Silicon Valley’s Next Gender Thoughtcrime

Power Line can announce that it has identified the next Gender Thoughtcrime offender in Silicon Valley, and it is a doozy. First, here are a few samples from the transgressing article (author ID and publication reference at the end):

[O]ver the past 15 years or so, there’s been a sea change as new technologies have generated a growing pile of evidence that there are inherent differences in how men’s and women’s brains are wired and how they work.

Not how well they work, mind you. Our differences don’t mean one sex or the other is better or smarter or more deserving. Some researchers have grappled with charges of “neuro­sexism”: falling prey to stereotypes or being too quick to interpret human sex differences as biological rather than cultural. They counter, however, that data from animal research, cross-​cultural surveys, natural experiments and brain-imaging studies demonstrate real, if not always earthshaking, brain differences, and that these differences may contribute to differences in behavior and cognition. . .

Social psychologists and sociologists pooh-poohed the notion of any fundamental cognitive differences between male and female humans, notes [Diane] Halpern, a professor emerita of psychology at Claremont McKenna College [and former past president of the American Psychological Association].

In her preface to the first edition [of her book Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities], Halpern wrote: “At the time, it seemed clear to me that any between-sex differences in thinking abilities were due to socialization practices, artifacts and mistakes in the research, and bias and prejudice. … After reviewing a pile of journal articles that stood several feet high and numerous books and book chapters that dwarfed the stack of journal articles … I changed my mind.”

Why? There was too much data pointing to the biological basis of sex-based cognitive differences to ignore, Halpern says. . .

Where does this Thoughtcrime appear? In the Spring 2017 edition of Stanford Medicine, the journal of Stanford Medical School, under the title “Two Minds: The Cognitive Differences Between Men and Women.” The author is Bruce Goldman, who is identified as “a science writer for the Medical School’s office of communications and public affairs.”

Well at least until tomorrow anyway.

Bonus chart of the day:

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