While it would be a good exercise to dissect the particular ways in which Tierney is wrong and stupid and needs to shut his stupid face forever, PZ Meyers has actually done a far better job of that than I could. Since Tierney's column ultimately boils down to the claim that gender inequity in science isn't bad, because gender actually does predict ability in the sciences, Meyers rather deftly shifts the argument to wealth, a much better predictor. I rarely like writing where the thesis doesn't come till the end, but it's well done in this post, and here's what brings it home:
You see, there's a shifty little game that proponents of gender discrimination are playing. They argue that high SAT scores are indicative of success in science, and then they say that males tend to have higher math SAT scores, and therefore it is OK to encourage more men in the higher ranks of science careers…but they never get around to saying what their SAT scores were. Larry Summers could smugly lecture to a bunch of accomplished women about how men and women were different and having testicles helps you do science, but his message really was "I have an intellectual edge over you because some men are incredibly smart, and I am a man", which is a logical fallacy....We get these waves of articles touting the statistical superiority of males because some people want their club, the Men's Club, to have that prestige of being better than the Women's Club, despite the fact that their individual performance may not be better than the performance of individuals in that other, 'inferior' group.
Indeed. Tierney, incidentally, always wanted to be a scientist but went into journalism because its peer-review process was a great deal easier to sneak through. That's really a shame, John. It's too bad that you didn't have a big enough penis for science. I suppose I could let you borrow one of mine.
Boo. That's mean of me, and I'm sorry. But Myers is right, Tierney is definitely making using of one of the SunshineBoy's most favoritest* fallacies: The Ecological logical fallacy. From Tierney's post: "The gap in science seems due mainly to another difference between the sexes: men are more interested in working with things, while women are more interested in working with people." It may seem a minor difference, but for that sentence to (just) be valid, it needed to have been "more men are more interested in working with things, while more women are more interested in working with people." And that's stipulating that the data he bases that claim on is good, and that the desire to work with things rather than people actually does translate into an interest in science.
Combine that with the fact that Tierney's long-running NYTimes blog was called "Tierney Labs," and was billed as a sort of journalist research group, and that Tierney always wanted to be a scientist, and I think it's clear that Myers has him dead to rights -- Tierney wants men to be better at science than women, so that he can be better at science. I find that rather wounding. But then I remember that I'm halfway through a Master's degree in the life sciences. I also always wanted to be a scientist -- and I get to be.
* My favorite is post hoc ergo propter hoc, which as I understand it, is a kind of helicopter that allows us to reach conclusions that were previously un-leapable.
But, let me point you to another New York Times column that makes Sad Scientist happy. Olivia Judson, the brilliant author of Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice for All Creation, writes on the conservation implications of a proposed highway through the Serengeti in Tanzania. I have a tendency towards suspicion when it comes to American or European conservationists weighing in on development projects in Africa, or South America. When you get down to the bones, they seem to always be saying that developing nations should sacrifice their economic well being in order to save fragile ecosystems. There's a strong paternalist overtone of "learn from our mistakes!! Save your precious majestic landscapes!"
Judson starts out on the same refrain, and my heart sunk a little. On the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti: "It is the last great migration on Earth. But for how much longer? A large part of the migration takes place within the vast Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, and there are reports that the Tanzanian government is preparing to build a major road through the northern part of the park: through a designated wilderness area, through the migration route." The last great migration -- because the other great grasslands of the world, in North America, and northern Asia, no longer support the mixed species herds that used to roam them. Learn from our mistakes!
But after setting that theme, Judson does give us a sentence or two on how important development is to the humans living in Tanzania, and that Tanzanians do need a road. And she rescues us from our dilemma by informing us that the road that would cut through the migration is not the only proposed road, nor is it the best road proposal--that a southern route would connect more communities without disturbing the wildebeest.
My favorite part of Judson's columns are the miles of notes and links beneath them. She gives links to the plans for the Southern road, and to substantiate many of her other claims. This lends her writing a lot more substance, and lets us go on to look at her evidence. I don't know of a good reason *not* to do this in the electronic publishing format. Since using up more space isn't really an issue, and ostensibly you've done your homework and still have your list of sources available, why not give good notes at the end? In Judson's case, she may simply be in the habit of doing so; she has a biology PhD from Oxford, and so her academic habit is to leave her notes affixed. (Oh, Tierney, what's that? Yeah, Judson has a degree in the sciences, from Oxford. You can shut your stupid face now.)
Incidentally, Judson's science and society writing is pretty much always excellent. Her piece on the Personal Genome Project is great, though I think it was something of a mistake to spend so much time on Galton, give a sentence or two to the "ghastly legacy" of eugenics, and then go on to talk about personal DNA sequencing as though there were no hint of similar problems with such modern programs.
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