The Summers myth echoes

The media's distortion of what former Harvard president Larry Summers said about women's representation among math and science faculty continues.

In December, the New York Times said the "idea voiced" by Summers was that "women over all are handicapped as scientists because as a group they are somehow innately deficient in mathematics." Then, earlier this month, the Times wrote that Summers had suggested "that a lack of intrinsic aptitude could help explain why fewer women than men reach the top ranks of science and math in universities."

Here are two recent examples spurred by the hiring of new Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust. On National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" yesterday, co-host Renee Montagne said "His presidency [Summers] was marked by controversy, notably his remarks that women might not have aptitude for the sciences." Similarly, syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman wrote that "President Larry Summers suggested that a lack of 'intrinsic aptitude' was partly why few women made it in academic science."

The impression that these statements leave is that Summers said women are not as good at math and science as men. But as I've pointed out before, that's not accurate. Summers did not state that women are "innately deficient" in math and science, that they have "a lack of intrinsic aptitude," or that they "might not have aptitude for the sciences." (You should be suspicious when reporters exclusively paraphrase a controversial statement -- see the Al Gore Internet myth, for example.) In statistical terms, he did not argue that average (mean) ability was different between genders.

Summers actually made a more subtle argument that the variability of mathematical and scientific ability may differ between genders, which means that there could be more men at the high and low end. In statistical terms, he suggested that the variance of "intrinsic aptitude" might be greater for men. That claim may be wrong or offensive, but it's a more complicated one than what the media is attributing to him. Unfortunately, most reporters don't understand statistics and haven't read what Summers actually said, and so we get these distorted paraphrases instead.

Comments

[Kisil]

I've heard it's actually worse than this, though I haven't actually read his controversial speech. Not only was the argument itself misrepresented, Summers was supposedly listing it as only one of several competing theories that needed to be addressed. [Again, I'm told that] he didn't actually assert any of these theories as something he believed personally; he was merely setting the stage for a conference on female involvement in the sciences.

[JJ Kahala]

This is silly. I've read and reread Summers' remarks and still can't side with his supporters.

He did give voice to an idea that has no basis in the literature. I don't see the problem there.

Furthermore, you know you're grasping at straws when you suggest that because Summers wasn't talking about means or medians but about distributions, all reporters have gotten him wrong/the remarks aren't ignorant/etc.

Summers was insufficiently sympathetic to academic culture. That's no a moral failing; academia is pretty ridiculous from any number of perspectives. It was, however, a leadership failure.