What if women really were inferior to men?

Let the information flow!

nikipedia: so talking to him got me thinking
like what if we do this sex difference research
and find out that the reason women are underrepresented in like
everything that matters
is bc women really are inferior somehow?
like obv i do not think that is the case
but what if we found compelling data suggesting that women were deficient?
should we release it to the general public?
haha do you think that will be too contentious?
girlofscience: i don’t think it would really matter even if that were true
because it would only say something about averages
and would not account for individual differences
like say, genetically, on average, women were more deficit than men
on some kind of scale, they were an average of 237, inherently, social factors aside
and men were an average of 309
some women would be 450
nikipedia: right
girlofscience: so people would just have to understand the laws of averages and understand that even the best person in the world could poss still be a woman
and a lot of men could be really bad
and that it simply had to do with averages but did not account for individuals

[Sorry for being lazy; I’m running out the door.]

Id release the information. It really wouldnt come as a shock to me to find men are better on average than women in some areas, just as i wouldnt be shocked to find the inverse.

Release the information, release the methodology. Let others duplicate the experiment or find the flaws in it—that’s how science works.

But be prepared for a huge amount of media attention, because the average person does not understand statistics.

Agree with cwilbur, especially on the statistics-knowledge point.

What do you mean if?

What if aliens show up and are way superior to us? I wonder if we would still still ponder such questions.

Hum, inferior. Kind of a really negative connotation. It’s a long way from initial/original research to empirically proven too. If one wouldn’t release the info, there wouldn’t be the opportunity to establish empirical, peer-reviewed evidence.

I’d release the info I guess. However, I’d formulate that the female brain excels in different qualities than the male brain :).

Even if, it’s all mathematical models of averages anyways.

I wouldn’t have any problem releasing the information. There is always something that one sex is going to be better at than the other and vice-versa and it’s really nothing to be ashamed of, in my opinion.

I personally don’t see myself superior or inferior to anyone but I try to imagine all of us on a level playing field. Some people are just smarter or more talented than others but that doesn’t necessarily make them ‘better’ or ‘superior’ to anyone else.

Let’s face it, they are inferior. We men think with our dicks.

I’d only tell the men.

Damn it AC, you took my answer!

I think the question is biased—why not look to differences as simply being different, not inferior or superior. The differences aren’t biased, it’s how we think about them—were there any to be found.

Suppose for the sake of argument that the methodology was sound, and the one group really was demonstrably inferior to the other in some meaningful way.

What I’m asking is: if someone had information that could cause tangible harm to a group, is it better to keep that information under wraps to protect the group, or is it better to encourage the free flow of information regardless of its impact? In this example, this finding would clearly have negative consequences for women, so should that kind of research not be done in the first place? Should the results be filtered through some kind of PR campaign to lessen the impact? Should scientists just do the science and let the rest of society decide what to do with the results?

lets put it that way, if for argument’s sake, the research methodology was sound, then it’s only a matter of time until someone will finally reproduce the experiment/study.

To that effect I’d rather release myself in ways where I at least to some extent can influence the way the information is used e.g. to address and improve that circumstance as opposed to “abuse” of the collected data to undo social progress of the last 200 years.

Knowledge is power, but only if you control it (power being neutral of moral value in this case).

Woman get off fluther and change all three babies diaper, cook me dinner, and wash my uniform. Im watching football and drinking beer.

@Magnus

To quote Bullettooth Tony: “Dicks have clarity of vision”, lol

I would try to give both sides of the story as best i could. i would search for criticisms from colleagues, and ask the general population for their scientifically based feedback. If no scientific criticisms are found, then i’d have to say to all the women out there “well, im sorry, but all the numbers checked out, and you are inferior”. after that, i’d lock myself into a cottage and never speak again, because something i say might effect the interpretation of the results. also, i’d have angry feminists chasing me with pitchforks and torches.

im not so scared of the results of such a study, but of the way people would interpret them.

GQ for awesome use of the topic tags!

you can’t depend on just one source for information so if some ding dong of a scientist really ~discovered~ that then, i’d definitely want to hear some other opinions!

what if there were no more hypothetical questions?

There has been research done in some of these areas already, and as it stands it always is just an average. So why not release it? People always get so offended by the terms “On aver such and such is better then such and such”, and the typical response is always “NO! Thats not true I don’t, and my mother practiced such and such for years!!”. These statements are never saying that these findings are 100% true, that would be illogical. It is simply the AVERAGE of that particular research. So yes, this information should be released if ever stated because it is a scientific find, and should be released to the public.

To make it personal—yay! No more math. Let them do the adding, I can do everything else myself. I’m not really bad at math.

I’d have to release the data, but I probably would want to do so along with a very good explanation of what it means. Growing up, I always heard men were better at math. I just took it at face value, as a general statement…not proof that any one man was better at it than any one woman.

Niki,

if someone had information that could cause tangible harm to a group, is it better to keep that information under wraps to protect the group? ...should that kind of research not be done in the first place??

How would anything ever be discovered if we were to think like that? Since when do we worry about offending someone over the undeniable/well researched truth? Wouldn’t it be better in the long run to get the truth out there and evaluate it and explain it and just do something about it rather than concealing it, if it really were true? I mean… what’s the point of science, otherwise?

nikipedia said: if someone had information that could cause tangible harm to a group, is it better to keep that information under wraps to protect the group? ...should that kind of research not be done in the first place??

I’m pretty sure this is the exact stance that the many churches and religions took with science as a whole throughout the Dark Ages and before, the groups being harmed of course themselves. If they had instead let science develop naturally we would probably be centuries ahead of where we are now technologically. The sharing of information is such a critical keystone to our modern way of life.

If there were such a difference, everyone would know about it anyway. Releasing the information wouldn’t matter. For example, everyone knows that men, on average, are stronger than women. Everyone knows that women, on average, are better at non-medically-induced lactation than men.

This better ‘than/worse than’ stuff is crap! It’s all a product of social values, and it can change. It is, in no way, written in stone. It’s just a value judgement. Human values change all the time. It might take a while, but it happens. Just study a little history, and you’ll see.

You ask about whether the knowledge can harm, should you hold it back. There’s no point in holding back knowledge. We have this problem with genetic engineering, or nano-technology. We had that problem with nuclear power. Knowledge and technology can be used for good or for harm.

It’s important to know, however, that the research will be used, whether you try to bottle it up, or not. Therefore, it is far better to release the information and let society respond to it, than to try to hide it, and let self-interested folks get their hands on it, and use it for harm.

@nikipedia: Suppose you reached the conclusion, purely hypothetically, that adult women performed worse on tests of abstract reasoning and three-dimensional visualization than adult men did. This sounds like exactly the sort of result you’re pondering, because it then can be used to justify discrimination against women: “they aren’t as good at engineering as men are!”

What if you released it, and the very publication of it kicked another researcher into saying, “Why should that be?” and looking at the causes—and then that researcher found out that there was a bias in most early childhood education that correlated strongly with this difference—and then figured out how to fix it?

You don’t know what the ramifications of science will be. I think if you’re afraid of knowing the answer, you don’t ask the question; once you’ve asked the question, and figured out the answer, the responsible thing to do is to share it.

Let’s have a few men give birth to babies, and then see who is inferior. :-)

http://xkcd.com/385/

Is inferiority a concept that can be defined rigorously enough for scientific inquiry?

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. As a male I would want the info to come out if the logic and the goods were actually there to support it but I would 1st try to get a woman on board breaking the news. If I as a male tried to do it alone or with other males it would be dismissed by most because as a society we want to go off emotion even more than logic or fact. Many women would never want to admit they were not as good as a man in any area and thus not embrace anything the study or report said. Many men who might agree under their breath would rebuke it also because if they openly agreed with it they would use many jars of Vaseline at night because their squeeze will have a “head ache” many, many weeks in a row.