Slate has just finished an excellent five-part series on two recent books which have attempted to paint men and women as vastly different in mind, brain and behaviour by exaggerating the science of sex difference.
The books in question are Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain and Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox.
Both have been influential because the authors write from an explicitly feminist angle, and both claim to be drawing on the latest neuroscience, suggesting that they’re overthrowing the mushy political correctness of "everyone is the same".
The Slate series pulls no punches though, saying "Ultimately, the evangelists aren’t really daring to be politically incorrect. They’re peddling one-sidedness, sprinkled with scientific hyperbole."
Of course, there are cognitive differences between men and women, but the punchline of almost all sex difference research is that the extent of the difference between any two individuals, be ...
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What do you need to do to be considered an expert?From: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2008-05-22 18:14:26
Sociologist Harry Collins is interviewed in American Scientist on his fascinating mission to find out what we need to do to be considered an expert and what different types of expertise exist.
Collins has spent many years studying how science works. Not how it is supposed to work, through experiments and falsification and gradual knowledge building, but how it actually works, through social networks, economics and traditions.
He studied physicists who research gravitational waves and realised ...
more Don’t believe the neurohypeFrom: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2008-05-22 19:00:00
Wired magazine has just published a must-read article on the hyping of neuroimaging technology by companies wanting to sell brain scans on the deceptive premise that they can tell you something about your mood and personality, the effectiveness of adverts or whether you’re being truthful.
Here at Mind Hacks, we’ve covered several highlights in the ongoing parade of brain scan powered bullshit in the past (FKF Applied Research I’m looking at you) but this new article, ...
more Linguistic feathers ruffled by high tech new schoolFrom: mindhacks.com
Post Date: 2008-05-21 20:00:00
This week’s Nature has a feature article on how a new breed of computational linguists are attempting to understand the evolution of language by using high powered computer models. The traditionalists are not impressed, and accuse the new school of reducing language to numbers and oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness.
It’s an old debate in the human sciences, and relates to whether aspects of human experience can be meaningfully quantified.
Some psychologists, for exampl...
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