This mass outbreak of fake news - something must be done

We do entirely agree that fake news is a bad thing. Even that Something Must Be Done. Which is why we highlight today just such a piece of fake news:

Girls as young as six years old believe that brilliance is a male trait, according research into gender stereotypes.

The US-based study also found that, unlike boys, girls do not believe that achieving good grades in school is related to innate abilities.

Andrei Cimpian, a co-author of the research from New York University, said that the work highlights how even young children can absorb and be influenced by gender stereotypes – such as the idea that brilliance or giftedness is more common in men.

“Because these ideas are present at such an early age, they have so much time to affect the educational trajectories of boys and girls,” he said. 

The fake news is not, of course, that the researchers found this result. Rather, it's the assumption that the girls are wrong to hold this view. In fact, they seem pretty switched on for it is true that brilliance is more common in men.

The variance of intelligence in men is higher than it is in women. As the House of Commons shows all too often drooling moronity is more common in men as is, as the HoC never shows, great intelligence or brilliance.

This is absolutely nothing at all to do with feminism or any other -ism - not even conservatism nor patriarchism. It's just one of the features of our species, that men are more variable than women along many axes. We are not supposed to say this of course, doing so is what cost Larry Summers his job as President of Harvard University.

But it is true all the same and the denial of it is the fake news.

All of which we think is rather fun actually. Because it is the left insistent that we must root out such fake news. And aren't a lot of shibboleths common on the left going to get hoist on that particular petard?