Newcombe’s article has an unusually neutral position. Newcombe talks about Lawrence Summer’s argument and the negative influence of itsmisinterpretation. She mainly evaluates the interpretation that sex difference of intelligence is biological based and unchangeable. She points out that there is little evidence of extant biological explanations and she argues that though sex difference can be eliminated through training, intelligence ability is one of many elements that contribute to science success so we should more focus on education. Many parts of her analysis convinces me. However, the effort to contain opposite viewpoints makes her article confusing and her rejection lack linkage. Although I believe in the authenticity of evolution psychology theory and think that it can explain differences between men and women, it should not be the only factor focused on today. The veracity of biological evidence should never be obstacle for women in their career lives. Newcombe’s rejection approach is good but she arrives at it for the wrong reasons.

Newcombe over looks the differences in division of men and women’s social labors. Evolution theory says that primitive men target at prey to hunt and women search for fruit without targeting at certain objects, so such different duties has improved men’s spatial ability. Newcombe believes that men do not usually use spatial ability to hunt and women need spatial ability too to search for food. Yet her assumption is more farfetched. First, opposite to the author’s inference that men use traps rather than follow the prey to hunt, in many primitive tribes today, men follow prey for three to four days and use spears to kill it. Second, focusing on a fruit and quickly switch to another is very different from aiming at one target for a long time. Women and men may have different types of searching ability. Research shows that women are better at finding objects in brand visual field while men are better at focusing on one target, which fit in the evolutionary theory. I believe the evolution theory because it exists. In nature, many species have distinct difference among male and female. Female insects usually have much bigger volume and are more aggressive for breeding offspring. Male mammals usually have stronger body to protect their occupation of mate partner and their children. Among the same species, we should not overlook the difference between male and female.

Author’s claim that men don’t need spatial ability to find women for reproduction and gain reproductive advantage ignores opposite evidence either, for men need to trek between different tribes to find female spouse. The author disputes the generalization to human from an experiment that shows male vole, who needs to search for female to mate, has better spatial ability than female. Female human, unlike vole, live in a tribe rather live separately. Yet though human females live in tribe, marriage usually won’t happen in the same tribe, so male still need spatial ability to find female in other tribes. Also, research reveals that women tend to find stronger, more athletic men; such tendency has imprinted on female’s unconscious mind. Such physical advantages include ability to hunt, which engaged with spatial ability. A simple question, if spatial ability fails to give men productive advantage, how could it maintains in gene, and spread all tribes across the world?I think men actually gain some productive advantages.

Although the correlation between spatial ability and biological basis is unclear now, it is hasty to link it just to accident. True, some gene mutation happens, but the actual accidents will be weed out and the ones conserve have pass through nature selection. Moreover, to analogize spatial and acne is improper. Acne is a skin disease but spatial ability is an inner element that can affect our behavior in many dimensions. Moreover, acne may not be an accidental as it linked to male’s high metabolism in adolescence. Thus, like acne, spatial ability is likely linked to certain function that important to male. In a word, distinctive spatial ability is not accident.

Other than her rejection to evolutional theory, her objection to other biological theories conflicts with each other, as she implies sex difference appears at older age as maturational without intention to focus on that. Arguing whether sex difference emerges at early ages is caused by biological basis, Newcombe refutes the biological theory by saying that early-emerging effect is more likely produced by environment, and late-emerging effect is more maturational. However, such argument mixes with following statement: more obvious sex difference emerges in middle and high school. Such statements convey the information Newcombe doesn’t mean to highlight: sex difference in older age period is maturational.

Though Newcombe’s arguments lack linkage, her main point that we should not focus on unchangeable sex difference and that it doesn’t link to scientific success reminds me of the nature of serendipity in science, thus highlighting that sex difference is meaningless, even harmful. She compromises that the sex difference can be hard to eliminate even by such training, yet it never has had a dominant effect to academic success. We fail to state a linkage between intelligence and scientific success. First of all, does science retain the most intelligent brains? Fifty percent students in Princeton University choose careers in financial field.(Rampell) Science has become unpopular among smart students due to its low salary and arduous laboratory work. We will find it hard to prove that people in science field are intelligent. Moreover, can we imply a correlation between intelligence and success? Probably not. Proof by fact, success is more related with chance rather intelligence, just like success of science. Most scientific success is rather serendipity than result of wisdom, such serendipity more reflecting diligence of scientists rather than intelligence. For example, the discovery of nylon. However, I have to compromise that the science successes is circumscribed at science field, as success of mathematics is more related to intelligence.We can infer from the truth that focusing on women’s weakness is only meaningless and will truly become an obstacle for women scientists.

In “Taking Science Seriously”, Newcombe fails to refute the evolutional theory by strong evidence. But her opinion about limited correlation between spatial ability and science success is right. She fails to use the right reasons to approach her purpose as decrease the influence of biological sex difference theory. Based on fact, there are many factors influence a scientist’s career success, and intelligence may just play part role. And the research about biological explanation for sex difference in spatial ability is endless. We are hard to find a perfect answer. In contrary, we shall focus on how to retain intelligent group in science and how to train both men and women to improve their ability as part of them will become next generation of scientists.

Citation:

Newcombe, Sex differences in spatial ability and spatial activities in Why there are few women in science? Ceci and William

Catherine Rampell, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/out-of-harvard-and-into-finance/?_r=0

What if I asked about your attitude toward Lawrence Summer’s address that women’s innate reasons cause their absence in science? Well, the issue has been debated again and again that even for the same argument, there are lots of different explanations. Sex, math, and science, an academic response of Lawrence Summer’s assertion, points out Spelke’s belief that it is not cognitive difference but social discrimination causes women’s absence in science. Her statements that gender schema and discrimination are reasons for the phenomenon are very convincing, but part of her statements lack logic and can be questioned.

Spelke’s points about gender discrimination and social elements are very convincing. I believe that women’s underrepresentation due to discrimination decrease science’s attractiveness to young female. And I believe that Spelke’s statement about women’s plausible low interest in science: it is not women’s lack of interest but more the invisible cost women need to pay to pursue a scientific occupation that stops women’s pavement to science career. She points out that children will be treated differently because of their gender, as parents always see boys as stronger, more intelligent, and aggressive. People’s assessment about candidates’ competence is different towards male and female, in which people tend to believe males have more ability and tend to doubt females that show extreme competence in their resume. Spelke’s data convinces me. It reminds me about social schema theory and several similar experiments. First is about judgment of ability of different genders. When men and women have similar resume, people tend to see male candidates as more competent. And when female candidate are especially competent, people admit her ability but describe her as more hostile (Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, Tamkins, 2004). The second experiment shows people’s standard shift: there are two candidates that either have more education history or more work experience. When the former is male and latter is female, people tend to choose the former. But when their gender switched, people change their standard to support the male (Norton, Wandello, 2004). Furthermore, even females tend to underestimate female themselves. Both experiments convince me about the existence of the influence of social stereotype to women. In many situations, becoming a scientist means that females have to tolerate extra pressure and bias, discrimination of workplace and extra difficulty to advance. In China, there is pressure of marriage and advancement difficulties for female scientists, stemming from people’s biased attitude and negative description on media. In three top universities ( Beijing University, Tsinghua University, GUCAS), eighty percent of women doctoral students doesn’t have relationship (Tingru Li, 2008).

Though I agree with Skelke’s viewpoint, her rejection towards sex difference in cognitive ability has many logic loopholes. She rejects Summer’s three factors that women focus more on people, women are less talented and women are less motivated. I think her logic isn’t convincing. The first factor is that men are more focused on objects, and girls on people. Without a definition of “focus on object” and “focus on people”, Spelke compares the time male and female infants need to study discerning the distance an object moves and study how to build stacks. Depends on equal time period infants need, she infers that infants of different genders have same abilities to learn about objects, thus there are no different focuses for males and females. However, Spelke’s assumption is that similar time to learn something means equal focuses and interest on such thing. I don’t think so, as interest does not equal ability. One may has ability to do one thing but doesn’t have interest in it; one can also lack the ability to do a thing but has enthusiasm about it.

The second factor is the different mathematic and spatial ability of men and women. Spelke compromises that adult of different genders have different favored types of mathematics abilities, which may be a key variable in high-level mathematics. She makes a great point that the SAT test doesn’t have equal items that favors men and women, so the SAT data cannot reflect aptitude of women and men. Spelke’s assumption is that mathematical abilities that favor male and female are equally important in high level math. However, what if the distribution of mathematic ability doesn’t equal the abilities needed in the high level? What if some kinds of abilities are especially important in the high level math that favors certain gender? Other study implies that the ability of spatial and rotation, which favors male, may be the key ability to achieve high-level success in mathematics.

Moreover, the following experiment about effectiveness of studying mathematical materials of male and female students has lots of uncontrolled variables. Spelke’s first assumption is that amount of males and females taking math course and their grades can reflect math aptitude of different genders. But I doubt it. People will find it farfetched to link a student’s class choice with his or her aptitude. If a student’s attendance of mathematic class proves his or her high aptitude, the student doesn’t need to study hard to prove it anymore. We can just choose four most difficult mathematical courses and then we can convince that we are geniuses. As for grades, there are more than one variable. What if one student studies very hard to get certain grade and another one just feels easy to get the same grade? Do they have the same aptitude? I don’t think so. As there are many extraneous variables, the validity of such study can be questioned. The study may not show a suitable causal variable of aptitude but may just reveal a correlation. In addition, there are other research suggests that men have higher aptitude. In such research, men and women are asked to solve questions that were not already rehearsed in a classroom, and males get better scores (Felson & Trudeau, 1991; Wainer & Steinberg, 1992).

In her rejection to the third factor that there are more male geniuses, she equates some objects that have different definitions. She uses the male-female ratio of mathematics major to measure the geniuses in each field, which reveals equal numbers of male and female in this major. So she concludes that there are not more male geniuses. However, her assumption, again, shows simplification that composition of genders reveals the composition of geniuses of different genders. For example, there may be ten percent of male students have high talent but only five percent of female students have such talent. The geniuses are people have high mathematics abilities, and they don’t have causal relationship with major choices. There is also opposite research shows that there are especially large difference in tail of intelligence distribution in one percent, five percent and ten percent of different genders. And males excel over females ( Hedges& Nowell, 1995).

As conclusion, though Spelke’s inference about sex difference of cognitive ability has some loopholes, her points about gender bias and discriminations convince me. Again, back to Summer’s assertion, the debate of cognitive difference of males and females still need further evidence. I hope new research will reveal deeper reality.

Citation:

Hedges, Nowell, Sex differences in mental test scores, variability, and numbers of high-scoring individuals.

Doreen Kimura, Underrepresentation or misrepresentation?

Tingru Li, Walking along in the edge between male and female—female doctorate “ third gender” phenomenon analysis.

Virginia Valian, Women at the top in science——and elsewhere.

Synopsis

Is Math a Gift, an academic paper of Dweck, states a brand new angle that it is not the lack of ability, but the combination of entity belief and stereotype makes girls venerable when face academic obstacle. At the same time, girls who believe talent can be gained through effort aren’t not shown grade trap when meet set back. So it is not the difference of ability but different venerabilities to set back that makes women have lower grades in science classes, as boys are less venerable than girls. So the effort to make girls believe in incremental theory may eliminate the gap between male and female in science class, because people’s ability decreases when they believe they have lower ability. Dweck ends up by arguing we should teach students incremental belief in school, implicating we should ignore the influence of the innate element.

Dweck’s assumptions

There are some uncertainties within the author’s assumptions. First, the author points out a phenomenon: the higher IQ a girl has, the worse a girl does when facing difficulty. Then she points out that only intelligent girl who believes that talent is a gift is venerable to setback. The rest of intelligent girls who believe that talent can be nurtured are not that venerable. Then how did she come up with the first theory that girls with high IQ are venerable, since part of them has been defined as “not venerable” later? Second, Dweck focus on top grade girls’ phenomenon at the beginning, saying that girls with high IQ are more venerable than girls with low IQ. But the following parts are focusing on two types of girls who are defined by different beliefs of talent. The author does not mention the girls have top grades anymore at the rest of her article. She highlights the way to classify girls by their grades at first then follows by a different method as to classify girls by their beliefs to talent. I don’t think the two methods are compatible. Third, she doesn’t point out the reason of phenomenon that girls with high IQ are venerable than girls with low IQ. Forth, Dweck also confuses two variables that have small difference: venerability and lack of confidence. The former part of essay is talking about girls’ venerability while the latter part silently switches the point “venerability” to lack of confidence and implicates that they have the same meanings. These two terms are not same.

Don’t tell the truth can be a correct choice

Well, there are some uncertainties in her article, but also, she puts forward an interesting solution for girls’ venerability which may involve complex social paradox: to conceal the scientific truth may be helpful to promote girls’ performance in math and science. And I generally agree with that. In a modern society, equality and humanity is the main thesis. There is even research showing biological difference between gender, race or even different persons, the equality is always the most important thing. We can indeed see the positive effect of the talent-growing belief to women. We have the reason to believe, when the incremental theory collide with education in school, women’s academic performance will improve rapidly. In my high school in china, teachers told us that hard work can bring good grade. There are more and more girls decided to choose engineering or science as major; they think the major could prove their ability in logic and systematic thinking.

Other than gender’s issue, there are many examples shows that keep the research truth may be a better way to improve people’s equality. The judgment of certain group’s ability is not moral. There is some research showing that black people’s intelligence is lower than that of other races. The social effect of these research make public and black people themselves see black people with a low grade as normal thing. However, black people show by their effort that they can succeed in academic fields, Derrick Bell, the first black professor at Harvard University, is a good example. So we can clearly say that speaking out some research studies do harm people. A better way is to encourage them and make them believe there is way to promote their ability.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, Dweck states that girls’ belief of entity theory makes them venerable to setbacks. And she argues to apply incremental theory to education to decrease the gap between grades of men and women. Though there are some shortcomings about Dweck’s assumptions, her solution to decrease the gap of ability of women and men is worth thinking.

Reference:

Dweck, C. S. (2007). Is Math a Gift? Beliefs That Put Females at Risk. Why Aren’t More Women in Science? Top Researchers Debate the Evidence.

Women in Media Debate at The London Press Club. L-R Kay Burley, Carla Buzasi, Anne McElvoy, Lisa Markwell 

Synopsis

In Underrepresentation or Misrepresentation, Kimura points out women’s lack of math ability as reason for their absence in math and science. Begin with irony to feminists, Kimura assails many social commonsense of women’s situation. After asserting there is difference between women and men in mathematic ability which is innate and hasn’t changed for a long time, he comes up with another viewpoint that such ability of math is to do with career choice, the combination of which is his main point. Along with several related parts about women’s less interest in science and girl’s low representation in doctorate as a lateral support, Kimura ended by putting forward a interesting alert: women have been overhired in scientific fields while men suffered academic discrimination.

Limitation of evidence and impatience to persuade

The essay sounds like a typical yet one-sided voice echoing in the debate about women’s absence of science. As to me, the biological difference is an unavoidable hard nut to crack for women. However, the voice itself may have some limitations as well. It seems to me that based on a more logical part about objective research about ability difference of two genders, author tries to collect nuances as many as possible to support men-ruling theory. There’s a very inappropriate example the author uses: women’s high representation of secretarial work reflect female’s better verbal capacity. Can we say that minorities have more finger dexterity so they undertook most labor works in US last century? Should the phenomenon make sense and be maintained? Also, author seems to try to find fault in women’s relatively high representation in biology to associate it with women’s superiority of language and inferiority of mathematics. I don’t know if it can satisfy author if women don’t gain high representation in all scientific fields. What will be the “reasonable” explanation if one day women’s representation in physics also increases? As for the last over-hire part, the way to describe the phenomenon is incomplete since it only mentions the hire ratio of women rather than the ratio of women to be hired as high position researcher.   Many female faculties may suffer from career indifference and don’t have chance for advance. “Forty years ago, women made up just three percent of full professors in science and engineering fields, a figure that inched up to ten percent sixteen years later, according to the NSF.”(Why Men Dominate Math and Science Fields, by Jeanna Bryner)

Ethical complex

Meanwhile, we are going to discuss something important in research: the ethical principles. Whether or not these papers about gender difference moral? As a very complex core, research ethical code requires scientists to report their paper accurately and honestly, which involves with how to report to avoid producing misleading information or offer support for potential discrimination. My psychology teacher has been refused to do a research based on pregnant women’s frequently forgetfulness because the research may bring potential information that pregnant is “stupid”. Also, “Study about people’s interpretation of information conveyed by different color of clothes may offer support that women be blamed for what they wear when assault happens.” Is the research about different IQ among races offering evidence for racist? Are so many informal researches displayed on television about different traits among “types” of people and races bringing bad influences to equality and supporting bias? Could scientists reject to do some research in spite of opportunities to publish articles as to avoid potential misrepresentation? I think the researches about gender differences are in such debate.

Conclusion

There are many studies about gender differences. I believe we shall see them with critical thinking, realizing the complication these issues involve with, trying to accept partly but not wholly. At the same time we shall dispute the misleading and distorted interpretation of such studies.