Controversial remarks
Having grown up in an academic environment, I've been watching with interest the recent brouhaha over Harvard President Lawrence Summers' remarks at a conference last month. It's an interesting controversy: he appears to have offended several attendees by suggesting that research should be done into whether there are biological reasons behind the fact that there are more men than women in math and science. While I'm sure he deliberatly chose controversial language, I wonder if the historical politicization of genetic differences is preventing an open scientific inquiry. Clearly there are some genetic differences between men and women (otherwise we'd have b00bs), but is it possible that there also differences in brain chemistry and structure? How about different genetic predispositions between people whose ancestors grew up in the Northen British Isles versus the Meditrranean basin? It's a shame that it's so hard to have conversations like that without cranking people off.
Of course, Summers raised the question using as proof (according to the transcript he released yesterday),“that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the national basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and agriculture.” That probably didn't do much to help his cause.