Viva Uruguay

Pour ce soir, la rencontre entre la sélection française et les Bleus (Uruguay) semble passionner les foules. Je viens de croiser dans la rue des jeunes gens portant les couleurs tricolores et qui ont semblé contrariés que je soutienne l'équipe d'Uruguay.

— Tu parles français, tu devrais supporter l'équipe de France.

— Il ne faut pas se fier aux apparences, j'ai répondu. Parler le français ne fait pas de vous un compatriote. Puis, j'aime mieux les joueurs du Plata à ceux de la banlieue.

Tout le monde a oublié que l'Uruguay a longtemps été une place forte de la France. dans son livre, Just-Jean-Etienne Roy, rappelle les raisons de la présence des Français dans la bande orientale (autre nom de l'Uruguay).

Heureusement pour ces marins la ville de Montevie compte de nombreux négociants européens dont beaucoup de Français qui les aident à trouver des contrats de cabotage local. L’attrait des Français pour pour la capitale de la Bande Orientale, l’autre nom de l’Uruguay, est un sujet d’étonnement pour les voyageurs venus d’Europe. Pourquoi s’établir ici alors que les affaires pourraient leurs être plus prospères aux Etats-Unis ou au Brésil ? Dans un récit de voyage publié en 1865, l’auteur met dans la bouche d’un voyageur français l’explication suivante :
« Aux États-Unis, mon cher Armand, la race anglo-saxonne, par son activité, son aptitude pour le commerce, ne laisse guère aux étrangers qui viennent s’y établir, surtout dans les villes du littoral, la facilité de grands succès dans les opérations commerciales. J’ajouterai aussi que cette race a peu de sympathie pour la nôtre ; aussi combien j’ai vu de Français qui étaient allés chercher fortune à New York, à Boston ou à Baltimore, n’y rencontrer que des déceptions et de la misère ! Le Brésil offre, il est vrai, plus de ressources aux émigrants de notre nation ; mais son climat brûlant ne leur est pas toujours favorable ; au contraire, le climat de Montevideo et de toute la Bande Orientale, est extrêmement sain. Aussi, dès que ce pays eut acquis un peu de tranquillité, dès qu’une constitution extrêmement favorable à l’émigration étrangère eut été sanctionnée, les avantages incontestables de la position maritime et commerciale de Montevideo à l’entrée de la Plata, la fertilité prodigieuse d’un vaste territoire, où l’abondance des cours d’eau prévient les sécheresses si fréquentes et si désastreuses pour les bestiaux du territoire argentin, et où le croît des troupeaux les double régulièrement dans l’espace de trois ans, imprimèrent un grand mouvement de prospérité à Montevideo et à la Bande Orientale. Notre commerce surtout y prit un développement considérable, incessamment favorisé par l’arrivée successive de nombreux émigrants français. Cette émigration, composée en grande partie, dans l’origine, d’ouvriers du pays basque, qu’attiraient la salubrité du climat, des mœurs hospitalières pour les étrangers, et l’élévation du prix de la main-d’œuvre, fit de rapides progrès. En même temps le commerce français y trouvait des débouchés on ne peut plus favorables, les produits de la France y étant très recherchés, et ceux du pays convenant parfaitement à la consommation française. Aussi le pavillon français absorbait-il à lui seul, avant la dernière guerre, près des neuf dixièmes de la navigation de ces parages, et un nombre assez considérable de nos négociants y ont fait d’excellentes affaires… »

Roy, Just-Jean-Etienne ; Girard, Just, Mes voyages avec le docteur Philips dans les républiques de La Plata : Buenos-Ayres, Montevideo, La Banda-Oriental, etc, Alfred Mame éditeur, Tours 1861, page 107.

La mort de l'historien François Crouzet

The Independent publie la necrologie de l'historien François Crouzet, spécialiste de l'histoire britannique, agrégé d'histoire, professeur d'histoire de l'Europe du Nord à l'université de Paris IV-Sorbonne et directeur du Centre de recherches sur la civilisation de l'Europe moderne, décédé le 20 mars 2010.

Parmi ses livres, on peut citer :

Le concept de révolution, 1991
Le Conflit de Chypre, 1973
De Guillaume le Conquérant au Marché commun, : dix siècles d'histoire franco-britannique / [textes choisis et présentés par] François Bédarida, François Crouzet, Douglas Johnson, 1979
De la supériorité de l'Angleterre sur la France, 1985
L'Économie de la Grande-Bretagne victorienne, 1975
La grande inflation , : la monnaie en France de Louis XVI à Napoléon , 1993
Les Hommes d'État célèbres. 5, De la Révolution française à la Première guerre mondiale ? 1975
Les Paysages culturels européens, héritage et devenir, 1995

Professor François Crouzet: Celebrated anglophile French historian of Britain


Professor François Crouzet was the greatest French historian of Britain of his generation, and he will probably be the last. In the introduction to one of his books he quoted his characterisation by an American historian as "a French francophobe anglophile", and he did not demure. He was certainly an anglophile, but he was by no means a francophobe. He loved France, and he loved Britain. He loved speaking perfect and precise English with a very strong French accent.

It does not fall often to a Frenchman to produce a successful textbook on British history, but Crouzet achieved this with his The Victorian Economy (1982). His long introduction to the book he edited on Capital Formation in the Industrial Revolution (1972) has stood several generations of students of economic history in very good stead. His The First Industrialists (1985), developed from the Ellen McArthur lectures that he gave in Cambridge in 1983, is full of insight as well as information.

François Crouzet left school just before the war broke out in 1939, and he spent the war as a student in Paris. His father was a teacher of history and an Inspector of Schools. The summer before he entered the élite Ecole Normale Supérieur in the dark days of 1941, he discovered economic history by reading his father's copies of Annales, the great journal begun by Marc Bloch and Georges Lefebvre in 1929 which revolutionised the French approach to economic and social history.

He was not, however, seduced by la nouvelle histoire. After a foray into medieval history for his master's degree under Jean Meuvret, Crouzet struck out for British empiricism. After the end of the war he was awarded a fellowship to undertake research into British history, and he found British economic history – combining, as it did, gentle theory with sensible quantification and a careful regard for facts – much to his taste. He found himself happily in the tradition of J H Clapham and T S Ashton. Not for him the self-important "Parisian gurus" (his own phrase).

Indeed, he found himself sitting at the feet of Ashton, since he had been attached to the London School of Economics, whence Ashton had just moved from Manchester to be Professor of Economic History. Crouzet spent many happy days in the post-war years dividing his time between the Public Record Office and the Institute of Historical Research, with a cup of tea and the odd visit to the LSE in between. Without losing interest in the French Revolution, he was now immersed in the Industrial Revolution.

When I once asked him flippantly whether he needed food parcels sent from France to sustain him in post-war London, he pointed out that I had quite misunderstood the situation. Coming to London with its efficient system of rationing and price control in restaurants meant that he could be well-fed after years of near-starvation in Paris, with its domineering black market and corruption. He added that the situation, however, changed after 1948.

During his London years he married Françoise, grand-daughter of Emile Levasseur, the first professor of economic history at the Sorbonne, from 1919. They quickly became and remained a devoted couple. Together they extended his researches into the provinces – Manchester (McConnell and Kennedy papers), Birmingham (Boulton and Watt), Aberystwyth (south Wales ironmasters), and elsewhere.

In 1949 he returned to Paris as an assistant in the faculté des lettres. Between 1956 and 1969 he served as a professor successively at Bordeaux, Lille and Nanterre, before returning to the Sorbonne as Professor of the History of Northern Europe. He took this to mean Britain; he held this chair with distinction until his retirement in 1992. His course on "Britain from Churchill to Thatcher" was remarkably popular.

His first great work was his doctorate on the economic impact of the Napoleonic blockade of Britain in the early 19th century, published in two large volumes in 1958. There followed a steady flow of major publications dealing not just with the history of Britain; he also wrote about French history and about comparative global history. Many of his most important and thought-provoking articles are collected in his Britain Ascendant: Comparative Studies in Franco-British Economic History (1990). The title of the French edition was more provocative: De la Superiorité de l'Angleterre sur la France (1985).

He held visiting appointments at Harvard, Columbia, Berkeley, Geneva and Leuven, as well as at Cambridge and Oxford, where he was a Visiting Fellow of All Souls. He became very well-known at conferences in Britain and throughout the world. In 1993 he gave the Neale lecture at University College London on a topic of comparative international finance; his inability to pronounce Rothschild in anything like the English manner meant that many students had no idea what he was talking about.

He received honorary doctorates from Birmingham, Kent, Edinburgh and Leicester, an honorary CBE and was made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. He particularly despised French caricatures of the English, and vice versa. He worked consistently for Anglo-French understanding, with considerable personal success.

A man of great charm, he always lived in Paris, where he and Françoise entertained with style and elegance, as well as bringing up their devoted family (who are now on the way to forming an historical dynasty). For some years they also had a gîte in Kent.

Negley Harte

François Marie-Joseph Crouzet, economic historian: born Monts-sur-Guesnes, Vienne 20 October 1922; research fellowship in England 1945-49; assistant in the faculté des lettres in Paris 1949-55; professor at Bordeaux 1956-58, at Lille 1958-64, at Nanterre 1964-69; Professor of the History of Northern Europe at the Sorbonne 1969-92; Emeritus Professor 1992; Honorary CBE; married 1947 Françoise Dabert-Hauser (one daughter, two sons); died Paris 19 March 2010.

D'où viennent les super-modèles brésiliennes ?

Une beauté tropicale : Gisele Bündchen.

Un reportage vidéo du New York Times répond à cette question.

USS Liberty toute l'histoire en vidéo

Le 8 juin 1967, les armées d'Israël ont attaqué un navire de l'US Navy, l'USS Liberty. Cette opération s'est soldée par 34 tués et 172 blessés américains et aucune perte du côté des forces de l'Etat juif.

Dans le documentaire ci-dessous, une vision des événements à mettre en balance avec celle avacée par les défenseurs de l'armée israélienne.

Euro : ce que les marchés ne veulent voir

C'est avec beaucoup de tranquillité que je suis les tribulations de l'euro sur le marché des changes. Sa baisse rapide comme sa montée tout aussi vertigineuse ne m'émeuvent pas.

Voici plus de trente ans, lors d'une conférence publique, j'avais prédit la fin prochaine du dollar comme monnaie de réserve.

Lers faits m'ont donné tort et, depuis ce triste constat de mes limitations intellectuelles, j'ai fort opportunément appris à la fois la modestie et que les marchés ont souvent tort dans leurs mouvements à court terme.

Une des raisons qui justifient selon les marchés la baisse de l'euro et la difficulté de certains Etats à financer leur emprunts est l'endettement excessif de pays comme la Grèce ou l'Espagne, pour ne rien dire de la France, de la Belgique ou de l'Italie.

L'Europe s'est tiré une balle dans le pied en interdisant à la Banque centrale européenne d'agir comme un banque centrtale normale et de financer la dette souveraine des Etats. Par un subterfuge, elle le fait désormais indirectement mais le mal est fait.

L'euro est juste en dessous de 1,20 dollars et tout porte à croire que sa chute va se poursuivre.

On est encore loin de son minimum, à près de 0,80 dollar.

Je ne suis donc pas inquiet du tout.

Les finances des Etats menacés sont-elles en danger ?

Non car le fonds d'intervention est prêt à agir et la BCE intervient à tour de bras pour racheter de la dette chaque jour que le bon Dieu fait.

Si les banques américaines retiraient en bloc leurs fonds d'Europe, notre continent aurait-il assez de dollars ?

Oui, car les accords entre la BCE et la Réserve fédérale fonctionnent admirablement et ont déjà opéré voici peu.

Alors pourquoi ce vent de panique sur les marchés ?

Il n'y plus de panique. Nous sommes entrés dans une toute autre situation. Nous avons des agents qui parient à la baisse de l'euro et qui font fonctionner à plein régime la machine à rumeurs comme, par exemple, le Financial Times ou le Times ou encore le Daily Telegraph. Il est intéressant de noter que leurs confrères d'outre-Atlantique sont bien plus mesurés.

Dans un climat de crainte nourrie par la presse anglaise qui déteste le projet de construction européenne en général et l'euro en particulier, tout est bon pour tenter de noircir le tableau.

Ces rapports alarmistes sont parfois si ridicules qu'on a peine à croire qu'ils peuvent être publiés par un quotidien responsable. Le courrier des lecteurs n'est pas en reste et celui des blogs du Daily Telegraph en offre un des meilleurs exemples.

Voici quelques jours, j'ai eu la surprise de lire un correspondant disant vivre « sur le Continent » expliquant que ces connaissances liquident leurs avoirs en euros et vident leurs comptes en banque pour acheter de l'or.

Quand on sait que le marchand moyen intervenant sur le marché des changes n'est pas une culture générale très développée et que sa technicité monétaire ne compense pas un manque de sens commun élémentaire (il suffit d'observer Jérôme Kerviel), l'impact de ces bobards est considérable.

Mais comme l'observait le sinistre Abraham Lincoln, on ne peut pas mentir tout le temps à tout le monde.

Les marchés, les opérateurs et ceux qui les manipulent vont finir par se rendre compte que l'euro ne va pas s'effondrer, que l'Union européenne ne va pas disparaître et que le marc, lma peseta ou le franc ne vont pas réapparaître au détour de la prochaîne crise européenne.

Déjà, les analystes américains commencent par se rendre compte que les grandes netreprises européennes sont soldées et que les fondamentaux ne sont pas forcément ceux que l'on dit.

Robert Barone a les yeux ne face des trous et sait compter. Voici la comparaison qu'il établit entre la dette de certains pays européens et celle de certains Etat américains. Eclairant.

Forget PIIGS, US Debt Is Out of Control


Editor's Note: This article was written by Robert Barone, head of Ancora West. Barone currently serves on AAA’s Finance and Investment Committee, which oversees $5 billion of investable assets. This column was originally posted on AncoraWest's Market Insights.

The markets are in turmoil because of worry about the so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) debts. In Fiscal Crises: The Next Shoe, I opined that Greece is just the canary in the coal mine and that when we look homeward, we have our own huge debt issues, which aren't significantly different from those of the PIIGS countries. I believe that the only reason the European contagion hasn't yet spread to America is because of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. That era is coming to an end, and it would behoove America to get its house in order.

A May 14, 2010 Barron’s piece entitled We’re Not Greece -- Yet (D. Henniger) referred to a Royal Bank of Canada (RY) study that concluded that “Although the states of California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois are comparable in terms of economic output and population to Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, RBC finds that states’ debt burden are nowhere near that of the PIIGS.” This, “even after including unfunded liabilities for states’ employees’ pension and other benefits.” As you'll see below, I take issue with the above conclusion, and the first half of this piece will deal with why. Basically, citizens of each US state are responsible not only for the debt burdens of their states and localities, but they're also responsible for their proportionate share of the federal debt. As you'll see, the combination of the two produces debt ratios far in excess of those of the PIIGS.

Table 1 shows the PIIGS data that the markets are concerned with.

Table 1

Table 2 shows estimates (for fiscal year 2010) of the Population (1), State GDP (2), State Debt/State GDP (3), Local Debt/State GDP (4), Unfunded Pension/State GDP (5), Other Unfunded Benefits/State GDP (6), Total Debt/State GDP (7), and Per Capita Debt (8) for the states mentioned in the Barron’s piece plus Michigan.

Table 2

Using California as an example, the population is rapidly approaching 40 million, the state’s GDP is estimated at $1.87 trillion, the State Government Debt/State GDP is 7.4%, Local Government Debt/State GDP is 17.2%, Unfunded State Worker Pension Liability/State GDP is 27.8%, Unfunded Other Health and Benefit Liabilities/State GDP is 3.3% for a Total Debt/State GDP of 55.7%. Translating this into Debt Per Capita reveals that every California citizen owes $26,000 for debt or liabilities contracted by their elected officials. Looking back at Table 1, this isn’t too different than the Debt/GDP ratio of Spain. And looking down the Total Debt/State GDP column of Table 2, it becomes apparent that both New Jersey and Illinois have Debt/GDP ratios equivalent to that of Spain.

But wait! Citizens of the states in the US are also responsible for the debt piled up in Washington, DC. So, to the debt of the states and localities, one must add the national debt. The first three rows of Table 3 show an average of all State (row 1), Local (row 2), and Federal (row 3) Debt/GDP and the Per Capita dollars owed by each US citizen.

Table 3

Using the table, look at the intersection of the "Cumulative (%)" column and "+Agency" row, which represents the recognized public debt of the federal government and its agencies and an average state and local burden. One can see that at 134.6% of GDP, debt burdens are higher than those of all of the PIIGS countries that have given the markets so much heartburn. Table 4 substitutes the debts of the states shown in Table 2 for the "Average State" and "Average Local" and shows the indebtedness of the citizens of these states per capita and as percentages of both State and US GDPs. All of the states shown have Debt/GDP ratios significantly higher than that of Greece.

Table 4

Now, I'm not an expert on debt levels in European countries. And, it could well be that citizens of those countries have taken on public debt that would be similar to US State and Local debt that isn't in the figures shown in Table 1. But, because the absolute levels of the Debt/GDP shown for the PIIGS have been a cause for concern, then the debts of the citizens of the US, and, specifically those states shown in Table 4, should also be cause for grave concern. For the most part, the European states are at least considering austerity measures. And while some US states are being forced into austerity because of their inability to print money, the major contributor to the indebtedness, the US Congress, doesn't seem all that concerned. This is a major difference from what's occurring in Europe.

So far in this piece I've only talked about public debt. Usdebtclock.org estimates total personal debt at $16.6 trillion, mortgage debt at $14.1 trillion, consumer debt at $2.5 trillion, and credit card debt at $848 billion. (Amazingly, of the four types of private debt, only consumer debt is shown at usdebtclock.org as expanding; the other three categories of consumer debt are contracting. I wish I could say the same about public debt!) So, on top of all of the public debt, each US citizen, on average, owes privately $53,525. Adding the public and private debt together totals $117,181 per capita, or a total Debt/GDP ratio of 248% (see Table 3). Wow! Now that's a lot of debt!

Finally, the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare are nearly $109 trillion, or about $352,000 per US citizen (see usdebtclock.org). That number alone is a Debt/GDP ratio of 745% and is so outside the realm of rationality that I didn't bother to put it in the table. Clearly, the recipients of these promises can't possibly hope to receive such benefits in current dollars. Depreciation of the currency or significant cutbacks in the promises (or both) is inevitable. The recognition of the real magnitude of these irresponsible promises should be enough to cause a loss of confidence in the dollar. In my view, unless the US moves to at least begin to address these issues, that day is closer than anyone might think.

All of the public debt was originated by governments and most of the private debt by banks or other financial institutions. In feudal times, serfs owed a significant portion of their toil to their lords. Have times really changed? The lords are now the politicians and "Too Big to Fail" bankers. Many ordinary people are serfs, highly indebted either voluntarily (private debt) or involuntarily (public debt). Looking at debt in this way helps to explain the unholy alliance between Washington and Wall Street (see The Unholy Washington-Wall Street Alliance) and why the "Too Big to Fail" and Washington politicians get richer and richer at the public's expense.

While US citizens are drowning in debt, the political system appears incapable of reducing it. In fact, the politicians continue to expand it in the erroneous belief that more debt will help. There are only two ways out: years of austerity or currency devaluation/inflation. The political system won't allow the former. Buy Gold!

Les filles sont-elles meilleures que les garçons en maths ?

Annoncer que les filles sont meilleures que les garçons n'entraînera aucune conséquence négatives pour celui qui énoncera cette hypothèse.

En revanche, avancer la thèse que les garçons seraient meilleurs que les filles en mathématiques et alors les ligues de vertu entreraient en action.

Voici quelques années, le malheureux Lawrence H. Summers alors président de Harvard avait cloué au pilori pour quelques phrases qu'il avait ptoncées sur l'absence relative des femmes aux deux extrémités de la courbe de répartition des aptitudes à la mathématique.

Ces propos avaient été déformés par les féministes qui en avaient conclu que selon Lawrence H. Summers les femmes ne sont pas douées pour les maths.

Cet article de Jodi Hilton pour le New York Times met en lumière les contradictions entre la nouvelle loi pour lutter contre les discriminations dont pourraient souffrir les femmes dans les sciences avec justement la science tout court.

Le journaliste révèle que les résultats encourageants que certaines enquêtes révèlent sur les aptitudes des femmes aux sciences dures concernent la moyenne des femmes, soit le centre de la courbe de répartition.

En revanche, le 1 pour 10 000, soit la crème de la crème des aptitudes aux sciences est encore majoritairement masculin.

Or les mathématiciens de haut vol qui forment l'avant-garde scientifique d'un pays, qui assurent l'enseignement dans les universités ou les instituts spécialisés se recrutent forcément par les meilleurs, soit un milieu majoritairement masculin.

En revanche, pour être professeur de mathématiques au collège ou au lycée, les femmes ont toutes leurs chances car elles dominent le terrain.

Daring to Discuss Women in Science



The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry’s Law. The official title of this legislation is “Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering,” but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard.

This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the White House science adviser to oversee regular “workshops to enhance gender equity.” At the workshops, to be attended by researchers who receive federal money and by the heads of science and engineering departments at universities, participants would be given before-and-after “attitudinal surveys” and would take part in “interactive discussions or other activities that increase the awareness of the existence of gender bias.”

I’m all in favor of women fulfilling their potential in science, but I feel compelled, at the risk of being shipped off to one of these workshops, to ask a couple of questions:

1) Would it be safe during the “interactive discussions” for someone to mention the new evidence supporting Dr. Summers’s controversial hypothesis about differences in the sexes’ aptitude for math and science?

2) How could these workshops reconcile the “existence of gender bias” with careful studies that show that female scientists fare as well as, if not better than, their male counterparts in receiving academic promotions and research grants?

Each of these questions is complicated enough to warrant a column, so I’ll take them one at a time, starting this week with the issue of sex differences.

When Dr. Summers raised the issue to fellow economists and other researchers at a conference in 2005, his hypothesis was caricatured in the press as a revival of the old notion that “girls can’t do math.” But Dr. Summers said no such thing. He acknowledged that there were many talented female scientists and discussed ways to eliminate the social barriers they faced.

Yet even if all these social factors were eliminated, he hypothesized, the science faculty composition at an elite school like Harvard might still be skewed by a biological factor: the greater variability observed among men in intelligence test scores and various traits. Men and women might, on average, have equal mathematical ability, but there could still be disproportionately more men with very low or very high scores.

These extremes often don’t matter much because relatively few people are involved, leaving the bulk of men and women clustered around the middle. But a tenured physicist at a leading university, Dr. Summers suggested, might well need skills and traits found in only one person in 10,000: the top 0.01 percent of the population, a tiny group that would presumably include more men because it’s at the extreme right tail of the distribution curve.

“I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong,” Dr. Summers told the economists, expressing the hope that gender imbalances could be rectified simply by eliminating social barriers. But he added, “My guess is that there are some very deep forces here that are going to be with us for a long time.”

Dr. Summers was pilloried for even suggesting the idea, and the critics took up his challenge to refute the hypothesis. Some have claimed he was proved wrong by recent reports of girls closing the gender gap on math scores in the United States and other countries. But even if those reports (which have been disputed) are accurate, they involve closing the gap only for average math scores — not for the extreme scores that Dr. Summers was discussing.

Some scientists and advocates for gender equity have argued that the remaining gender gap in extreme scores is rapidly shrinking and will disappear. It was called “largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors” last year by two researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Janet S. Hyde and Janet E. Mertz. They noted evidence of the gap narrowing and concluded, “Thus, there is every reason to believe that it will continue to narrow in the future.”

But some of the evidence for the disappearing gender gap involved standardized tests that aren’t sufficiently difficult to make fine distinctions among the brighter students. These tests, like the annual ones required in American public schools, are limited by what’s called the ceiling effect: If you’re measuring people in a room with a six-foot ceiling, you can’t distinguish among the ones taller than six feet.

Now a team of psychologists at Duke University has looked at the results of tests with more headroom. In an article in a forthcoming issue of the journal Intelligence, they analyze the test scores of students in the United States who took college admissions tests while they were still in the seventh grade. As part of an annual talent search since 1981, the SAT and ACT tests have been given to more than 1.6 million gifted seventh graders, with roughly equal numbers of boys and girls participating.

The Duke researchers — Jonathan Wai, Megan Cacchio, Martha Putallaz and Matthew C. Makel — focused on the extreme right tail of the distribution curve: people ranking in the top 0.01 percent of the general population, which for a seventh grader means scoring above 700 on the SAT math test. In the early 1980s, there were 13 boys for every girl in that group, but by 1991 the gender gap had narrowed to four to one, presumably because of sociocultural factors like encouragement and instruction in math offered to girls.

Since then, however, the math gender gap hasn’t narrowed, despite the continuing programs to encourage girls. The Duke researchers report that there are still four boys for every girl at the extreme right tail of the scores for the SAT math test. The boy-girl ratio has also remained fairly constant, at about three to one, at the right tail of the ACT tests of both math and science reasoning. Among the 19 students who got a perfect score on the ACT science test in the past two decades, 18 were boys.

Meanwhile, the seventh-grade girls outnumbered the boys at the right tail of tests measuring verbal reasoning and writing ability. The Duke researchers report in Intelligence, “Our data clearly show that there are sex differences in cognitive abilities in the extreme right tail, with some favoring males and some favoring females.”

The researchers say it’s impossible to predict how long these math and science gender gaps will last. But given the gaps’ stability for two decades, the researchers conclude, “Thus, sex differences in abilities in the extreme right tail should not be dismissed as no longer part of the explanation for the dearth of women in math-intensive fields of science.”

Other studies have shown that these differences in extreme test scores correlate with later achievements in science and academia. Even when you consider only members of an elite group like the top percentile of the seventh graders on the SAT math test, someone at the 99.9 level is more likely than someone at the 99.1 level to get a doctorate in science or to win tenure at a top university.

Of course, a high score on a test is hardly the only factor important for a successful career in science, and no one claims that the right-tail disparity is the sole reason for the relatively low number of female professors in math-oriented sciences. There are other potentially more important explanations, both biological and cultural, including possible social bias against women.

But before we accept Congress’s proclamation of bias, before we start re-educating scientists at workshops, it’s worth taking a hard look at the evidence of bias against female scientists. That will be the subject of another column.

Une équipe qui nous ressemble

A l'approche de la coupe du monde de balle au pied, on a tous le réflexe de soutenir notre équipe, l'équipe dans laquelle on se reconnaît.

Laquelle allons nous soutenir ?

Celle de la France ?


Celle de l'Espagne ?


Celle d'Argentine ?


Nos visiteurs réguliers ne seront pas étonnés d'apprendre que nous avons écarté l'équipe des Bleus sans aucune hésitation.

Notre cœur balance entre l'équipe des Rouges (l'Espagne) et celle des bleus et blancs (Argentine).

Finalement, on a choisi l'Argentine.

Ce petit film explique notre choix.