It is astonishing how difficult it apparently is to collect dispositive data on such questions as, “How are women doing in the sciences?” The president of Harvard, as everybody knows, suggested they were not doing as well as men. Never mind why; is it so? The statisticians began to file in.

Meghan O’Rourke, who is culture editor for Slate magazine, wrote that “women constitute approximately 20 percent of science and engineering departments nationwide and hold few senior positions.” Moreover, to get specific about the role of Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard, “under his leadership, tenure appointments of women have declined every year; only four of the last 32 appointments were of women. Harvard does not have a senior female math professor; in a department of 18 chemistry professors, only one senior position is held by a woman.”

The controversy bestirred vociferous members of the community of the concerned. One was president of the Association for Women in Mathematics, Carolyn Gordon of Dartmouth. She wrote that, of course, things ought to be better; on the other hand, “About a third of all U.S. citizens who have received Ph.D.s in mathematics recently are women,” and “about half of all undergraduate mathematics degrees in the United States go to women.”

The pool, therefore, is large and, manifestly, nondiscriminatory. The difficulty would appear to be in the number of women who are promoted to the higher posts in the academic scientific community.

Is this a matter of bias? Ms. O’Rourke thinks so. “Contrary to the pie-in-the-sky assumptions of many of Summers’ media defenders, studies show that discrimination against women in the academy is alarmingly widespread, if often unconscious. M.A. Paludi and W.D. Bauer conducted a study in which 180 men and 180 women were asked to grade a paper on a five-point scale. When the author was ‘John T. McKay’ rather then ‘Joan T. McKay,’ the men on average graded the paper a point higher – and the women scoring the test weren’t much more egalitarian.”

Ms. O’Rourke then cites a truly liberating practice involving aspirant classical musicians. “Until blind auditions were held for national orchestras, women were radically underrepresented in the field of classical music. Many argued that women had less wind power and were biologically incapable of performance at highest levels on many instruments. Since blind auditions have been held, though, the participation of women has risen precipitously – evidence that it was almost entirely discrimination that was keeping women out.”

It is fine to come up with incorruptible devices by which to frustrate discrimination. One beauty of athletics is precisely this incorruptibility: The fastest runner runs faster. This does not preclude curiosity into matters that do indeed touch down on race and ethnicity. How do we account for the victory, year after year, of Ethiopian or Kenyan runners in long-distance races? And why is it that there are so few black violinists playing in symphony orchestras?

In the matter of the sciences, Mr. Summers touched on three explanations for the disparity. (The sequence in which he listed these factors attracted the attention of the critic minded.) (1) Women can’t put in the 80-hour work week that would make them competitive. (2) Innate differences between men and women permit men, in the end, to outperform; and (3) gender discrimination discourages women from going the extra mile.

Why did he not list discrimination as the first cause of underperformance? Nancy Hopkins is a biologist at MIT. She walked out before Mr. Summers had even finished his speech. Why? Because – she told the Boston Globe – she had no alternative. So offensive did she find what was said, she’d have “blacked out or thrown up” if she had stayed. Perhaps Mr. Summers should have listed a fourth reason for female underperformance.

The experience has been cathartic. Do not undertake any analysis of anything that rests – indeed, that touches down on – any possibility of genetic endowment. Just – don’t.