Annoyed by Allies

[andrewducker]

In some ways it's more annoying when people who nominally believe things like you step over the mark and say ridiculous things than when people on the other side do so. As usual it's nominally 'objective' scientists taking a theory and then using anything to hand in order to 'prove' it. Robert Anton Wilson talks about this propensity - he divides us into two people - the thinker and the prover. In a perfect world the thinker would think whatever the prover had proved. In reality, the prover sets out to prove whatever the thinker already thinks. Robert Heinlein put it another way when he said that "Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal." We will selectively ignore whatever evidence there is that contradicts what we already believe. We invent the most tenuous of excuses in the face of evidence of a world we don't like. I'm certainly guilty of this myself, as is everyone else I know.

However, it'd be nice to think that when people are publishing a scientific work that they would stick to things which, if not actual facts, were as close to facts as possible. It's all well and good me putting together a few chance observations of the people around me and the news and culture I have access to, but I expect scientists to work a little harder and actually try to, well, prove what they're saying.

Which makes this dissapointing. The new book from Michael Baron-Cohen (apparently very respected in the world of autism) explores differences in the brains of men and women. Sadly, while it contains some decent research and interesting studies, it also contains a vast amount of hearsay and anecdotal evidence which wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny.

So on the positive side there's things like:

...a study of rats in which the males were found to be better at finding their way through mazes. Baron-Cohen contends that this marginally supports his theory that men are better than women at reading maps. "In both the human and rat studies, a male superiority has been established when geometric (systemic) cues are available. Females tend to rely on landmarks (objects) in the room," which he says is not very systematic or reliable method.

Delving further into biology, Baron-Cohen finally gets cookin'. First off, hormones appear to play a factor in gender-typical behavior. Higher levels of testosterone, particularly in early development, he maintains, citing studies on everyone from rats to men with "very small testes" to male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals, lead to an increased aptitude for systems and a decreased aptitude for emotional relationships. What's more, fetal testosterone may also affect the rate of growth of the brain's two hemispheres: the higher the testosterone level, the faster the growth of the right hemisphere, which has been linked to spatial ability, in which systemizing plays a role. The left side of the brain, meanwhile, is linked to language abilities, which is a key component of empathizing, Baron-Cohen says.

One particularly interesting study cited in the book finds that women tend to have larger left feet than right -- and larger left ovaries and breasts -- as well as dominant left brain hemispheres. These "left-greater" people tend to score better in language tests. Men, on the other hand, are generally found to have dominant right brain hemispheres -- and larger feet and testes. "Right-greater" people have been found to do better on spatial tests.

Still, Baron-Cohen seems much more comfortable when he turns to his area of expertise: autism. (He is the director of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre and has written two books on the subject, "Autism: The Facts" and "Mindblindness.") Here, he argues that autism, which afflicts far more men than women and is characterized by "abnormalities in social development and communication" and "unusually strong obsessional interests," and Asperger Syndrome, similar to autism but found in people with higher IQs and less severe communication issues, are both examples of "the extreme male brain." In other words, these are people for whom the systemizing/empathizing split is heavily weighted toward the former. (For the record, I scored very low on Baron-Cohen's appended Autism Spectrum Quotient test, meaning I show few signs of the syndrome.)

On the negative side there's vast amounts of things along the lines of:

For instance, to support his assertion that boys have a superior mathematical ability across cultures, after allowing that their work in school might be "less neat" than girls', Baron-Cohen looks at the entrants in the International Mathematical Olympiad, "in which the world's best mathematicians compete against each other."

"You can look up the winners on the Web if you are interested," he writes. "You will notice immediately that they are nearly all male. The Olympiad winners are listed by name, not by sex, but one can have a good guess at the sex of someone called Sanjay, David, Sergei, or Adam."

As the reviewer asks: This is valuable scientific evidence?

And the answer is that it might have been, if the time and effort had been put in to research it properly and check the backgrounds of the places these children come from - I can see Heron's immediate response to this that in most cultures the males are taught far more than the females are, which would easily slant the results, especially as "Sanjay" is a name associated with India, a very gender-based culture, "David" is possibly Jewish (another one) and so on and so forth.

It's only by sticking to the basics of what can be shown statistically to be (as) true (as possible) that inroads can be made. And if you can't show it to be true, then stating it as a fact based on trivial anecdotal evidence and guesswork harms your cause, it doesn't help it.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

For instance, to support his assertion that boys have a superior mathematical ability across cultures, after allowing that their work in school might be "less neat" than girls', Baron-Cohen looks at the entrants in the International Mathematical Olympiad, "in which the world's best mathematicians compete against each other."

"You can look up the winners on the Web if you are interested," he writes. "You will notice immediately that they are nearly all male. The Olympiad winners are listed by name, not by sex, but one can have a good guess at the sex of someone called Sanjay, David, Sergei, or Adam."

In addition to the author making a specious argument, the whole idea that men are on average better at math than women was recently revealed to be junk. A 20-year study of 1,700 students from starting public school to leaving college showed that in public school (including high school) women did (on average) slightly better than men in math. The other significant difference wrt math was that even women who excelled at math are less likely to go into math-heavy careers like engineering. The authors of this article attributes difference this to the fact that men and women on average value different things about careers. I'd also suggest that workplace bigotry likely had something to do with these decisions.

The most amusing gender studies are always the ones that definitively "prove" something already known to be incorrect.

[andrewducker]

See those bees?

I hear it's been proved that they can't fly.

Oh, I'd appreciate a link to the study. I'm collecting stuff like that.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

Heh. I so screw up all that stuff, being a left-handed female artist with excellent natural skill in languages, strong empathic tendencies, roughly the same amount of testosterone as ten men, bugger-all ability with maths or map-reading, have indeed got a larger left hand, foot and breast; have many of the characteristics common in those with Asperger's Syndrome, and would appear to be right-brain dominant.
I believe the reaction would be : "what the fuck?"

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the study was in a magazine, but it did have a link to the group that performed the study. I'd heard a little but about this study before and it seems fairly robust. Then again, I am far more likely to trust large sample size studies of actual human behavior than any study of brain activity or genetics.

My guess is that the earlier data about women doing less well in math was solely due to prejudice and cultural pressure. While these are only somewhat better, they are clearly enough better to eliminate that sort of discrepancy in performance.

[andrewducker]

Well I'd trust large sample sizes of actual people too.

I'm not going to believe anything firmly until we have a study of at least 10,000 people showing a correlation between their genes and some kind of social/intellectual characteristic.

My gut feeling is still that there is a strong genetic component in the underlying levels, but I'm not going to claim that it's proved until it actually is.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I have a significantly larger right breast and right foot. Maybe that explains my propensity for some typically-male endeavors. D&D anyone?

required reading!

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Stephen Jay Gould wrote a brillian book (http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0393314251-0) about a particular version of this problem: scientific racism.

His analysis of how purportedly scientific people twisted their own research to fit their bigotry is chilling, and will make you question any research that seems to fit a social set of beliefs.

[andrewducker]

Ooh, sounds fantastic.

Your place or mine?

Re: required reading!

[andrewducker]

I keep meaning to pick up a copy of the mismeasure of man.

It's important to remember that just because something would help a political point doesn't make it _wrong_ any more than it makes it right. It just means you should check even harder...

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to believe anything firmly until we have a study of at least 10,000 people showing a correlation between their genes and some kind of social/intellectual characteristic.

My feeling is that you will be waiting an extremely long time, both because I don't believe that such characteristics have a significant genetic component (assuming no gross genetic and physiological defects) and have not seen and useful evidence that there are any such correlations. But you already knew that :)

OTOH, 10,000 is a good number for a study and assuming a reasonable degree of rigor in methodology and sample selection (which are sadly far too rare in such studies) I'm likely to believe the results of a study with this sample size.

[andrewducker]

Well, the NHS looks likely to start recording genetic data fairly soon and we'll have records on _everything_ for people in the UK that should allow for studies on that scale. But it'll take decades.

And of course, it may show nothing.

I may need to find some other way to occupy my time :->

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I've been exhausted tonight by dissecting your quotes in your other thread! Maybe another night :D

Well, if you're gonna take it that way,...

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

If you are going to test people and compare gendered results you must also look at the cultural emphasis on that activity within that culture.

As for math, I do not believe you can adequately assess comparative results through gender if you do not take into account that the concepts of:
-girls are supposed to get guys
-the only point of being a girl is to get a guy
-girls who don't get guys are losers, freaks, ugly creatures that are not worthy of life
-guys don't like girls who are smart, or at least seem smart than them
(all of which is just as offensive to guys as far as I am concerned)

are still very strong in many North American schools. Some studies have shown amazing differences in the marks of girls in co-ed schools versus girls schools. Aaaand! Some recent studies I read about - sorry, can't remember where - showed an almost exactly corresponding change in boys marks in co-ed versus boys schools.

Raw potential cannot be measured through skills if those skills are culturally affected.

Yeah, I was a math and hard sciences geek. I also didn't get a date until the middle of grade 12 (last year of high school) while making honour role with two pencils tied behind my back. (When Kelly L. tried to she could kick *anyones* ass in calculus.) I *know* there were other girls *as* smart or event smarter than me. Boys, clothes and dating took up their time.

Just some thoughts and observations.

Ekatarina, now an English geek, but a geek nonetheless. "Hey, did you hear about the new Beowulf translation by Heaney! Scobie hates it and Grant loves it! Tucker still hasn't decided!"

[andrewducker]

There's no dissection there!

Re: required reading!

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

And of course the late Dr Gould was in a position of some authority to speak on such a topic.

oh, the irony.....

(he often attempted to use science to [try to] support his political views - fairly far left IIRC, which lead him to be anti-sociobiology)

Unless I have him confused with somebody else...entirely possible.

Re: required reading!

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Nothing ironic about it. Nothing wrong with "using science to support political views", either. Scientific ideas may will inform your political ideas, and it's quite proper to say so.

Sociobiology, like the I.Q. test and the "Bell Curve" and any number of contentious areas, can't exist outside the sphere of what we as political and moral animals believe. That's one of the points of Gould's book.

And someone who disagrees with you may say you're "using science to support your beliefs" if they disagree with either your politics or your scientific ideas, or both.

Gould's point in his book is that the scientific method and scientific attempts at truth can be knocked off the track quite easily by bigotry, and that everyone will go along with this quite cheerfully if it's useful.

This is true whether the bigots are "right" or "left". See the career of Lysenko for details.

Re: required reading!

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't disagree. I'll admit that I was having trouble expressing precisely what I meant neatly, so I gave up and did it sloppily. I just found it personally humourous that somebody with whose political views I happen to disagree, and who uses their own personal set of science to support is seemingly 100% aware of what he is (was) doing. This trick is to read as many and as opposing viewpoints as possible to try to insure that you yourself get a decent spread of data.

Personally, I just don't find sociobiology (in the original Ed Wilson sense, I suppose) at all contentious. I do find going to strenuous efforts to treat humans as a special case totally illogical. I find that most of the science that I disagree with seems to start with that sort of thinking. I can see why it appeals to people with certain agendas but I don't (personally) find that the evidence supports it.

It's a nice thought that people are most influenced by their environment, because then you could try to make that environment the right one for producing nice people. A pretty fantasy and far too simple to be anything related to the reality of any living thing. Not saying that SJG's views were quite that simple, but you get the kind of base flavour to the thinking that i'm on about (and with which I do not agree).

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Me, too. My right foot is half a shoe size or more bigger than my left foot. And I'm good at math, in 9th grade I did a local math contest and when the top three scorers from each of the three years stood together for a group photo, my mom called out "hey, Emma, what are you doing with all of those boys?" which of course made me want to sink into the floor... But the number of boys who had entered the contest in the first place was much larger than the number of girls who were there. So saying the winners were mostly boys just reflects the makeup of the pool of competitors in the first place. And by that age, many girls had already been convinced they're bad at math.

My 3-year-old son has autism spectrum disorder, and it is interesting to consider his communication issues. My husband is very much an introverted absent-minded professor geek stereotype. And aspects of his communication (or lack thereof) has always bugged my mom (yes, mom again). Recently she said to me that learning to love and accept the way Philip (my son) is has really helped her a lot in understanding how my husband is... so I can sort of buy into the "autism is the extreme of the male mind" concept, with the proviso that calling it "the male mind" in the first place is creepy.

[andrewducker]

Agreed. I'd much rather he'd called it the systemising mind and then said that men were more likely to have one. It would have seemed like much less of sa stretch.