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Comment by halostatue | Hacker News Reader

It’s pretty easy to find at least one scientist who will deny global warming, or that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. That doesn’t make that scientist right any more than these (all male, all white) scientists.

The assertions of the author of the screed are not well-accepted, and they are not facts. They are conjecture, and the author attempted to make universals out of primarily American ways of thinking and ingrained ways of discrimination.

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I agree, it's certainly possible to find scientists who will support one stance or another, but please do read the linked article in its entirety before spreading misinformation. One of the scientists is actually a woman (and non-white btw), Debra Soh, who holds a PhD in sexual neuroscience.

Did you actually read the article I linked?

Yes. I’ve also read other articles. The stance presented by the memo author does not represent “broad” scientific consensus, it represents a pseudo-scientific basis for continued discrimination. The same thing was tried back in the 1800s to explain why certain humans should be enslaved to others.

How interesting, I have read other articles too. I am unqualified to make any authoritative claims on this subject (and many others), but people who seem to be just that appear to disagree with you.

Most arguments against the manifesto (sic) I have seen, seem to be either ad hominem or claiming some form of "discrimination" .. as in prejudice. In the light of the current discussion around gender, mostly in the US, I am just not convinced. And it seems that many people who actually are qualified agree (no, a group of self referencing "gender studies" professors does not convince).

Anyway, it's coming up 5AM here and I will not bother you further with my slave-owner-descendant misconceptions.

No, you did not read the article. You claim all scientists in the article were male scientists, while in fact one is female.

Then please link to some of these articles. You are doing what you are complaining about: merely asserting.

But they are well-accepted, and they have been for decades. If scientific consensus is any measure of truth, you should be defending his propositions with the same fervor you would global warming. Anything else is just science denialism.

They are? That's news to me.

Several of the studies he cites on biological differences in genders are well accepted, so far as I know the field. But the key conclusions that he draws from those studies (and really, the entire point of the memo) don't have any direct scientific support that I know of. Perhaps I am missing some key references. Care to provide citations for some of these?

"Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things ... These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics."

There's a citation for the first part. What's the evidence for the conclusion drawn?

"Neuroticism ... This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."

Citation for why neuroticism leads to fewer women in high stress jobs?

How about the entire "Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap" section? That contains stuff like this:

"Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things"

"Women on average are more cooperative"

"Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average"

Each of these statements (which at least hit my radar of being scientifically supported from the literature I know) is followed by some suggestions on how to improve the workplace for women. Implicit, of course, is that these aggregate scientific differences are somehow responsible for the gender gaps in tech. Any citations for why the quoted statements explain anything at all about gender differences in tech, rather than say, other STEM fields (biology? medicine? they have very different gender gaps).

It would be great to have the references I'm missing, because without them it sure appears the author is citing well accepted studies in order to make it look like his unsupported conclusions have "evidence".

Fair point. I'm here to defend the factual basis for his conclusions, not the logic that got him there.

At the end of the day, he told a just-so story; in this, he's no different than the "blame discrimination" camp. At least this story is an empirical one backed by self-reported work place surveys, cross-cultural analyses, etc. The fundamentalists opposing him just have some anecdotes, some unreproducible stereotype threat studies, and a healthy dose of religious conviction.

The views in the article represent the scientific consensus.

Scott Alexander covers some of the most salient points here:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

See Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate for a book-length treatment.

(all male, all white) scientists

This is both ad hominem and wrong (the fourth scientist featured, Dr. Debra W. Soh, is an East Asian woman).

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