[Aunche]

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

People really did exaggerate how bad the memo really was. That said, it definitely has portions that brought up stereotypes without citing direct evidence, like how men have a higher drive to achieve status. Google considered these statements "discriminatory," which sounded reasonable enough to the NLRB. It doesn't matter whether these statements were actually discriminatory because they clearly fall outside the bounds of protected speech.

[manfredo]

He cited multiple academic sources to back up the claims made about gender. He also belabored the point that averages and general trends of a demographic should not be used to make judgements about individual members of the demographic.

[s73v3r_]

Not all of them. He also misinterpreted several, and stretched the conclusions beyond what was reasonable.

[zimablue]

Good of you to point then out for us then, thanks.

[oh_sigh]

This is exactly what happens in academia all of the time, when you have factions who believe in competing ideas. Side A thinks that logic and rationality and the data is on their side, and that side B stretches the facts and don't have support for their claims, and vice versa for side B.

Are all of these issues in academia settled which you refer to? Or is it that, maybe, Damore accepted side Bs views, whereas you accept side As views, but this isn't settle in academia?

Could you point out, perhaps, the most offensive, non-supported statement that Damore had in his memo?

[bduerst]

There's a good breakdown here, that was eventually run in Forbes:

https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...

[throwaway324823]

Is it a good breakdown? The author seems awfully bought into the narrative of power structures being the dominant reason for sex differences, and is obviously extremely angry. Hardly an unbiased observer.

[oh_sigh]

Yes, the author makes a point that Damore's memo 'makes repugnant attacks on compassion and empathy'. Does it really? That seems a bit silly and I didn't read anything like that in the memo. It makes me suspect other parts of the rebuttal.

[leereeves]

He did cite evidence for his claims, but the most widely circulated copies of the memo removed his citations.

[Aunche]

I mean the citations weren't particularly thorough, and he took some liberties with interpretation.

[bduerst]

Not to mention cherry picking what to cite in order to support his arguments.

[leereeves]

I agree Damore's sources were unconvincing, but I've searched for sources disputing one of his most controversial claims (that women are more "neurotic" - an unfortunately named Big Five personality trait - than men) and haven't found any.

Do you know of any?

[bduerst]

The Big Five is getting outdated. It was a popular method in the 90's, but doesn't hold up today for biological factor analysis because its lexical nature opens it to social biases:

>And that is what the Big Five represents: a consistent model of how humans reflect individuality using language, no more. There were no considerations of findings in neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, experimental psychology, observations of behavior of people or animals in real situations – none of this was used at the research stage leading to the development of the Big Five. In this sense we can say that the Big Five does not represent the structure of temperament or the structure of biologically based traits, even though lexical perception reflects some elements of it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903487/

The big five can still be used for self-reported correlational analysis, but Damore used it in an argument against social constructs, when the method itself can be heavily biased by the social constructs he's arguing against.

[Consultant32452]

His statements were within the mainstream interpretations of modern clinical psychology and evolutionary biology. That doesn't make them certain facts by any means, but it's important that we not misrepresent things here.

[awesomepantsm]

Are you implying the lawyers in the case didn't read the citations? Please.

[leereeves]

No, I'm responding to the claim in the comment above that Damore made statements "without citing direct evidence".

Though it is probably true that the lawyers in the case didn't read the citations. It wasn't their job to determine whether Damore's statements were scientifically accurate, and they stated that his statements were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, regardless of the scientific references and analysis.