Back at the old blog we used to occasionally chat about the notorious speech by Harvard President Larry Summers, in which he suggested that intrinsic aptitude was a more important factor than discrimination or bias in explaining the dearth of women scientists. Examples here, here, here, here, here, and here. There was a lot of posturing and name-calling and oversimplification on either side of the debate, of course, which tended to obscure the basic fact that Summers was, as far the data goes, wildly wrong. Two favorite goalpost-moving maneuvers from his supporters were first to pretend that the argument was over the existence of innate differences, rather than whether they were more important than biases in explaining the present situation, and then to claim that Summers’ critics’ real motive was to prevent anyone from even talking about such differences, rather than simply trying to ensure that what was being said about them was correct rather than incorrect.
It was a touchstone moment, which will doubtless be returned to again and again to illustrate points about completely different issues. Here’s an example (thanks to Abby Vigneron for the pointer) from Andrew Sullivan:
DAILY KOS AND LARRY SUMMERS: It’s a small point but it helps illuminate some of the dumbness of the activist left. “Armando” of mega-blog/community board, Daily Kos, takes a dig at Larry Summers, and links to a new study on gender difference. I’m not getting into the new study here, but I will address Armando’s description of Larry Summers’ position. In a bid to be fair, Armando writes:
NOTE: Yeah I know Summers didn’t say men were smarter than women, he just said they had greater aptitude in math and the sciences than women. Huge difference.
This is one of those memes that, although demonstrably untrue, still survives. Read the transcript of Summers’ now infamous remarks. His point was not that men are better at math and the sciences than women, as Armando would have it. His point was that there is a difference not in the mean but in the standard deviation:
Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I’m sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper – looked at the book, rather – looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those – they’re all over the map, depends on which test, whether it’s math, or science, and so forth – but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates. From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%. And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations. If you do that calculation – and I have no reason to think that it couldn’t be refined in a hundred ways – you get five to one, at the high end. (My italics.)
Summers was addressing the discrete issue of why at the very high end of Ivy League math departments, there were too few women. His point, as the Harvard Crimson summarized it was that, in math and the sciences, “there are more men who are at the top and more men who are utter failures.” Armando is wrong; and he needs to correct the item. In fact, this is a good test of leftist blog credibility. Will he correct? I’ll keep you posted.
Ah yes, the good old standard-deviation argument. It’s the absolute favorite of those in the intrinsic-differences camp, since (1) it sounds kind of mathematical and impressive, and (2) they get to insist that it’s only the width of the distribution, not the mean, that is different between men and women, so really the argument doesn’t privilege men at all, while it manages to explain why they have made all the important contributions in human history. In a debate with Elizabeth Spelke at Edge, Steven Pinker rehearses the argument somewhat pedantically.
But let’s look at what the argument actually says, both explicitly and implicitly.
- Standardized tests scores reflect innate ability.
- Boys’ scores on certain tests have a larger standard deviation than girls’ scores, leading to a larger fraction of boys at the high end.
- The dearth of women scientists is explained by their smaller numbers on the high end of these tests.
Now, everyone who is familiar with the data knows that point 1 is somewhere between highly dubious and completely ridiculous; Summers himself admits as much, but it would ruin his story to dwell on it, so he soldiers on. But point 3 is interesting, and deserves to be looked at. It’s a nice part of the argument, because it’s testable. Is this difference in test scores really what explains the relative numbers of men and women in science?
Summers’ data comes from the book Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes by Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shauman. Interviewed shortly after his remarks, both Xie and Shauman were quick to criticize them, using words like “uninformed” and “simplistic.” We were fortunate enough to have Kim Shauman herself as a speaker at our Women in Science Symposium back in May. She pointed out that the studies Summers refers to can indeed be found in her book, right there in Chapter Two. But if you wanted to know whether the standard-deviation differences were actually what accounted for the dearth of women in science, you would have to read all the way to Chapter Three.
Here’s the point. By the time students are in twelfth grade, there is a substantial gap in the fraction of boys vs. girls who plan to study science in college. So it’s easy enough to ask: how much of that gap is explained by differing scores on standardized tests? Answer: none of it. Girls are much less likely than boys to plan on going into science, and Xie and Shauman find that the difference is independent of their scores on the standardized tests. In other words, even if we limit ourselves to only those students who have absolutely top-notch scores on these math/science tests, girls are much less likely than boys to be contemplating science as a career. Something is dissuading high-school girls from choosing to become scientists, and scores on standardized tests have nothing to do with it.
Now, looking at Sullivan’s post above, there’s nothing he says that is strictly incorrect. He is simply characterizing (accurately) what Summers said, not actually endorsing it. Still, he is certainly giving the wrong impression to his readers, by repeating a well-known allegation without mentioning that it is demonstrably false. It’s a small point, but it helps illustrate some of the disingenuity of the activist right. Sullivan is misleading, and he needs to correct the item. In fact, this is a good test of quasi-right-wing blog credibility. Will he correct? We’ll keep you posted.
Great. We can have argument by Google now. Regardless, the only bearing your quote has towards innateness is the issue of cross-cultural studies which are probative but hardly conclusive. Whether or not social intelligence is innate has little to do with my point, anyways.
The rest of your post is a complete non sequitor. No one who’s spent even a moment thinking about the philosophy of science thinks we prove anything in it. Now, I suppose we could go all Popper here, but I’m not really sure what the point would be.
Dear Arun,
I described detailed instructions how to find tens of other papers that measured virtually the same thing – sexually correlated preferences of toys. It’s up to you whether you want to look at them or not. It makes no sense for you to question whether the research exists because absolutely everyone except for you has already been able to look at these papers.
Dear Aaron,
there are definitely differences in social behavior but it is much harder to objectively define what “social intelligence” means. As far as I am concerned, “social intelligence” is a completely subjective and political category. People who think that the truth is more important than political correctness, for example, certainly believe that social intelligence includes the ability to realistically judge and understand the differences between the people and between various groups of people.
There will be other people who will tell you that being “socially intelligent” means to parrot non-scientific stupidities created by feminism and to award islamic terrorist with smile and love, in order to improve his or her career in the weird world where the tollerance to bad things is often appreciated as a positive virtue.
The definitions of social intelligence can be so diverse that the error in its measurement safely exceeds any potential difference between two groups of people in the civilized world. From a scientific viewpoint, “social intelligence” is a useless term.
Unless you want to measure “social intelligence” by the amount of careers that people could do. That would imply that in the past, this kind of social intelligence was higher for males. But in my opinion, it is completely meaningless to invent the word “social intelligence” if the measured quantity can be called much more accurately and differently.
Best
Lubos
Dear Lubos,
Do you ever read what is put in front of you? Yes, there are plenty of studies of the gender differences in toy preferences of **human** children, no one is denying that.
There is this one study of the gender differences in non-human primates.
-Arun
Dear Arun,
we are rotating in a circle. Last time you agreed that it is not the most intelligent thing to repeat the very same experiment without any improvement and modification, and you were interested in similar experiments with the same conclusion.
Now you returned to your previous position and you demand exactly the same experiment with monkeys and human toys. Should not you try to remember at least the last sentence you write somewhere?
Moreover, I am pretty sure that even when this correlation is firmly established for chimps, people like you will say that it does not mean anything because humans are not chimps – and people, unlike chimps, are more affected socially by intelligent design. I’ve learned your way of reasoning in detail.
It’s not the most scientifically interesting thing to look at chimps playing with baby trucks all the time. There is much more serious research involving the effect of various hormones etc., and whoever disputes that the effects of hormons are measurable and separable from the social bias is an enemy of natural science.
Best
Lubos
Arun in post 20Regarding Beethoven and Michelangelo, it is not clear to me what their “boldest breakthroughs” correspond to. They were productive through out their lives well beyond the testosterone.
I would caution against falling prey to this kind of reductionism. It produces many just-so stories, very satisfying and all, but likely wrong. Everything doesn’t reduce to DNA or testosterone or high school math test scores.
I see this ongoing debate and wanted to add what little if I can here.
If by analogy we had wanted to understand our advancement in “spheres of developement” what would this mean?
There is a whole host of ideology here about the matter defined states of existance and humand kind through the basic function of the brains casings?
Is this is true, then it would evolve to some point in the future where focalize valuation of the abstract mind would lead all matters to follow from the point other then in the physical procreation, but in the evolution of our developing minds apart from this animalistic behavior.
Well then such evolution of spheres (patience here:), might indicate that even though the experience can be view from rather well define and clear viewing apart from the emotonional state, although not separate, then such advance would take in a wider perspective, then one that would hold, in lower spheres of developement?
Then such relations drawn to “evolutionary styles” would not be pre-selective to male or female , but see where each individualistic behavior could excell from these various spheres of developement, regardless.
So at what sphere of developement are we that we now can take in the whole breadth of this developing being that we can say that we have something in which we are excelling too. Is there evidence that we can lead our brains and bodies, to perform in ways by attitude?
What has the computer age done to us now in forum talk that our mind can live in a certain space. It does not say that we are not attached to our bodies, or our emotions, or our mental states, and that such progressions outward, are always attached by some supersymmetrical valution( topological connection at the horizon) by a symmetry breaking action(phase changes), that is never really apart from the beginning?:) So where is that?
A “simple map” can help once in a while:)
Aaron, the logic of your position makes no sense to me. First you deny the significance of the social intelligence study (as well as all the evolutionary psychology work) on the grounds that it is not conclusive — it proves nothing. Then you write. “No one who’s spent even a moment thinking about the philosophy of science thinks we prove anything in it.” So, are you being consistent in denying the provability of any hypothesis, but singling out evolutionary psychology for arbitrary abuse; or do you maintain that there remains some kind of difference in provability between physics and evolutionary psychology? Please explain.
Lubos, you object to the term “social intelligence” because it is used by many people to mean many different things. I believe that the same can be said of the term “energy”. The fact that civilians use the term in ways that defy clear definition does not prevent physicists from using it with precision. The same applies to the use of the term “social intelligence” in evolutionary psychology. While it’s not as precisely defined as the term “energy”, the usage of the term in evolutionary psychology is tight enough to be scientifically useful.
Provability is a red herring. Falsifiability is a much better (although not perfect) metric. I’ve been using a shorthand (because I generally think delving too far into the philosophy of science ends up in a morass) of calling things useful or not. I don’t think telling stories is very useful except for minor things like showing why irreducible complexity is a bankrupt idea.
Furthermore, of course one study or one type of study isn’t conclusive. I said that the study can be probative, so I’m not sure what your problem is.
Lastly, evolutionary psychology is, if you haven’t noticed, a fairly prominent subject of this thread. So, to call a discussion of it ‘arbitrary’ is bizarre. I have, however, been careful not to attack evolutionary psychology as a field because I’m not familiar with the primary sources. My problem are with the popularizations and the promulgators who solely engage in storytelling.
The above sphere definition of this action, could be “varying from one moment to the next”? Depending on where we are in our, physical, emotive,thoughtful abstract patterns are at the time?
Sometimes, we are connected at the emotive level, while on clear days, we can see for ever?:)
Einsteins issue on valution of time then about” a pretty girl and a hot stove” could have taken analogy to a whole new level. This example, was not meant to be sexist, but added dimension to our everyday thinkings. Slow and frustrating from phase changes of ice to a world quite fluid, while time, can be fleeting in steam? Non?
Aaron, I do not understand your continuing disparagement of the idea of storytelling. After all, evolutionary theory falls in the broad discipline of natural history, with emphasis on hiSTORY. A good way to understand who we are is to figure out how we got to be who we are. The story of human evolution offers vast explanatory power for the human condition; why are you so dismissive of it?
You seem to think that it is only the popularizations that engage in storytelling. This is incorrect. Even the most technical of presentations on evolutionary psychology often provide explanations of sequential processes that led to current conditions. That’s storytelling. Indeed, inadequate storytelling is often used as a falsifier of evolutionary concepts. The classic example of this is the case of creationists who claim that there is no evolutionary sequence — no story — that can explain certain attributes of living organisms: eyeballs, for example, or hemoglobin. In all these cases, of course, the scientists have been able to provide stories that explain the phenomenon — but the fact that they feel compelled to answer the charge demonstrates the seriousness with which storytelling is taken in historical sciences.
Physics is a state-based science with no consideration of history. Indeed, the assumption of historical uniformity in the laws of physics is fundamental. In this, physics and evolutionary theory differ profoundly. Take care not to permit the fundamental assumptions of your own discipline color your evaluation of a very different discipline.
Anyway from storytelling to fact.
The monkeys quickly learned how to use the joystick to make the arm reach and grasp for objects, and how to adjust their grip on the joystick to vary the robotic hand’s grip strength. They could see on the monitor when they missed their target or dropped it for having too light a grip, and they were rewarded with sips of juice when they performed their tasks successfully.
While the monkeys trained, a computer tracked the patterns of bioelectrical activity in the animals’ brains. The computer figured out that certain patterns amounted to a command to “reach.” Others, it became clear, meant “grasp.” Gradually, the computer learned to “read” the monkeys’ minds.
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2003/10/clips10-13.html
If we can map physiolgical implements like arms from neurlogical mapping, then why can we not map the repercussions of the “emotive fluid” and it’s sphere of influence associative, with the mental states of being?
Because we are not advanced enough?:)
People had looked at this long before we had started to become “socially educated?”:) This society in reference might had be cut off from the outside world, so it’s cultural inclinations might had been very different then the “current socially educated” of the western world. Is it myth, and story telling at it’s best?
Chris —
The story of human evolution could tell us a lot if we knew what it was. For things like physical traits, we have the fossil record. We also can do comparative genetics for areas of the genome we understand. For this sort of storytelling, on the other hand, we end up too far in the realm of speculation for my tastes.
Your example of the use of storytelling is, in fact, the exact one I gave, so I’m not sure why you’re repeating it to me. The lack of storytelling is not, however, used to falsify evolutionary concepts. That’s the path that the ID people want to follow.
Aaron, of course we don’t have a videotape of human evolution, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t figure out what happened. You seem to be arguing that only direct evidence counts. Let me give you an example of the kind of inference that is common in evolutionary theory. Most scientists in the field think that humans of the last few hundred thousand years were near-monogamous, or perhaps serially monogamous. Why? First, that’s pretty much how humans are these days. Second, the sexual dimorphism of the ancient skeletons shows a declining trend, and we know that sexual dimorphism is associated with harem-keeping in many (but not all) mammals. Third, human male canine teeth are relatively small, and we know that male canine teeth tend to be larger in harem-keeping species — but it’s only a tendency. Fourth, we believe that harem-keeping is only practicable in species whose dietary habits permit tight grouping of the females under the watchful eye of the dominant male; for other reasons, we believe that hominine feeding habits required greater disperson of the group. Not one of these considerations constitutes anything like proof. But taken together, they lead most scientists to conclude that hominines of the last few hundred thousand years practiced something shy of true monogamy. It’s inference, not proof. We don’t really know what happened. But we have some good guesses, and that’s what we work with.
The classic example of this is the genesis of human language. Obviously, language leaves no fossil evidence, so by your standards it is impossible to know anything about the genesis of language. In fact, scientists working on the problem have figured out a great deal. Yes, it’s all speculative in the sense that it’s all very indirect. But that doesn’t mean that we dismiss it all as unscientific hocus-pocus. These people have put together a huge assemblage of facts to infer a continually improving story of how language developed.
Lastly, your assertion “The lack of storytelling is not, however, used to falsify evolutionary concepts.” is flatly incorrect. A great deal of the literature is dedicated to addressing precisely that problem. A scientist who makes a claim that cannot be supported with evolutionary logic gets shot down real quick. I suggest that you read Richard Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable for a detailed explication of these principles, with many good examples.
You seem to be going back and forth between saying that we don’t need evidence to then presenting attempts at evidence. There are obviously degrees of evidence that can be brought to bear on a problem. Evidence that relies upon layers of inference is weaker than direct evidence. Storytelling, on the other side, is not evidence of anything at all.
As for evolutionary evidence, am I correct to interpret your claim as “a failure to come up with a satisfactory evolutionary story for a trait means that is not evolved”? That certainly sounds like proof by lack of imagination to me, and I doubt that there’s anyone out there in the field of evolution who would agree with it.
No, the storytelling is not evidence, it is explanation. The world of evolutionary science is not so plainly divided between experimentalists and theoreticians as is the world of physics. Any claim made by a scientist in that field should make evolutionary sense. Sometimes scientists will report observations that seem to violate evolutionary logic; the value of these observations is that they force everybody to scramble, looking for an explanation — that is, a story that brings the observation into harmony with evolutionary theory. If they can’t do that, then they have to make changes in evolutionary theory. Where physicists derive equations from established theory in order to explain experimental results, natural historians tell stories.
Think about the fundamental character of evolutionary theory. Evolution is intrinsically a time-sequential process. “The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection” describes a sequence of causally related events. A story is a sequence of causally related events. Evolution at its heart is a story.
You are certainly not correct in distorting my assertion into “a failure to come up with a satisfactory evolutionary story for a trait means that is not evolved”. A failure to come up with a satisfactory explanatory story for a trait means either that evolutionary theory is incorrect (unlikely but possible), or that the scientist has misundertood or misreported the trait.
Some essay deriding ID gave an example that went something like a man earning a small salary at a bank was investigated for having a huge mansion and luxuries and so on. Asked how he could afford all that from on his meagre salary, he said that an angel came to him in a dream, and gave him precise instructions where to find buried treasure. Asked if he had any evidence that he had found the treasure as described, he said – look around you, how could I afford all this if I hadn’t found the treasure?
This is a just-so story. Evolutionary Psychology seems to have many just-so stories, such as the origin of the “seven-year itch”.
The inferences on sexual dimorphism – Orangutan males are twice the weight of females and orangutans lead solitary lives. Chimpazees have a 30-40% weight difference between male and female, Bonobos have a 14% weight difference, Humans have around a 5% weight difference. As far as I can tell, perhaps the weight difference trend is smaller with increasing sexual interest/availability of the female and hence increasing amount of sex. Humans might have lived in bonobo-type societies early in their evolution. What rules it out?
“No, the storytelling is not evidence, it is explanation.”
It could be explanation, but it might not be. It’s a story. The story needs evidence, too.
As for your last statement, it’s well-known, I think, that there are traits which are not adaptive and are pretty much just random.
OK, so you, Arun, dismiss evolutionary psychology completely, while Aaron does not dismiss it entirely. You both dismiss the storytelling aspect of evolutionary psychology as unscientific. So I put the question to you, how can one avoid presenting stories to explain natural hiSTORY?
I don’t understand what you are driving at with your final comment about humans living in societies similar to bonobos. Indeed, there are many similarities; there are also some differences. The foraging troop is fundamentally similar to the hunter-gatherer group, the main differences being the distance that males travel from the group, and the greater reliance on meat-eating.
Aaron, you assert that a story needs evidence, too. Of course it does! And in fact evolutionary psychology is full of stories that link to evidence. The basic form of an evolutionary story would be something like this:
Once upon a time there was a species X. Its environment changed in such a way as to present a challenge. We don’t know that the environment changed, but we do know that trait Y began showing up with increasing frequency, and trait Y would be a good response to the environmental change. However, there arose a problem in the form of a conflict between trait Y and a previously existing trait Z. This caused members of the species to fall prey to predator P. Those members of the species that changed their behavior in direction D suffered fewer losses to Predator P and so they took a larger place in the gene pool. We have noted that the teeth of the species did show a change, which suggests that their diet included more of Nutrient N, which is most easily obtained by change in feeding behavior D.
Note that, in this little story, lots of things are unknown: the identity of Predator P, whether Predator P really was predating upon the species, the change in the environment, the change in behavior, or the new nutrient N. All we know is that Y shows up with increasing frequency in the fossil record, and that the teeth show a change that is consistent with the hypothesis. This may seem like utter speculation on the part of evolutionary psychologists, but they judge this scenario based on their knowledge of predator behavior (“how likely is it that a predator could benefit from the interaction of traits Y and Z?”), their assessment of genetic change (“how plausible is it that behavioral change D could appear quickly enough, or pre-exist for recruitment, in the given species?”), their judgement of the likely benefits of the change in behavior D, and their hunch as to how closely the change in dentition matches the change in feeding behavior hypothesized. There’s an enormous amount of judgement being applied here, something that doesn’t happen in the physical sciences, but that doesn’t make this unscientific.
Your comment about traits appearing randomly is the kind of thing evolutionists try to avoid. Nobody’s happy explaining a phenomenon as a fluke. “And then, a miracle happened!” is never accepted as part of an evolutionary explanation.
The correlation between sexual dimorphism (SD) and harem-keeping, sizes of male canine teeth and harem-keeping, dietary habits and harem keeping, are merely correlations, and while they may lead to the inference that humans were virtually monogamous, they do not constitute proof, nor do they constitute explanation.
A theory has to provide a causal link. E.g., if one says, competition for sex with females gives larger males an advantage and males with larger canines a natural selection advantage, then one has something that purports to explain the correlations noted above. Then, this theory would say that human ancestors were not polygynous but were monogamous or polyandrous.
If one was going purely by correlations, then I could say that whatever makes the bonobo SD less than the chimpanzee SD is, in greater degree, what makes the human SD smaller than the chimpanzee SD; and monogamy is not it.
Arun, you’re working on the assumption that science must be mathematically rigorous. That’s certainly true for the physical sciences, but the life sciences, and especially a lot of evolutionary science, cannot rely solely on mathematically rigorous techniques. Yes, they can occasionally come up with some interesting math, but the general situation in the life sciences is so multivariate that ofttimes this kind of rigor simply isn’t possible. Again, the very best example of this is in the research into the origins of language, where there is almost no fossil evidence and almost everything they use is indirect.
I believe that we have reached the nub of the problem: that physicists look down their noses at any form of science that does not operate in the same way that physics operates. I agree that the rigorous methods used in physics are the best possible methods to use, and, to the extent that they are applicable in other fields, they should be used. However, I do not accept the insistence that mathematically rigorous methods are the only means of establishing scientific truth or useful explanations of natural phenomena.
You’re welcome to say, “It ain’t science”, if you wish. You’re welcome to call all members of that field witch doctors and quacks. They’ll just keep chugging along, figuring things out without you. And your silly academic prejudices will continue to perpetuate the silly academic divisions with which academia is riven.
I’m pretty much tired of this at this point, so I’ll confine myself just to this:
I don’t know any ‘evolutionists’ who try to avoid it. Not everything is adaptive or selected for. Some stuff just is there. It happens. It’s not at all like saying that a miracle occurred.
Nature Conformable To Herselfby Murray Gell-Mann
It in no way diminishes the importance of the chemical bond to know that it arises from quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and the prevalence of temperatures and pressures that allow atoms and molecules to exist. Similarly, it does not diminish the significance of life on Earth to know that it emerged from physics and chemistry and the special historical circumstances permitting the chemical reactions to proceed that produced the ancestral life form and thus initiated biological evolution. Finally, it does not detract from the achievements of the human race, including the triumphs of the human intellect and the glorious works of art that have been produced for tens of thousand of years, to know that our intelligence and self-awareness, greater than those of the other animals, have emerged from the laws of biology plus the specific accidents of hominid evolution.
When we human beings experience awe in the face of the splendors of nature, when we show love for one another, and when we care for our more distant relatives–the other organisms with which we share the biosphere–we are exhibiting aspects of the human condition that are no less wonderful for being emergent phenomena.
http://www.santafe.edu/~mgm/nature.html
OK, I agree that we’ve pretty much talked this out. I’ll summarize the main points that I have been pressing:
1. There are undeniable behavioral differences between males and females.
2. Some of these behavioral differences arise from genetic factors, not cultural ones.
3. Evolutionary psychology operates using a logic entirely different from that used in the physical sciences, and this logic is necessary and appropriate to the field. While rigorous mathematical deduction would be preferable, such analysis is inapplicable to the multivariate problems faced in that field.
4. Some (SOME!) physicists are so wrapped up in their own field that they cannot appreciate the subtleties of other fields, and do not accord them the respect they deserve.
My summation would be
1. There are undeniable anatomical, physiological, behavioral differences between human males and females.
2. Whether the differences are innate or acquired is not known.
3. The relevance of these differences to the success of women in physics is even less known.
4. Some of Evolutionary Psychology is so pseudo-scientific that even biologists like Prof. PZ Myers (pharyngula.org) have a problem with it. From my POV, he can have the last word: