I see what you're saying, but I think it's more complicated. If you start to play politics and try to be more persuasive, you are losing the moral high ground. That's why many people would prefer to play openly.
Enough time has passed that experts have had time to comprehend the original document, and it seems like James was only pretending to play openly. He misrepresented a lot of the science and put his own spin on it.
A great answer by an evolutionary biologist on how James was absolutely wrong on almost every point he made: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...
Doesn't seem like that to me. The Suzanne Sadedin's answer (which I personally find kinda hard to understand, IMHO it avoids the core argument) was the only answer (of several I read) from an actual scientist that disagreed with what Damore has wrote. Other scientists' responses either agreed or declined to comment. In particular, here: http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
I think we can say that there is a lot of disagreement in the scientific community. The memo painted a much different picture.
It's an informal reply on quora from someone we have no verification about that cites exactly one supporting scientific study - and that is about bird mating practices. The rest cites amazon bookstore pages, blogs, articles in general interest magazines, other quora responses, or wikipedia articles (which themselves actually undermine the point she was trying to make - eg skimming the stereotype threat article, consensus seems to be it isn't real). The rest is an attempt to justify calling the author a fascist racist sexist etc. etc. and thereby gloss over the actual question at hand (namely, was he right?).
My education is in physics and CS, so I am not qualified to judge what is accurate in something like evolutionary psychology. But when I see a paper that weasely, juking around the issue while engaging in personal attacks, it inclines me to believe the memo is scientifically valid and this sort of emotion based response is the only one available to its detractors.
I counted 10 supporting scientific studies, and a whole bunch of other articles that all included lots of references.
> thereby gloss over the actual question at hand (namely, was he right?)
I don't see how you can come to that conclusion. She quotes what he wrote, and then shows why he is wrong, over and over again. She doesn't juke around the issue at all.
An impressive feat. Mind sharing them?
And again, direct support - not "mating practices of birds" or "fetal hormone influence and autism" or other none sense.
And also not links to Business Insider articles, Wikipedia articles, blogs, Amazon, or anything of the sort.
You are aware you can't just make stuff up when I've read the article and examined its links right?
>I don't see how you can come to that conclusion.
You don't see how quoting a person, and then playing free association with their words to conclude they're some kind of crypto fascist fog Whistler is kind of ridiculous?
You've already admitted that you are not qualified to judge what is accurate in this context, so why do you think you can now decide that some of the studies are nonsense? All of these studies support arguments she was making.
In reverse order of appearance:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4350266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27460188
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01256568
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11...
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourna...
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~bieman/Pubs/turleyBiemanCSC94.p...
https://peerj.com/articles/cs-111/
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611416252
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-...
But an article that sleazy and loaded with weasel words and underhanded rhetorical tactics, that dances that much around the points being discussed - no one who has the facts on their side argues like that. Reading that post from beginning to end actually did more to convince me Damore was right than any other piece of writing I've seen thus far on the subject.
As to your links:
Read what you're trying to cite before blinding citing it.
Here is some of the titles of the papers you just linked to:
No relationship between prenatal androgen exposure and autistic traits
The origins of agriculture: Population growth during a period of declining health
Human Health and the Neolithic Revolution: an Overview of Impacts of the Agricultural Transition on Oral Health, Epidemiology, and the Human Body
Power Increases Infidelity Among Men and Women
Cuckolded Fathers Rare in Human Populations
As I said, basically pure none sense. The quora post is trying to blindside people with number of sources, to hide the fact they have absolutely no quality in sources.
Indeed, even the most directly pertinent link didn't really talk about the core issues raised in the memo. It instead discussed github pull requests vs. gender, which while far more related to the subject at hand than autistic dentistry (it is about sexism and the tech community), does not actually address the specific points raised by Damore's letter or support the arguments she was trying to make.
Incidentally, that study is nicely debunked here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-exci...
You've probably read http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
David P Schmitt, the only one whose work was used in the memo doesn't seem agree with the memo. His third and fourth paragraphs say that any differences between sexes is small and not relevant to work going on at google. This is a common theme with the memo. The science is correct. But James goes beyond what the science says and adds incorrect arguments and statements on top. This is the problem. And it is the kind of thing that can get you labeled as sexist or whatever.
As I go through the links, each is used to directly refute one of these incorrect additions to the science that James wrote. They don't refute the science, they refute James' added commentary.
In 'Early androgen exposure and human gender development' there is a section titled "Which human behaviors show average sex differences?" and it is very pertinent to this topic.
Lots of people have been bringing up the Androgen Exposure argument in this debate, and the second Androgen study linked was showing it is not a solved question yet. So that was also relevant.
The Human health and population growth studies were used to refute James's statements that were quoted. Etc.
I'll happily agree that the author shouldn't have used certain terms or phrases. That was unneeded and unprofessional.
https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what...
I think one of the important points is this: "The differences are much larger and more consistent for traits related to interest and enjoyment, rather than ability."
Damore argued based on this, and I hold a similar view, that gender quotas should not be used, because they don't correspond to personal preferences. This has nothing to do with abilities.
It confirms the criticisms of Damore cherry picking his sources. It appears that for almost everything he wrote there is both supporting and conflicting evidence. The fact the he only mentions the supporting evidence is a huge problem. I would expect better from a google engineer.