When her work was attacked in 1987, Gilligan said that even if scientists have challenged the book, its findings made sense to many readers. Many agreed that men and women might use two different styles of moral reasoning--"justice" and "care"--roughly divided along gender lines.

"The proof of the pudding is that her findings are meaningful to so many people," says Professor of Psychology Ellen Langer. "There are so few people that have made a contribution to the order that Carol has--regardless of any minor, or even major, experimental gap,"

"At the time, [Gilligan's work] was revolutionary. To nit-pick at it is to miss the point," agrees Rhodes.

Even some critical scholars are willing to ignore perceived empirical flaws and applaud Gilligan's contribution.

"She has been speaking a larger truth," says Stanford Professor of Psychology Eleanor Maccoby, who has criticized In a Different Voice for its weak empirical foundations. "Men and

women do have somewhat different orientations, different agendas, different modes of enactment, in their relationships with other people, and it is this side of her work, rather than the moral judgment issues, that she has been following up effectively in her more recent teaching and writing."

But some of Gilligan's colleagues say reader resonance is no substitute for hard data.

"Ideology--even ideology in the service of the oppressed--is a poor underpinning for research," Nails wrote in her 1983 study. "Let us beware most of all and criticize most effectively those with whom we yearn to agree."