Our Obsession with Biological Rationales for Discrimination
Prompted by a relatively recent note on Facebook, which concerned the possibility that men might be inherently smarter than women with regards to the sciences (and as a whole, as the discussion furthered), I can't for the life of me understand why people choose to publicly hypothesize on the issue when they aren't contributing to the science, and then automatically assume that their hypothesis is correct in dealing with others. Calling what is easily described as a mere opinion a hypothesis when you are not contributing any new data through the scientific method, and instead substituting whatever analysis (with whatever bias) is not professional and not kosher. Most people who care already know what you're about to say, and most everyone already has his own opinion on the issue -- and chances are it's not going to change because of your sudden insight.
On most polarizing issues, whether about politics, race, gender, or rights, anyone can simply stack up all of the evidence for one side of the issue and claim to have an compelling and unshakable argument. One of the biggest offenses is assuming correlation without causation; in the example of this particular Facebook discussion, the predominance of men in academia and most academic prizes was for some reason used as evidence that "the most superior individuals in various fields are predominately males, but without these outliers, women are just as intelligent and capable."
That is not very compelling evidence considering demonstrable cultural bias, like the very real glass ceiling, sexual harassment in the workplace (and other places), and the fact that women equally or more qualified than their male counterparts tend to be paid less for the same positions. Consider the pressure on traditional-thinking women to be homemakers, a situation that occurs rampantly in the home country (Japan) of the individual who was arguing for a rational look at the possibility that men might be more intelligent.
One way to deal with the difficulties of wrapping your mind around discrimination and often unsettling differences between social groups is to look for (or assume) some sort of intrinsic, often biological explanation. Is nobody deterred by the fact that efforts to scientifically describe non-negligible differences between races have overwhelmingly fallen short? For every Dr. Watson that argues to devalue the integrity of an entire race (or gender) of people, an overwhelming rest of the academic (as well as public) world says, "Shut the hell up," before dumping piles of questions and evidence examining environmental, cultural, and social causes for any given discrepancy.
If you are not a scientist with suitable experiments combined with sufficient analysis and adherence to a strict scientific method, writing a peer-reviewed paper for publishing in an accredited scientific publication, please label such thoughts as opinion instead of trying to assign false scientific value to your misogyny/racism/whatever. If your point could have been proven by anecdotal evidence, the media would have picked up on it ten thousand times over, and using "logic" and "reason" in your editorial is not going to make it any more valid.
On most polarizing issues, whether about politics, race, gender, or rights, anyone can simply stack up all of the evidence for one side of the issue and claim to have an compelling and unshakable argument. One of the biggest offenses is assuming correlation without causation; in the example of this particular Facebook discussion, the predominance of men in academia and most academic prizes was for some reason used as evidence that "the most superior individuals in various fields are predominately males, but without these outliers, women are just as intelligent and capable."
That is not very compelling evidence considering demonstrable cultural bias, like the very real glass ceiling, sexual harassment in the workplace (and other places), and the fact that women equally or more qualified than their male counterparts tend to be paid less for the same positions. Consider the pressure on traditional-thinking women to be homemakers, a situation that occurs rampantly in the home country (Japan) of the individual who was arguing for a rational look at the possibility that men might be more intelligent.
One way to deal with the difficulties of wrapping your mind around discrimination and often unsettling differences between social groups is to look for (or assume) some sort of intrinsic, often biological explanation. Is nobody deterred by the fact that efforts to scientifically describe non-negligible differences between races have overwhelmingly fallen short? For every Dr. Watson that argues to devalue the integrity of an entire race (or gender) of people, an overwhelming rest of the academic (as well as public) world says, "Shut the hell up," before dumping piles of questions and evidence examining environmental, cultural, and social causes for any given discrepancy.
If you are not a scientist with suitable experiments combined with sufficient analysis and adherence to a strict scientific method, writing a peer-reviewed paper for publishing in an accredited scientific publication, please label such thoughts as opinion instead of trying to assign false scientific value to your misogyny/racism/whatever. If your point could have been proven by anecdotal evidence, the media would have picked up on it ten thousand times over, and using "logic" and "reason" in your editorial is not going to make it any more valid.
posted by James D. at
6:59 PM
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