“I’m a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That’s what kind of man I am. You’re just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It’s science.”

-Lawrence H. Summers*

No, the New York Times didn’t attribute this quote to Summers, but it’s come pretty darn close - twice. In its story reporting Lawrence Summers’ impending appointment as head of the NEC, the New York Times gives us this gem on Summers’ background:

“After leaving government in 2001, he was president of Harvard for five years but resigned after clashing with faculty over his remarks suggesting that women lack the intrinsic aptitude for math and science.”

One would think Summers were a bonafide Archie Bunker. It’s about time the media dispensed with its laziness with respect to this story. Summers did not say that women were incapable of doing math and science. Summers did say that there is evidence to suggest that the variance in scientific and mathematical aptitude is greater for men than it is to women (leading to a statistical likelihood that there are more males at both ends of the bell curve).

Now, that sort of explanation may be too much for a brief hard news piece on the appointment. But that’s no excuse for butchering the truth. Especially when it comes on the heals of another piece in which Tamar Lewin of the NYT completely misses the mark (and that’s perhaps, too generous a description) in interpreting the study that vindicated Summers’ view (here’s the original NYT piece).

Full disclosure: my own views on the whole Summers debacle are well-documented. I was the editorial chair of the Harvard Crimson during the whole mess. Summers certainly made his mistakes, and, in fact, I count this statement among them. We just don’t need shoddy journalism making Summers out to be a bigot rather than a flawed leader.

* actual quote is from Ron Burgundy in Anchorman