More on Ben Barres's Nature Editorial

Eugene Volokh from The Volokh Conspiracy has weighed in on the recent Nature editorial by Ben Barres that I commented about before. The editorial is about whether it was right for Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, to discuss the possibility of innate gender differences in the gender disparity in science. He agrees with Dr. Barres's evidence but is concerned about the standard we set when we prohibit discussion of scientific topics. Money quote:

Now I understand part of people's concern about discussion of innate gender differences: If certain students get alienated or dispirited enough by such statements, for instance because they're insulted by them or because they wrongly infer that such assertions about broad populations mean that they themselves have no future in some field, they may stay away from certain fields, or certain universities. I do think there are social factors that push many girls and women away from science and engineering, and I think those factors are costly for universities and for society as a whole. Universities and other institutions should work hard to diminish these factors, and to encourage people with mathematical and scientific aptitude -- boys and girls alike -- to go into math and science (plus encourage people without such aptitude to nonetheless get some decent grasp of the basics).

Such efforts on the part of university, however, should not come at the expense of constraining academic debate about very important scientific issues such as the interaction of gender and cognition. If some students are offended by scientific theories faculty propose, they should be taught to respond with research, analysis, and (if the theories are wrong as well as offensive) rebuttal, not alienation. If some students are dispirited by the implications of those theories, they should be taught to understand the limits of those implications. If some students are concerned about sex discrimination both in society and in their institutions, they should certainly fight it (including by researching the matter, and seeing to what extent any observed disparities flow from discrimination, and to what extent, if any, they may flow from genuine biological differences).

But students should never be taught that apparently dangerous ideas about what is true ought to be fought through suppression, rather than investigation and (when called for) rebuttal. And that brings us to one other problem with Prof. Barres' proposal: (4) It would teach the next generation of scientists the wrong approach to science -- an approach that urges them to premature certainty rather than constant doubt and inquiry, and an approach that urges them to suppress contrary views rather than rebut them. That's a poor service to all students, whether male or female.

Read the whole thing.