The memo appears to be based on actual real science that seems to be the consensus.
However, the author appears to be completely tone deaf and extremely socially awkward - he has very poor communication skills. And lacking the understanding that there is a current culture war going on - to allow himself to be taken as a champion of some of those groups seems to show he is oblivious to the greater social/political discussion out there.
It does not help his argument to be the white knight for the _actual_ misogynists and racists.
>The memo appears to be based on actual real science that seems to be the consensus.
No. See this wired article, his view is not consensus. I do agree that it was pretty poorly made though!
Professor Gina Rippon, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University in Birmingham, said it was surprising how much of the research Damore misinterpreted or got wrong. She added that sex differences backed-up by proper research scrutiny were so tiny they couldn't explain the kind of gender imbalance at Google.
"They're assuming a divide that doesn't really exist," Rippon said. "Either its biological or its social and if its biological you can't change it so Google shouldn't be wasting its time with all these high minded equal opportunity initiatives.
"But the key thing is it can be changed – we know that if women have poor spatial skills, which has been demonstrated in the past, then its easy enough to change that by appropriate training – very often its associated with video game experience for example. He seems to be saying there are fixed differences and we're wasting our time trying to gain equality," Rippon said.
I've read that critique, but I've found numerous more critiques that have supported his position. Do I have a monopoly on saying what percentage support him - No, but it appears so far, and this may turn out to be wrong, that more academics appear to support his claims than those that deny them.
They can be left to argue among themselves however just like any other scientific debate. Social sciences are further complicated due to the nature of how difficult their studies are to perform and analyze.
Perhaps some quality over quantity is needed, this answer on quora is the most in depth critique of the bad science in his paper I've been able to find so far:
Besides it's hardly fair for us to expect academics who are critical of the memo to speak publically about the issue when the alt-right is currently doxxing people for doing just that.
I don't find her critiques convincing in all respects. A couple of her answers seem to be strawmen. For example:
The passing mention of IQ is interesting, since it has nothing to do with gender, which is the focus everywhere else. He’s presumably talking about race, but he doesn’t want to be branded a racist, so he keeps the reference subtle. So why risk doing it at all? It’s a dog-whistle to the alt-right.
She admits she is _assuming_ his intentions - sets up the strawman, and counters it. BOOM - the guy is now racist.
As for Milo and his ilk - yeah they can go to hell - but what? This guy gets fired for speaking publicly? That seems a double standard.
Not the person you are asking, but since I also found some of her arguments to be straw men, I will list some parts I find convincing.
> As an evolutionary biologist, the claim that these observations are “exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective” is especially painful to read. I would not dismiss the field completely, but many of its predictions have turned out to be wildly misguided.
> All in all, we have no reason to think female software engineers should perform worse at software engineering based on female trait distributions. And there’s a huge amount of evidence that promoting diversity improves the performance of teams and companies.
Note that that was a straw man, but I agree with the denotation anyway.
> We know that negative stereotypes damage people’s performance. We know that unconscious bias influences our judgement of others’ competencies. Consequently, whenever there’s significant cultural prejudice against certain groups, as there is with female software engineers, we expect to see inequalities emerge. So it’s implausible to attribute these differences to biology alone.
This touches on the part where I disagree the most with the memo: he acknowledges that bias exists, but appears to base his recommendations mostly on his non-bias explanations. He would have done better to underline that he doesn't want all anti-bias programs to end, but instead open them to more people where that makes sense. (He mentions a program to help women get better at negotiation, which would also help men who are bad at negotiation, but who are excluded because of their gender.)
He makes references to real science, but gets nowhere close to demonstrating that the effects he references should manifest themselves as an 80/20 gender ratio -- presumably worse, if his policy recommendations were adopted. Hell, I'm not even sure if the gender differences would make women worse at engineering, on average, anyway.
