

Women, less-attractive men lag in the effort to find financial backing - wozniacki
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/study-says-attractive-men-fare-best-in-gaining-venture-capital.html

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gmays
Interesting, but not necessarily surprising. Especially if any of the research
that suggests that attractive people are also smarter, i.e this one (links to
PDF):
[http://www.researchgate.net/publication/41752961_Why_beautif...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/41752961_Why_beautiful_people_are_more_intelligent/file/60b7d51830634c6013.pdf)

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Jugurtha
There are a whole bunch of blogs (from MIT, CBS, NBC) talking about that.
Numerous things have been written, and I bet you anything that none of them
actually read the article.

Here it is, by the way:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/06/1321202111.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/06/1321202111.full.pdf#page=1&view=FitH)

They only say "An article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences". Yeah ? If they'd read it, they'd at least cite the authors or
give a link to the _original_ work.

And the information gets diluted: MIT writes about that(info dilution), CBS
and NBC pick it up and dilute it even more, some distortion, and low-life
bloggers pick it up from CBS and NBC and completely miss the point.

~~~
slvv
Since the article looks like it's behind a paywall, can you give us an idea of
how the information has been diluted, specifically?

~~~
Jugurtha
It's not behind a paywall, slvv. Just clicking on the link opens it. (I
haven't paid anything to anyone).

Or you can just Google "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences female
entrepreneurship", then click on the PDF icon and you got it.

For example: There was a HN post here of a blog post wondering why there are
very few women led backed venture. They cited the article (well, the journal)
but if they had read it, they'd know that the authors hinted at the reason of
that: That there are simply way fewer women pursuing this than there are men.
And the women who end up being entrepreneurs, mostly focus on women's stuff
(cosmetics, etc). It's right there, in the article. But they didn't do their
reading.

It's like talking about some book character after reading Cliff's Notes.
Worse, imagine if Cliff's Notes were written from summaries of summaries of
summaries.

People are just lazy. This is why "Did You Know" in Facebook is such a hit.
They give you pseudo facts (often taken out of context and a lot of times
resulting in a superficial reading and a hurry to draw a conclusion from a
Wikipedia entry). Most people will read them, accept the fact and think
they're smarter by the day.

~~~
slvv
I've read the whole, original PNAS article. I have to say, I don't see a major
distortion/dilution of it in the submission's linked article.

~~~
Jugurtha
I may have been generalizing. But there was a post here on HN with a link to
such article about that PNAS one that was a bit selective on the parts it
picked and ignoring some answers already in PNAS article to questions it
asked, and that's what I don't like.

For instance the reason why there wasn't enough backed ventures that were led
by women.. The PNAS article hinted that the fact women pursue less (and those
who do, do mainly in cosmetics and such matters) has something to do with
that.. Yet the article chose to ignore that and asked the question as if there
were no answer to it, and _then_ picked the part good-looking men get funding,
and used that to answer the question.

Sorry for late answer.

