Comment by dtf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dtf | Hacker News Reader

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Note that only the headline says "may explain why girls mature faster". Note the use of "may". Yet within days, this research becomes:

  "Girls really do mature quicker than boys, scientists find" - The Telegraph

  "Why Girls’ Brains Mature Faster Than Boys' Brains" - Time

  "Science proves girls do mature faster than boys" - San Francisco Chronicle

There was a similar charade a few weeks back when a PNAS paper about differences in the connections between male and female subjects (concluding that males connected more strongly front to back, females more strongly laterally) turned into hundreds of front-page stories about women being better at multitasking and men better at map reading, before being roundly denounced as quite shoddy research. By then of course, the meme has stuck, because we love having our prejudices confirmed.

The main difference between male and female brains is that male brains tend to be bigger:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2013/09/25/ar...

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I just want to stress I have no problem with the research presented here, just with the way it is presented - "sexed up", as it were - on the way to the media.

There was a similar charade a few weeks back when a PNAS paper about differences in the connections between male and female subjects (concluding that males connected more strongly front to back, females more strongly laterally) [...] roundly denounced as quite shoddy research

It wasn't roundly denounced as shoddy research, unless you're referring to certain groups being angry with the study.

Posts on Jezebel, Feministe and Tumblr were angry, and they tried to spin the results inaccurately. They claimed that the results indicated that female brains were different because of culture, and they claimed we should stop acting like there are innate non-physical differences between men and women.

Unfortunately for them, the differences in brain chemistry became pronounced not during the brain's most plastic years, but rapidly during puberty during the flood of sex hormones. And the study made that clear.

I don't know why the notion of different brain chemistry is so threatening to some groups, but it is what it is.

Yes, "shoddy research" is unfair. But the scientists went way overboard with their interpretation, given how tiny the differences were.

I don't read Jezebel or Feministe, but here are a couple of less mainstream links on the subject:

http://lindeloev.net/?p=64

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/getting-in-a-tangl...

There are many interesting analyses linked from this Storify:

http://storify.com/deevybee/postpublication-peer-review-on-s...

The author of that Storify points out that much bullshit came from both camps - those who believe strongly in sexual dimorphism in the brain (the multitasking/map-reading crowd), and those who refuse to believe in any. Meanwhile we should just be looking at the data for what it is and keeping in mind how little we know about anything when it comes to this marvellous organ.

"I don't know why the notion of different brain chemistry is so threatening to some groups, but it is what it is."

Maybe because such notions have historically been and still are used to justify biases that underly sexist behavior such as that studied here: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/6414.aspx

This is just a modern day spin on phrenology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology). Remember how scientists once looked for a link between face symmetry and criminality? Good times.

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