Article in new scientist that about sex based brain differences

[Bowlofbabelfish]

Or lack thereof

www.newscientist.com/article/2185295-there-is-no-fundamental-difference-between-male-and-female-brains/

Thank you dean Barnett

Differences. Not fifferences.

Sorry - typing without specs during epic night feeding sesh

Can't read it because it's behind a paywall but sounds interesting, thanks for highlighting. I'll see if I can find the study they're talking about.

Oh dear. So no blue brain and no pink brain after all.

Saying that men and women have different brains is like saying that men and women have different kidneys. It's technically true, but on a small scale

Here is where he is blogging now, article within

cosmicshambles.com/words/blogs/deanburnett/male-and-female-brains

Here is the study:

www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/11/06/1811032115

thanks for the open source links all, and for posing this Bowl

I get so depressed by the people who come here and fundamentally believe in pink brains and blue brains, it's so fucking sexist

I cant read the article but surely the study did conclusively find significant differences on the traits they were measuring? Is he arguing that it is socialization that accounts for those differences?

Ok I've got the opensource, thankyou

Thanks for the blog post - I looked at the research one first and was that they published results in the confident way they did given the way they gathered data. And that's fucking CAMBRIDGE.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be prove. According to the study, males are more likely to be systematic and females more empathetic. This is not new, and does not prove nature or nurture conclusively. Someone like me may look at it and say 'yes, there are fundamental, biological differences between males and females'. Equally, an article like cosmic shambles could say 'this proves nothing, nurture all the way'.

Thanks, Bowl.

Thanks Bowl! And also thanks Sign for the Dean Burnett piece.

To me that article just says:

Males are more likely to be type S
Females are more likely to be type E
People with autism are more likely to be type S or SS, regardless of sex

Have I missed anything? The last point particularly worries me as it could give the trans lobby reasons to crow that young autistic women are right to believe they're male. They're not, though (and as a woman in STEM I'd know).

But thank you for the link, op!

Oh bummer forgot about the paywall! Thanks to sign for posting the blog :)

goes to buy a copy of new scientist

Oh how I love New Scientist in all of it's idiot proof glory

Our brains are plastic (in the sense of changeable). So it makes sense that how you think, which is influenced by socialisation, would impact your brain. It makes sense that the experience of being in a male, or female body, would influence your brain.

But from an evolutionary perspective, it would seem wasteful for a species to develop two different kinds of brains. So brain differences are surely post-fact, not intrinsic?

Statistical differences aren’t absolute differences.

If a man is shorter than the average man that doesn’t make him a woman - even if he is precisely the height of the average woman.

Even if there are statistical differences between men and women’s brains that does not mean there are absolute differences. Being more systematising might correlate with men and more empathetic might correlate with being a woman but that doesn’t make a non-systematising man a woman or a less than empathetic woman a man - whatever people think about Theresa May.

The point is, if I understood the original study correctly, that the differences are found at a population level, and the ‘more likely to be’ percentages are still a minority of the male/female population. So even the empathising females are less than half of the female population, there are just more statistically speaking empathising females than males. This is hardly characteristic of a female brain in the way breasts and reproductive organs are characteristic of a female body.

But- the fucking face book comments under this story (on fb) are extremely depressing.

Lots of people claiming to own neurobiology books that disprove what he's written.

If a man is shorter than the average man that doesn’t make him a woman - even if he is precisely the height of the average woman.

As it happens, I am precisely the height of the average UK man. I suppose I should fall in line with the new, brave and stunning version of biology and start calling myself Steve, and tell the children I gave birth to to call me dad.

Thanks bowl and sign
Great ammunition for the pink brain blue brain crap argument.

neruotrash

The FB comment cesspit was the main reason I took a subscription out. I just couldn’t face them any more. A mix of gullibility, paranoia and stupidity.