It appears “she’s” got some brilliant commenters, too. Check out this post on stereotype threat (the idea that women and minorities worry about confirming the stereotype that they’re bad at a given subject, and so get nervous and do perform badly when tested), and watch Diana Senechal demolish the study in question.

I also wrote about stereotype threat here. My problem with studies of stereotype threat is that they directly invoke the stereotype they’re testing — basically, they try to make women and minorities nervous to suppress their scores, and it works. It’s not at all clear that ST affects real-world situations, and though the new study purports to overcome this problem, the commenter shows how it really doesn’t.