This has, not unexpectedly, raised an additional brouhaha about political correctness, whether someone in Summers' position should consider the implications, political and otherwise, of what he says before he says it - whether, that is, his exercising of his right to free intellectual debate amounted to the academic equivalent of crying ``Fire!'' in a crowded theater.

Summers has since shown contrition, apologized and announced plans to step up recruiting of female academics in the sciences.

Both lines of discussion - whether there are such innate differences and whether a president of a leading academic institution need watch his tongue - seem to me to miss the main point.

It is, for example, pretty easy to demonstrate that innate differences between men and women impede the latter in many careers, not just science. Women have a statistically significant tendency to miss advancement opportunities because of childrearing.

It is, however, possible that there is something genetically different about the neurological and/or chemical make-up of men's and women's brains that predispose the former to understanding science more easily.

But so what?

Any genetic predispositions notwithstanding, most men are hopeless at math and science while there are a good number of excellent women scientists. There is evidently nothing preventing a woman becoming a scientist and, more to the point, general genetic dispositions, even if true, tell one absolutely nothing about the capabilities of any given individual, male or female.

Prejudice is just that: prejudging an individual based on his or her membership of a group, rather than on actual ability. The fact that a group may be statistically better or worse at something tells one nothing about the abilities of any given individual.

To think otherwise is to misunderstand statistics and probability. A gambler knows that a card pulled randomly from a deck has a one-in-13 chance of being an ace - but any given card is either an ace or it isn't, which is why poker players actually look at the cards in their hands. To prejudge a person on the basis of gender, race or ethnicity is like leaving your hand face-down on the table.

None of this, of course, means that Summers' musings, even when qualified by ``may'', necessarily have any validity. One has to be careful about scientific evidence that claims to explain social characteristics: the social effects (for example, upbringing) have, as we know, huge effects on people's choice of, and success in, their career, and these can swamp whatever biological basis there may be. In particular, correlation is not causality: people of East Asian extraction are over-represented in the United States in science and engineering, yet this hardly demonstrates any difference in Asians' innate capabilities.

And while there is a significant correlation between the wealth of children and their parents, that does not mean the children inherited any facilitating characteristics from their parents except the money.

In addition, and worse, a perceived lack of expectation might dissuade women from even trying to excel in science; prejudice, or even statistically significant correlations, can in this way become self-fulfilling. Pursuit of scientific truth is one thing, but one should be careful not to stoke negative feedback loops of this kind.

Most arguments against prejudice, or discrimination, which is way prejudice manifests itself, are that it is ``wrong'' or ``unfair''. These arguments have failed to gain a great deal of traction in a pragmatic town like Hong Kong.

However, there are good practical arguments against the practice: discrimination is economically inefficient. By refusing to rent to certain people, one reduces the supply of renters and thus rents. By refusing to hire or promote certain people, one will not have the best possible employees.

There is no such thing as a purely private commercial decision: agreements are backed and enforced by the law, and therefore society has the right to expect certain standards. When society condones anything other than objectivity and transparency in small relationships, it has a corrosive influence throughout.

Discrimination is merely the flipside of favoritism. If we permit discrimination in our daily actions, we can't complain too much about government collusion or favoritism.

Is discrimination in Hong Kong serious enough to be legislated against? Would it even work? I don't know. What I do know is that ``innate differences'' between groups of people are, or should be, completely irrelevant to the evaluation of any individual.

pgordon@iagroup.com.hk