Science and EBM vs. theory

[mordantcarnival]

I've actually been trying to write something about this for years now--literally years, like 7 or 8. But every time I come back to the topic, I feel like I'm drowning. Suffocating. About a month or so ago I came across a PDF on the topic which I thought might make a good jumping-on point, as it specifically tries to use the tools of post-

Comments

[cusm]

It seems to say, 'how can a woman understand a number, when she understands things in terms of their relation to the rest of her life experience' or some such. Its going back to analysis of differences in male/female cognition, where males are said to think more linearly and logically, and females abstractly and relationally. Some neuroscience showing womens brains having more interconnected synapses has been used to support this. All of which of course identifies biological tendencies possibly caused by hormones in development but fails to prove anyone can or can't do anything better than anyone else when put to the test. But in this case, it assumes that the woman can't rationalize the number, because numbers are meaningless cold abstractions in a cruel patriarchal world that fail to allow her to express her feelings for lack of connection to her life experience. It almost has a point in how one's life experience can't be boiled down to numbers, but loses it assuming the number itself is without value and that the woman simply can't parse it because she can only think in terms of emotional value.

In other words: rubbish, junk science, sexism.

The rest caused me to glaze over in disbelief from the abstract. Evidence is fascist? I can buy that overwhelming data can cause one to tend to draw conclusions based upon that data and reject ideas which are not scientifically proven, but isn't that the point of fucking science? Oh, but the scientific method is a cruel tool of oppression from the male majority (fascists! fascists!) to suppress creative thinking and we should discard historical data to practice medicine from our instinctive feelings and connect with the patent with hugs instead of chemotherapy. Feh.