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The Summers Hypothesis Tina Mitra
So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.[1]Last Thursday, Harvard University President Larry Summers released the transcript of the speech he delivered at the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. However, his purported attack on the intellect of the gentler sex made national headlines long before his January 14 comments appeared on Harvard’s web site. Over the past month, I have heard Princeton women vehemently criticize Summers for suggesting that biological differences may explain the shortage of women in tenured science and engineering positions. I nodded my head politely when a professor I respect claimed that Summers’s archaic notions sickened her. I shook my head in mock disbelief when my classmates marveled that an Ivy League president would speak his sexist opinions so freely. However, as a young female scientist, I wish to express my exasperation at the backlash against President Summers. Let me begin with a personal anecdote. Toward the end of fifth grade, my teacher assigned the class a science fair project. Since fifth grade science functioned as a vague amalgamation of biology, chemistry, and physics, I had the freedom to address any scientific question in my project. I chose to study flowers (I like flowers—-blame it on western society’s stereotyped gender roles). For a month, I measured and photographed daisies growing in containers of various liquids on our dining room table, eventually pasting my graphs on a tri-fold cardboard display. Today, I don’t remember if water with aspirin or water with sugar better fostered daisy growth, and I’ve certainly forgotten who won the science fair, but I did learn something from my science fair project. It’s called the scientific method, as you probably remember from your fifth grade class: we observe, we hypothesize, we predict, and we test. I am now a junior in the Molecular Biology department pursuing a certificate in Neuroscience. Rather than photographing daisies, I isolate mutagenized plasmids in MOL Core Lab and plate mouse embryonic stem cells with my thesis adviser. Despite the complexity of these projects, the scientific method continues to guide my work and that of my fellow scientists. Or at least it should guide my fellow scientists. Without rigorous testing, and for that matter, valid controls and resolute objectivity, science would dissolve into a meaningless battle of untapped claims. Which is how I would describe the dialogue between Summers and those who have spoken against him. Summers and his opponents agree that women are underrepresented in top science and engineering positions in the academic sphere (observation). Both sides perceive this gender disparity as a problem, motivating them to explore the issue further. So, at a conference encompassing this very topic, Summers followed the flow chart of scientific inquiry and hypothesized a possible explanation for gender disparity. He did not claim to have tested his idea, but instead stated, “I would like nothing better than to be proven wrong.”[2] I have no desire to argue the merits of Summers’s hypothesis, although some scientific evidence does suggest that the sexes perform differently on verbal memory and spatial rotation tasks, with women faring better and worse, respectively. Instead, I take issue with those espousing a knee-jerk reaction to this “attack,” many of whom ironically believe that females possess biological gifts in the areas of empathy and intuition. Summers wagered a hypothesis, and they have dismissed it on the grounds of their own irritation? Is every idea they dislike categorically untrue? No one has suggested that a woman cannot excel in science or engineering, just that innate factors may affect her inclination toward those fields. Yes, many other factors are at work, and yes, Summers minimized them, but with each issue of Nature, we’re learning that biology plays a role in a variety of areas. Stanford University President John Hennessy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Susan Hockfield, and our own Shirley Tilghman released a statement encouraging readers to work toward a resolution of this gender disparity, rather than focusing on its history: “The question we must ask as a society is not ‘can women excel in math, science and engineering?’ -- Marie Curie exploded that myth a century ago -- but ‘how can we encourage more women with exceptional abilities to pursue careers in these fields?’”[3] This is indeed the question, and it is in fact, the same question about which Summers mused on January 14. As Hennessy, Hockfield, and Tilghman suggest, we need to address the cultural issues dissuading women from pursuing top positions in the sciences. However, knowledge of the biological differences between men and women might help us encourage and cater to women interested in these fields. For example, understanding how men and women learn, remember, or respond to competition would allow us to revise our teaching strategies appropriately. In other words, biology could inform our overhaul of non-female-friendly social factors. If we want to resolve this issue, we cannot create a culture that replaces unorthodox hypotheses with politically correct alternatives. The scientific method suggests that we should predict from and subsequently test Summers’ idea of gender-based variability in intrinsic science and engineering aptitude. If we were to prove him wrong, we would, I suppose, vanquish an oppressive myth designed to prevent the female race from reaching its full potential. If we find that Summers is correct, we might consequently learn how to retain women in science and engineering by accounting for biological differences in our classrooms. But ladies, if we whine rather than test, maybe we really do lack aptitude in the sciences. Tina Mitra is a Junior from San Jose, California. |
Dore: Well written here.READ Or comment via email. |
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