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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (93986)	1/19/2005 11:44:10 AM
From: one_less	Respond to of 108807

"Hmm. Seems you didn't bother to read the article ..." Apparently, he has already earned his science degree which has lifted him from any obligation to use his brain in rational discourse ... at least when his world view is challenged. I asked him if he'd like to explore the simple notion of time and eternity with me in rational discourse ... You'd a thought I was trying to kill the goose that lays his golden eggs or something. He threw a major hissy fit.

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (93986)	1/19/2005 11:47:49 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 108807

I think his mommy truck and daddy truck was pretty personal :-) The guy made a boo boo. Even if there are sex based reasons for differences in academic performance, a guy who is hiring people probably ought to be careful how he puts that out there when he 1. isn't involved in the research 2. apparently is contradicting the material presented AT the conference and 3. has a poor record hiring women. It's very common for people who are already bigoted to grasp at studies they think confirm their notions. Is this what is happening? Well, given the really tenuous nature of the research at this point, I'd say he made a poor call and it looks like bigotry even if it isn't. Part of an administrators job is PR, and knowing what kinds of things are likely to go over like a lead balloon- based on that fact alone I'd say Harvard has a problem.

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (93986)	1/19/2005 12:33:40 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Respond to of 108807

I wondered how long it would take for "bigotry" to come up after my post. I underestimated just how fast. Knee-jerk reactions travel at the speed of light. In the Globe this morning, a columnist has already equated Summers' comments with "The Bell Jar" and the controversy over race and intelligence. The man will be lucky if he doesn't end up on the rack.

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (93986)	1/19/2005 2:06:08 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 108807

What I concluded with was this : It may even be true, but coincidental or due to complex effects. Regardless, it is a minefield and a person holding a political academic position should be circumspect regarding such statements. He had declining hiring for women and it sounded like he was using pseudoscience to justify it. Replace "women" with "black" and any reasonable person would agree unless there is some other agenda. If society has unconscious or conscious bias in behavior toward women, then it may not be surprising to see this bias in society's children vis-à-vis their test scores. The unethical experiments would have to gender neutralize all societal effects and then you might have some as sad as the monkeys taken from their mothers, clasping to furry models, or in the absence of that, to a tubular structure, for comfort. My response, is OK, so what?