The Harvard controversy

The transcript of the Harvard President Lawrence Summers' controversial speech at the NBER conference: Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce.

Independent of the social sciences research on these issues that contradict or support his comments, I continue to wonder why the dichotomous Nature-Nurture debate persists so doggedly. As Susan Oyama in The ontogeny of information observes, this either-or idea of causality is like a boa constrictor where half-hearted attempts to get away from it only results in a tightening of the coils. Every time the words "innate", "genetic" (i.e. the Nature camp), "social structure", "culture" (i.e. the Nurture camp) are used as broad explanatory devices, it is a warning of the lurking boa constrictor that is waiting to wrap us up in its coils.