Larry Summers Never Said That!

Okay, the week is nearly over, and I still can’t get a misleading headline on a Sunday magazine piece out of my mind.

Headlines are supposed to be catchy and one expects a certain amount of license, especially on features.

But “Larry Summers, Meet Abby and Sherri,” the sassy headline on an article about two female science whizzes, by implication vastly misrepresents what Larry Summers actually said.

The embattled Harvard president never said that women can’t be scientific geniuses–he simply mused that perhaps scientific genius isn’t equally distributed and that there are fewer first rate scientists on the distaff side.    

Here is how the piece begins:

“Earlier this year, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers raised questions about the fitness of women to do advanced work in science. He even wondered about the ‘intrinsic aptitude’ of females. So, what do young science whizzes like Abby Fraeman and Sherri Geng think about Summers’s remarks. Not much, it turns out.”

It’s fine to hype a headline (within reason) and to try to peg a story to a current controversy, but not at the expense of making Larry Summers say things he never said.