Dear Mr. Knight:

In replying to my message, you seem inadvertently to have omitted the
most important part.  While I am of course flattered that you would wish
to place my email on your web site, I would respectfully insist that you
place it there in its entirety or not at all.

Since you place such stress on the importance of intellectual honesty, I
am certain that you will have no difficulty in complying with this
request.

After all, placing excerpts on a web site, to be read by people who
cannot see the original message, is inherently different from citing
excerpts in a reply that is addressed only to those who have received
the original.

Here is the portion that is missing from your web site:


> I've shared some of this material with the friendly folks at the TIMSS
>
> Curriculum Study, who are of course the ultimate experts on their own
> data and on what conclusions can legitimately be drawn from it.  Their
>
> response began:
>
> > Perhaps this is the classic example of people trying to interpret
> > spurious
> > correlations as causality.  What this probably reflects more than
> > anything
> > is the subject matter preparedness of the teachers in math and
> > science.  It
> > has little to do with the gender of individuals.  It is only
> recently
> > that
> > international data have shown the breaking down of sex differences
> in
> > scores and so much of the teaching forces in these countries still
> > reflect
> > earlier biases in who was directed to study math and science or the
> > simple
> > reality that males tend to choose advanced work in mathematics and
> > science
> > much more so than females.
>

Thank you in advance for your courtesy in this matter.  Please advise
when you have made the correction.

Erwin Morton
emorton@bigfoot.com
  

NOTE: The above follow-up post is added to the record only with the following caveats:

1. It is understood that it was not included in the original critique dated Dec. 1 from Mr. Morton.
2. This author and 11 other members of TIMSS-Forum never saw this paragraph until Mr. Morton posted it on Dec. 11.
3. The source of the comment cannot be verified because there is no email address, phone number, url, nor any other way to identify the original author.
4. It is dubious that the comment applies to all 451 education-related graphics figures on the FM Web Sites, as Mr. Morton infers.
5. Even if it applies to just one figure, such a statement simply could not have been made by someone competent in probabilities & statistics.
6. It is sexist to assert that the only reason males outperform females in math and science (i.e., that 98.5% of the top 50th percentile of GRE scores are males) is due to "earlier biases".
7. The statement first refutes "causality", and then goes on to explain that such causality "has little to do with the gender of individuals ".
8. Even though these two assertions are 180 degrees out of synch with each other, it will be posted at Mr. Morton's request.
9. Given such a gender gap, and the abundant statistical evidence of TIMSS related to causality, the relationship of gender to education quality & costs is overwhelming.

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