Tag: science

Tierney (un)Truth and (not) Dare

Posted by helenboyd – June 18, 2010

A little more than a week ago, John Tierney published an article in the NYT “daring” to question whether or not girls just aren’t good at math. What a goddamn revelation. I don’t know what we would do without such daring journalism.

Maggie Koerth-Baker over at BoingBoing actually interviewed some female scientists on the topic. One of them, a Dr. Isis, had some great things to say:

John Tierney titles his article “Daring to Discuss Women’s Potential in Science,” as though he is bravely daring to out the dirty little secret that we all supposedly know deep in our hearts. Girls suck at math and science. The truth is, they really don’t. It’s just that John Tierney sucks at googling.

I love the idea of John Tierney publishing pie recipes instead:

Yet, he clearly has ignored the fact that this phenomenon is unique to the United States. Indeed, in countries with more gender equal cultural norms, the divide disappears. In Iceland, girls out perform boys in math and science. Japanese girls out perform American boys. Maybe in his next column Tierney will argue some type of evolutionary difference between the boys and girls in these other countries and American boys and girls. Personally, I would find it much more interesting if he would start posting recipes for pies we could make with all the cherries he’s picking.

and then:

Can we all agree that Tierny pulled this completely out of his ass? Someone who scores in the top 99.9% of an aptitude test is more likely to get tenure than someone who scores in the top 99.1% in the seventh grade? Really?

Honestly, the NYT had no business publishing a poorly-researched and obviously biased article. Let’s all keep in mind that Tierney has already written in defense of Summers, which indicates some pre-existing bias — other than the obvious sexist one, of course.

These guys tire me.

Sex Difference Studies Suspect

Posted by helenboyd – September 9, 2009

Kudos to Scientific American and Lise Eliot – who published & wrote an article on sex brain difference studies, particularly the ones involving emotional sensitivity & the SG size in brains.

However, in both studies, Wood and colleagues added another test that reminds us to be cautious when interpreting any finding about sex differences in the brain. Instead of simply dividing their subjects by biological sex, they also gave each subject a test of psychological “gender:” a questionnaire that assesses each person’s degree of masculinity vs. femininity—regardless of their biological sex—based on their interests, abilities and personality type. And in both adults and children, this measure of “gender” also correlated with SG size, albeit in just as complicated a way as the correlation between “sex” and SG size. (Larger SG correlated with more feminine personality in adults but less feminine personality in children.)

In other words, there does seem to be a relationship between SG size and social perception, but it is not a simple male-female difference. Rather, the SG appears to reflect a person’s “femininity” better than one’s biological sex: women who are relatively less feminine show a correspondingly smaller SG compared to women who are more feminine, and ditto for men.

This article is some of the best writing on science & sex difference I’ve read – especially for lay folks who don’t want to tackle the work of someone like Fausto-Sterling.

It happens so rarely, but it’s so lovely when it does.