Honest question, do you really think that their opinions weren't already extreme in light of the fact that the science on the differences between the sexes (and the races, tangentially) aren't significant enough to define hiring practices? I ask because I think we're seeing not a backlash from corporations because they're anti-science but because they're anti-scientism. We've had two centuries of science being misused to excuse unscientific policies in law and even corporate policy (and to some extent we still do this). Google, in my opinion, is right to ignore the science on the differences between groups of people because the science at this point speaks very broad terms and worse still it doesn't define social and moral goods. Science is good at describing a thing but not describing what should be done with the thing it describes, that's for philosophers, law makers, and preachers to do. And folks like Damore fall into the tar pit of scientism where they try to describe concepts of morality and philosophy in disguise when they claim they describe things in terms of a science. There's nothing scientific about fairness. It's just something we feel is fair in a given era. A century ago giving women an equal say in society whether by vote or employment would've been seen as unfair. Today? It's totally fair and expected. How that changed I won't go into but the fact is the change occurred independent of science (as it should). Science works best when it attempts to be as value free as possible. But hiring practices aren't in the sphere of science and Damore should have known this well before he wrote his letter. He should've focused on fairness and defined fairness in scope of being an employee (potential and actual). That way his point might've been accepted because at the end of his letter he spells it out as a matter of judging people on individual ability. So the rest of his letter is actually useless and hides that important point he made. All because he got caught in the trap of scientism.