Proof

[ZSorenson]

Proof Edited May 10, 2010 by ZSorenson

[L-C]

"It is research that is guaranteed to delight men - and infuriate the women in their lives."

The first sentence is quite telling. Why would someone be delighted or infuriated at a given fact, one that has been in effect all along whether or not we've known about it so far?

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There should be a rule in the forum for innacurate and misleading topic titles.

[SapereAude]

I don't know that this study could have possibly had enough controls to be valid.

[Blinky]

I have not read the study but from the article several things strike me as somewhat suspicious.

First of all the data can be explained differently then by stating that men are smarter than women. Since the research was done with results of university aptitude test, selection might have easily played a role. If more women try to go to university (that means those who are not that smart as well) you would find better results of men than women as well and it would have nothing to do with men being smarter. Other possible explanation is based on the "fact" that intelligence of men is more variable than that of women. If only people with IQ bigger than some value try to go to university (and do the test) than that may lead to men having higher test scores. An example might be helpful: Suppose that there are three boys and three girls with same mean IQ and boys having bigger variability of IQ. Boys may have IQ for example 90, 100, 110 and girls 95, 100, 105 (both sexes have mean IQ of 100). But suppose that there is a threshold for those who try to go to university (or do the test) of 92. Then the most stupid boy does not do the test and mean IQ of boys rise to 105, while IQ of girls stays at 100 because all of them have higher IQ than the threshold.

The explanations I described would explain why the difference was found in study of adolescents but not in the study of childs (about which is written in the article as well). Furthermore bigger variability of men's IQ explains why there are more exceptional chess players, scientists and so on and on in male population than in women population.

Some of evolutionary explanations at the end of the article are just plain stupid, ex post, and useless.

Note that I don't know whether some of my concerns weren't adressed in his article (if the research was published).

I do think that political correctness harms science and sex and race differences are good examples, but bad research and unfounded conclusions don't help either.

Hope I clarified the issue at least a bit and forgive my English (if I made any mistakes).

[mindcruzer]

What difference does it make either way? It affects nothing.