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Women in Science - counterpunch

By razib on July 16, 2006.

Over at GNXP Classic Agnostic has an extensive post up on the "women in science" controversy. I will admit to prodding him on this issue as I've been receiving emails (and comments) where people want me to "address" it. But time is finite...and I'm rereading Genetical Theory as well as hitting some George C. Williams, and I'm about as interested in getting "into it" as I am in arguing about Creationism. James F. Crow speaks for me:

Two populations may have a large overlap and differ only slightly in their means. Still, the most outstanding individuals will tend to come from the population with the higher mean.

All I would add to that is that the mean is the only parameter of interest, variance is perhaps more important in the context of sex differences. My post on distributions sketches out the general outline of my thinking. Perhaps I'll get interested in these public policy topics at some point in the future, but at this point there's real science being done that I don't know jack shit about, so until that's out of the way....

(P.S. I expect that discussion on this topic will occur on the other blog, so I've closed comments for this thread)

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