The Greater Male Variability Controversy: Science Versus Politics

Abstract

Research on gender differences has consistently been surrounded by controversy because of the political implications of the findings. The conclusions drawn by Cattell, Hall, Thorndike, and other early proponents of the greater male variability hypothesis-recounted in my article and in Noddings's sociohistorical commentarywere not justified by the available data. Their conclusions, which almost certainly predated their examinations of data, were essentially these scholars' personal beliefs about differences between the sexes and their political opinions regarding the roles of men and women in society. It is unfortunate that their views were passed off as scientific facts to maintain the status quo of their era. Noddings described my article as oddly neutral. I prefer appropriately scientific. The points she raised have all been noted before by others (who were duly referenced in my review), and there was no need to rehash them. Instead, I detailed the limitations of past analyses, conducted new analyses with superior data sets, and interpreted the results by today's more rigorous standards. The scope of my quantitative review was intentionally narrow, as its main objective was to make a data-based contribution to the literature.