In nature nothing takes place in isolation. Everything affects and is affected by every other thing, and it is mostly because this manifold motion and interaction is forgotten that our natural scientists are prevented from gaining a clear insight into the simplest things.

A study at Stanford University even shows that although there have been significant gains by women in math and science, scientists are still pictured as overwhelmingly male and white—that is, children tend to depict scientists as male and white, even though the number of female and nonwhite scientists has been steadily increasing. And findings of research on the development of gender stereotypes in children indicates continuing challenges: “Many children assimilate the idea that brilliance is a male quality at a young age. This stereotype begins to shape children’s interests as soon as it is acquired and is thus likely to narrow the range of careers they will one day contemplate.

Studies of genetically identical mice in different environments have shown some surprising results. One group was observed over a three-month period in an intricate environment of great diversity, while another group of control mice were kept in plain cages. Even though the mice were all genetically identical and behaved similarly at the beginning of the experiment, their exploratory behavior was markedly different by the end. Mice that moved around a lot and explored grew new nerve cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain influenced by environmental complexity. In other words, the brain structure of genetically identical mice changed as a result of their life activity.

No group is innately intellectually or morally superior to another. We are not compelled by our biology to act in antisocial ways—to be greedy, selfish, and competitive, for men to dominate women, for whites to discriminate against people of color. Rather than being written in our genes, racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination and oppression are the creation of unequal societies. The future is therefore open to the creation of a genuinely equal society.

This proves what many of us have suspected all along: boys are genetically inferior when it comes to reading, at least careful reading. Their brains are not wired for words. So stop trying to make excuses for things like guys failing to understand mortgage contracts or IPCC reports on climate science. This is not a social failing; it’s because of evolutionary inheritance. Back in the cave age, males who got absorbed in reading were eaten by sabretooths or something. Pretending that biological differences don’t exist is just Political Correctness, and we know how horrible that is.

The existence of racism means that people are viewed through a distorted lens, leading to mistaken assumptions regarding cause and effect. For example, assuming that race is a biological reality encourages scientists to search for genetic explanations for the high incidence of diseases such as asthma or hypertension among the African American population. However, the cause for the high incidence of these diseases is racism and the resulting stresses and environmental contamination in African American communities. It is a similar issue for the supposed differences in intellectual abilities between supposed races.

The very idea of testing for racial difference is itself racist.

The research by the remarkable plant geneticist Barbara McClintock (1902–1992), showing that corn genes or parts of genes could change location on chromosomes during cell division, was largely ignored. For many years the phenomenon of “jumping genes” was mainly considered an eccentric curiosity or oddity. The findings that some 50 percent of the human genome and as much as 80 percent of the corn genome are composed of what are now called “transposable elements” indicate the significance of McClintock’s research, for which she was belatedly awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983.

The work of the English chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) provided critical evidence for ferreting out the structure of DNA. James Watson and Francis Crick essentially appropriated Franklin’s work and originally did not even acknowledge the significance of her contribution to “their” discovery. Crick has since died, but Watson, who as a world-famous geneticist really should know better, has become infamous and a pariah within the scientific community for his openly espoused racist and sexist bigotry.

Ada Lovelace is recognized by many as the world’s first computer programmer. But Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s analytical engine gained little attention when they were originally published in 1843 (under her initials A.A.L.). It wasn’t until they were republished in B.V. Bowden’s 1953 Faster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines that her work found a much wider audience.

All six primary programmers for the first modern computer, ENIAC, were women—Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman. They are most often referred to as “computers” and “the ENIAC Girls.” They too, received little attention at the time they worked; programming was undervalued precisely because it was done almost entirely by women. These women weren’t even invited to the dinner following the announcement that the machine worked in 1946.

Another possibility of obtaining literal accounts is the use of a recording machine, either visible or hidden—a measure which, in my view, is absolutely against the fundamental principles on which psycho-analysis rests, namely the exclusion of any audience during an analytic session.

Not only do I believe that the patient, if he had any reason to suspect that a machine was being used (and the unconscious is very perspicacious), would not speak and behave in the way he does when he is alone with the analyst; but I am also convinced that the analyst, speaking to an audience which the machine implies, would not interpret in the same natural and intuitive way as he does when alone with his patient.