The hopelessness of quantifying scientific ability

From Sean Carroll, a physicist at my alma mater, the University of Chicago, who writes a blog called Preposterous Universe:

So, except for the fact that "scientific ability" is something hopelessly hard to quantify, I'm happy to contemplate the possibility that men have some tiny innate superiority to women when it comes to science. I am equally happy to contemplate the possibility that women have some tiny innate superiority to men when it comes to science. The point is that we have no strong evidence one way or another. It's impossible, given the current state of the art, to reliably measure "innate ability" in a way that isn't hopelessly noisy and compromised by cultural factors. It's perfectly clear that the differences between individual people are typically much larger than the difference between some hypothetical average man and average woman, just as it is perfectly obvious that the expression of innate ability is tremendously affected by social and cultural factors.

Howard Georgi of Harvard University has an essary published in the Harvard Crimson today that makes a similar argument:

1 - Talent is not a unitary thing. It is multidimensional and difficult to measure or quantify precisely.

2 - Many different kinds of talents are critical to the advancement of physics or any other science interesting enough to be worth doing.

3 - The spread of talents within any group, sex, race, etc, is very large compared to any small average differences that may exist between such groups.

4 - Talent can to be developed and enhanced by education, encouragement, self-confidence and hard work.

For these reasons, I think that it is not particularly useful to talk about innate differences to explain the differences in representation of various groups in physics. Instead, I conclude that we need to try harder to teach science in a way that nourishes as many different skills as possible.

These arguments totally demolish the concept that "innate scientific ability" is anything we can hope to measure with any degree of confidence.  Those defending Harvard President Summers' comments on the basis that he was allegedly merely asking for more research in this area are misguided.

Anyone defending Summers' dismissal of discrimination is even more mistaken.  Sean Carroll continues:

Don't these people read any history at all? Whenever some group is discriminated against by some other group, people inevitably suggest that the differences in situation can be traced to innate features distinguishing between the groups, and they are never right!  If you would like to suggest that innate differences are responsible for some current discrepancies in people's fortunes, the minimal burden you face is to acknowledge that such explanations have been spectacular failures in similar circumstances throughout history, and explain why we have compelling reasons to think the situation is different this time. Maybe it is, but the presumption is strongly against you.

Systematic biases against women in science are real. I've talked about this before, so didn't think it was worth rehearsing, but apparently there are a lot of folks who don't quite see it. They must not be looking.

Like I did earlier, but more eloquently, Carroll finds fault with Summers' argument that discrimination is not a significant cause of gender disparities:

Summers, of course, casually dismisses the idea that differences between the representation of men and women in science can be traced to systematic biases. His argument is based on rational markets: if there were a lot of talented women out there who were being discriminated against, a clever university could dominate the competition by hiring them all up, but this doesn't happen. This is the kind of idea so dumb that it could only be entertained by a professional economist. By similar logic, shouldn't smart baseball executives in the first half of the twentieth century been able to win multiple World Series by simply scooping up all of the African-American players that their racist colleagues were reluctant to hire?

Clearly, it's time to add Preposterous Universe and PZ Myers' Pharyngula (who comes through with another excellent post today on this subject) to my blogroll (that's the list of blogs on the left side of this page to those of you unfamiliar with the term).  And time to remove Mark Kleiman.

Comments

[Linnet]

Thank you for talking about this rationally. When people like Summers arrogantly dismiss evidence in favor of their own prejudices, it really pisses me off.

[debra hughson]

Ordinarily I don't get involved in online discussions about people's private parts, like brains and things, but this comment was solicited. I did catch a news clip of His Pompousness blustering down a Harvard Hall dogged by swirling controversy. Reminded me of some boys I knew in Fifth Grade, so sure of so many things and especially sure that boys are better than girls. It was how rather than what he said. Suppose he had ask the question then set off gathering data on neonatal brain structure and trying to find something meaningful to measure on a statistically valid sample. I suppose it might have provided an afternoon's worth of material for the daily talk shows but you'd still have the likes of Marie Curie winning two nobel prizes for work done in a shed out behind the boys only French Science Academy, setting the stage for her daughter to win another nobel prize. But swirling controversy? He pulled his dick in public then, when the spasm subsided, weasel-whined about how he was posing scientific hypotheses to provoke discussion. Um. So the network news, in their compulsion for every misguided viewpoint to air an opposing and equally misguided viiewpoint, interviewed a woman professor at Harvard who claimed Herr Doctor was stifling the free exchange of ideas with every apology. As if academics is a place where every idea has equal merit. We could get that done in a bar. Academia is about how some ideas are better than others and why that is so. Otherwise, schools would be teaching creation alongside evolution. Say what? In the bigger picture this is just another scene on the slow slide to the new dark age and El Presidente is the ideological heir of Cotton Mather.

[bosco pilman]

I thought it has been illegal for years to ask questions or make comments about ones marital status,children, babysitting, transportation in an interview or in the work place. this was prohibited when I worked in a gov't agency until recently. I was a supervisor. I would have been counseled, written up and severely reprimanded by management if I made any comments such as the statements made by the Harvard president.

[Peter]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Debra, it's too bad you don't get involved in these discussions more often. Thanks for dropping by.