The controversy surrounding the nomination of E. J. Antoni to head the US Bureau of Labor Statistics briefly brought public attention to a topic that is usually confined to academic psychology. During discussions with interns at the Heritage Foundation, Antoni reportedly stated that men and women differ in intelligence distributions and that males are more likely to appear at the extremes, including very high IQ levels. The comments triggered criticism and media attention, and the nomination was eventually withdrawn. This was not the first time such ideas had cost someone a prestigious position. Larry Summers was similarly pushed out of Harvard after suggesting that inherent differences in ability between the sexes could account for why men tend to dominate at the top end of STEM performance.
Furthermore, conservative commentator Helen Andrews has recently argued that Summers’s departure marked an early landmark moment in the rise of what is now called wokeness. Yet the question Antoni raised has been studied for decades within psychometrics and cognitive science. One of the most prominent contributors to this debate was Richard Lynn, who developed a developmental theory proposing that average intelligence differences between males and females vary across the life course.
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