Much of what our public intellectuals pretend to believe is demonstrably incorrect.

From The Boys Under the Bus by Arnold Kling.  He is reviewing Of Boys and Men by Richard V. Reeves.  Reeves does some good research but his analysis and prescriptions tend to be of a lesser calibre.  

Kling notes:

Reeves sees the political left as overly focused on segments of society where women still have not caught up to men. Male earnings advantages exist at the top end of the income scale. But the left obsesses with these disparities while ignoring the lesser-educated half of the population, where the problems that males are having is what stands out.

Reeves sees the political right as living with the hope of a return to the traditional household with the male as the primary breadwinner.

In his newsletter, though, he adds:

My review does not do justice to how annoyed I was with the book. It seems clear to me that Reeves is trying to bend over backwards to try not to say anything that would offend feminists. He steers clear of any diagnoses or prescriptions that would offend the political views of a typical college-educated woman. He strikes me as using “studies” like a lawyer to make a case rather than like a judge to try to figure out a complex situation.

I’m getting tired of reading books like this and seeing them get great publicity. The next review I write I will not hold back.

Indeed.  There are vast swaths of intellectual knowledge which we now know which are inconsistent with what our public intellectuals would like to be true.  It is one thing to let the public intellectuals down politely.  It is quite another to avoid the reality of the world that they do not acknowledge.  

Our greatest social challenges have to do with how we treat men, not how women are treated.

Differences in group interests and achievements between the sexes are universal and most prevalent in the safest and most prosperous countries.

Intelligence is significantly heritable.

Discrimination is primarily on factors having nothing to do with race (usually and most commonly to do with class).

There are no material incomes gaps between men and women when known variables (education, IQ, profession choice, length of service, hours per week worked, etc.) are taken into account.

There are no material income gaps between races when known variables (education, IQ, profession choice, length of service, hours per week worked, etc.) are taken into account.

There are material differences in socio-econometric measures between cultural groups which replicate across the world reflecting the effectiveness of different cultural priorities.

There are no known mechanisms to maintain economic prosperity and growth while simultaneously reducing income inequality.  

The empirical case behind all these realities are pretty deeply established at this point and yet public policy is made as if none them were true.