(FORTUNE Magazine) – ''Kindly commandeer a college-level text on genetics,'' plaintively beseeched Keeping Up's senior policy analyst the other day, ''as the present expositor is confessedly hazy about the role played by all the little chromosomes in determining who gets ahead in the world, which is why he needs some scholarly reinforcement before tackling the latest hubbub over alleged sexism in scholastic testing, this being what all the politicians are now burbling about here in Cuomoland.'' The row about testing offers the latest unedifying example of public servants running for cover when somebody cries discrimination. Basic background: For many years now, New York has awarded a number of grants to college-bound students. The most desirable these days are the Empire State Scholarships for Excellence, which are worth up to $10,000 apiece and are given to the 1,000 high school seniors scoring highest on designated aptitude tests. Principally involved here are the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (the famous SATs), long a target of various overheated egalitarians. Usually these folks are out front denouncing the SATs because minorities generally do poorly on the tests. The row in New York brings something different to this party: Now the argument is that the SATs discriminate against women.

This proposition was initially broached in March by the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and an outfit called FairTest. NYPIRG produced data indicating that men were winning more than two-thirds of the Empire State scholarships, even though women represented 52% of those taking the tests. ''Test Bias Costs New York Girls Millions in College Tuition Aid,'' was the interpretive headline atop NYPIRG's news release. It went on to offer as evidence of bias the fact that men have generally scored higher on the SATs than women: some 50 points higher on the mathematical portions of the test, maybe 11 points higher on the verbal portions. Instantly impressed by this Naderite analysis, legislators began asking for money to design a nonsexist test. Why would the boys outscore the girls? After all, the two sexes are equally , intelligent; at least, both have about the same average IQs. NYPIRG and FairTest have been stating that the SAT difference mainly reflects cultural biases built into various test questions: for example, the paucity of female historical figures in passages used to measure reading comprehension. Keeping Up's policy analyst assumes, au contraire, that the girls are not going to be helped by test questions alluding to Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. He states that the young gentlemen taking the SATs are smarter than the damsels and have been winning those scholarships fair and square. Based on a semi-exhaustive search of his Nexis database, he believes himself to be the only living analyst in New York making this point. Daring fellow, eh? His understanding of the test results is rooted in a certain fascinating proposition, which turns up repeatedly in the literature of psychology even if it is being suppressed in Albany. Proposition: Men's intelligence is more variable than women's. Just about all tests of mental ability show men overrepresented at the extremes; more of them score very high and also very low. Since only the better students take the SATs, it is not exactly surprising that men would have higher average scores than women; and in an elite group like the scholarship winners -- who represent roughly the top 0.8% of those tested -- you would expect the men to be substantially overrepresented. Why are men's scores more variable? The leading hypothesis is one rooted in genetics. As explained by clinical psychologist Robert G. Lehrke, a contributor to a 1978 volume called Human Variation, men's greater variability is related to something called ''X linkage.'' Women have two X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y. The second X chromosome in women is thought to be effective in moderating the effects of deviant genes; lacking this chromosome, Lehrke explains, males would show the deviant trait at full force, whether it was beneficial or deleterious. The Y chromosome, meanwhile, does nothing much for them except convey the genetic instruction for maleness. And yet one senses that this explanation will fail to fly in the New York legislature. One awaits the questions about Zenobia.