New York Times Columnist Takes US National Academy of Sciences to Task. (September 26, 2006)

    Liberal New York Times op-ed columnist John Tierney had just about had enough of the mantra that there are no difference between men and women, so when the US National Academy of Sciences 291 page report on Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering lobed onto his desk he decided he had a few points to make.

"[C]all me naïve — I never thought the academy was cynical enough to publish a political tract like 'Beyond Bias and Barriers,' the new report on discrimination against female scientists and engineers."

Leaving aside the makeup of the committee (17 females, 1 male), Chair, Donna Shalala Professor of Political Science and President of the University of Miami, formally U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration, what Tierney objects to is exemplified by the unqualified statement in the report, "The academic success of girls now equals or exceeds that of boys at the high school and college levels, rendering moot all discussions of the biological and social factors that once produced sex differences in achievement at these levels."

Tierney's rebuttal?

"It may seem moot to the Shalala committee, composed mainly of university administrators and scientists who don’t study sex differences (or are hostile to the idea that they exist). But it’s not moot to the scientists who’ve documented persistent differences," and he goes on to tell his readers that he consulted a half-dozen experts in the field "about the report, and they all dismissed it as a triumph of politics over science."

"I am embarrassed," said Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware, "that this female-dominated panel of scientists would ignore decades of scientific evidence to justify an already disproved conclusion, namely, that the sexes do not differ in career-relevant interests and abilities."