Yes, he was very careful in his wording and close to 100% correct. What the outrage mob did was as follows: 1. Change preference to ability: so "the research

Yes, he was very careful in his wording and close to 100% correct. What the outrage mob did was as follows: 1. Change preference to ability: so "the research suggests that women, on average, prefer to do things other than code" to "women can't code" 2. Change a statistical argument to an essentialist one. So "on average" to "no women" 3. Change the population/sample from the general population to "people who work at Google". So at this point we have gone from "in the general population, there appear to be more men who like the sorts of tasks associated with coding than women who like the same kinds of tasks" to "Women at Google can't code" 4. Get horribly upset about someone claiming that they can't code. 5. Use the demonstrable fact of their being so horribly upset as evidence that he is the one creating a toxic work environment. 6. Voilà, he just has to go. (7. Also: claim, falsely, that there is no research for what he said) This multi-level shifting of definitions and wording is a common pattern, so something to watch out for.