anti knee-jerk response (Score 1)

I think what happens a lot of the time in cases like this is an anti knee-jerk response. That is, when someone says that maybe women are intellectually inferior, we're afraid of making the knee-jerk response and call that person sexist. Instead we say "now wait a minute, maybe he has a point." But the problem with that is that this person doesn't have a point. In this case we're talking about a male economics professor who seems to think he knows more about cranial biology and psychology then his biology and psychology professor peers. To make an analogy, if an economics professor went in front of a group of professors (some of whom are biology professors) and said "We need to more closely examine the issues of evolution because it may just be that the Intelligent Design people are on to something," I don't think anyone would have any trouble writing him off as a lunatic (and rightly so). When this guy said that women may be mentally inferior to men, he was on the same scientific grounding as Pat Roberts when he says evolution is false.

Although the anti knee-jerk reaction may be better than a knee-jerk reaction, the best solution would be just to recognize sexism and idiocy when we see it. And when an economics professor says that fewer women in the math and science fields is an effect of inferior mental development, that economics professor is sexist and ignorant. No need to beat around the bush, it's a fact.