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.

[NKF]

I know boys like pink. Or at least they do until they're teased out of it. What irritates me is the argument that seems to run "Oh girls like pink, see you can't argue with biology, they're different to boys, quite understandable that they always earn less and do more housework" and so on.

[Pruners]

Message withdrawn

[McEdam]

Exactly, NKF! That's why reports of this study irritated me so much.

[Tortington]

i do think it rather depends on what shade of pink.

[Monkeytrousers]

McAdam, I haven?t read the original report ? I don?t have an Athens login. But I know evolutionary psychology. If you haven?t reads it, why are you so SURE they haven?t taken cultural factors into account. The study, a cross cultural one, wouldn?t actually stand up without it? actually, when I get time today I will ask a friend of mine at Newcastle uni to email me the paper. Then I will be able to answer that question properly.

Here is a review of an oft cited critique of evolutionary psychology, Evolutionary psychology: "fashionable ideology" or "new foundation"? It is short and very easy to read but covers all of the bases of misrepresentation. Please, could all of you who are interested in this debate read it so I don?t have to keep repeating myself about what evo psychology is and is not. Here is an extract, the last sentence very important to what you are trying to assert about EP, from what basis of knowledge I don?t know: ?Evolutionary psychologists look at, amongst other things, permutations in behaviour in order to work out what the underlying rules are and how they operate. This research, which necessarily involves cross-cultural studies, commits evolutionary psychologists to a strongly "environmentalist" position: the idea that differences in behaviour are largely the product of differences in environmental -- physical, social or cultural ? factors?

This is not an arbitrary rule within EP, it is central to the collection of data.

Pruners, we were talking about evolutionary psychologists, not evolutionary biologists; ev theory encompasses the two but they are discrete and separate disciplines - who do study culture by way of environments within which genes are switched in BTW. Your DH just doesn?t seem interested, fair enough, the human mind (not human beings) may well seem difficult to study from his perspective, but as a scientist he should not be letting his personal prejudices be his guide.

I cannot believe that women will be threatened by the fact that because they might like pink/red hues more than men (just more than, no more remember) it is justified to think them stupid. That is a paranoid fantasy.

You are right in your next post Pruners, but not about monkeys..we actually evolved from a cousin of the ?monkey?, not directly from monkeys. It is a common misconception. Sorry, but it is my geeky duty to correct it ? and your DP should have done that already!J

NKF ? ?"Oh girls like pink, see you can't argue with biology, they're different to boys, quite understandable that they always earn less and do more housework"? This is NOT how the argument runs ? this is NOT what the study is about or says - this is just another paranoid and meaningless extrapolation; the kind Zoe Williams is responsible for putting in many of our heads. The argument runs on logical lines, this is not logic. I repeat, THERE IS NEVER ANY JUSTIFICATION FOR DISCRIMINATION ON THE GROUNDS OF GENDER OR RACE OR WHATEVER. EVOLUTIONARY THEORY DOES NOT BACK UP SPECIOUS IDEAS (NEVER BASED ON EVIDENCE) OF FEMALE INFERIORITY. ONLY PSEUDO-SCIENCE DOES THIS, NOT SCIENCE AND THIS IS WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE!

If you object to this then challenge misrepresentations of science, psudo-science and not science itself. But educate yourselves to know the difference, FGS.

[Monkeytrousers]

I meant to say - Ev biology studys culture by way of environments within which genes are switched on BTW, something your dh should be aware of.

[Tortington]

yes but ...fuschia

[starfish2]

Disclamer: this is not intended in any way as an insult or offense or unpleasant provocation!!!

monkeytrousers, you said that
'statistics tell us (via scientific investigation) that on average more girls are drawn to pink and more boys to blue'.
That sounds to me like asking lots of different people from different cultures 'what is your favourite fruit?', doing statistical analysis on it, saying this is 'scientific investigation' and it shows that such fruit has been scientifically proven to be the 'fruit that most people are drawn to'.
I am a working scientist (biophysicist BTW) and I feel that this is a complete misrepresentation of science as a whole. You can apply statistics to absolutely anything and it does not mean it is science. That is what market researchers do, and it does not make marketing into a science. You can also apply Darwinian evolution to anything, but it does not mean it will be science. Or good science. Everything has its place, but not everything can be called science just because there was some statistical analysis on it.

As to theories being there to be challenged... well, there are good theories that withstand time, and some that do not. And there are bad theories that should never come out. There are some papers that completely baffle other scientists as to how they were published. And I am also sure that if a theory similar to the 'pink vs blue in boys and girls' was to be scientifically shown to be true the consequences would be so great that a journal like Nature or Science would have no problems publishing it.

The inherent cultural bias that humans display so far has not been shown to find expression in any gene... By definition, cultural studies are not science...

But I am professionally very upset when you said to Pruners (and her dh) that
'the human mind (not human beings) may well seem difficult to study from his perspective'
It seems to me that you believe you have the right perspective to study the human mind, or a better perspective to study it. They are all different perspectives. Some are scientific and some are not scientific. I hope I musunderstood you.
'but as a scientist he should not be letting his personal prejudices be his guide'
The fact that he is not interested in something does not mean he is prejudiced. That was an assumption you made.

As to biological systems, everything is made from a gene. If you show me the gene responsible for something I'll start to believe in the theory behind it. And if you can help provide a vector (any expression system available: bacteria, yeast, baculovirus or mammalian cells) that expresses that gene I'll be more than happy to do some scientific work on the gene product. Other than that, it is just statistics.

Hope I haven't got completely the wrong end of the stick here .

[dundeemarmalade]

Would I not be right in thinking that referring to 'science' as a general and all-conquering method for understanding the world is roughly on a par with referring to 'nature'? Surely the scientific method is based on the experiment, replicable in controlled conditions- I find it hard to envisage a context in which any replicable or reliable study could be done on both a synchronic and a diachronic basis into such a mutable phenomenon as colour preference.

My interpretation of the original Goldacre article was that he was criticising the research because it appeared to rely on assuming the truth of its own proposition: in any case, how could this 'hypothesis' ever actually be tested? I'm quite surprised that evolutionary science, as spokespersoned for by monkeytrousers, seems to remain stoutly positivist in the assumptions it makes about the existence of a universal human nature. This is something that the humanities have largely 'evolved' away from, in the light of realisations of the extent and profundity of the influence of socially contrived structures/meanings. As far as I'm aware, we simply don't know enough about life in the 'hunter-gatherer' period (last I heard nobody could agree on where these hunter-gatherers actually lived), and in any case a smooth transition from ape > early human hunter-gatherer > modern human can be contested on a number of counts, so how can anybody produce anything more concrete than speculation about this period in human evolution?

My own criticism of the research (lost my athens login too, so all of this is based on second-hand info) stems from the huge problems involved in trying to factor in the inherent interpretative bias caused by the extremely powerful socially constructed associations that the study's conclusions seem to support. Furthermore, 'science' (by which I'm assuming we mean the scientific process) cannot, as far as I understand, easily account for complex qualitative, ethnographic influences- I wouldn't have a problem with the study if it had stopped at saying 'we have found a statistically significant preference for women to choose pinky colours'. The issues that I (and I suspect Goldacre and others) have is that this statistical significance was then used to generate a positivist, essentially un-testable hypothesis that relies on the existence of a universal human nature, and which appears to have overlooked the extent that the researchers themselves cannot but have been influenced by socio-cultural structures of significance and meaning.

[Monkeytrousers]

Re your first paragraph, you may feel it is a misrepresentation, but feelings are not enough, gut feelings are not enough but it seems that gut feelings are what have fed most of the criticisms of this paper. It also sounds a bit like you are on the verge of saying ?there are damn lies and then there are statistics ? a maxim usually proffered by people who just don?t understand stats. Stats are massively important ? how can saying that they are important be a misrepresentation of science? I?m not saying everything can be called science because there was some statistical analysis on it ? but show me something that is science that didn?t. Statistics is a very good way of establishing proofs ? I?m not a statistician and know that there are other proofs that are looked at in tandem with stats ? to separate causation from correlation for instance.

Re you second paragraph ? how can we know a theory is ?bad? (not committing the naturalistic fallacy there I hope) is it is not tested? It, or papers like it, may well be published in a peer reviewed magazine ? lets follow the research over the next few years and see where it takes us.

?The inherent cultural bias that humans display so far has not been shown to find expression in any gene... By definition, cultural studies are not science...? I don?t understand what you are trying to say here. No one is asserting that cultural studies are science. You first sentence there may have some typos as I just don?t understand it.

You didn?t misunderstand me. Is psychology not the right perspective to study the human mind? Maybe you prefer psychoanalysis ? but that isn?t scientific. I do, and most others, thank god, think and know that science is the only way to truly know things. It isn?t my personal assertion, thankfully the scientific method is my guide and anyway was in response to something Pruners said ? take it in context and don?t take it personally. You may be a scientist, a biochemist, but saying, as I think you are that there are other ways other than science of understanding the human mind shows the dangers of scientists talking out of their realm of professional experience.

?As to biological systems, everything is made from a gene. If you show me the gene responsible for something I'll start to believe in the theory behind it.? Have you read any evolutionary biology about genes? I?m not about to get into this with you ? and I have to get to work ? I;m not a biologist or a geneticist ? you would win hands down on a debate about vectors ? but that isn?t what this debate is about.

[Tortington]

with sparkley bits.

my boys likes high heels whilt racing with plastic pram ( ala imaginary racecar)

now aged 17 & 14 they are both post op transexuals.

nah not really. they wear man boots and build things in a manly way

[Monkeytrousers]

Re you second paragraph ? how can we know a theory is ?bad? (not committing the naturalistic fallacy there I hope) if it is not tested?

[Anna8888]

Monkeytrousers - you are right, as usual . I think that you are trying to explain things that are way over other people's heads.

[dundeemarmalade]

sorry mt, but you really should consider the implications of what you're saying:
[saying] that there are other ways other than science of understanding the human mind shows the dangers of scientists talking out of their realm of professional experience.
Are you REALLY saying that the scientific method is the ONLY way that the human mind can be studied? This is an awfully limited perspective, isn't it? And doesn't it assume rather a lot about the sameness of mind and brain/body?

I think was Starfish was trying to say was that the linking in this study of a genes with cultural preferences is, in this instance at least, problematic. Hope I've got that right.

[dundeemarmalade]

although, as a cultural anthropologist rather than a 'scientist' perhaps you don't think I have a valid perspective about this debate at all?

[Anna8888]

starfish - "by definition, cultural studies are not science".

What about linguistics? Study of culture or study of science?

[niceglasses]

Slight tangent [and sorry if already been mentioned] - did anyone also see the Bad Science article a week or so ago about supposed 'links' btwn Downs syndrome and Oriental culture/traits. Truly, truly bizzare - I thought it was a joke.

Ps - hello MonkeyT. Can we meet sometime pls, I need a drink.

[dundeemarmalade]

linguistics- study of language and language use, innit?

[Anna8888]

Linguistics - yes, but do you use the cultural or the scientific method to understand language?

[dundeemarmalade]

niceglasses- yes, i wasn't sure whether it was a joke- couldn't believe anything like that would actually get published in this day and age.
does seem to have been somewhat similar to saying that girls choose pink, berries are pink, therefore girls choose berries, n'est ce pas?

[dundeemarmalade]

re linguistics, depends on what you want to find out. good research in the humanities usually seems to incorporate both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

[Anna8888]

Linguistics requires both cultural and heavy-duty scientific approaches... which is my point - you can't separate the two (which is what MT says about evolutionary biology, if I understand her correctly).

[aloha]

There seems to me two issues. Firstly WAS the study to 'Test Why Girls Like Pink' as seems to be assumed, or was it just testing colour preference with no preconceptions as to outcome?
If it was testing 'why girls like pink' and therefore taking the girls = pink thing as eternal fact instead of (as it appears) an regional, historically anomalous fad, then this seems odd at best and idiotic at worst. After all, even a very quick trip round the National Portrait Gallery would have shown no special connection between girls and pink in history. In fact, even in the earlier Disney movies the princesses were as likely to wear blue as pink.
Our modern mania for pink for girls and blue for boys seems just that, a very modern mania, so it seems strange to decide that a decidedly cultural preference - and a very recent one at that - is likely to have an evolutionary basis.
If the research was merely looking at colour preferences in 20 year olds for various reasons, and was perhaps going to followed up by testing the perception of different colours, then that's fine and totally different..

[fortunecookie]

Almost everything that dd(7) chooses is pink. Usually fuschia or bubblegum pink. In no way, shape or form did I have anything to do with this! Bright plastic pink especially makes my head ache. Most of the little girls I know love pink. Even at mealtimes, if dd doesn't have her pink Ikea knife, fork, spoon and mug, she freaks.

My ds(4) has, so far, shown no particular preference for any colour.

[aloha]

Even very small children are susceptible to peer pressure though. If this was an innate preference arrived at through evolution, then why is it so recent?