> Isn't it a common known fact that while average IQ is the same for males and females, male IQ varies more and hence there are more male idiots as well as more male geniuses?

I had heard this as a kid, but I haven’t seen anything to back it up recently that didn’t turn out to be wishful thinking by the author/reposter.

> wouldn't it make perfect sense that the sex that produces more gametes in a day than whole countries of opposite sex in their entire lifetimes would be the sex with more variance in any kind of feature because the potential rewards for taking a genetic risk could also pay a lot more than for the other sex?

I don’t see why the number of gametes is relevant, as the average number of viable offspring is necessarily the same.

If you have a person with $2 billion dollars, and then 1000 people with $100,000, they have an average wealth of $2.1 million, but the average really fails to capture the dynamic.

This should hold for males, and I can see it making the number of gametes relevant. Historically, 80% of women and 40% of men have reproduced. In terms of reproduction, a woman could have maybe 20 children if they usually had twins or something. If a male wins big, like Genghis Khan, they might literally manage thousands.

I mean, it really doesn't seem like a stretch to see different selection pressures on males and the Y chromosome.

> In general, most researchers have failed to find greater variability in either sex in any area that is consistent across cultures and not confounded by social factors.

But then the following paragraphs contradict that. Especially this study:

https://largescaleassessmentsineducation.springeropen.com/ar...

I would look at all the studies listed, rather than a summary written by the wikipedia editor.

So it is saying we haven't been able to isolate the extent of the social impact. But this applies to so many things. Do we have research that shows that most people are heterosexual that is consistent across culture and not confounded by social factors? No, we don't. There have historically been cultures where the view on sexuality, what constitutes sex, and how sex is viewed are so different than we cannot say that our current split of people's orientation is based only on biology.

But, this sort of disclaimer is not being equally applied because it would apply all psychology and sociology research. We have a few examples of research that shows just how extreme the social impact can be, but we don't understand impact enough to account for it.

Is it good science if the standards research are held to are not consistent depending upon the topic?

This really reads to me as "the whole field of psychology is compromised" and it's not a surprise for many.

>Is it good science if the standards research are held to are not consistent depending upon the topic?

Passing a single standard would be a start.

> I don’t see why the number of gametes is relevant, as the average number of viable offspring is necessarily the same.

Biologically, there are usually a complex history of reasons for an exhibited trait. It's important to remember tha sperm carry either a Y OR X gene expression, which inherently leads to more variability.

Human ovum undergo some mixing (https://genetics.thetech.org/ask-a-geneticist/odds-making-id...) but Human sperm are both more varied and larger quantity since they are more complex. The sperm both have to compete with each other and be acceptable by the ovum. -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4071627/ (etc)

The actual payload of the sperm and ovum are roughly the same at ~8 million combinations for 8x8 million combinations for the fertilized ovum. -https://www.biology.iupui.edu/biocourses/N100H/ch9meiosis.ht...

So, the question implied by your casual comment is, what is the purpose of the multitude of sperm?

Is a multitude of sperm an evolutionary dead end (inefficiency)? Maybe, but there's no going back. The sperm faces quite a bit of natural resistance along it's fertilization journey. It's necessary, probably along the lines of the morphologically convoluted duck penises.

Is a multitude of sperm otherwise useful? Yes. It ensures a limit to the number of variations that can be passed on. If there are too many variations maybe the flagella will not be as efficient and loses to competition. -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242561/

Doss this directly contradict the idea of males having more variability? (posed by the previous paper). No. There are also environmental conditions (including seminal fluid involvement), temperature and the male/female bodies. Ovum are subjected to and less affected by environment than sperm, which likely is the source of greater variation overall. -https://jeb.biologists.org/content/218/1/107

There is also the nature of the disposability of sperm and the likelihood that there is less strict quality control, for a lack of better term, since competition solves inefficiencies on production quality. I could find nothing that indicates that this is a specific topic of study.

> So, the question implied by your casual comment is, what is the purpose of the multitude of sperm?

Rather, I am asking why to expect the number of gametes to be more relevant than the number of viable offspring when considering genetic diversity.

Exactly three of the $big_num of sperm my father’s body created led to offspring. Likewise exactly three of my mother’s eggs. Gamete_father >> Gamete_mother is true, but does not appear important in this specific regard.

I accept the other reasons you give for there being lots of sperm cells, but it’s answering a different question :)