Women not best scientists-Harvard Prez

<p>Not going to be a fun week.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.local6.com/education/4090001/detail.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.local6.com/education/4090001/detail.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>He is a little too full of himself.</p>

<p>Wow, that's pretty amazing. I guess he hasn't met my friend, a Harvard alumnus, who has had a very successful career as an astrophysicist and college professor. And, she played with DOLLS when she was a little girl too. I can't wait to see what she has to say about this article! :)</p>

<p>Sigh, I am afraid to find out what the prospective students I'll be interviewing will say about the article....</p>

<p>That is horrible. I know his daughters, and they are very smart (although I am not sure if they are interested in science)!</p>

<p>Somewhere in Cambridge a village is missing its idiot. It just goes to show no matter how educated a person is, they still have a lot more to learn.</p>

<p>This could be a job killer IMHO.</p>

<p>I just reread the article and checked the poll results. Most people dd not find it offensive!</p>

<p>The truck anecdote does not support his theory at all- it just makes him seem dumb. How are trucks/dolls preferences at all related to women in science?!</p>

<p>The point that he makes -- that women may perhaps be different from men in terms of aptitudes and interests naturally -- has a lot to do with women in science. He tries to make it clear that they are not his opinions, and that he was simply naming some hypotheses in the field, though I doubt him on this count.</p>

<p>Or is it just not politically correct to state the truth? Based on my observation it seems that a greater percentage of the male population is interested in science and engineering than is the percentage of female population. Can any of you give a logical explanation for this difference?</p>

<p>Thinkingoutloud: Part of the reason that boys are seen as more likely to excel in the sciences is because that is what has come to be expected. This thread also exists in the parents' forum, and someone there mentioned that studies have shown that girls perform better in science related tests when boys are not in the room. This all goes back to the nature versus nurture argument.</p>

<p>Ha ha. I challenge anybody to provide any empirical evidence that would counter his well documented ascertain. If he be guilty of anything it would be for his accidental wandering off from the "Liberal Thought Plantation". And we all know THAT'S JUST NOT ALLOWED! at our elite universities. </p>

<p>Political Correctness is a harmful intentioned, bold-faced lie.</p>

<p>I wish i could remember where I read this, but a while ago, I read about a study that looked at this issue in an interesting light. A group of males and females, all of whom possessed exceptional math ability, were tracked from childhood to post-college. In college, the males tended to major in math or science and enter math-based professions, such as engineering. The females, although they possessed the same great math/science ability as the males, slowly lost interest in math and science, drifted towards humanities-based majors in college and subsequently did not choose enter math-based professions. This could be because of our society's expectations. Or, perhaps the differences in males' and females' brains may not necessarily affect innate intelligence in certain areas; perhaps they simply drive males and females to pursue different ways of thinking.</p>

<p>There is another thread on this. I was offended even more by the comment made by the organizer of the event, a Harvard professor, in response to women who walked out after hearing Summers:</p>

<p>"The organizer of the conference, Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman, described Summers' critics as activists whose sensibilities might be at odds with intellectual debate."
These "activists" who can't engage in "intellectual debate" because of their "sensibilities" (probably too hysterical? PMS? a case of the vapors?) are the president of MIT and the Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz!</p>

<p>don't you guys think this is getting a little blown out of proportion?</p>

<p>You think as such an academic mind he'd know not to say things like that... it's people like him who fuel discrimination. Look where it got them in Montreal... 14 female engineering students murdered by a man who "hated feminists" because he didn't get into the school.</p>

<p>suddenly i no longer want to go to Harvard anymore. In a world where douchebags still think and make claims like that, it feels as if we stepped backwards in terms of women's rights. Personally, I feel it is cultural and societal pressure that often pushes men into math/sciences/engineering and women into the humanities. Do not forget that it only about 80-90 years ago that women were not allowed to vote. Sexism is still inherently built into the system that we all go through.</p>

<p>yea, i agree those comments were inappropriate. but how are claims like these impeding on women's rights. as far as i know, women are encouraged and welcome to study science and math.</p>

<p>A few of observations:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Emotional reactions to a hypothesis tell us little about the validity of the hypothesis.</p></li>
<li><p>There are a number of studies that suggest that while men and women have approximately the same average IQ, the standard deviation for men's IQ's is greater, meaning that men are overrepresented at both tails of the bell curve. There have always been significantly more boys than girls in special education classes as well as in engineering classes. </p></li>
<li><p>I remember reading that before the SAT was recentered in 1995, the number of males who scored over 700 on the math section was something like 8 times as high as the number of females. </p></li>
<li><p>There's other evidence that men's brains and women's brains tend to be organized differently. An example: men are far more likely than women to suffer from aphasia after a stroke, suggesting that women's speech centers in the brain are less localized.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Women are decidedly more relationship oriented. Maybe even with identical math aptitude women just opt for more people oriented careers. Engineers, scientists, and math researchers (maybe all researchers?) are not the most social folks, generally.</p>

<p>Anyone recall the study where they put two chairs side by side but facing the same direction in a room? First they sent several sets of two males in with instructions to sit on the chairs and wait for further instruction. The men sat in the chairs and waited. Then they did it with several sets of women, all of whom immediately, upon sitting down, turned their chairs to face each other so they could converse. I found this kind of striking.</p>

<p>Anyway, men and women are equal but clearly not the same. I don't fault this guy.</p>