an error in the measurement of the math score. When you observe many tests and many other things that attempt to “evaluate” the chances of the individual, the statistical flukes will be smoothed.
We have many tests in colleges and elsewhere which allows us to assume that this effect is eliminated and that the same score means the same thing regardless of the group. But in every individual case, this conclusion is gonna be violated and the less-represented group will look more represented in every single test.
Also, the measurable gap between boys and girls typically starts to explode near 14 years of age. Even if you imagine that the sex/math difference is negligible before this age and even if we attribute the growing difference at the high school to the sexual development of individuals, it still remains a fact of nature and any boy or girl who is thinking realistically knows that it will occur. It is just completely natural if some of the decisions about the job actually occur already before the differences start to flourish physically simply because the people share the “social memory” where all these things are going for teenage boys and girls.
One can call it psychological discrimination, but I call it a rational expectation based on known statistical data and experience.
Kea, also note that on my blog (newest article), there are at least 2 female candidates for a physics Nobel prize in 2005 being mentioned. I know how to appreciate women as well as men for their cool achievements. Some left-wing hypocrites are only promoting some virtual women – which means women who are completely dumb because they believe 100% of the feminist trash ideology and beyond, but who declare their right to be considered as peers in sciences and elsewhere (which is completely crazy).
This is a very big difference in the focus; if I wanted to positively discriminate and support someone (and I often have the feelings that this is a right thing that should be done), it would be the real women – many of which think that feminism is an idiocy just like what I think – and especially those women who have really shown an extraordinary fluctuation made by mother Nature and who are extremely talented, bright, and skillful. In Nobel physics, this may be Vera Rubin and Lene Hau. In politics, for example, it is Margaret Thatcher or even Condoleeza Rice. But the far-left-wing bloggers will never support such women because what they care about are not women but rather their medieval egalitarian ideology.
OK, I see from the above posts that (hardly?) any seem to be from females who have graduate degrees in Physics. Well, let me humbly present my perception of the situation, as a female with a M.S. in the subject.
I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort thinking about this issue. I’ve spoken to other females in Physics grad programs and tried to be as objective as possible, taking into account factors such as their aptitude and motivation, as well as the personalities of the dramatis personnae of their (often disheartening) anecdotes.
I realize that many skirmishes, misunderstandings etc. between individuals could be attributed to clashing modes of expression which could happen irrespective of demographic classifications, but a clear overall pattern emerges all these stories: women are unwelcome in Physics. I hasten to add that not all males in Physics display this attitude, but those who contribute to the unwelcome environment factor far outnumber the others.
It seems to me that the genesis of this attitude is quite often not outright hostility or misogyny; it is more general social awkwardness. Most of these guys just appear to feel uncomfortable around women and instead of coming to terms with the female presence, find it easiest to tune it out. I have often noticed, for instance, that some professors direct their glances primarily at the male students and have not bothered to introduce me to visitors when I was planted right smack in the midst of a group.
Whatever the individual personality traits of these women the unwelcoming males seems to have a reason for not recognizing them as valid members of the program. Either she’s not considered smart enough, or her smarts are a threat to these males. She’s either a loud obnoxious b***h or too passive to make her presence felt. Either she’s not feminine enough to take notice of, or too alluring to be a serious member of the Physics community.
Until there is a dramatic reduction in the fraction of Physics people who have these attitudes, I see no appreciable change forthcoming in the representation of women in Physics. I’m not waiting to see a 50-50 representation, only a reduction in the attrition rate of talented women. Yes, I agree that self-selection (influenced by social pressures?) and the exiegencies of the female biological clock contribute to the poor representation of women in Physics but the unwelcome atmosphere seems to the main factor.
“…also note that on my blog (newest article), there are at least 2 female candidates for a physics Nobel prize in 2005 being mentioned…”
Yes, we all know you’re really a sweet guy, Lubos. But I fail to see how your chuminess with your lovely companions can be used as an argument in favour of your being more right than the rest of us.
Citrine, you raise an important point that I think deserves further exploration. Physicists — students as well as professors — are generally pretty weak in the social dimension. This was probably the leading factor in my decision not to accept my advisor’s urging that I pursue a doctorate after receiving my master’s. I didn’t want to become like the physicists I saw.
This observation has been confirmed by later experience. I once attended a reunion of the physics students from my old undergrad days, and I was deeply disturbed after speaking with my old professors. With one prominent exception, these men whom I had considered to be giants when I was an undergraduate seemed so much smaller when I saw them as an adult. They had an emotional flatness to them; I could not establish any kind of human connection with these people. Despite my love of physics, I am glad that I chose not to pursue that field; had I done so, I would have ended up as stunted a human being as the many physicists I have known through the years. It’s funny — I can appreciate their genius and even like them for their passion, their intensity, and their intellect. But emotionally, these people are klutzes.
Perhaps this is what’s going on here. Not any deliberate, conscious effort to drive women away. Instead, a kind of emotional obtuseness that leads to all sorts of offputting behaviors. I suspect that most physicists really want to do the right thing, but they just don’t know how to go about doing it. And in their emotional clumsiness they step on a lot of toes.
So here’s my proposed hypothesis: physicists are not consciously sexist. Consciously, they really are sincere in their desire to bring more women into the fold. But they represent the bottom of the barrel when it comes to social reasoning skills, and their social incompetence leads them to say and do things that some people find really obnoxious. This doesn’t affect males much because they’re just as clueless. But it can have a profound impact on women who aren’t as desensitized.
Think of it as a big dance with these oafs all stepping on each other’s toes, but they don’t even notice because they all wear huge clodhopper boots. When a ballerina tries to dance with these oafs, she gets stomped on and eventually departs the dance in disgust.
Hi Chris,
I like your analogy! Yes, I too think that the social awkwardness/ cluelessness of the majority(?) of males in Physics generally tends to bother their male peers less than the females. With extended contact within the same circles, these behaviors tend to become feedback loops.
Your ballerina example holds strange significance for me. I originally decided to do grad studies in Astrophysics but ended up going into General Relativity. I happened to notice that many people in GR seem to exist so intensely in their heads that even their physical movements seem disjointed. I worried that I might end up the same way and signed up for ballet classes at college. (Once the instructor demonstrated how we were to move our pointed feet and asked us to describe the curve. I remarked that it was a parabola and got strange looks from the entire class.)
Kea, citrine, Sleeps with butterflies, and everyone — thanks for chiming in, especially for the anthropological know-how. Some of these comments serve as an excellent reminder of the barriers that clearly exist for women who wish to enter science, and how difficult it will be to get people to understand what is really going on. People love to concoct elaborate theories of human behavior on the basis of their own guesswork and a few pieces of anecdotal evidence, plus some just-so stories about the heroic exploits of their hunter-gatherer ancestors. And on the basis of these theories, and an unwavering faith in their own personal egalitarian virtue, they become convinced that the conditions around them are not really influenced by social factors, but are simply states of nature.
You can point out to them all you want that their ideas about women’s innate inferiority (or lack of competitiveness, or whatever) are hypotheses that, like any good scientific theory, make predictions. For example, that the fraction of women in science should be similar from country to country, and that it should be steady over time, and that it shouldn’t matter whether girls go to co-ed or single-sex schools, and that success should be correlated with test scores, and that the fraction of women should continue to decrease as you climb the academic ladder, and that a smaller percentage of women should switch into physics, and that the disparities we see in the physical sciences should be similarly reflected in other high-competition fields like law and medicine. And then you can point out the them that none of these predictions is true. And then you can suggest an alternative hypothesis, pointing to the overwhelming evidence of persistent and discriminatory systematic biases.
But none of it will change their minds one bit. Against a strongly-held prejudice, no amount of evidence will be persuasive. But it’s worth it to keep trying — not everyone is an implacable ideologue.
I’d like to point out that you’re not actually reading what I’m writing, despite the fact that I know much more about what we’re talking about than you clearly do. Using one source is never a good idea in the field of science.
Thanks, Sean!
Sean, I think your analysis in regards to hypotheses and predictions runs into problems when applied to a topic as complex as gender differences in society. Yes, every hypothesis suggests predictions, but in massively multivariate problems such as these, there is no way to isolate any single factor or prepare a controlled experiment. The performance of any individual is completely beyond the reach of any analysis; there is just no way we can make a prediction about that individual based on theory. When we start working with large groups of people, especially groups that share a number of special characteristics, we can apply some of our analysis, but even then it’s impossible to do so with the rigor we enjoy in the physical sciences. So the best we can do is bring to bear all possible sources of information: paleontological, anthropological, evolutionary, and modern data. Then we put it all together in our heads and try to come up with reasonable inferences. Not proof — we can never have proof. But we can make reasonable inferences.
What makes the gender difference issue so messy is the conflation of nature and nurture issues, and the feedback loops between the two. Culture reflects and attempts to channel natural impulses in desirable directions, so it amplifies some natural forces and inhibits others. We can engage in reasonable speculation on how we got to be the way we are, but we can never prove any of these speculations. This does not render such speculations pointless; we face real problems right now, problems that require solution. If we waste all our time on, say, the “Evil Old Men” hypothesis that physics is under the control of a cabal of nasty old men who plot to destroy the careers of women physicists, then we won’t accomplish anything, because that hypothesis is manifestly absurd. It’s important for us to address the issue forthrightly and honestly. Part of that honesty requires us to acknowledge that there are native gender differences in behavior, and to factor those differences into our deliberations. We must also recognize cultural factors, for they usually play a larger role than innate factors.
The denial of innate behavioral differences between men and women obstructs our resolution of these serious issues.
Yawn. I see you’re right, Sean.
Chris,
It is not so much about the “Evil Old Men” in physics that “plot to destroy the careers of women physicists”. The problem starts much earlier and involves the whole structure of the society. Parents often give different toys to the little gilrs than to the boys (a structural toy sharpens your mind much more than a doll). Adults sometimes make comments indicating that it is ok for a girl not to be good in math at school because, after all, she is a girl. (Just for clarification, this does not refer to my personal experience, but I know it happens, or at least it used to.) These are small things, I understand, but if they happen for a long time, they do affect, subconsciously, the predisposition of young girls to math, science, and engineering.
And then of course, there are also the practical barriers that cause many women who made it to graduate school in science to give up at some point, or take a less stressful route outside of academia, in order to accommodate the needs of their partners/families. It has been said before that in the older generations one had “two people working on one career”, so it may sound trite to repeat it here, but it has been so much rooted in society, that I will. Just as an example: In my years in physics, I had to move several times between labs and universities, and most of the these times, the move involved also a move across the Atlantic, in either direction. So did many other colleagues of mine. In most cases of my male colleagues, however, it was expected that their partner would follow them, even if she had her own graduate studies or career to tend to. Sometimes taking a lesser job, sometimes without a job prospect at all. I guess you would call this “self-deselection” by women. I call it the effect of centuries of society’s expectations from women.
We all know the difficulties that women had in the earlier part of the 20th century to break the glass into math and science (sometimes even publishing under male names, either fictitious, or of their male colleagues). Discrimination that happened for centuries has lasting effects in the way people think, often without even realizing it. But on top of having to break the old barriers, to hear that we are not smart enough, or driven enough, or not suited in any other way, due to innate differences, to do science, is a little too much.
Dear citrine,
I find your comments about men and women in physics to be a bit painful.
First of all, no men in physics have any interest to eliminate women as such. In some cases, it is only other men who are viewed as competitors because competition is often segragated to the sexes.
Second, you talk about men who are actively working to bring more women to the field. I am not one of them and I consider these acts to be an irrational piece of social engineering. The representation is what it is, and pushing the percentage in one or another direction is equally stupid in both cases.
Third, and most importantly, you talk about the “social incompetence” of men in physics. This is just outrageous. In physics, there exist certain standards how a person is thinking about issues that are related to physics itself. These standards are accessible to everyone, regardless of his or her sex. It may be that they are more typically male. But at any rate, if XY does not like this approach to the search for the truth, and the atmosphere of colliding ideas where the results are more important than some emotions or compassion, he or more typically she should not have chosen the field. Such a situation does not prove social incompetence of the male physicists but rather the scientific incompetence of XY.
According to your text, I imagine you as a person who would be teaching others that they should be deciding things not according to the usual principles of science and the results they found but according to emotions and “social competence”. I think it is very important to say openly that the people with this kind of opinion are not welcome in physics and they should not be welcome. Even the very fact that you don’t seem to have any respect for the physicists – which includes the heroes of physics – is highly worrisome.
The fairy-tales that it is the men who convince/force women to leave physics are silly. My experience shows that statistically speaking, the most problematic relations in physics are between two women, for example. These personal things have not much to do with the sex but rather different approaches to life and science. Being less focused and rational and more emotional may be a typical female characteristic, but it is one that does not usually lead to problems in personal communication because the men are designed to live with women – and typical women – quite happily. There are many other sources of problesms for the people.
Once again, your opinion that the “majority of males in physics are socially awkward and clueless” is indeed too big a problem for you to become a physicist. The biggest heroes in physics – such as Isaac Newton – could have been socially awkward according to your definition, but whoever thinks that physics and the truth are important also thinks that these superficial things are completely irrelevant.
Best
Lubos
Dear Anna,
boys and girls tend to play with different kinds of toys. Every parent with a common sense realizes that this bias exists. (Although some parents buy trucks for their daughters.) 🙂 This correlation is also known to exist from scientific experiments, see
http://schwinger.harvard.edu/~motl/cahill.pdf
Parents often tell their daughters that it is OK not to be good in math (sometimes they tell it their sons, too, but I don’t want to discuss this here). In 90% of these cases, they are telling it to daughters that would indeed have problems with math anyway. If you don’t agree with me that experience shows that most of the high school girls indeed have natural problems with math, we must be living in a different universe.
The parents are saving their daughters from frustration, and they should be thanked to. If a girl likes math and if she is good at it, she can make it anyway and I am sure that the comments that “she does not have to be good” won’t discourage it. If you don’t have to be good, it does not mean that you can’t be good. 😉
I agree that statistically, it would be more fair if the males and females were determining the solution to the “two body problems” equally often. But on the other hand, there are cases in which one of the partners has a career that “feeds” both partners, and it is more often the male.
But citrine has shown a more typical set of features that make the co-existence of physics and the “female thinking” problematic: it’s about the question whether “social competence” or “scientific integrity” is primary. For scientists, it must be the latter. And in fact, I think it should be the latter even for many people outside science. Most girls and women who are in physics agree with me that “social awkwardness” and similar things are just secondary superficial irrelevant features of individuals but the primary things are different.
Best
Lubos
Sean, don’t be silly. One half of the “predictions” that you talk about are confirmed by the data very well, and the other half of the “predictions” are not really predictions.
You say that one prediction is that the data should be equal in all countries. This is based on yet another egaliterian medieval religious dogma of yours that all nations are equal. This dogma is easily shown to be incorrect – and the average IQ of nations differ by as much as 15 (which is three times the worldwide difference of average male and female IQ). When one looks at absolutely anything, the results of different nations differ. The difference between male and female innate abilities will also depend on the nation. In reality, I don’t think that this dependence of the sexual difference on a nation is strong according to the available data.
You used an incorrect assumption to derive a “contradiction” that is not really a contradiction because it is pretty universal that the ratio of men vs. women with (math-dominated) IQ which is 40 above the national average exceeds 5 in all countries, to mention one example.
The different representation of women at physics departments etc. in different countries is more a reflection of different types of social engineering in the individual countries. The overall trend is pretty clear, and if one looks at the groups with the highest math requirements, she will see that the percentage of women is significantly smaller and no country in the current world can change it. (Otherwise the country would probably have generated some Fields medal female winners already.)
In some countries, the score of boys and girls may be equal (or even inverted) because the requirements are smaller and the tests actually measure the curve pretty near the average (where the girls are more concentrated because of their distribution’s smaller second moment). But if you approach the “high” end of the spectrum, the differences are undisputable.
In a country where the universities resemble the U.S. high schools, the ratio of women and men will be comparable to the ratio in the U.S. high schools, and the comparison may go in both ways. What a surprise.
Best wishes
Lubos
Fyodor,
just what I wrote in post #10.
Lubos,
I agree about the social awkwardness of a large fraction of the male physicists. But I find it hard to believe that this cause women to leave physics. It is sometimes a nuance, but by no way a serious factor in the discussion about “social barriers vs innate differences”.
By the way, I disagree with citrine on the following:
“She’s either a loud obnoxious b***h or too passive to make her presence felt. Either she’s not feminine enough to take notice of, or too alluring to be a serious member of the Physics community.”
I think that a woman can have a strong presence in the field without necessarily being obnoxious. And I never found a conflict between the “feminine side” and being a physicist. If a male colleague thinks that the way I look makes me less or more of a serious member of the physics community, it is really his problem, not mine.
If Lubos Motl is relying on The Bell Curve and references there-in that nations differ in their average IQ, then we are entering yet another area where he is Not Even Wrong. We can go into detail about what’s wrong in the works that The Bell Curve cites, if necessary.
But I’d like to see Motl explain the Flynn Effect. The Flynn Effect basically says that adults 50 years ago had an average IQ that is 15 points less than the average IQ today, if one uses the same normalization for the tests. So, we should either have many more geniuses today compared to back then, or else IQ doesn’t measure intelligence, it measures rank on a test in a specific population, and no one knows how to extend the ranking across populations who take the test at different times; and I suspect places.
Dear Anna,
I am very happy about your answer. Incidentally, many girls indicate that the male physicists (and mathematicians in particular) are too sissy etc. Other girls like it and some of them joined physics partly because the physicists are “nice”. This includes a judgement of the social communication skills and general attractivity of their personalities.
Among the two opinions, I tend to agree that the male physicists are more sissy than macho. And my guess is also that they *should* be more macho and it is kind of wrong that the physicists have become so modest and nice recently. 🙂 But I am not really macho myself, so this can’t be a credible criticism. 🙂
It does not sound too likely to me to think that women are either too passive or too loud (and obnoxious). This sentence was probably written by someone who is allergic against women in general because a quick statistical analysis shows that the fluctuations of women – in all sorts of characteristics – are smaller, and this includes aggressivity. Of course that some women are laughing out loudly all the time and others are quiet; but these differences are probably even bigger for the males, and this potential difference even if it exists can’t really explain much.
Of course that I know examples of all these groups of people – men who are too loud, women whose laughter is too loud, men who are too quiet, women who are too quiet and nervous. People are different.
I totally agree with your attitude that if someone is affected by some superficial characteristics to judge the presence of someone else in physics, it is his (or her) problem, not yours. Different people prefer different personal characteristics anyway, so in the large scale this probably gets averaged out. But still, it is important for the physics community to allow diversity in the way how people behave – especially because the physicists are a very diverse and in some sense bizarre community and this diversity and idiosyncracy of individuals is often important for bringing the right new ideas and ways to look at things.
This holds both for men and women, and attempts to homogenize the community – or to prescribe the way how physicists should behave socially – is counter-productive. After all, physicists are *at least* people again, and they should have the same freedoms and human rights and their own style to approach the opposite (or the same) 🙂 sex.
Finally and maybe most importantly, it seems to me that the advantages for girls exceed the disadvantages. Their small concentratation makes them highly valued as potential partners etc. No one should doubt that the boys in the male-dominated fields may have less fun in some respects. For a diversity of regular human life, it could be nice to have more girls and women around. But on the other hand, assistant professors are not allowed to date them 😉 so the argument from the previous sentence sounds kind of irrelevant for some professions, maybe not the students.
Best
Lubos
Dear Arun,
the Flynn effect is almost undountedly a real effect. People today must know much more and they have been trained to solve various tasks much more than 50 years ago. The better results show a certain combination of innate aptitude and training. There are some tests argued to be “pure g” and measure the pure aptitude and pure intelligence only. I am sceptical that it can quite be isolated (or even defined, for that matter), but “g” can certainly be isolated more or less accurately.
I can very well imagine that even the innate aptitudes are measurably higher than 50 years ago and the Flynn effect measures – more or less purely – a biological change. And maybe it measures predominantly a better training. There are however many characteristics in which the evolution is speedy. The Japanese are 20 centimeters taller than their grand-grand-fathers, for example, because of better nutrition. A higher people with higher IQ does not translate to many new “theories of relativity” simply because all the super-important theories comparable to relativity up to a certain level of difficulty have already been discovered. Our job is much harder today.
But once again, it is quite plausible that the brains today are in better shape than they were 50 years ago. What do you want to deduce out of it if it is true or if it is not true? If you want to use it as a universal humiliation of all tests, be my guest. But various tests still measure *something*; you can and you don’t need to be interested in the “something”. Lower results in various countries etc. may be a result of bad education, training in families etc. But it is definitely so difficult to separate and improve these things that such a situation is more or less equivalent to the situation where the difference is purely biological. The important point is that it can’t be traced and localized – and it can’t be changed easily. In this sense it is about biology, as long as we admit some deeply rooted social traditions to be a part of biology.
Best
Lubos
Anna, I’d like to offer some observations on your assertions re deep-seated social constraints on female advancement. First, I agree that this is a substantial issue; there remain a signficant number of parents who raise their children poorly. However, I’d like to point two ameliorating considerations:
First is the undeniable fact that there are quite a few couples who do not fit this description at all. I count five married couples among my close friends; three of them have children. In all five marriages, both partners have careers. In one of the five, the wife’s career is subordinated to the husband’s; in the other four, they worked out compromises to enable both partners to pursue their careers. In one case, the husband flew from his job in New Jersey to his home in California to enable his wife to continue her career. In two other cases, the wife and husband worked together in companies they owned. In my own case (a sixth), we alternated, moving twice to allow advancement of my wife’s career, and once to allow advancement of my own. Another couple has moved three times, in each case to further the wife’s career — but then, she was the primary breadwinner.
On the raising of children, there’s no question that these parents are doing everything possible to encourage their girls to pursue any and every possibility. One of the girls was raised with full support for her interest in astronomy (they bought her an expensive telescope and then went along with her on all her astronomy activities. She’s become quite proficient with it.) Another family has two girls and I can assure you that these girls are being raised with zero sexist prejudices.
Of course, this is all anecdotal evidence and it is not representative of the general public; I cite it only to show that some parents have substantial sensitivity to the problem. There is some progress. Not enough, to be sure, but it’s real.
There’s also a selection effect here. My impression is that the most sexist families are also the ones least likely to produce children with any interest in intellectual pursuits. These are usually socially conservative families with little interest in the life of the mind. Thus, the most oppressive sexual prejudice is dumped on children who are unlikely to go to college anyway. This doesn’t excuse the prejudice, but it does tend to diminish the detrimental effects of general social prejudice as far as physics training goes.
What we must avoid is the tendency to treat this issue in terms of blame rather than constructively. It’s all too easy to sit around and bitch about how stupid and nasty society is, or some people are. It creates a warm cozy feeling of intellectual and moral superiority, and shifts the blame for one’s problems onto others. But it solves nothing. Rather than idly bitching about the faults of others, I urge people to deal with the nitty-gritty of actually solving the problems. Examine the report on problems women face in physics cited earlier; the number one problem cited by women in physics was lack of proper day care. So that’s the number one problem to tackle. We’ve known this since the 1970s, yet some people prefer to bitch rather than work towards arranging more convenient day care. Setting up a day care center is a logistical problem well within the intellectual grasp of most physicists, and it is something that males can help with, should they wish to make a contribution. It usually costs little. What we’ve learned over the years is that large institutions can usually be cajoled into providing day care centers, while smaller groups of women can set up cooperatives.
On Evolutionary Psychology:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/gould_on_ep/
Arun, your source on evolutionary psychology is pretty trashy; that fellow seems more interesting in ranting than providing any kind of substantive analysis. Allow me to provide you with a broader and more complete bibiliography on evolutionary psychology and related work:
The Ascent of Mind, by William H. Calvin. This book didn’t make much of an impression on me. The material is solid, but Calving tries a bit too hard to be poetic. He’s certainly an authority, to be sure, and his writing is crisp.
A History of the Mind, by Nicholas Humphrey. A more general treatment of human mentation, with only secondary emphasis on phylogenetic development.
Origins of Genius, Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity. by Dean Keith Simonton. Again, not primarily about evolutionary psychology, but relies heavily on Darwinian principles in assessing the development of genius.
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. by Steven Pinker. I highly recommend this book to counter those who deny the role of nature in the nature/nurture debate. Pinker makes his case with passion, brilliance, and his usual eloquence.
THe Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller. Excellent work on sexual selection issues. Highly recommended, especially to Sleeps with Butterflies.
The Prehistory of the Mind, by Stephen Mithen. An excellent book by a top-notch archaelogist. Best presentation on mental module theory I have seen. Again, particularly recommended to Sleeps with Butterflies.
The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond. A popular work, this provides an excellent starter for those just wanting to dip their toes into the water.
Language and Species, by Derek Bickerton. This guy is the leading worker on language development, and this is his signature introductory book (although it has since been superseded) More on language than evolutionary psychology per se, it nevertheless offers a good idea of the kind of reasoning used in evolutionary psychology.
The Descent of the Child, and The Scars of Evolution, by Elaine Morgan. Morgan is the writer that professional anthropologists love to hate. While I don’t agree with her early conclusions, her later work offers some very compelling arguments. The ability of humans to hold their breath remains a major issue, in my mind, that is unaddressed by any of the conventional theories.
Origins of the MOdern Mind, by Merlin Donald. More of a philosophical work, this nevertheless offers some interesting ideas about evolution and the human brain.
The Symbolic Species, by Terrence W. Deacon. Focuses primarily on the evolution of symbolic thinking.
Why is Sex Fun? By Jared Diamond. Another popular book, this offers some good observations on gender issues from an evolutionary point of view.
Uniquely Human: the evolution of speech, thought, and selfless behavior, by Philip Lieberman. More about the evolution of human mental physiology. Solid.
Promethean Fire: reflections on the origin of mind, by Lumsden and Wilson. Something of an apologia regarding the whole sociobiology controversy, this goes well beyond Lumsden’s work of the 70s and addresses cultural issues.
An Anatomy of Thought: The origin and machinery of the mind, by Ian Glynn. This is a “big picture” book on the brain as a whole, covering a great deal of material, but lacking focus. It is not well-written.
The Runaway Brain: the evolution of human uniqueness. By Christopher Wills. Presents an interesting hypothesis that the enlarged human brain is a runaway sexual selection phenomenon, rather like the peacock’s tale. I don’t buy it, but I have to admit that the hypothesis has merit. The writing is a bit turgid.
Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, ed Lock and Peters. A massive collection of articles on all the major areas of investigation into the evolution of the human mind. Not for the faint of heart.
Mother Nature, by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Magisterial treatment of mothering behavior in humans and primates. This is not an introductory book; don’t tackle it until you’ve gotten some other stuff under your belt.
The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright. Probably the best overall introduction to evolutionary psychology, but growing a little long in the tooth.
Origins Reconsidered, by Richard Leaky and Roger Lewin. Mostly about bones, but there is some material on human mental development.
Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. by Robin Dunbar. A short, snappy little book presenting some good material on the development of social reasoning and its relationship to language.
The Evolution of Consciousness, by Robert Ornstein. This is definitely a book for the beginner, with lots of cute drawings.
Lingua ex Machina: reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the human brain. By Calvin and Bickerton. Two of the top thinkers in the field put their minds together and come up with mush. It’s hard to follow, but the book has its moments.
The Ancient Mind: elements of cognitive archeology. ed Renfrew and Zubrow. Little material here on evolutionary psychology, but it does show what can be inferred from a variety of sources.
The Prehistory of Sex, by Timothy Taylor. I’m not yet through this book, so I can’t offer an overall assessment, but so far his ideas seem reasonable enough, although I’m a little offput by his writing.
And finally, for the truly open-minded: Why Men Rule: a theory of male dominance, by Steven Goldberg. Many of the participants in this forum will have conniptions reading this book, but the guy does make some good points. I don’t buy everything he says, but he deserves consideration.
And of course, there’s always the Internet, where you can find all manner of material on the subject, some good, some bad, and you’ll never be able to tell the difference unless you already know the answers!
Fun thread. I am a computer scientist, not a physicist, anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist, or sociologist.
Evolutionary psychology tells some great “just so stories”. I loved the Pinker books. But unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it does not (yet) tend to make falsifiable predictions, and hence is not (yet) a mature science. Chris Crawford’s answers in #61 might explain the “yet”s, but won’t fly in the long run.
I’m having a hard time swallowing Lubos Motl’s claims in posts #66 and #71. I’m not familiar with the Flynn effect, and I don’t know the average IQs involved, but a 15 point change in 50 years is what, 10%? We’re not Drosphila or bacteria; can anybody really maintain that these tests are measuring innate intelligence and that there has been a 10% increase in average intelligence in 50 years? Similarly, while a significant difference in innate intelligence across isolated populations is credible, the idea that we shouldn’t be surprised by innate difference across “nations” makes no sense. If the test results vary so much across artificial (non-genetic) boundaries and across so short a time span, they are clearly not measuring innate intelligence.
In post #64, I think Lubos Motl either misunderstood or mischaracterized citrine’s point. In any social setting, including a scientific community, all parties have a reasonable expectation of appropriate social behavior. As a geek, I can safely say that geeks of all stripes have social skills and norms different from (and widely considered to be lower than) society at large. Citrine’s point is that if female physics students and physicists have a lower tolerance for inappropriate social behavior than males, they will tend away from the discipline. Lubos Motl responds by talking about scientific incompetence of the women. I don’t really see how their scientific competence even entered the discussion. Perhaps their commitment to pursuit of the discipline or some other nebulous concept, but tolerance and competence are orthogonal. Being charitable, perhaps Lubos Motl was suggesting that the rules of society at large are irrelevant, and that what female physicists “mistake” for antisocial behavior is actually just correct following of the “physics community way”. But this doesn’t diminish citrine’s point at all, and only validate’s Lubos Motl’s point up to the point of equating “doing things the way they’re done” with “scientific competence”.
Kea, I encourage you to re-read your posts and compare them to other posts from “our side” for tone and content. I think you dilute your valid points by dismissing others with ad hominem attacks. Whether Chris Crawford and evolutionary psychology are right or wrong, the substance of his posts was, well, substantive, and presented reasonably. By attacking him, instead of arguing with him, I think you weakened your own position.
Sleeps with Butterflies, great stuff, but I disagree with your last paragraph of post #37. If nothing else, we can teach each other about the differences in our socialization about the sciences, so we can work together to solve this problem. Plus, you can teach us how to behave in public. 😉