Very bright idiots.

This is almost incomprehensibly incoherent. From A doctor said the gender pay gap is fair because women in medicine ‘don’t work as hard.’ He apologized. by Taylor Telford.

As I have discussed extensively, and is supported by multiple studies across the OECD, there is no gender pay gap when you control for hours worked, career duration, degree level achieved, etc. You don't expect a part time employee to earn the same amount as a full time employee. You don't expect a person in their first year of a career to earn as much as somebody with twenty years of experience. You don't expect a paramedic to earn as much as specialist doctor.

All rigorous studies which take into account the multiple factors responsible for productivity find the same thing. Men and women are paid the same for the same work when you compare apples with apples. And that is exactly what you would expect from economic theory.

So economic theory predicts equal pay. Multiple pre-registered randomized studies which control for all variables, replicated in multiple countries, all confirm empirically that men and women are paid the same for equal work. What's the problem?

The problem is that the reality breaches an article of faith among some ideologues. Powerful ideologues.

Poor old Dr. Gary Tigges had the audacity to observe, and be reported for saying:

“Female physicians do not work as hard and do not see as many patients as male physicians. This is because they choose to, or they simply don't want to be rushed, or they don't want to work the long hours. Most of the time, their priority is something else … family, social, whatever,” Tigges told the Journal. “Nothing needs to be ‘done’ about this unless female physicians actually want to work harder and put in the hours. If not, they should be paid less. That is fair.”

Everything Tigges says is true. It is what is reflected in the data. Claudia Goldin at Harvard has done probably the deepest research in this area.

But that is not what the Washington Post or any of the establishment ideologues want to hear. The baying mob goes after Tigges. He is forced to apologize for telling the truth.

The Post's new tag line "Democracy dies in darkness" takes on a certain irony when they themselves cannot shine light on their own articles of faith but have to hide the facts in darkness from themselves so that they do not have to confront their own false beliefs. Or their own "fake news" as others might term it.

The Washington Post does its part by imputing to Tigges that which he did not say. From the Post:

Many female doctors do work fewer hours and see fewer patients, but not because of laziness or lack of drive, according to studies from the Annals of Internal Medicine and the American Medical Association.

But Tigges did not say the women work fewer hours because they are lazy or lack drive. That is the Washington Post reporter creating that out of thin air. What he said was that women work fewer hours because "they choose to, or they simply don't want to be rushed, or they don't want to work the long hours."

His causal explanation is that they prioritize other objectives over longer hours. And the data supports that.

This playing with words in order to leave a false impression isn't journalism, this is ideological advocacy from a journalist.

There are ideologues who insist that there has to be systemic discrimination, facts be damned.

But notice that in trying to put words into Tigges mouth, the Post acknowledges his central argument to be true "Many female doctors do work fewer hours and see fewer patients." They work less and they are paid less for working less. Tigges is right, that's fair. It is both true and fair.

Telford, the advocate journalist misreporting this incident then spends the remaining four or five paragraphs of the article in an extended non sequitur, justifying why women choose to work fewer hours.

Women doctors choose to undertake more responsibilities at home than male doctors, they suffer greater depression, they work fewer hours, more of them switch careers. Tigges did not say their decisions about their priorities or where to spend their time were bad. He did not accuse them of laziness. He simply observed empirical data showing that they do indeed, as Telford acknowledges, work fewer hours, see fewer patients and choose to spend their time on other objectives.

And that's the rub. The female doctors are making decisions that fit their personal goals and objectives and those decisions are not consonant with what the ideologues want them to decide to do.

The gap between what the ideologues want to be true and what real people want leads them into mind-bending inconsistencies.

Many female doctors do work fewer hours and see fewer patients, but not because of laziness or lack of drive, according to studies from the Annals of Internal Medicine and the American Medical Association. Female physicians shoulder more of the burden at home; those with kids work an average of 11 fewer hours a week than ones without, according to a 2017 study by JAMA Internal Medicine. Their extra burdens at home are used against them — to justify their lower pay and elevate men's higher pay, according to Kim Templeton, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.

Templeton seems to be arguing that women doctors work fewer hours but should be paid the same as men (and women) doctors who work more hours. That makes no sense under any political or ideological system. The fact that women doctors are choosing to spend more time with their families apparently incenses Templeton. But that is an issue for Templeton, not an issue of systemic discrimination.

Modernism: Equal pay for equal work!
Postmodernism: Equal pay for less work!

We are left with an incident in which a doctor accurately states what the data shows - doctors who work fewer hours are paid less. Ideologues in the medical industry are outraged that he has the temerity to tell the truth. They acknowledge the facts but claim that just because some doctors choose to work fewer hours, they shouldn't be paid less.

The truth-telling doctor is shamed and ridiculed and forced to issue an apology for telling the truth.

All of which is reported by a journalist advocate in a fashion that leaves the impression that the facts are different from what the doctor said and from what all the data supports (and the law requires) - men and women are paid the same for equal work.

Is it any wonder that middle Americans living in the real world are rejecting their despotic, over-compensated, self-dealing, reality denying, science denying establishment "betters"? I think the only surprise is that the establishment is so blinded by its own shibboleths that it can't see what others see.