Larry Summer vs. Jim Watson

Jim Watson and Larry Summers. Or, how I learned to hate radical academic activism because it is a crock of shit with no spine.

Both have waded into areas of pop culture that ought to be verboten to anyone who is trying to convey a complex idea to gotcha journalists - who tend to be not terribly smart, as a rule, and their focus is not to educate or inform, rather to create soap opera level drama to sell some newspapers.

I thought that Larry Summer's scalp was won only for the advancement of the very silly ideas that men and women ought to be identical. Feminists of the more radical ilk are prone to assert that women can do anything a man can. If that were all they would state, I would be all for their activism and agree whole-heartedly with them. Their overt statements of capability would be noble and pure and beyond disagreement. However, they use the guise of equal capability to project the idea that "equality" (note they are using a sleight of hand to switch capability with equality) is only achieved by mathematical representations of 50% men and 50% women. Until that measure is met - there is some sort of discrimination at work and you can fill in the blank as to who or what causes that sort of inequality. In academics, this "proof" of inequality is borne out by more men than women faculty in a department.

The reasons for disproportions in the gender representations at the faculty level are varied and complex. But I have yet to find anyone in my generation to say that capability has anything to do with the matter. Larry's point (which should not have been gender specific) was that women often have not achieved parity in percentage of representation in most academic departments because they may be confronting a complex stew of issues that includes their gender, societal norms, and personal value structure. He clearly stated that it is unfortunate that faculty people must work 80 hours a week to be successful and is there a way to develop a work-life balance where women who want to have children and be a responsible and available parent could (and should) also be successful in the academic world.

When men talk about women and their "tendencies" towards being responsible adults in terms of child-rearing as causes for disparities in gender representation in academics- the feminists turn red and start frothing. Larry's intention was right on the mark (aside from the gender specificity) - people (not only women) should be able to do good science and be good parents (or, by extension, have outside interests that they can pursue if it is not children). But his mistake was talking about women in particular. So the feminists went to town on him with every incendiary tactic they could devise. Capability (which Larry never talked about) was brought to the fore. The radical feminists and their minions never did address the 80 hour a week problem that Larry was trying to address - and that was startling in its omission in my humble opinion. The workload is the real problem here at a human level - not a gender level. No, these feminists chose to spin the argument that Larry was making the sin of talking about how women who fall away from academics because they are also wanting to raise a family and be a good parent. And I will be the first to assert that many men also fall away for the same reasons.

In an interesting aside, there are a number of areas where women and men have achieved proportional parity in academic departments. Some examples:

If one goes into any engineering school of any reputation, one will see that women are under-represented in some areas and equally represented in other areas. One clear example might be to compare electrical and chemical engineering. I graduated from NC State in Chem E. NCSU is a top ten school in Chem E. In all of my Chem E specific classes, including Thermodynamics I and II, Transport, Control, and the intro sets of 200 level classes, women and men were roughly in equal proportion. This is interesting given that NCSU has more men than women overall, and that Engineering is not supposed to attract women. But the fact remains that there were still 40-50% women in these classes. One of those women, my lab and study partner for 3 years, would regularly get a 100% on her tests - a true curve buster. But if you wandered across the street and went into the Electrical Engineering (double E), there were very few women.

Another great example: When I was at UVA as a grad student in Biomedical Engineering - women everywhere. Not only were they there, but they were publishing at an astonishing rate.

Another great example is veterinary medicine - Davis now has 70% women in any given class which is a complete change in demographics from 30 years ago when there were very few.

I'll bring up another example in biology - go to the Plant Biology dept at Davis (where I got my PhD) which is among the best in the world and you will find equal numbers of men and women - both genders succeeding using all measures.

This diversion is only to point out that there really is no bias in academics against women, per se, rather it is that women (in my opinion) who are pursuing an academic position may be focused in certain areas. Why that is - I haven't a clue. But I firmly believe that it has nothing to do with institutional bias and everything to do with a very complex mixture of choices that women confront that is probably not even on the radar screen of men. And this supports my hypothesis that women and men are equally capable in the diverse areas of science but probably are not comparable in how they approach their career choices.

A feminist would be quick to say that this disparity is because some gender-biased societal structure dissuades women in subtle ways from the sciences. But I would point to those getting a Chemical Engineering degree (widely held as among the hardest of degrees to obtain) and that, in my experience, this approaches a 50-50 split. Same goes for Plant Biology or Pediatrics or Psychology. None of those are a cake walk but all have tons of women who are top in their respective fields and equally represented in academic and working circles. But if you compared those three choices with Plant Breeding, Orthopedics or Neuroscience - these later three scientific fields (which are similar in their respective area but different in focus) are lacking in proportional representation of women.

My examples are specific to scientific areas and only to show that, maybe just maybe, women might be more selective in their interests in the sciences. Conversely, it may be that societal norms are at play here and many capable women are steered away from certain areas of academics by more sinister forces. As you could probably predict from the previous paragraph, I favor the former idea and frown upon the later.

So moving on from the diversion and Larry Summers, we now have to confront the more troubling character of the two. Jim Watson.

Here is an excerpt from CNN:

The controvery began with an October 14 interview Watson gave to the Sunday Times, which quoted him saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really."

Watson also asserted there was no reason to believe different races separated by geography should have evolved identically, and he said that while he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."

Now first of all, it is hard to find the statement by Watson in its entirety on the web. That alone tells you that the journalists, whose job is to inform, are more intent on making sure they have distilled the issue to its "key" points (remember its all a soap opera to sell papers).

But Jim Watson should have known that the old days of his ability to make cynical remarks which draw, at most, an eye roll are long gone. The new world of instant scorn via the web are at hand. Particularly when making a really really really dumb set of statements.

His apparent intention was to discuss how evolution affects intelligence as, purely, a genetic trait. His idea was that geographical isolation allows for localized adaptation and that, by his estimation, intelligence, absurdly defined as a purely genetic trait, would be unequally distributed among these discrete populations. I have a number of problems with this. But I shan't build a house of cards just to knock it down. Let's just get to the heart of the matter - intelligence is a trait that has a very strong environmental component and the genetics of it are just one factor. Anyone who is gay will understand the fundamentals of this (i.e. the genetics of same sex attaction, much like intelligence, is present in every population but its ability to be observed is highly dependent upon the environmental factors that are at play.....more simply put, gayness and intelligence are never purged from a population but they can be masked or promoted using all kinds of societal devices).

A proof that intelligence is subject to environmental whims would be that there may be a fetus with all kinds of genetically favorable alleles that would confer high intelligence, but, if said fetus was residing in a mother who smoked crack all through the pregnancy, does any geneticist think that the posited "purely" genetic trait of intelligence would overcome a hostile environment? Another example might be if a very gifted child is raised in a family where he/she was fed a continuous diet of crap food and no books might become the next Einstein? Environment most likely trumps genetics again. We can play these hypothetical games all day and night and we will still get the same result - the phenotype (observed trait) for intelligence will always have a genetic as well as a environmental component.

Watson's first problem was asserting that intelligence is a genetic trait that has no environmental influence. Am I to believe that a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry (geneticists is usually lumped into either this category or in Medicine) who has spent his whole life in genetics and molecular biology can wantonly ignore the environment as a major component in complex traits, including intelligence? He argues that geographic isolation is the factor that matters. I would argue that the horrors of colonialism and subsequent despotism has made the African continent such a mess where few can get adequate nutrition, much less an education, would preclude a meaningful comparison of intelligence between a rich and educated Westerner and a poor and starving Ethiopian. Jim's point was that "testing" supposedly proves his hypothesis. Testing of what? You actually expect me to compare a population, using a written test, of people who have enforced education (incidentally along with high rates of adequate nutrition, vaccination, preventative care, etc) against a population of people who have to deal with famine and totalitarianism daily?

As if this sin were not bad enough, he then rubs salt into the wound by asserting that African Americans are collateral evidence. Ouch. If the victimization specialists, namely, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, were ever needed to expose a legitimate institutional bias, they have been handed enough hate to work with for the next few years. Mike Nifong is small potatoes compared with Jim Watson.

Here you have a person who has used Federal funds for most of his career to advance his scientific interests and he is now spouting this non-sense rhetoric during the late autumn of his illustrious career in genetics and molecular biology - and on a book publicity tour no less. Jim is now on forced leave while the board at Cold Spring Harbor Labs (CSHL) decides his fate. What decision needs to be made? We have a preeminent geneticist who cannot put together a logical thought about how environment affects a complex trait, namely, intelligence. Said geneticist then layers on pure racial bias as "proof" of his argument. The Federal Government ought to halt all monies to CSHL immediately and continue this spending freeze until Jim Watson has been stripped from any project using Federal funds that he is even remotely associated with. This move would be good politics and better ethics. To allow someone of his stature, and I would argue coddling, to spew a fundamental flaw in basic genetics and then use racist tenets to support his flawed argument is beyond the pale - particularly when his institute operates disproportionately on Federal funds paid for by you and me.


If Barak Obama were sharp, as I think he is, he could use this as a very useful opportunity to frame a discussion about how the second largest class of entitlement benefactors of Federal dollars in America (namely, academics - the first being the military) should have their speech regulated. I refuse to accept that anyone on the Federal dole should be allowed to spout hate (and use the language of science as the method of pontification) to continue to receive funding.

And where is the outrage against Jim Watson from all the feminists who so quickly excoriated Larry Summers? Where are they? What are they doing? Probably still scratching their heads about how geographic isolation drives the evolution of traits. If they are so "informed" about gender neutrality of complex traits, shouldn't they be burning someone's bra over this? Racial bias and gender bias have the same origin. As a gay man, I would posit that homophobia could be included right along with the two previously stated forms of bias.

Larry's sin was to forward a nuanced discussion about developing a work-life balance that would allow women (and, as he failed to mention overtly, men) to succeed in academics. Jim Watson, on the other hand, projects a flawed hypothesis about the evolution of intelligence in genetic terms while ignoring the environmental factors and uses racist tenets as his support.

It is a sad day for academics. And a sadder day for radical activism. Jim thought that he could couch the discussion in genetics and get away with it....and he really has if we don't see a meaningful response from the academic zealots. For if they don't see the very real advancement of hate and racial bias that has been presented, then their PhDs are useless.