I am skeptical of your claim that sharing scientific research or interpreting science is more harmful than good. Please provide justification. I do not think that being ignorant leaves anyone better off. Scientists in general do not make social policy. Every person who votes and participates in our democracy makes social policy, to some extent - even if only city council, school board, etc. Some understanding of an issue is better than none, even if their understanding is worse than a scientist's. The right correction in these situations is more knowledge, not less. Today's college students have as much or more knowledge and understanding of their fields as expert scientists did only a few centuries ago. We have to start somewhere.

Research into sex differences has yielded real benefits. Research into differences in life expectancy, bone density, heart disease, etc., have helped a lot of people. Some issues are largely gender-specific, like breast cancer, and better understanding the nature of sex differences can yield crucial insight into treatments.

Research is also gradually gaining a scientific understanding of the cognitive differences between men and women at higher levels of behavior. See "Foetal testosterone and the child systemizing quotient" (European Journal of Endocrinology, 2006). Paraphrased:

> A growing body of evidence suggests that, on average, males spontaneously "systemize" to a greater degree than do females. "Systemizing" is a cognitive process defined by the drive to analyze or construct systems. Our study explored foetal testosterone (fT) levels as a candidate biological factor influencing sex differences in systemizing. Males (mean 27.79) tested significantly higher than females (mean 22.59) on systemizing quotient, confirming that boys systemize to a greater extent than girls. This study suggests that the levels of fT are a biological factor influencing cognitive sex differences and lends support to the empathizing–systemizing theory of sex differences.

http://docs.autismresearchcentre.com/papers/2006_Auyeung_fT&...

This same research also offers insight into medical conditions. The authors discuss the application to understanding autism:

> Individuals with [autism] score
higher than normal males on the [systemizing quotient], who in turn score higher than normal females. Baron-Cohen has
described autism as an extreme manifestation of some
sexually dimorphic traits. The extreme male brain (EMB)
theory of autism is an extension of the [empathizing-systemizing] model of sex differences and proposes that individuals with ASC are impaired in empathizing and are at least average or superior in systemizing relative to their mental age.

In other words, better understanding of fetal testosterone may give us insight into the causes of autism, which hopefully will some day lead to early detection and prevention. Autism is four times more common in men than women, by the way. I could also see this research having applications to education, specifically in the type of learning material and activities that might be most effective for male and female students.

The science I'm presenting is not fringe. You'll find a good deal of it in a typical college psychology textbook. "Leave science for the scientists" is a point of view with poor respect for human intelligence. Like the majority of autistics, the majority of scientists are also men. I think women, and people in general, ought to think about these issues critically. Psychology, especially social psychology and evolutionary psychology and similar fields, lend themselves well to at least a degree of "pop" analysis and understanding. The subject of these fields is the human condition, with which we all have experience. A person off the street will not have the necessary experience with control theory to understand a paper about robotics. By comparison, one does not need a doctorate in psychology to grasp the implications of, for example, the famous Stanford Prison Experiment.