Women, men, and examination scores.

To the editor: We are pleased to see research on the performance of female physicians, an area of much interest yet insufficient understanding. The article by Dr. Norcini and colleagues (1) raises as many questions as it answers, however.

The data indicate that very little or none of the variation in scores could be attributed to sex. The authors found that 0.5% of R ² in 1982 was uniquely contributed by sex. Thus, confounding factors must have been overlooked in accounting for the difference between the performances of men and women. The authors suggest that some convergence of the scores is