This is a very long article, but it's full of interesting scientific evidence that's relevant (though it seems that it picks up in relevance part way through). If someone can find a more focused discussion that has the same level of engagement with the literature, that would be great, but for now, I'd recommend reading it.
Why do I get this feeling that if it's been shorter you'd have then used “too short” as an excuse to dismiss it without reading?
I find this an interesting response to Damore's memo, which was rather long for a thinly-sourced rehash of common tropes with little support for its sweeping claims about very complex topics. The people whose pre-existing beliefs were compatible with that didn't complain, however, and tried to use the presence of references as a shield against criticism for being so weakly argued — it has references and is thus Scientifically Proven™! When someone goes to the considerably greater work of actually digging up original sources and actually evaluating their relevance and strength, however, the very first comment is that it's too long, as if real science is conducted over post-it notes.
Reading your comments, I'm starting to think the male brain is too emotional to effectively engage in science.
Of course, that cuts rather to the point here: nobody will ever look at your comments and make a general observation about all men. The author mentioned her background as a researcher to establish her credibility to talk on the subject because she knew that people would question it just as strongly as they would ignore Damore's lack of authority[1]. She had an entire section about trust, no doubt anticipating these kinds of attempts to dismiss the science by criticizing the author. Had she left it out, I have precisely zero doubt that some dude would try to play gotcha confabulating a conspiracy theory around that choice.
Also, I do find it somewhat curious that I've read tons of science writing which included some personal details and that never seems to be criticized coming from a male author.
Finally, just for the record I'm not the author and have never met her. I'm also not a scientist but I did previously support a computational neuroscience department and her conclusions matched very closely with what they used to say when the topic came up, so I felt very comfortable sharing this article as a counter to all of the tedious “my opinion deserves attention because it sounds science-y” commentary I've seen here, especially given the copious citations to actual peer reviewed research.
1. Translating to fields more familiar to HN, this seems like a debate about building scalable databases between an EE who focused on semiconductor design and a CS grad student working in distributed systems: neither is automatically correct but the latter is speaking a lot closer to their area of specialization.
I wasn't criticising the author - I was criticising the style. Anyone should be able to have a go at anything they want. If they are good, brilliant. I really don't give a monkey's whether the author identifies as fish, dolphin or attack helicopter. Just give me the science without your bloody life story and let me judge it. That's how science is supposed to work.
