Science writer Christian Jarrett has brought his attention to bear on a new study purporting to show that men's and women's brains are wired differently—and that this helps to explain different behavioural patterns between the sexes. Alas, while "the world's media lapped this up," (here's just one example among many) Jarrett points out that there are some serious problems with both the press coverage and the study.
Among the issues he brings up: the size of the differences in male and female brains(statistically significant but not substantive or fundamental); the fact that they are only averages (my male brain could be more like the typical female brain than a given female's); the new study did not look at behaviour, and past studies on the same sample found "trivially small" behavioural differences by gender; the authors "dredged up old ideas about the left brain hemisphere being for analytical thought and the right hemisphere being intuitive"; and of course correlation, if there is one, is not causation (different patterns of wiring could be caused by different behaviours which are themselves influenced by societal expectations, for instance).
What the study actually revealed, in other words, is this: Male and female reporters employed by news outlets of all sizes located in various different cultures around the world are equally likely to believe what they read and repeat it uncritically as long as it reinforces their preconceptions.
What the study actually revealed, in other words, is this: Male and female reporters employed by news outlets of all sizes located in various different cultures around the world are equally likely to believe what they read and repeat it uncritically as long as it reinforces their preconceptions.
