Kevin Pezzi, MD

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

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Why geniuses are often so fond of sex

Read this book and find out how I went from a dunce to a doctor who graduated in the top 1% of my class in medical school. All of my medical school classmates were very bright, and some were brilliant, with Ph.D.s in science. How did an erstwhile dunce even survive that competition?

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Introduction

Even if your work does not demand exceptional intelligence or creativity, this topic affects you because national prosperity is strongly affected by big ideas generated by geniuses. The United States is awash in little ideas but not many big new ones that fundamentally improve life. Such breakthroughs once catalyzed America's success, but as our creativity dried up, our economy sputtered. We can solve that problem, but to do it, we need more than hope or pixie dust; we need information. This page introduces you to this topic. I will present much more in a pending book that reveals how I went from dunce to doctor, and how I routinely use creativity to solve problems, big and small.

Sex is part of medicine but it should be part of education. Beyond the basics we all need to know, sex is one of the major catalysts fueling people to excel. As past scientists, innovators, and businessmen reached for the stars, they made the world a better place.

While the affinity for sex is as natural as the desire for tasty food, not everyone is equally captivated by sex. Researchers discovered a link between giftedness (especially the eminently gifted) and prenatal exposure to higher levels of testosterone.

University of Alberta researcher Dr. Marty Mrazik noted that “excessive prenatal exposure to testosterone facilitates increased connections in the brain, especially in the right prefrontal cortex [and unique patterns of inferior frontal activation]. That's why we see some intellectually gifted people with distinct personality characteristics that you don't see in the normal population.” One of these is extreme creativity; another is a heightened interest in sex, which is affected by prenatal and subsequent androgen exposure.

In The Neurobiological Foundations of Giftedness (original URL), the authors wrote:

Freud's fascination with sex is legendary, but Albert Einstein and other super geniuses were also intensely interested in sex. Here's an excerpt from one of my articles:

Evidence released after his death showed that Einstein couldn't get enough women. After nearly 3500 sealed pages of his personal correspondence were made public, the press had a field day with Einstein, calling him a “Phys-sex Genius,” a “Scientific Pimp,” a “Stud Muffin,” a “galactic womanizer,” and even a “sex-fiend.” Einstein's weakness for pretty women was indulged by chasing skirts that culminated in many affairs, including one with a “beautiful Soviet spy.” After infidelity ended his first marriage, “he spent some time deciding whether to shack up with his 42-year-old cousin, Elsa, or her 20-year-old daughter, Ilse.”

Other eminent physicists, including Richard Feynman, Erwin Schrödinger, Marie Curie, and Robert Oppenheimer, formed “a roster of lamentable philanderers.” Feynman, “probably the only Nobel Prize winner to befriend porn stars,” claimed he had “a foolproof manner for bedding women and do his calculations on napkins in strip clubs.” Judging by what buxom porn star Candi Samples wrote on her picture given to him, she was more impressed by the size of his anatomy than his mind: “To Big Dick, Love from Candi.”

Oppenheimer, head of the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos during World War 2, “tried to run off with the wife of Linus Pauling and bed the wife of another colleague.”

Schrödinger's Nobel Prize-winning idea came to him while shacked up in an alpine villa with an old girlfriend during a “late erotic outburst.”

Founding Father Ben Franklin consorted with a number of women other than his wife, and was no stranger to prostitutes (original URL). As he put it in his autobiography, “that hard-to-be-governed passion of youth hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way, which were attended with some expense and great inconvenience, besides a continual risk to my health.”

Franklin wrote a letter in 1745 advising a young man that relationships with older women conferred several advantages, citing their inability to get pregnant and the relative preservation of their vaginas compared with the aging of their faces and breasts, making intercourse with them at least as pleasurable as with younger women. Franklin wrote:

“Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.”

Franklin was indisputably a polymath: “a leading author and printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.” Walter Isaacson called him “the most accomplished American of his age,” and he was the foremost heartthrob of the 18^th century.

Franklin “freed his slaves and became one of the most prominent abolitionists.” He refused to patent any of his inventions, reasoning that he was already rich enough. He discovered the principle of conservation of charge and originated the concept of positive and negative electrical charges. A list of Franklin's other accomplishments could fill a book; he wasn't just a genius, but a multifaceted super genius.

To Americans who are more comfortable discussing the sex lives of celebrities than their own, it may be difficult to reconcile Ben Franklin the Founding Father and super genius with Franklin the patron of prostitutes and lifelong womanizer who wrote about the sensate characteristics of vaginas as women aged, but Franklin unabashedly discussed sex because he viewed it as part of human nature—which it clearly is. Franklin fit in as well with royalty as he did with tradesmen because he was an intellectual superstar but down-to-earth.

Our Founding Fathers are often idolized and revered as saints or demigods, but some of them had Clintonian sexual appetites. Besides Franklin, there was Thomas Jefferson—another polymath—who had a longstanding affair with Sally Hemings (one of his slaves) that produced several children.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, a political genius who led America through its darkest hour, didn't let polio get in his way of sleeping with distant relatives, young beauties, and an endless parade of others, including Norway's Princess Martha.

Other researchers believe that increased prenatal exposure to testosterone may improve interhemispheric communication (via an unusually developed corpus callosum) and enhance right-brain development, thus facilitating creativity.

When extraordinarily intelligent people are exceptionally creative, their creativity often manifests in diverse areas, including sex, thus explaining why polymaths such as Franklin sought creative ways to enhance sexual pleasure.

Here's a relevant excerpt from my article, My strategy to leave China in the dust:

The authors of The Neurobiological Foundations of Giftedness wrote:

Considering that sex is one of our most basic and intense drives, it is hardly surprising that outside-the-box thinkers would seek creative ways to maximize sexual pleasure. I've discovered (and written about) thousands of ways to increase libido and sexual enjoyment.

Ultimately, people marry not to share a mortgage, but because they want to have sex. People routinely seek to enhance one of the other great pleasures—eating—by dining in the best restaurants they can afford, preferentially purchasing tasty foods, and scouring many cookbooks, magazines, and websites for the best recipes. For most people, it is easy to find foods that are bursting with flavor. Furthermore, eating usually remains very enjoyable throughout life, while various diseases, conditions, and the aging process itself can decimate sexual pleasure.

Sex is part of medicine, so it is taught in medical school, but even the best schools don't have time to thoroughly cover this subject. Gynecologists and urologists learn more, but even they generally only scratch the surface in terms of addressing problems with libido and sexual pleasure. A new medical specialty will eventually emerge, but bright, creative people aren't waiting for that; they seek solutions now.

Considering the almost universal desire to amplify sexual pleasure and the ubiquity of sexual problems that limit libido, pleasure, or performance, why doesn't everyone put down the TV remote control and read sex books?

First, sex seems deceptively simple, and it can be, when everything is OK with both partners.

Second, sex books are usually filled with tips that most adults need about as much as they need to be told to look both ways before crossing a street.

Third, many people assume that whatever sexual pleasure they obtain is as good as it gets, even though the pleasure peak for most people is substantially below what they could obtain.

The apparent simplicity of sex leads many unqualified people to write about it. Even when they don't understand neurophysiology, endocrinology, biochemistry, nutrition, microbiology, pharmacology, neurology, and other subjects that form the basis of the science of sex, they somehow feel qualified to write about it and mislead—or disappoint—their readers.

After reading a few sex books written by such no-nothings, it isn't surprising that most people pick up a TV remote control instead of another sex book. However, very smart people often keep searching, intuitively knowing that while sex is just as complex as any other facet of medicine, an author (such as myself) who understands all that gobbledygook can translate the science of sex into simple tips that can make libido and sexual pleasure skyrocket.

My approach to enhancing sex can also improve health, appearance, longevity, intelligence, creativity, memory, alertness, and mood, so seeking to boost libido and sexual pleasure can also heighten brainpower and the general enjoyment of living. It's thus a very smart thing to do, so it is not surprising that especially smart people are very interested in this subject.

Abraham Lincoln said, “It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.” That reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

Geniuses are often quirky because the factors that create genius shape the mind in ways that make fitting inside the box more difficult. To fit inside the box, you must mindlessly adhere to many of the bizarrely idiotic social customs, such as men wearing neckties. They serve no practical purpose and are clearly a phallic symbol pointing away from the brain and toward the penis. That's rather odd for business dress code that is worn in the hope that the wearer will be given more respect, taken more seriously, and ultimately given more money—not because of his ideas, but because of that phallic symbol pointing toward anatomy irrelevant to business.

If we're visited by aliens from another planet, they will surely be more intelligent than us. If they have a sense of humor, they will laugh at many of our customs and be horrified by some of our ideas, such as ones that make hatred seem desirable. I presented an example of that in my essay on how sex is part of medicine, which also mentions other odd and utterly indefensible practices most Americans adhere to because they aren't smart enough to think for themselves, or don't have the spine to do so.

Discussing the legacy of Roger Ailes, founding CEO of Fox News who lost his job after a succession of sexual abuse allegations, The Hill's media reporter Joe Concha said, “He was the most influential media executive, ever—certainly over the last 20 years.”

Indeed he was. Defying those who doubted he could compete with existing cable networks, he built a multi-billion-dollar business, indelibly influencing American politics and hence our destiny.

Incisively, Concha added, “As far as professional dominance versus not living an exemplary life, personally—and I'm not minimizing that part at all; obviously, he was forced to resign for a reason. … But if you look back at former Presidents, former athletes, big-time athletes, celebrities, that seems to be more the rule than the exception.”

It is. The common denominator is testosterone, which fuels big muscles and big brains with big ideas and big aspirations like Miracle-Gro^® fertilizes beautiful flowers and vegetables—but also some weeds. Drugs have side effects; hormones do, too.

It isn't perennially politically correct/plastic-perfect milquetoasts who do great things; it is those with rough edges, with minds and lives that are amalgamations of genius and gaffe that still add up to genius, eclipsing the seemingly less flawed folks whose mediocrity dooms them to do so little for the world they are quickly forgotten once they leave it.

UPDATE late November, 2017: My head is spinning trying to keep up with the tsunami of recent revelations of sexual misconduct by Hollywood stars, other celebrities, and politicians. A heightened interest in sex and greater pleasure in it can strengthen the bond between men and women, benefiting marriages, children, and society. As I've witnessed with friends and family members, when people are dissatisfied in that department, they too often conclude the grass is greener on the other side of the hill, so going there is the way to go.

Screening more people, so to speak, increases the chance of finding a bedroom superstar, but there are much better ways based on science—one of my motivations for writing The Science of Sex.

Sex is part of medicine and hence taught in medical school, but most doctors know pathetically little about it and hence are unable to optimally help most patients who develop sexual problems—that's most of us—or who have diseases manifesting as sexual dysfunction.

I was equally ignorant decades ago. A prescription drug (Accutane, for acne) erased my libido and destroyed sexual pleasure, replacing the normally very pleasant sensations with a highly noxious pins-and-needles feeling. This problem persisted many years after discontinuing the drug, so I eventually mustered the courage to see a doc, then another, after which I was so deeply disappointed I devoted years digging into sex, discovering info most people would figuratively give their right arm to know. I put some of that material into a 500+-page free book and have enough pending additions to add a thousand more pages, but I've been too busy inventing to do that.

Interestingly, one tip in my book that can boost libido and sexual pleasure can also amplify creativity, putting it into overdrive. Before utilizing it, I'd often go years struggling to think of a single good invention; after, I was flooded with them. I sold some (not even close to my best stuff) to a company led by a friend of Bill Gates; that company paid me for years for my ideas, and they internally brag they hire only the smartest Ivy League grads—and I'm hardly an Ivy League grad. In fact, I once was such a dunce my exasperated sixth-grade teacher called me “slow” in front of the class! And I was before serendipitously finding ways to transform brainpower, enabling me to go from dunce to doctor.

I've developed several things I once would have thought were impossible. Incidentally, years after my girlfriend met me, she confided that when we first met and heard me talk about what I could do, she thought I was just a bullshitter full of hot air, thinking “there's no way he does any of those things.” She eventually realized everything I said was true when she saw working models of things she once presumed were just fantasy—some of them so difficult to believe they work even I won't believe it until I see it, so I build prototypes and test them.

I spent the past two years prototyping and refining an invention that does something very useful, and does that without an engine or motor, significantly outperforming competitive alternatives with an engine or two and half a ton of weight. I can do it with something you can carry in one hand. The rest of what I invented could make your life better than you imagined possible, if I ever commercialize those ideas.

I'm getting sick of the inventing game. Our politicians in Washington have been too busy screwing around to optimally incentive innovation, ignoring even obvious steps, such as better funding the Patent Office and better compensating the brainiacs who work there.

Related articles

David Petraeus, hormones, and pheromones: the secret to the warrior's strength?

Notes:

1. Creativity and psychopathology. A study of 291 world-famous men
2. Where Are All the Female Geniuses? (Scientific American Mind, Nov/Dec 2012)
3. Men are both dumber and smarter than women
4. Harvard: Testosterone may improve mental function
5. Cancer Research UK: Thinking, memory and sex hormones
6. Sex Might Actually Make You Smarter
7. Why geniuses don't have jobs
8. From a History Channel H2 special, 10 Things You Don't Know About Ben Franklin: “Franklin pioneered tabloid journalism in America. [He] understood that when it comes to publishing, sex sells, and so he printed in his newspaper the first gossip column and the first sex advice column.”
   Gossip trivia: Women use gossip to compete for a man's attention: New study shows that gossip is essential for interpersonal relationships
9. Endocrine disruptors as a threat to neurological function (full paper is here)
10. Testosterone May Improve Mental Function
11. Testosterone Therapy Improves Memory in Postmenopausal Women, Preliminary Study Finds
12. Males' Superior Spatial Ability Likely Is Not an Evolutionary Adaptation; Testosterone 'Side Effect'? based on Male superiority in spatial navigation: adaptation or side effect?
13. Self-Confidence, Overconfidence and Prenatal Testosterone Exposure: Evidence from the Lab
    Comment: Men exposed to high intrauterine testosterone levels are less likely to overestimate their performance, hence less overconfident, which is more adaptive because it is more in tune with reality. Not surprisingly, they tend to earn more.
14. The Confidence Gap: Evidence shows that women are less self-assured than men—and that to succeed, confidence matters as much as competence. Here's why, and what to do about it.
15. First cell-type census of mouse brains: Surprises about structure, male-female differences
    Comment: Not very surprising that male-female brain differences exist in any advanced species.
16. Lack Of Imagination In Older Adults Linked To Declining Memory
17. Prenatal Testosterone Levels Influence Later Response to Reward based on Fetal Programming Effects of Testosterone on the Reward System and Behavioral Approach Tendencies in Humans
18. Relative Length of Adults' Fingers Indicator of Verbal Aggression: Prenatal Exposure to Testosterone Linked based on The Effect of Prenatal Sex Hormones on the Development of Verbal Aggression
19. Your fingers show your athletic potential and anxiety
20. Can you judge a man by his fingers? Link between relative lengths of index and ring fingers in men and behavior towards women
21. Will your partner stay or stray? Look at finger length
22. Athletic ability and finger length linked?
    Excerpt: “ … the ring finger in males is typically longer than the index finger, whereas the fingers are about the same length in females. "There is some indirect evidence that this digit ratio of the length of the fingers, is determined during early fetal development by testosterone — the more testosterone the fetus produces, the longer the ring finger, so the smaller the digit ratio," he [Professor Grant Tomkinson] says.”
23. Finger lengths may indicate risk of schizophrenia in males
24. Sensitive Testosterone Detector Linked to Less Aggression based on Aggression, Digit Ratio and Variation in Androgen Receptor and Monoamine Oxidase A Genes in Men
25. Testosterone Does Not Induce Aggression, Study Shows based on Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour
26. Alpha Males Take Greater Risks: Study Links Finger Length to Behavior based on Testosterone and domain-specific risk: Digit ratios (2D:4D and rel2) as predictors of recreational, financial, and social risk-taking behaviors
27. Financial Risk-Taking Behavior Is Associated With Higher Testosterone Levels based on Testosterone and financial risk preferences
28. Higher Level Of Testosterone In Women Linked To Choice Of Risky Careers
29. Testosterone Increases Honesty, Study Suggests (I cannot tell a lie: it does! :-) based on Testosterone Administration Reduces Lying in Men
30. Finger Length Predicts Mental Toughness in Sport
31. Finger Lengths Linked To Voluntary Exercise based on Selective Breeding for a Behavioral Trait Changes Digit Ratio
32. Hormone That Affects Finger Length Key To Social Behavior
33. Testosterone-Fueled Infantile Males Might Be a Product of Mom's Behavior based on Genetic and environmental contributions to saliva testosterone levels in male and female infant twins
34. Low Testosterone Linked to Heightened Risk of Early Death based on (1) Low serum testosterone and increased mortality in men with coronary heart disease and (2) Testosterone levels and cardiovascular disease
35. Low Testosterone Appears To Increase Long-Term Risk Of Death
36. Low Testosterone Linked to Alzheimer's Disease
37. Older Age Does Not Cause Testosterone Levels to Decline in Healthy Men
    Comment: Many problems associated with aging are incorrectly attributed to the passage of time, when they actually result from poor health and behaviors we can correct.
38. Declining Testosterone Levels in Men Not Part of Normal Aging
39. Masculine features support 'extreme male brain' theory of autism spectrum disorder
40. How the shape and size of your face relates to your sexuality based on The Facial Width-to-Height Ratio Predicts Sex Drive, Sociosexuality, and Intended Infidelity
41. Ilana Mercer: James Damore Confronts The Nagging Harridans of High-Tech (& Loses)
42. ‘Hyde Park on the Hudson’ shows FDR’s complicated private life
43. The Other Women (in FDR's life—and bedroom)
44. FDR Scandal Page
45. Could Playing 'Boys' Games Help Girls in Science and Math? based on Gender-Role Differences in Spatial Ability: A Meta-Analytic Review
46. BPA and Testosterone Levels: First Evidence for Small Changes in Men
    Comment: I warned about BPA many years ago in The Science of Sex, which covers several health topics in greater detail than virtually all health books. If you're not healthy, you're not in the mood for sex.
47. Macho Men May Not Have Survival Advantage in War
    Comment: That article correlates appearance with testosterone levels during development but appearance is affected by many factors besides testosterone.
48. High-Testosterone Competitors More Likely to Choose Red
49. Male Testosterone Levels Increase When Victorious in Competition Against Rivals, but Not Friends
50. More left-handed men are born during the winter: Indirect evidence of a hormonal mechanism
    Comment: Extrapolating from this, slightly more geniuses may be born during the winter.
51. Being lower in pecking order improves female tit birds' memory: Rare case in nature in which female has better cognitive ability
52. Study supports the theory that men are idiots
53. The media love men... bad news for women: Why men continue to dominate media coverage
    Excerpt: “ … women's presence was no greater in news produced by liberal American media organizations than in that produced by conservative ones. Nor did they find that women's presence in the media increased in organizations where women were editors-in-chief or managing editors or where there were more women on the editorial boards.”
    Comment: Several explanations account for this: some obvious, some not. Thanks to testosterone, men tend to be naturally more flamboyant, self-confident, and even full of themselves whereas women tend to be more self-effacing. Media hungry for viewers want pizzazz, not wallflowers. In helping various women trapped in dead-end jobs become outstanding doctors, I knew exactly what they needed: a stat infusion of self-confidence based on reality. They had The Right Stuff but didn't realize it.
    
    However, as my article above indicates, the wider bell curve of intelligence in men (with more stupid ones but also more brilliant ones) means that while women have a slight edge in terms of average IQ (“perhaps scoring a half point or a point higher”), brilliant people are more likely to be men. Let's face it: the media isn't interested in the quotidian accomplishments of folks with IQs of 100 or 101; they crave the red-hot trailblazing crackerjack ideas and other seismic events that come from men more often than women. Thus the media focuses more often on men than women.
    
    Then there are the obvious explanations, such as pure ol' bias, with some people thinking more of men and what they do even when it is no more noteworthy than what women do.
54. Popular Science Monthly/Volume 31/July 1887/Mental Differences of Men and Women
55. Grounded: Why Thirteen Women Never Made It To Space
56. Sex differences in intelligence
    Excerpt: “The average IQ scores between men and women have little variation. However, the variability of male scores is greater than that of females, resulting in more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution.”
    Comment: That means more male dunces, but also more male geniuses.
57. Common prostate cancer treatment linked to later dementia, researcher says
    Excerpt: “Men with prostate cancer who are treated with testosterone-lowering drugs are twice as likely to develop dementia within five years …”
58. Eureka! Gender affects how we judge competence, genius
59. Black and brilliant? A female genius? Not according to RateMyProfessors, study finds
    Excerpt: “An analysis of more than 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessors.com, where students write anonymous reviews of their professors, found that students most often use the words 'brilliant' and 'genius' to describe male professors and in academic disciplines in which women and African-Americans are underrepresented.”
60. Men Supporting Hillary Clinton Have Lower Testosterone
    Comment: The claim in that title isn't yet documented by science, but it would be interesting to research that. There are indeed notable differences between liberals and conservatives.
61. Raging Bull: First study to find link between testosterone and stock market instability
62. Zika infection causes reduced fertility, low testosterone in male mice
63. Mars and Venus on the therapist's couch
    Comment: Just one of countless pieces of evidence indicating that men and women think differently.
64. Workplace sexual harassment 'a chronic problem,' says APA president
65. Feynman trivia: Love After Life: Nobel-Winning Physicist Richard Feynman’s Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife: Where the hard edge of physics meets the vulnerable metaphysics of the human heart.

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