It may have made the women you've talked to feel better, but personally, I'm not a fan of the idea that I'm simply less biologically capable than men in any way.
Nobody (serious) is saying that. First, when this is talked about, it's always about averages, which are meaningless from individual perspective.
Second, there are obvious biological traits where women are less capable than men on average, like weightlifting. There are also traits where women are more capable, like having kids.
These are facts though. You might also not be a fan of idea that "Earth revolves around Sun", but that's how it is.
On the other hand, I can understand your feeling. I am for example not a fan of idea that many humans are xenophobes.
There's something about the "girls can do anything" mantra (which I totally agree with!) that seems to translate to "no girl has ever been less capable than anyone at anything as long as they try hard enough." Any theory or evidence contradicting that notion is nonsense.
My daughter, who is very strong and is stronger than her brothers, wouldn’t even compete if she had to go up against men in her sport, powerlifting. It’s very obvious in that sport that sex related hormones make a difference.
People are saying that seriously a lot on HN.
Bottom line, notwithstanding ham-fisted commentary by the author, and some here, this paper is not about men exhibiting greater variability in reproductive fitness, or whatever, than women do. It's about gender differences generally among sexually dimorphic species. And given how remarkably humans are unconstrained by biological hardware, it's totally unclear how this work is relevant for us.
Also, this paper reports no observations. It's not even a review. It does list many studies and reviews, but without any substantial critique or discussion. It just presents results of some simple mathematical modeling.
And yes, perhaps the remaining author does display an agenda. But even so, the models presented are either interesting or not, regardless of the agenda. And from my reading of the history, it's arguable that the initial paper would have displayed far less agenda than the somewhat bitter version that ended up on https://arxiv.org/ .
So we should corner science off from loaded subjects? That sounds alot like what the church's position on Galileo was.
That statement speaks volumes, and probably in ways that you did not intend.
I am very short, so the same things apply to me, it doesn't mean I like it, but reality is that which doesn't go away when you deny it.
I don't like the idea men live shorter than woman, but that's reality.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
And nobody here said that women are less capable than men. The hypothesis was, that the distribution for some traits for men has more kurtosis, so while the mean is similar, there are more outliers, and to be clear, in both directions!
1. that humans are not obligated to care about each other's feelings, either. If you are pursuing a course of research that is purely hurtful and has no perceived positive impact, nobody is making you pursue it. (I don't think this paper is in this category, to be clear.)
2. that an idea is more likely to be true simply because it hurts people's feelings. The hypothesis of this paper is simply a hypothesis. It's got some evidence, but it's subject as all ideas are to future argument. "What if it's true, let's not flinch away" is a fine sentiment; "It's true, deal with it" is not.
This is not about my feeling vs your feelings, it is about your tribe vs my tribe. Simple! The whole article is about the opposing faction was obsessed about Alt-Right or Conservatives using this paper as a basis of their arguments.
I suspect, given two hypotheses- one that is politically correct and one that isn't- the politically incorrect one will be held to a much higher standard of evidence required due to confirmation bias and people acting as described in the article.
If you look at psychology, the politically incorrect results (IQ) have much better evidence despite being constantly attacked. Compare that to say, priming and sterotype threat - which everyone wanted to believe in.
That’s an extremely bad and uncharitable way of summarising patriarchal oppression. It’s not about men being nice or not, it’s about (in part) a society that assigns roles to men and women and expects girls from a young age to be less logical, less mathematical, less interested in technology, etc., thus discouraging them from pursuing scientific careers. This effect, by this point, is extremely well-founded.
That’s not to say GMVH might not also be an effect, but to restate socialised gender roles as “men are just horrible people”, and to call that more controversial, is ridiculous.
Here's one I've seen a few articles on within the past year or so. According to test data (SAT, PISA, and I believe others) on teens, girls who are at the top in science tend to also be at the top in other areas too [1]. Boys who are at the top in science tend to be more ordinary in other areas.
People in general tend to to enjoy more and go into careers in areas they are good at.
Result for boys: boys who are at the top in science are highly likely to want to go into science. It's what they are good at and enjoy.
Result for girls. For the girls at the top in science, though, it is just one of the things they are good at and enjoy, and often they are even better at those other things than they are at science. So top girls in science are more likely than top boys to pick some other area to go into.
Roughly, the top girls tend to be more rounded than the top boys. I've not seen anything on why that might be so.
[1] Anecdotally, that fits me. When I first took the SAT in high school, I got 790 on math, and a terrible 540 on verbal. I took it again to see if I could do better on verbal, and got that up to 640, which is still nothing to write home about but is at least good enough to suggest I might actually be able to write. Math dropped to 750 the second time, which was embarrassing.