A. Women account for 53/(866 + 53) = 6% of ALL Nobel Laureates.

B. Women (Marie Curie) form 1/4 = 25% of two-time Nobel Prize winners

C. Women (Marie Curie) make up 100% of Nobels won in two different fields. In other words no man has achieved a Nobel in more than one discipline.



It appears that
D. In general, men are smarter than women
E. Women are more versatile — TheMadFool

What do you mean it appears? D and E don't follow from A, B and C.

The common explanation is that there's more variability among men than there is among women. In other words, that the smartest and dumbest are more likely to be found among men. The evolutionary basis for that would be the asymmetrical biology of reproduction which made risk-taking a more favorable strategy for men than women.

What do you mean it appears? D and E don't follow from A, B and C. — zookeeper

Do the stats beg an explanation or not?

Supposing there was no bias against women, shouldn't the proportion of women remain the same in both one-time Nobel winners and two-time winners?

The common explanation is that there's more variability among men than there is among women. In other words, that the smartest and dumbest are more likely to be found among men. The evolutionary basis for that would be the asymmetrical biology of reproduction which made risk-taking a more favorable strategy for men than women. — zookeeper

Please explain; to my knowledge 50% of genetic material is sourced from both homo sapien parents.

"Asymmetrical biology of reproduction"?
Please explain; to my knowledge 50% of genetic material is sourced from both parents in homo sapiens. — Key

Men can have a practically unlimited amount of children, women can carry at best one child per year. Plus, after birth, only the woman is physically needed to care for the child (breastfeeding). Therefore for men it's a more viable strategy to simply have more children, whereas for women it's more important to ensure their offspring actually survive and to be more selective regarding their mating partners as well.

The common explanation is that there's more variability among men than there is among women. In other words, that the smartest and dumbest are more likely to be found among men. The evolutionary basis for that would be the asymmetrical biology of reproduction which made risk-taking a more favorable strategy for men than women. — zookeeper

Do you mean to imply that risk-taking and intelligence are linked to each other? Whatever happene to discretion is the better part of valor?

I don't follow how being limited to reproducing at one rate or another makes it "[...]more important [...] to be more selective regarding their mating partners[...]"
Is there a literary work done by an evolutionary biologist you can source?

I don't follow how being limited to reproducing at one rate or another makes it "[...]more important [...] to be more selective regarding their mating partners[...]" — Key

Because reproduction is free for a male, and costly and dangerous (and in the worst case, fatal) for a female? From the point of view of spreading their genes, a male has no reason not to reproduce with every female they possibly can. A female can't do that, because pregnancy is taxing, dangerous and you can't do it as often, so you have to give more consideration to who you actually reproduce with; whether they have good genes, whether they're a good parent, and so on.

Is there a literary work done by an evolutionary biologist you can source? — Key

Not that I can name any, but I'm sure a lot of the stuff referenced for example here.

Because reproduction is free for a male, and costly and dangerous (and in the worst case, fatal) for a female? From the point of view of spreading their genes, a male has no reason not to reproduce with every female they possibly can. A female can't do that, because pregnancy is taxing, dangerous and you can't do it as often, so you have to give more consideration to who you actually reproduce with; whether they have good genes, whether they're a good parent, and so on. — zookeeper

You seem to be approaching this from an organism-centric model of evolution which has been outdated since at least the mid-70s when Dawkins published "The Selfish Gene" and established gene-centric evolution as the dominant hypothesis.

Due to the pressures of natural selection, genes that enable their "gene machines" to reproduce with fated partners do not propagate through the gene pool.

I think men are crazier than women. Women have 23 chronomome pairs, while men only have 22 pairs. Men have an X & Y with no back up copies (poor things).

You seem to be approaching this from a organism-centric model of evolution which has been outdated since at least the mid-70s when Dawkins published his work known as "The Selfish Gene" and established gene-centric evolution as the dominant hypothesis. — Key

Well, I don't see how what I've said would be mutually exclusive with gene-centric evolution.

Due to the pressures of natural selection, genes that enable their "gene machines" to reproduce with fated partners do not propagate through the gene pool. — Key

I think men are crazier than women. Women have 23 chronomome pairs, while men only have 22 pairs. Men have an X & Y with no back up copies (poor things). — Wheatley

I'm quite certain that is inaccurate.

Due to the pressures of natural selection, genes that enable their "gene machines" to reproduce with fated partners do not propagate through the gene pool. — Key

I'm afraid I can't tell what that means, but I'll wager a guess: genes that increase promiscuity in men don't actually end up propagating through the gene pool if too many of their partners are evolutionary dead-ends?

Okay, perhaps you can call X & Y "pairs". The fact is they're different. If there's a mutation in a gene in the Y chromosome (for instance) there's isnt another Y chromosome to read from. (I'm not a biology major, so take everything I say with a grain of salt).

Due to the pressures of natural selection, genes that enable their "gene machines" to reproduce with fated partners do not propagate through the gene pool. — Key

It’s not that genes that allow for some doomed offspring get eliminated, it’s that genes that don’t allow for some non-doomed offspring get eliminated. Males can just make lots of offspring at no cost and let some of them be doomed so long as some others survive. Females can’t make lots of offspring at no cost, so have to be careful that their few offspring do survive.

1. Is there a theory of intelligence that explains these statistics? — TheMadFool

This is quite dumb, actually. But very typical for today.

The answer is of course not.

How about the issue that the prizes have been started to be given out since 1901? How many women were at STEM-fields in 1901? How many women could even vote at that time? I think for the first seventy or nearly eighty years a minority of women worked outside the house in the US. So you could start with these kind of statistics before going in Nobel-prizes:



How many are there even now in the STEM-fields? They are a minority, yet are women really going to study physics or economics far more than men?

How have things changed? Well, Hence looking from 1975 onwards:



And Marie Curie? Thank God for her, because statistically it was really rare to have women in her position. Of course, once you gotten a Nobel-prize, you have a huge probability more to get another one. Let's remember that we are talking about a very small group of people, but people will eagerly use the statistics for Nobel-prize winners to answer general questions about science and gender, race or nationality.

:up:

What's shameful looking at that is that no woman has won the Nobel prize for physics solo, which means that even when women are doing great research, they're not doing their own great research. It's unlikely to change because science is ever more collaborative and still male-dominated.

On which...

In general, men are smarter than women — TheMadFool

No, it appears far more men are in science than women, which is already known. I taught physics at a department that had one of the highest percentages of female undergraduates in the UK. At that level, there's no obvious difference in intelligence.

That said:

1. Is there a theory of intelligence that explains these statistics? — TheMadFool

Not theory, but experiment. Helen Fisher studied extremes of intelligence and found that there were more male geniuses. And more male idiots.

What's shameful looking at that is that no woman has won the Nobel prize for physics solo, which means that even when women are doing great research, they're not doing their own great research. It's unlikely to change because science is ever more collaborative and still male-dominated. — Kenosha Kid

Actually solo Nobel-prizes have become more rare. What usually happens is that some specific field gets a Nobel and there simply isn't a Newton or an Einstein that hasn't got the peers that "on whose shoulders they stood". So very likely it's more than one. Besides, seldom people publish scientific breakthrough articles just by their name, but have others that have participated in it.

Not theory, but experiment. Helen Fisher studied extremes of intelligence and found that there were more male geniuses. And more male idiots. — Kenosha Kid

I would argue that even larger issue is simply what fields men and women choose to study.

And yes, there can be the occasional misogynist still somewhere in the academia, but they are very rare. More likely the head of the university or the research institute will sigh happily if they get a talented woman or minority member to their team.

It appears that @TheMadFool is again being a complete moron and not taking into account the fact that woman have were excluded by the kinds of educational and employment opportunities afforded to men for most of history.

Actually solo Nobel-prizes have become more rare. What usually happens is that some specific field gets a Nobel and there simply isn't a Newton or an Einstein that hasn't got the peers that "on whose shoulders they stood". So very likely it's more than one. Besides, seldom people publish scientific breakthrough articles just by their name, but have others that have participated in it. — ssu

Yeah that's what I meant by it bei

I hate this phone. That's what I meant by it being more collaborative.

1. Is there a theory of intelligence that explains these statistics?

No.

2. Are the statistics a reflection of systemic bias against women? — TheMadFool

No.

You have to account for social factors. Only in affluent societies do women have the means to peruse science etc. Women don't go into scientific areas as much as men, even when they have the means to. Men who are breadwinners will sometimes have jobs that could lead them a nobel prize. Women often choose types of work, like medical care, that won't lead to a nobel prize. There are dozens of reasons why.

It’s not that genes that allow for some doomed offspring get eliminated, it’s that genes that don’t allow for some non-doomed offspring get eliminated. Males can just make lots of offspring at no cost and let some of them be doomed so long as some others survive. Females can’t make lots of offspring at no cost, so have to be careful that their few offspring do survive. — Pfhorrest

Under the assumption that an increasing population produces no cost to the surviving genes, yes. But because there is cost, even if the cost is significantly less for males than females, it will stimulate the same selection pressure. The existence of a pressure is more significant than its actual degree (given enough time).

In other words, while a harsher pressure will likely produce population change exponentially quicker than a milder one, in theory over enough time the outcomes should look quite similar.

You know you can edit your posts?

You know you can edit your posts? — Pfhorrest

Aye, but this phone is really crap. I can hit the edit button a hundred times and nothing happening.

Under the assumption that an increasing population produces no cost to the surviving genes, yes. — Key

Population growth is limited by females one way or another. Males reproducing more doesn’t make population grow faster, it just makes more of the resulting population carry their genes.

Really? Then wouldn't it make sense that homo sapien females would be produced at a much higher rate than males, and not (roughly) 50/50?

It would, if lots of single mothers were evolutionary advantageous. And if, as you said, larger population sizes don’t create a cost themselves.

Because reproduction is free for a male, and costly and dangerous (and in the worst case, fatal) for a female? From the point of view of spreading their genes, a male has no reason not to reproduce with every female they possibly can. — zookeeper

I don't have a time machine, but I suspect sexual activity hasn't always been the free-for-all it currently seems to be.

For one, humans have lived in social groups for a long time. We were hunter-gatherers in a sparsely populated world for... hundreds of thousands of years--much of our homo sapiens history. It is not a huge stretch to suppose that there were social limitations on what both men and women might do. We evolved in social groups, not as lone operators. There weren't hundred, thousands, of potential partners in the hunter-gatherer bands. They just weren't that large.

Survival was precarious. Survival was not a sure thing. In hunter-gatherer groups, reproduction was perhaps not free for any of the adults, "not free" in the sense that too many children would be hard for the adults (male and female) to feed.

The whole animal kingdom isn't loaded with males running around mating promiscuously. In some species, yes; in other species, no. One of the limitations on male promiscuity is female mating-willingness. Because in many species, females are choosy about mating the male would be very lucky to achieve promiscuity. Another factor is population density: there just aren't enough animals of a particular species in one area to allow for male promiscuity. (Probably more true for larger fauna than smaller,)

When and where we have achieved high population density (cities, complex urban societies) my guess is that male-promiscuity opportunities are higher than in the distant past. Maybe we are projecting present conditions into the Stone Age.

No, it appears far more men are in science than women, which is already known. — Kenosha Kid

I believe the actual number of men and women in science doesn't matter. What's important is the percentage of men and women who win Nobel prizes.

If the percentage of men who get Nobels is greater than the percentage of women Nobel winners then gender plays a role in intelligence.

Ergo, just because the percentage of men Nobel awardees is greater than their women counterparts, we can't draw conclusions about gender and Nobels until and unless we know what fraction of men and what fraction of women have won Nobels.

Consider the following:

Noble winners (20) + Non-winners (80) = 100
Men (75) + Women (25) = 100
Men Nobel awardees = 15
Men who didn't win Nobel = 60
Women Nobel awardees = 5
Women who didn't win Nobel = 20
Percentage of men who won Nobels (M) = 15/75 = 20%
Percentage of women who won Nobels (W) = 5/25 = 20%
Percentage of all (men and women) who won Nobels (T) = 20/100 = 20%

Since M = W = T, gender is not associated with winning Nobels i.e. being a man/a woman doesn't affect your chances of winning the Nobel prize.

However, given that someone has won a Nobel, it's more likely that that someone is a man (15/20 = 75%) than a woman (5/20 = 25%).

So, to say that because men constitute 94% [866/(866 + 53] and women 6% [53/(866 + 53)] of Nobel awardees, gender affects the chances of winning a Noble is incorrect.

However being a member of the fairer sex does increase your chances of winning Nobels in two different fields. A male has 0% chance of winning Nobels in two different fields but Marie Curie's two Nobels makes it possible (non-zero chance) for women to achieve this unique feat.