Stevo, ceolaf, calcareous and knappa all deserve stars. I could not agree more with knappa about people that brag about not knowing math, I feel embarrassed that I never went onto number theory and above during my formal eduction. That is why I have taken it upon myself to get a few books and see if I am able to improve my math knowledge and if that does not work audit a few classes. Might as well brag about not being good with them there letters.

To reemphasize Stevo's point about how bad broadsheet is with science, any study that shows women equal or superior to men is taken as self evident, any study that shows women as victims of men or society against treated as correct with out question to the study, but god forbid BS does not agree than the study might as well have been done by monkeys.

This being BS and all of course they built up a straw man argument that Summers never made and they sure showed him, you go girl. Others have already pointed out what Summers actually said that got him drawn and quartered. What else is interesting is what BS decided not to comment about this part of the article

As Hyde and her colleagues looked across the data for states' testing, they found something they didn't expect: In most states they reviewed, and at most grade levels, there weren't any questions that involved complex problem-solving, an ability needed to succeed in high levels of science and math. If tests don't assess these reasoning skills, they may not be taught, putting American students at a disadvantage to students in other countries with more challenging tests, the researchers said.

So even using part of the BS strawman argument this study does not show up Summers. Summers was discussing college level advance math and science classes but the AP article says that the type of skill most needed for these classes was not included. HMMMM, does this not mean this study did not actually find results one way or the other that can be used to debunk Summers?

The article also links to two other BS articles that is supposed to debunk Summers claims. Yet the first link is to an article about self fulfilling stereotypes and does not address the ability of women in math and science only that women are more likely not to take up math and science because they are told they are not good in math and science. The only mention of Summers in the piece was to point out that his comments brought up the subject and if anything the article implies that he might be right. So, the question I have to ask is did you even read the BS article or did you just use search with Summers name and then link to each article? If so, did you not understand the article? If not, is that not a little dishonest?

The second article also had nothing at all to do with the question of gender differences in math. It too was a piece that only mentioned Summers as the reason this issue is being discussed along with being a piece about girls feeling they are told not to be good in math by society. Dishonest to say the least claiming these two articles some how debunked Summers.

I have to ask, does BS have any form of oversight? An editor that can look over the piece and the supporting evidence before it goes out?

The reason for this testing is not to damn ambiguous sexed athletes, it is part of the Olympics anti doping/"cheating" program. In case you are not aware the Olympics is equal parts a chemical competition, cheating competition as well as an athletic competition. The Olympics and the different governing bodies have decided that there needs to be hard and fast rules on what is a "natural" athlete as well as what is a "female" athlete.

At the level of the Olympics a female just can not evenly compete with males there needs to be a solid definition of what is a female for the purpose of making the event as fair as possible for other females other wise some government, say the Chinese, will find some way to send a ringer in. Genital checks just will not cut it as some government (or individual) will spend the money to insure/make such a natural surgery that will fool experts. That leaves genetic testing looking at the chromosomes. At this point in medical knowledge the only way to say with certain that a person is a female is for there to be two X chromosomes that is the rule in order to compete in women's events. Sucks for those that are for all intent and purposes females except chromosome makers that point to them being a male but they can compete against male athletes.