Open Letter to the New York Times

[differenceblog]

To the Health editors of the New York Times:

I was extremely disappointed with Nicholas Wade's article "Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes" (4/10/2007). While Mr. Wade was correct to reference Larry Cahill's excellent 2006 review, it seems as if Mr. Wade read only the abstract. Dr. Cahill is fairly clear in his review that while

Comments

[differenceblog]

Not too flame-tastic? I always worry that I get a little too aggressive when I'm writing about Bailey.

[njyoder]

To be fair, while his conclusions are wrong, the data is from legitimate studies showing that women tend be physically aroused by images of both sexes, where men tend to be aroused by just the opposite sex. This is based on studies using devices such as a plethysmograph (penile and vaginal) that measures physical arousal.

From the sounds of it, teenage boys can get aroused by images of a banana, a car, giving a speech in class, etc. But _women_ are the ones who don't really know what they want.

If you're talking about [transient] puberty, a male isn't getting aroused by the car, he's just randomly getting physically aroused. Anecdotally, that isn't supported.

[njyoder]

I almost forgot, they use brain imaging methods too (e.g. fMRI). I'm not sure if they have done it with an EEG, but that would make a lot of studies much cheaper and less embarrassing if it were an accurate measure.

[differenceblog]

shrug. I think it's worth writing the Times about that as well, but I thought I got too long already in pointing out that they KEEP going to Bailey, and people KEEP pointing out to them that he's a poor scientist, and maybe, just maybe, they should look around for someone else?

[vinnie_tesla]

I was pretty disgusted with the tone of the article. I'm kind of spitefully pleased to learn that the science was bad to match.

[drinkywinky]

Nicely written letter.