Recently ate at: Cheese Board Pizza (mmmmm... had to go there before I left Berkeley for a while!); Cafe Intermezzo (really big tasty salad with avocados and all sorts of good stuff, both dinner and leftovers for breakfast)
Last morning Benjamin (a friend of mine who has been nice enough to let me crash at is place for few days while I'm homeless) and I were listening to Forum on KQED and one of the guests made a comment that women have more neural pathways than men (although male brains are bigger). This lead us into a discussion about scientific claims that have political or other motivations behind them. Benjamin is quite skeptical of many scientific claims, especially those as broad as that and that would require some very complicated and lengthy experiments to prove. I'm much more optimistic that scientists tend to design good experiments and, at least in academic journals, tend to only make statements that are justifiable and have merit. We both agreed that sometimes science in the popular media gets misdirected or misinterpreted by excitable journalists.
Incidentally, according to the NIH this is true in parts of the brain. And, as this article describes the actual situation is more complex. And statements that sound too general to be true probably are [too general to be true].
Scientific Skepticism
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It's indisputable that, historically, there are many instances where scientific claims were brought to bear on social policy in ways that we now think of as clearly incorrect. For instance, at the turn of the last century, prominent scientists determined that "pauperism" and "criminality" were genetically determined, and used this to argue (often successfully) that the forced sterilization of criminals and poor people was justified. See http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/. Also, Stephen Jay Gould's essay "Carrie Buck's Daughter" offers a vivid portrayal of the early 1900s eugenics movement.
An interesting question is whether we are justified in believing that scientists today are better at wading impartially into socially divisive issues.
I don't know the answer to this. What factors are relevant? Technological change? More rigorous review processes? Are we less biased in general (or are we just differently predisposed)?
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