Comments | ozarque: Linguistics; gender and language, part 2; "gendered" brain research

ozarque

Linguistics; gender and language, part 2; "gendered" brain research

Feb 09, 2006 14:29

The research reports that have been coming out in recent years about the alleged neuroanatomical differences between male human brains and female human brains (and the accompanying discussions of why those alleged differences exist), make me nervous. The articles and "medical moments" that have been coming out in the mass media based loosely on ( Read more... )

Comments 46

poeticalpanther February 9 2006, 14:38:15 UTC

There was a recent episode on one of the Law & Order shows that referred to this obliquely; in this case, the senior researcher finds out that the junior has the brain anomaly that he's trying to prove causes the bad behaviour.

Response to lovecraftienne... ozarque February 9 2006, 16:07:42 UTC

Thanks for posting this; I didn't see that episode.

motive_nuance February 9 2006, 15:21:44 UTC

I'm a cognitive scientist, and I'll confirm that you're right about much of what you say -- our knowledge about the brain and the mind is spotty and generally far from certain. But it's important to note that the rate at which hypotheses are made is slightly higher than the rate at which they're discarded. Some of them stick around, and over the years acquire the imprimatur of scientific knowledge. This kind of knowledge has two things to recommend it over the garden-variety sort of knowledge. One is that if a hypothesis has any serious credibility there's a lot of fame and fortune to be found in finding a counter-example, so there tends to be a fairly concerted effort to disprove it. The other is that scientific knowledge is inherently disposable. Once a solid counter-example is produced, every serious scientist in that field will drop the idea in a flash, because they know that if they don't, any research they do that touches on that area will be unpublishable, and consigned to the bio-hazard bin of history ( ... )

Response to motive nuance... ozarque February 9 2006, 15:59:41 UTC

Thank you for the comment -- and I agree with everything you're saying, including the technical quibble. It's not that I don't think the cognitive studies published are useful and important -- I do. What troubles me is the instant "pop" distortions of the studies in the mass media, over which the researchers of course have no control. Women are still struggling to deal with comments in the "Oh, you know how women are when they're menstruating!" and "Oh, you know how women are when they're menopausal!" style; I just wish there were a way to avoid the addition of "Oh, you know how women's brains are!" to that set.

A quibble with the technical quibble... motive_nuance March 1 2008, 04:04:44 UTC

Excellent point about the inherently "disposable" nature of all theories ( ... )

michaelsullivan February 9 2006, 15:58:16 UTC

This has been bugging me about "scientific" conclusions in the popular media for a long time. Even reasonable sample sizes don't offer conclusive evidence if there's only been one study on a particular question. I feel much more comfortable talking about results as "known" when we've seen 3 or 4 studies by different authors, or with very different methodologies, which all show the same (significant) result. It's a real problem in medicine where the ethical issues make studies of significant sample size on real humans incredibly expensive. It's rare to see an experiment actually confirmed, because there's no money or prestige in saying that some other guy's result was okay. That sort of confirmation waits until something is already in common practice based on the previous single study, and someone can go back and data mine. And how often does the original study then turn out to be wrong? Too often ( ... )

Response to michaelsullivan... ozarque February 9 2006, 16:06:36 UTC

I don't perceive it as a rant; I second all your motions. And I don't know what the solution is. There's no way to get everyone to read the original research papers, even if they've had sufficiently valid science education to know how to deal with the terminology problems. And there's no way for a scientist to do an interview with a journalist and keep the journalist from grabbing whatever "has legs" and running with it. Refusing to do interviews because you know you'll be misunderstood and misquoted -- and unable to straighten out the mess because there's no mass media forum for that purpose -- is a sure way to find yourself without funding for your research. It's intricate, and there aren't any easy answers.

Re: Response to michaelsullivan... dteleki February 9 2006, 18:10:06 UTC

This problem doesn't just happen with science. (Not that mistakes in journalism are an unknown problem). My father is an economist specializing in agricultural chemicals, and he was once interviewed by USA Today. He went on and on about phosphate rock mines opening and closing, and explosions in factories, and corporate mergers. The article in USA Today ended up saying, among other things, that you should buy your lawn fertilizer now, because the price is going to go up.

Of course, my father never mentioned lawn fertilizer. He was talking about prices of unit-train sized lots. A "unit train" is a freight train with 100 identical hopper cars. The price of lawn fertilizer at gardening stores consists almost entirely of middleman costs and transportation costs, and the wholesale price of the chemicals has almost nothing to do with it.

This sort of silliness happened only rarely when he was interviewed by industry publications, such as Chemical Week. But it did happen occasionally.

Possible solutions ashnistrike February 9 2006, 18:36:32 UTC

You can teach people how to be skillfully suspicious of lay articles, even without making them track down the original. The very first assignment I give in Intro Psych, right after the methodology lecture, is to go find a newspaper or magazine article about a scientific study. Then they have to identify three issues that aren't sufficiently described in the article, that could completely change the interpretation of the results if you knew about them. It's a very simple assignment; there's no reason that it couldn't be a regular part of a high school science curriculum.

Attacking the other end of the problem, my school (a technical/engineering institute) has just started a science journalism major. The goal is to produce science reporters who know what they're talking about and value communicating it clearly.

Thread 6

whatifoundthere February 9 2006, 16:31:07 UTC

I've been enjoying all these conversations so much, and I've wanted to go back and reply to your thoughtful comments on my own comments; I hope to do that at some point soon but I'm busy too!

One reason I distrust neurobiological explanations for gender behaviour is that, even if the findings are accurate, I'm not completely sure that they're not symptoms, rather than causes, of the differences between men and women on the ground. I'm given to understand that for every element of our brains that's hard-wired, there's another that's grown or developed in a certain way in response to the environment. Are we really sure that the left-brain/right-brain disparities that were mentioned in an earlier comment on your journal don't come about because women are forced to come up with circumlocutions and men are not? If those disparities exist (and I'm not willing to assume they do until I see a lot more evidence), then I would be inclined to think it comes about because women "exercise that muscle" when speaking much more than men do. ( ... )

pocketnaomi February 9 2006, 16:56:12 UTC

That was a good point and no, of course we're not certain. And even if we were, I'm not sure it should make any practical difference, for the following reasons ( ... )

Response to amberspyglass... ozarque February 9 2006, 21:27:35 UTC

I understand full well that the comments people post at my journal represent an investment of time and energy they probably find it hard to spare; I know you're all busy. Not to worry.

The issue you raise is an important one, and you'll find that the researchers are very aware in it in their reports. (And in late-night discussions over a glass of something.) There is usually no reliable way to tell which direction the causation goes, even when it's possible to be sure that it's causation rather than correlation.

Re: Response to amberspyglass... oops.... ozarque February 9 2006, 21:53:23 UTC

That should be "the researchers are very aware of it," not "in it."

Haste makes waste....

pocketnaomi February 9 2006, 16:45:46 UTC

I understand the skepticism, and it's valuable. I am just as cautious about going the other direction and assuming as a matter of ideology that there is no brain difference and that any differences anyone finds *must* be a matter of cultural conditioning and/or researcher bias. There has been too much of that in other directions -- see Steven Pinker's _The Blank Slate_ for how the ideological insistence that everyone comes into the world initially identical in personality has messed things up, for example.