The Sexual Paradox by Susan Pinker

Susan Pinker is a psychologist and the sister of Steven Pinker, who wrote The Blank Slate. She also wrote her own controversial book alleging biological differences between groups: The Sexual Paradox. She cites abundant research purporting to show sex differences in a wide variety of contexts, but she frames her book around the captivating hook of two distinct subsets of men and women: Men who went on to successful careers after exhibiting various learning disabilities and other neurological challenges as children. This makes for fascinating individual tales, but it also limits the lessons that we can draw from the focus of her book. Even if we set aside the anecdotes and just focus on, say, statistical comparisons between men and women with dyslexia (or whatever other condition), we're comparing outliers from two groups, rather than averages or medians. This limits the relevance to the wider populations of men and women.

Also, her anecdotes are subject to interpretation, and her interpretations depend on which details one emphasizes. To wit, consider some of the women profiled in Chapter 3, which focuses on women who left STEM careers:

1) She considers a computer science professor pseudonymed "Donna." Donna spent sixteen years in the field but then said she was bored. OK, so it was lack of interest that drove her away? Well, Pinker later mentions that Donna got burdened with a disproportionate amount of mentoring and committee responsibilities, a common experience for women faculty, especially in STEM. Can I say with certainty that Donna left more because of a disproportionate burden rather than disinterest in the field? Of course not. But without more extensive quotations from Donna I can't be confident that Pinker accurately summarized Donna's motives.

2) A geography PhD pseudonymed Sonia. Sonia started a professorship but apparently didn't enjoy the demands of teaching and research. OK, fair enough, though I will note that it's not clear that she lacked enthusiasm for the subject; it seems that the workload was hard to balance, a common concern. Preferences regarding the pace of work are very different from preferences regarding the type of work.

So she took an administrative role in an office preparing grants and reports. But her boss was a jerk. Pinker says he was a jerk to everyone, so it wasn't sexism; we lack the evidence to adjudicate that interpretation. She thus changed careers to elementary education.

It's hard to read this narrative as indicating some innate preference for people-oriented work, given that it was a third choice and other factors beyond the type of work played into each transition. Maybe this individual woman really did prefer people-oriented work over data on land use or whatever. Maybe she liked both. Maybe she actually would have been happier doing geography in a different context. We don't know.

3) She also cites an anonymous law professor who got a BS in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, then went to an MD/PhD program, and finally left (with the MD but apparently not the PhD) to go to law school. She is now a law professor, and claims to be happier. She says she was not discouraged in any way while she was in science, and in fact felt pressure to stay rather than pressure to leave.

Maybe so. I'll just note that people who get a BS from Yale, an MD from Harvard, and a law degree from presumably a top-tier law school (she's an Ivy law professor, and they rarely hire from outside the top tier) are unusual in many ways, and move in unusual environments. Not only would I not extrapolate from her to a wider swath of women, I also would not extrapolate from her universities to all of academic science.

Besides women, she also discusses Terence Tao, a top mathematician who was a prodigy from an early age, but was nowhere near extraordinary in language skills. Again, I wouldn't extrapolate from such a singular person to men at large. She likewise made references to Einstein earlier, and the contrast between his mathematical and language skills. She doesn't explicitly endorse the theory that he was dyslexic, but she is clearly willing to entertain it. Besides the fact that Einstein was, um, unusual, the man read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in his teens; that is not an easy read (to put it mildly).

When she cites larger studies she has a point, but her case studies are not as illustrative as one might hope.