Thursday I stirred the pot and linked to some dredged-up Larry Summers controversy (It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time); I was dealing with a cold and didn’t include commentary while my head was foggy.

But I’m starting to feel better, and Cherish has raised some points and so here’s what my thinking behind this was.

One of the confounding issues here is the source amnesia that is going on — we remember statements made by non-credible sources, and forget the source before we forget the statement. We remember things not because they are true, but because they are repeated, and with that comes myths and falsehoods stuck in our memory. We all “know” Al Gore invented the internet, but fewer know that Gore didn’t actually claim that. The Summers controversy is similar. (And when I taught, I discovered that my students had a “not” filter: if you told them “X is not true,” the first thing they would do is forget the negation and thereafter believe that “X is true.”) So the first order of business is to read what he actually said, rather than rely on what we remember, or what others repeatedly told us he said.

Secondly, a disclaimer. Sexism and discrimination exist. Of this I have no doubt. I’ve seen it happen, both in academia and elsewhere (Sheesh, I was in the military, which is (still) a bastion for such behavior). I don’t like it, and try not to be a practitioner. Nothing in this should be misconstrued to think I’m denying or condoning such behavior.

The problem is this: there are times when the discussion about disparity of representation in areas of STEM (particularly academia) begins and ends with sex discrimination, and I have a problem with that. What I don’t understand why how other scientists don’t take issue with dismissal of requests to look at the situation scientifically, as with an attitude of not looking at other data, or how raising a question of “Have we looked at X?” is shouted down.
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