Is "gender bias" the reason there are fewer top female scientists than men? Uh, no. A new study backhands that shop-worn claim.

The voice of reason is easy to shout down but hard to vanquish altogether. This week it turned up in an unlikely place: an academic paper about gender bias in the sciences. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a coolly objective paper on the hot, politicized subject of bias against women in academic science.

In “Understanding Current Causes of Women’s Underrepresentation in Science,” Cornell professors Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams provide a thorough analysis and discussion of 20 years of data. Their conclusion: When it comes to job interviews, hiring, funding, and publishing, women are treated as well as men and sometimes better. As Williams told Nature, “There are constant and unsupportable allegations that women suffer discrimination in these arenas, and we show conclusively that women do not.” Put another way, the gender-bias empress has no clothes.

Now, that I'd like to see.

But this gender-bias farce has cost the American taxpayer millions of dollars. As Christina Hoff Sommers reports, congressman from both parties, have awarded activist professors millions in grants to combat this non-existent problem. It should stop. But it won't. Read the whole thing.