Just up at MercatorNet: Are men's and women's brains really different?

My review of Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference:

The gender wars take no prisoners. In 2005, suggesting that there might indeed be innate differences between men and women derailed the career of Harvard president Larry Summers. He reemerged, years later, as President Obama’s sometime finance guru). Meanwhile, a host of neuroscientists report differences between the brains of men and women that, they say, account for different abilities and career choices.

Psychologist and author Cordelia Fine disagrees with the neuroscientists. In Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, she has no time for the “special powers” that pop brain science currently imputes to the female brain, reminding us that such claims were made long before the magnetic resonance imaging machine was invented.

She takes aim at books such as What Could He Be Thinking? where we hear that images of male and female brains were “marriage saving” for author Michael Gurian and his wife, to say nothing of Gurian’s Leadership and the Sexes which “links the actual science of male/female brain differences to every aspect of business.”

And if that doesn’t make you feel like Employee Double X or XY clocking in, what will?

For more, go here.

See also:

Evolutionary psychology: Pink for a girl, blue for a ... girl?

Neuroscience: Philosopher rips "drivel" - pop science media 's bread and butter

Neuroscience: Philosopher rips "drivel" - pop science media 's bread and butter

Once upon a time there was this bright philosopher and Fine writer who immersed herself in the pop culture sludge of the breathless (this just in!) latest findings of neuroscience on human nature, in this case the supposed differences between the way men and women think. Differences that, Fine argues, are poorly supported.

What I learned from Cordelia Fine's latest book: Add time on an fMRI scanner to a mediocre mind carrying out a conventional research program and you end up with fodder for Cowsmoopolitan. Fine found that the men vs. women studies were too badly done to be conclusive. Her survey removes all doubt as to how many magazine and newspaper editors, stuck for a Sunday featurette, ever even wonder about such matters.

She goes on to challenge neuroscientists on the ethics of passively allowing these shenanigans:

... neuroscientists who work in this area have some responsibility for how their findings of sex differences in the brain are interpreted and communicated. When this is done carelessly, it may have a real and significant impact on people's lives. Many neuroscientists do appear to be aware of this. They are appropriately cautious about interpreting sex differences to the brain, and may also take the time to remind journalists of just how far we are from mapping sex differences in the brain onto the mind. (And of course they may find their work being misrepresented, regardless, others, however, as we have seen, are more cavalier.) " - from Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 173)

On a less heartening note, she adds,

Finally, there's an urgent need for editors, journalists, and schools to develop far more skeptical attitudes toward claims about sex differences in the brain. It is appalling to me that one can, apparently, say whatever drivel one likes about the male and the female brain, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing it published in reputable newspaper,changing a school's educational policy, or becoming a best seller. - from Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 173)

Trouble is, Cordelia, drivel sells. The woman whose boyfriend is running around wants to believe that a brain scan shows that he is merely a less-evolved ape. And she may not have to wait long for "He's a Gorilla, You're a Bonobo, and You Two Make a Great Scream" (Whattafastbuck Press, 2011) to hit her local bookstore's Women's Empowerment Evening ...

It is really a moral question for the journalist, editor, and bookseller, whether - in hard times - to front this neurobullshipping or demand accountability.
Anyway, hats off to Fine for saying something.

Now, do I agree with Fine that there are no significant brain differences between men and women? Well, let's just say I have a different take on those differences, explained here.

Are men really from Mars? Women really from Venus?

Deborah Cameron, writing in the Times of London, thinks not. In “Talking tosh on Mars and Venus”, we are told, she argues that it’s a myth:

The bones of Cameron’s argument, set out in The Myth of Mars and Venus, are that Gray et al have no scientific basis for their claims. Great sheaves of academic papers, says Cameron, show that the language skills of men and women are almost identical. Indeed, the central tenets of the Mars and Venus culture – that women talk more than men, that men are more direct, that women are more verbally skilled – can all be debunked by scientific research. A recent study in the American journal Science, for instance, found men and women speak almost exactly the same number of words a day: 16,000.
“The main thing about the book is that I wanted to offer people more than the evidence-free rubbish they get every day,” says Cameron. “My pitch was basically the CSI pitch: let the evidence tell the story.”

Hmmm. I’m not sure. I’ve met many men and women who conformed to the Mars-Venus stereotype and many that didn’t. But I never did the numbers thing .... Her book, The Myth of Mars and Venus, is surely worth a read.