Airbear,
So far, you've called me a "hater," "angry," "pompous," "self-righteous," "certainly NOT a mathematician," and someone who gets his "underwear in a wad" and who feels "threatened that [he doesn't] understand the concepts underlying these mathematical models." I hope you and others notice that, although I may disagree with you, I'm able to discuss these topics without going down the path that you've chosen.
As for your comments that I'm "certainly NOT a mathematician" and I "don't understand the concepts underlying these mathematical models," I completed courses in differential equations and linear algebra when I was 17 years old, and I have two degrees from M.I.T., where I studied, among many other things, probabilistic systems analysis, including analysis of distribution curves. I feel confident in my ability to understand grade-school statistics and the limitations of crude mathematical models of human performance.
I haven't said much about the speculations that you and others have engaged in to explain the respective distribution curves for men's and women's marathon times because it didn't seem worth my while. In real life, I get paid lots of money to argue about things much more important than Olympic trials qualifying standards, and I have a pretty good sense of whether it's worth my while to raise points for consideration, or whether I'm simply engaging in a time-wasting back-and-forth with someone who is either unwilling or unable to consider those points.
I will say this: For people who are familiar with the training history of a wide range of male and female marathoners, the most plausible explanations for the difference in distribution curves at the higher end is not that the range of talent for marathoning among women is, for some unidentified biological reason, more spread out than it is for men, or that there are more ectomorphic men than women (as someone hypothesized earlier in this thread). Rather, at the world-class level, fewer of the most talented athletes are engaged in hard marathon training and racing on the women's side, especially among the African countries that produce most world-class marathoners. In Kenya, for example, talented female athletes are more likely to have their training and racing curtailed at an early age. In Ethiopia, the best female distance runners do not yet compete in the marathon.
In the U.S., the situation is somewhat different. I don't think that the talent pool among female marathoners in the U.S. is necessarily poorer than it is among their male counterparts. Rather, the better female marathoners in the U.S. generally don't have the training background that their male counterparts have. Women like Deena, Joanie, and Paula put in many thousands of hard miles before they approached 2:20 marathon condition. Their training background had been comparable to that of their male counterparts. But if you look at the top 100 or 200 female marathoners in the U.S., their training background is nowhere near that of their male counterparts. If you only train 15,000 miles over the course of five or six years, you're not as likely to approach the limits of your talent as you would if you trained 25,000 or 30,000 miles during that period.
It's important to understand that I'm not saying that it's a bad thing that the top 100 or 200 female marathoners in the U.S. haven't trained as much or as hard as their male counterparts have, and I'm not saying that female marathoners in the U.S. are lazy. People have different priorities in life, and those priorities change throughout life. Most people, both men and women, very sensibly choose to do something other than train 100 or more miles a week through their twenties and thirties. They spend time raising families, working on nonrunning careers, helping others, and many other things that are far more socially useful than running 500 hours or more every year. If fewer women than men choose the very selfish and single-minded pursuit of fast marathon times, good for them. You may not believe it, but I really mean that. I just don't think that Olympic trials qualifying standards should be adjusted as much as they have been to accommodate those very sensible choices.
p.s. "Res ipsa loquitur" doesn't mean "it is what it is," and isn't considered a pompous expression among people who are familiar with the term. And you don't have to be a chemist to get the reference in my nom de plume, or a linguist to know the meaning of "lexicographer," or a mathematician to understand grade-school statistics. And if I were trying to impress someone, I wouldn't choose an anonymous person on the Internet. I was simply trying to have a discussion about a subject that interests me and that I've given some thought to.