Hurrah! Bad Science exposes that rubbish about blue is for boys and pink for girls

[McEdam]

Irritatingly can't find this in Guardian online but bless Ben Goldacre, he uncovers the truth behind that stupid study claiming evolutionary reasons behind blue is for boys this week. And points out that before the 1940s, it was the other way round - baby boys were dressed in pink, seen as more masculine as a diluted version of red.

He points out the study measured preference, not discriminatory ability - so it didn't show women are any better at finding red berries as the authors claimed. And lots of other goods stuff, too.

I do think the little girl and pink thing is getting deeply weird actually.

As a child of the 70s I was dressed pretty much in unisex clothes, most of which were then handed down to my brother. Most kids I knew were the same (a lot of brown, yellow and orange in the 70s mind you). Is this some kind of backlash against our mothers who dressed us in maroon cord dungarees and polyester polonecks do you think?

Even babies' clothes are now ridgidly gendered these days and though I swore I wouldn't get sucked into the blue-is-for-boys thing it's really hard not to.

(MT - this is just an idle musing btw and not an attempt to use anecdotal evidence to rubbish/explain statistics because I know that is wrong. )

Rigidly even.

Sorry if I was a bit full on then. The only point I wanted to make was that evolutionary theory can offer us very pertinent insights to a theory of a specific human nature. There is a lot of room within that for indvidual agency though.

Was a joke MT.
I love Ben Goldacre, but in this case I think his problem was partly not that he was tilting at a straw man as you say, but that he was responding not so much to the somewhat flawed methodology of the study as to the way in which the media were so keen to pick it up and misrepresent it, which is a completely different issue.

I agree - but re the op, the study of coulour preference, in response to biological or cultural factors isn't 'rubbish' - it is an observable phenomenon that cannot be explained away by parents assigning these colour preferences to children, in the west or otherwise. There is a study of toy preference in babies too. I really don't know why people get so het up about them - they are studies - explorations, not politcal agendas! The methodology may be flawed in this study, but the scientific process will weed such flaws out. That is the way science works. It is the most reliable system we have in a massivly flawed world due to the central rul;e that everything must be questioned and tested, by many people in many ways until some consensus comes about that we call scientific fact; but the testing still doesn't end then. We really need to trust it more.

If someone then comes along to try to say all girls like pink and are weak with a head full of frivolous things shout them down, not the studies that actually prove them wrong in the long term - which is what much of evolutonary theory does today; right the male bias within science that has assigned women with a passive role in the evolution of our species. Nothing could be further from the truth!

" I really don't know why people get so het up about them - they are studies - explorations, not politcal agendas!"

Because people use them to justify political agendas.

FWIW I agree with you that
the research itself is less of a problem than the way it is represented.

But a lot of people will now be going around blithely believing that a preference for pink has been proven by Science to be part of the essence of femininity and that the clever scientists have even proved that it's because of our hunter-gather past.

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Exactly Pruners, and it is so scary because newspapers are the only way most people come into contact with this kind of information, and it?s all skewed and out of context. In this sense I think the self regulation of the press has been a disaster.

Hi Kathy, FWIW if it were to be proven that women were more (statistically) predisposed to like reddish hues then it?s hardly going to hurt anyone, is it?

Yes, people use science to back up specious political agendas; all the more reason to study the science so we can recognise these charlatans. It is tricky, issues of policy will always seek to be backed up with theories of human nature. In the past these have come from the likes of Freud, since debunked as a pseudoscientist, though an entertaining writer non-the less.

There are two fundamental tools everyone should be aware of when looking at scientific data like this though. The first one is something called the naturalistic fallacy. People tend to think that something labelled ?natural? is therefore ?good? and preferable to unnatural. This is a fallacy. Death is natural, pain is natural, for instance, yet we know they are not ?good?. People also have a habit of ascribing morals to natural things, as though they are in some way benign ? this too is a fallacy.

The other thing is something Hume came up with and that is distinguishing between ?is? and ?ought?; the difference between the way things are and the way we think they should be. Many people accuse scientists of promoting bad things when they are simply telling it like it is. The idea that rape and murder is ?natural? for instance. Of course it is natural as competition for food and sexual resources are natural, BUT saying that is not that same as saying we should accept it and that nothing can be done to lower it?s incidence. It will probably never be wiped out, that is a sad fact, but rules of society can be set to make it less prevalent, and they are. When society breaks down by consequence of war or disaster, incidence shoots up again ? WHY it does so is a hugely important project when trying to come up with disaster management strategies that will protect women ? but you have to begin with facts, sometimes terrifying facts about the darker side of human nature, not wishful thinking. Human nature has a good side too, but obviously this needs less management than the darker side.

I hope that makes sense.

MT you're right, in fact I think everyone is agreeing it's not the scientific exploration which is at fault. But the media's representation of the information.

The idea that 'women might be statistically predisposed to reddish hues' isn't the problem (not sure if it was found to be true or not).

The problem is that doesn't make good headlines, so the story will be more along the lines of Kathyis6inches. It will be massively skewed to the point of propaganda.
And it's a short step to finding it's way into consumerist marketing campaigns, which informs how people buy. Then the world is awash with more pink.

So anyway I don't blame science for any of this stuff, in fact it's a damn good thing science still exists hopefully without too much interference from the media, corporate or consumer power. My problem is with how the media operates.
Which is why I found Ben Goldacre's articles refreshing as I assumed that it didn't blithely follow the press release that was sent out.
Although I admit it was the only article I read.

No I probably overreacted a tad too. I am confuse as to whether Goldacre is sus about the paper or evolutionry science as a whole - I really hope he hasnt' jumped on that pseudoscientific bandwagon. I find it hard to believe he has so maybe much of the fault was my own reactionary response as much as his casual engagement with the adaptionist programme.

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I don't have a problem with the claim that the methodology is flawed. Just that it is and end result when obvioulsy it is the first stage of a hypothesis. No one would accept the findings from such a small sample, but the research as to be published to others can challenge and build on its findings.

And I find the first chapter is just confusing. He must accept the theory of evolution - the odd flimsy study doesn't discredit the whole practice of looking at things via an evolutionary lens - which is precisely what Zoe Williams has tried to say.

Hi, t'internet's been down in my house ever since I posted this. MT, I don't think 'it's the journalists wots to blame' line is entirely fair.

Scientists are not always above all human foibles and prejudices. And this shapes what is studied and how those studies are framed. Previous generations of scientists have produced what they called 'evidence' to show that people of African descent were somehow less evolved than white people, or women were more stupid than men, for instance. There were lots of scientists involved in eugenics.

With this type of study, I think before launching into research on why girls like pink, it would make sense to test the assumption that girls DO like pink. If you look across space and time you'll pretty quickly find that pink = girls is not a consistent link.

So what's the point of investigating something that is clearly heavily socially determined? If you are going to investigate it anyway, does that suggest you have an agenda? If you don't, why would you study a false premise and why would you not test a more accurate/complex hypothesis about colour preference?

I don't blame 'journos' - more the people who set the broadcast agendas - much like Paxman said last week.

The media has huge influence and power. For many it is the only access they have to cultural discourse and room for manipulation there is huge. I personally don't think there should be a self regualtion of the press, there is far too much at stake. We wouldn't have self regulation of ruling parties - that would be totalitarianism. The power of the media is on a par with that of politicians, surpasses it actually - why Rupert Murdoch chose media and not politics.

And that girls like pink in ststistically relevent numbers to justify the study in the first place. That isn;t in contention, more why that statistical significance is there. The meathodology was flawed not the premise.

But if there is any evidence that women (because I think they looked at adults, not children, IIRC) overwhelmingly prefer pink, then you have to look at the evidence that this is cultural - it's clear that blue used to be for girls and pink for boys and that pink isn't seen as a signifier of feminity in all countries.

Why do a study about the evolutionary psychology of 'women prefer pink' when if there is such a preference a quick data search would find it is clearly not biological but cultural?

McEdam, you make the mistake that many people do about evolutionary science by assuming cultural factors weren't looked at. They were. Evolutionary theory does not discount cultural factors; it is not all about genes, despite what it's detractors assert. I would assert that nothing is merely either exclusively cultural or biological, that both matter and any attempt to create a dichotomy between the two is spurious.

Looking at it again I'm not even sure the methodology was flawed, or its premises - it seems people were just upset with the authors hypotheses, which is not set in stone and are out there to be challenged - this being science. A statistical significance was seen and that alone warrants further study. The authors won?t be interested in calling women fluffy, but differences in the way genders ?see? the world and trying to work out why such differences exist, as they do.

No, I don't assume evolutionary science ignores cultural factors, I was asking why this study appeared to have done so. Have you read the orginal study? If so, how did they report their findings and how did they take cultural influences into account?

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What's annoying about the girls love pink belief is not the colour question but the fact that it's used to indicate a fluffy, pastel sort of mind. And anyone who's ever met a determined, strong willed, pink-clad three year old knows that's just plain silly. If boys liked pink or could be proved to like pink, it would be regarded as a tough no nonsense colour.

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