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Comment by lxop | Hacker News Reader

Cordelia Fine is known for ignoring all finding that contradict her worldview. You make it sound like her position represents the consensus... it does not.

http://www.uvm.edu/~tribeta/Articles/Sex%20stereotypes%20Hal...

"Cleverly written with engaging prose, Delusions of Gender and Brain Storm contain enough citations and end notes to signal that they are also serious academic books. Fine and Jordan-Young ferret out exaggerated, unreplicated claims and other silliness regarding research on sex differences. The books are strongest in exposing research conclusions that are closer to fiction than science. They are weakest in failing to also point out differences that are supported by a body of carefully conducted and well-replicated research."

Fine can play the audience well but she does not do well in academic reviews outside of feminist circles.

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I'm not sure if you read the review you're linking but it's not a "bad review". It points out, as you quoted, where the books are "strongest" and "weakest", and is generally complimentary to the works reviewed. And as the author of the review points out to explain Fine's omissions:

"…whereas sex differences are reliably found in several areas of research, none of the differences support essentialist claims that girls and boys need separate educations based on their brain types, that one sex is better suited to become engineers, or that one sex is inherently more intelligent—to name just a few of the ideas being promoted under the guise of 'science'."

Halpern is being overly courteous. Fine denies the very existence of evolved human sexually dimorphic psychological adaptations, significant (physical) brain differences between men and women etc.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108906/

"Nothing short of stopping research on the topic would seem to satisfy her."

This is so ridiculous, I chuckled. This is from her conclusion on the aforementioned book:

"But also, to those interested in gender equality there is nothing at all frightening about good science. It is only carelessly done science, or poorly interpreted science, or the neurosexism it feeds, that creates cause for concern."

And her work is all about that. It's funny to me that she's done a very large review of tons of experiments, down to methodological aspects such as the way babies are held in supposedly controlled settings, and people try to slander her as some kind of anti-science advocate.

No doubt there are scientific flaws in Fine's work, but even as this article states:

"…popular books are written to appeal to a broader audience, and in that respect both Jordan-Young and Fine have succeeded. Prompting laypeople to adopt a more critical view of overly simplistic views of complex data sets is a goal any scientist can support, and for that we applaud their efforts."

The "overly-simplistic views" referenced by the reviewers are exactly the ones approvingly quoted in this article by Psychology Today, and to which Fine is, appropriately, being offered as a counterpoint.

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