^ AA is illegal in the UK? yeah right. So many ways to get around this.
Tim Gowers: that retracted math paper on gender differences is CRAP
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Stupid question, could the increased male variability in observed traits be caused by the fact that the X and Y chromosomes are inherited from the parents with essentially no recombination?
Genetic variation is indeed introduced by recombination, but that's not the same as variation in actual traits.
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I read somewhere where only 40 percent of men who have ever lived has kids. So ....
^ wow gowers is weak here. Very weak. For instance:
When applied to humans, this model is ludicrously implausible. While it is true that some males have trouble finding a mate, the idea that some huge percentage of males are simply not desirable enough (as we shall see, the paper requires this percentage to be over 50) to have a chance of reproducing bears no relation to the world as we know it.
lol yes it does.
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short answer from somebody who has studied genomics: yes. the actual models here are a lot more sophisticated, but your intuition is correct.
Stupid question, could the increased male variability in observed traits be caused by the fact that the X and Y chromosomes are inherited from the parents with essentially no recombination?
Genetic variation is indeed introduced by recombination, but that's not the same as variation in actual traits. -
I read somewhere where only 40 percent of men who have ever lived has kids. So ....
^ wow gowers is weak here. Very weak. For instance:
When applied to humans, this model is ludicrously implausible. While it is true that some males have trouble finding a mate, the idea that some huge percentage of males are simply not desirable enough (as we shall see, the paper requires this percentage to be over 50) to have a chance of reproducing bears no relation to the world as we know it.
lol yes it does.
I read something similar.
Historically, approximately 40% of men and 70% of women have kids?
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short answer from somebody who has studied genomics: yes. the actual models here are a lot more sophisticated, but your intuition is correct.
Stupid question, could the increased male variability in observed traits be caused by the fact that the X and Y chromosomes are inherited from the parents with essentially no recombination?
Genetic variation is indeed introduced by recombination, but that's not the same as variation in actual traits.
Thanks, that's what I thought based on my fairly limited knowledge of the field.
In that case the empirical result would be just a mechanical thing, really, so I don't know if it makes all that much sense to search for another explanation.
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"But in this case, instead of throwing up our hands and saying that we can’t fight against biology, we will say that we should do everything we can to compensate for and eventually get rid of the disadvantages experienced by women."
-- So this turd claims that even if biology has an effect, "we" need to eliminate its effect. So basically "we" need to make Basketball easier for shortees, racing easier for slowees, lifting easier for weakees. It is just the essence of equal opportunity, and a great society, a whole new world, etc..Before calling someone names in response to a statement they make, you should consider actually reading that statement. The sentence you quoted is preceded by a very clear conditional: "Let us suppose that the way society is organized makes it harder for women to become successful mathematicians than for men."
I agree that in this instance, Gowers did not express himself as eloquently (and clearly) as I would have wished; linguistically, that paragraph grated a bit when I read his post. Nonetheless, if you actually stopped to digest that paragraph for even a second, it is pretty obvious that he suggests that IF an observed gender difference is driven by societal norms, THEN we should not let it slide and should instead correct the bias. It's not about biological differences. It's not about making basketball easier for short people. So please calm down and stop embarrassing yourself with poorly written posts containing such lexical gems as "turd".
BTW, in case there's any doubt, what I am requesting is a common courtesy that should be extended to anyone respectfully expressing their opinion, whether that individual is a Fields medalist or an everyday colleague or student.
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^ wow gowers is weak here. Very weak. For instance:
When applied to humans, this model is ludicrously implausible. While it is true that some males have trouble finding a mate, the idea that some huge percentage of males are simply not desirable enough (as we shall see, the paper requires this percentage to be over 50) to have a chance of reproducing bears no relation to the world as we know it.
lol yes it does.
wow, just wow. gowers is a really sheltered mathematician
http://keinanlab.cb.bscb.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/papers/Webster_Sayres_2016.pdf
Genomic signatures of sex-biased demography: progress and prospects
One of the most common results from studies of modern human populations is that the effective population size of females is, and has been for much of human history, larger than that of males [26,27,28]. In a study of six populations across Africa and Eurasia, Hammer and colleagues [28] found substantially higher than expected ratios of X/A diversity, consistent with an overall greater Nf than Nm averaged across the entire history of each lineage [29]. More recently, Wilson Sayres and colleagues [30] found extremely low ratios of Y/A diversity in African and European populations, consistent with a combination of a very low Nm and strong purifying selection on the Y. Lippold and colleagues [26] further showed, using a global sample of 51 populations, that Nf has likely been greater than Nm throughout much of human history, dating back to before the bottleneck of populations migrating out of Africa. Data from the Arabian Peninsula also support an excess of Nf across the Out-of-Africa bottleneck, as lineages that diverged soon after dispersing out of Africa exhibit higher than expected X/A diversity ratios [31].
Interestingly, the difference between Nm and Nf has not remained constant over time and many populations appear to have experienced an extreme male-specific bottleneck and subsequent exponential expansion in the last 10,000 years [26,32,33,34]. Karmin et al. [33] estimated that, in Europe, this bottleneck occurred between 8 and 4 thousand years ago, during which Nf was as much as 17 times greater than Nm. The processes causing this bottleneck remain unclear. The spread of agriculture likely played some role, as it is associated with a shift to patrilocality (female dispersal) and patrilinearity, as well as changes in population size [13,23,27,35,34,35–38]. For example, African pygmy populations and closely related non-pygmy agricultural populations exhibitstrong differences in relative Ne, with agricultural populations exhibiting much stronger genetic signatures of patrilocality [39]. In Europe, analyses of ancient DNA revealed that patrilocality was associated with the spread of farming during the Neolithic expansion [35,40].
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Actually sounds like an interesting problem. Take two male subpopulations P and Q with mean m_P=m_Q and standard deviation s_P>s_Q. Now if females are more selective than males, subpopulation P is more likely to pass their gene on. Now the question is what is coded in the genes. If it is the outcome of the distribution X_i, this simply means that the next generation of males will be better than the previous generation. However, it could also be that genes carry some information on the underlying distribution (m and s). In the latter case, males become more variable than females. I guess you have to be a biologist to find out for sure.
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Its totally irrelevant whether the paper is good, and if you think that this is the issue (or excuses what happened) then you have no place in a sane academia.
Actually, it does matter whether a paper satisfies minimum scientific standards, such as supporting its claims. As Gowers points out, the paper is at odds with the data and in several respects implies precisely the opposite of its conclusions, a fact which should have been obvious to even modestly competent referees and editors. Papers which do not meet basic scientific standards are not publishable and should not be published.
Differences in variability of traits across males and females are an empirical fact and therefore there must exist some explanation. But science is not a soapbox where everyone gets to share their opinion no matter how illogical it is.
Now, you may say that it is still disturbing to see a paper retracted on political grounds, even if the paper should not have been published on scientific grounds. But the only evidence that this was the process is the author's word. For some reason, once people believe that there is an epidemic of something on campuses, they seem to jump to the idea that "victims" must always be completely believed, even though anyone with an ounce of life experience understands that people who tell you they were treated unfairly are often omitting important information.
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I don't get this. They are trying to debunk a paper than provides an evolutionary foundation for empirical observations. Greater male variability is well established empirically for many species, including humans. If you have a beef, debunk the empirical evidence. Collect new data, run experiments, etcetera.
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The paper wasn’t retracted, it was disappeared.
Its totally irrelevant whether the paper is good, and if you think that this is the issue (or excuses what happened) then you have no place in a sane academia.
Actually, it does matter whether a paper satisfies minimum scientific standards, such as supporting its claims. As Gowers points out, the paper is at odds with the data and in several respects implies precisely the opposite of its conclusions, a fact which should have been obvious to even modestly competent referees and editors. Papers which do not meet basic scientific standards are not publishable and should not be published.
Differences in variability of traits across males and females are an empirical fact and therefore there must exist some explanation. But science is not a soapbox where everyone gets to share their opinion no matter how illogical it is.
Now, you may say that it is still disturbing to see a paper retracted on political grounds, even if the paper should not have been published on scientific grounds. But the only evidence that this was the process is the author's word. For some reason, once people believe that there is an epidemic of something on campuses, they seem to jump to the idea that "victims" must always be completely believed, even though anyone with an ounce of life experience understands that people who tell you they were treated unfairly are often omitting important information. -
I don't get this. They are trying to debunk a paper than provides an evolutionary foundation for empirical observations. Greater male variability is well established empirically for many species, including humans. If you have a beef, debunk the empirical evidence. Collect new data, run experiments, etcetera.
Yes.
This thing is almost identical to Larry Summer's case. -
I very much doubt that the author has made up the story of the paper
It is crystal clear the acceptance was withdrawn and separately, the published version disappeared for political reasons. That is a disgrace. It is rare to have this evidence. Normally such papers are suppressed at the refereeing stage for spurious reasons.