If there's anyone out there who still doesn't think that the goal of the NY Times is to indoctrinate it's readership to be liberal and politically correct, all you have to do is read The Girls Are Smart, Real Smart by Clyde Haberman.

The main point of the article is to prove not only that women are capable of becoming good mathematicians and scientists, but that they are more capable than men. This is in response to the comments (posted earlier) of Harvard's president who claimed that it's possible that men are innately better at math and science than women.

Before continuing I will just say that I know that men and women are different, but I don't know whether one is better equipped for these subjects than the other, and honestly I don't care. Nor do I think that if one is proven to be better than the other that we need to rehabilitate whichever is the weaker sex.

However the Times goes so far to prove Lawrence Summer wrong that it proves it's point by mentioning about the most recent winners of the Intel science awards that -

"Four (NYC) teenagers made the cutoff. Three - count 'em, three - were young women."

I'm surprised the editors didn't add an exclamation mark at the end.

This is the reason the entire article was published even though the same article admits regarding the national results that, "women accounted for 15 of the 40. That is not a dazzling percentage, perhaps, but it's none too shabby, either."

The author further acknowledges, "A scientist might caution against sweeping generalizations based on such a small sample. Still, the performance of these city kids suggests that women are more than able to strut their stuff in areas widely perceived as male domains."

Personally I think you just have to be a human being with common sense, which does not require a Phd to see that there is no news at all in this article. At least the author was trying to be intellectually honest by mentioning that the accomplishments of a few people don't necessarily refute the position of the person who he calls "Harvard's chief penitent".

And to top it all off, a little bit of self-deprecating humor.

To cite but one example, Ms. Pikovskaya's research focused on "the synthesis, purification and crystallographic identification of recently discovered metabolite-binding mRNA's (riboswitches) that are responsible for gene activation."

We would love to tell you what all that means, but our lips hurt just reading it. It is safe to say, however, that Ms. Pikovskaya and the others are smart, so smart that there is little risk of their ending up as newspaper columnists.

That's a shame as we could definitely use some more intelligent, insightful reporting.