"Female and male brains are different, thanks to hormones coursing through the brain before birth. That’s taught as fact in psychology textbooks, academic journals, and bestselling books. And these hardwired differences explain everything from sexual orientation to gender identity, to why there aren’t more women physicists or more stay-at-home dads.

In this compelling book, Rebecca Jordan-Young takes on the evidence that sex differences are hardwired into the brain. Analyzing virtually all published research that supports the claims of “human brain organization theory,” Jordan-Young reveals how often these studies fail the standards of science. Even if careful researchers point out the limits of their own studies, other researchers and journalists can easily ignore them because brain organization theory just sounds so right. But if a series of methodological weaknesses, questionable assumptions, inconsistent definitions, and enormous gaps between ambiguous findings and grand conclusions have accumulated through the years, then science isn’t scientific at all.

Elegantly written, this book argues passionately that the analysis of gender differences deserves far more rigorous, biologically sophisticated science. “The evidence for hormonal sex differentiation of the human brain better resembles a hodge-podge pile than a solid structure…Once we have cleared the rubble, we can begin to build newer, more scientific stories about human development.” "

"Did the Maya really predict that the world would end in December of 2012? If not, how and why has 2012 millenarianism gained such popular appeal? In this deeply knowledgeable book, two leading historians of the Maya answer these questions in a succinct, readable, and accessible style. Matthew Restall and Amara Solari introduce, explain, and ultimately demystify the 2012 phenomenon. They begin by briefly examining the evidence for the prediction of the world's end in ancient Maya texts and images, analyzing precisely what Maya priests did and did not prophesize. The authors then convincingly show how 2012 millenarianism has roots far in time and place from Maya cultural traditions, but in those of medieval and Early Modern Western Europe. Revelatory and myth-busting, while remaining firmly grounded in historical fact, this fascinating book will be essential reading as the countdown to December 21, 2012, begins." --- They're speaking here on Nov. 28th, but I suspect I won't be able to make it.

"For more than 50 years, researchers—including many prominent scientists—have identified pheromones as the triggers for a wide range of mammalian behaviors and endocrine responses. In this provocative book, renowned olfaction expert Richard L. Doty rejects this idea and states bluntly that, in contrast to insects, mammals do not have pheromones.
Doty systematically debunks the claims and conclusions of studies that purport to reveal the existence of mammalian pheromones. He demonstrates that there is no generally accepted scientific definition of what constitutes a mammalian pheromone and that attempts to divide stimuli and complex behaviors into pheromonal and nonpheromonal categories have primarily failed. Doty's controversial assertion belies a continued fascination with the pheromone concept, numerous claims of its chemical isolation, and what he sees as the wasted expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars by industry and government. "

I'm tempted to make this into a problem set, but it's probably not challenging enough.

Presumably elaborates on her piece in Boston Review in 2002 (http://bostonreview.net/BR27.5/scarry.html)

"Gentlemen and Amazons traces the nineteenth-century genesis and development of an important contemporary myth about human origins: that of an original prehistoric matriarchy. Cynthia Eller explores the intellectual history of the myth, which arose from male scholars who mostly wanted to vindicate the patriarchal family model as a higher stage of human development. Eller tells the stories these men told, analyzes the gendered assumptions they made, and provides the necessary context for understanding how feminists of the 1970s and 1980s embraced as historical “fact” a discredited nineteenth-century idea."

To put it the blurb "shorter" form: "Oppositional culture?  _What_ oppositional culture?"

I love how he immediately thinks "if this worked, it could be a model experimental system for studying the neuroscience of free will"!

"The case of Fred Hoyle’s prediction of a resonance state in carbon-12, unknown in 1953 when it was predicted, is often mentioned as an example of anthropic prediction. However, an investigation of the historical circumstances of the prediction and its subsequent experimental confirmation shows that Hoyle and his contemporaries did not associate the level in the carbon nucleus with life. Only in the 1980s, after the emergence of the anthropic principle, did it become common to see Hoyle’s prediction as anthropically significant. At about the same time mythical accounts of the prediction and its history began to abound. Not only has the anthropic myth no basis in historical fact, it is also doubtful if the excited levels in carbon-12 and other atomic nuclei can be used as an argument for the predictive power of the anthropic principle."

Now that is what I call a _compelling_ homework assignment. (So much so, in fact, that I am not altogether comfortable with the idea of giving it. But at the same time so much of the rest of what they'd be getting in their economics classes is _also_ priming/framing/forcing, in a rather more underhanded way, that this might only be fair.)

"consequences of students ... not being randomly assigned to teachers within a school. It uses a [Value-Added Measure] to assign effects to teachers after controlling for other factors, but applies the model backwards.... [S]tudents’ fifth grade teachers appear to be good predictors of students’ fourth grade test scores. Inasmuch as a student’s later fifth grade teacher cannot possibly have influenced that student’s fourth grade performance, this curious result can only mean that students are systematically grouped into fifth grade classrooms based on their fourth grade performance. ... The usefulness of value-added modeling requires the assumption that teachers whose performance is being compared have classrooms with students of similar ability (or that the analyst has been able to control statistically for all the relevant characteristics of students that differ across classrooms). ..."

With a gracious comment by one of the authors of the paper in question.

Those studies you ran to show that your standardized tests had no predictive bias? Had no power to detect bias when it exists. Get back to us when you've got sample sizes of 10^5 from the minority groups.  HTH. (Application to IQ is let as an exercise to the reader.) --- But oh, those tables are so awful and ugly!

The cover is adorable.

Watching MYL debunking tendentious appropriations of neuroscience _again_, the phrase "One must imagine Liberman happy" comes to mind...

"So, I believe we need to deconstruct his claims on historical basis – while also, I guess, stating “Bullshit”."

Down with Pareto efficiency! Down with the the marginal productivity theory of wages! Up with... what, exactly?

Another childhood myth punctured.

Jesus fucking Christ. Levitt actually put his name to this?!? This is the kind of thing I cobble together as a "what's gone wrong here?" assignment for my classes; maybe I should give 'em this.

To be explicit: in addition to all the problems Klein notes, the reason we frown on drunk driving more than on drunk walking is that one puts an incompetent in control of several thousand pounds of high-speed machinery, and the other a few hundred pounds of shambling biped. It's the DANGER TO OTHER PEOPLE that matters.

I thought I was joking in http://bactra.org/weblog/524.html, but we really haven't moved on at all from nineteen-twenty-fucking-two.

Institutionalizing BMI, despite its ineffectiveness and the existence of superior alternatives. (Which, errr, make it even more obvious that I'm way over-weight, so this isn't rationalization on my part.) Lots of issues here for a data-mining class.

James Nicoll reviews an old Coevolution Quarterly book about the idea (mostly as expounded, at length, by Gerard O'Neill). "Someone may want to alert FEMA to the Cat5 handwaving which is about to be unleashed."

To be clear, the utter_stupidity tag refers to the people peddling the meme, not Silver.

"We are often told that a new global economy has emerged which has transformed our lives. It is argued that the pace of technological change, the mobility of multinational capital and the privatization of the welfare state have combined to create a more precarious world. Companies are outsourcing, jobs are migrating to China and India, and a job for life is said to be a thing of the past. The so-called 'new capitalism' is said to be the result of these profound changes.

Kevin Doogan takes issue with these widely-accepted ideas and subjects the transformation of work to detailed examination through a comprehensive analysis of developments in Europe and North America. He argues that precariousness is not a natural consequence of this fast-changing world; rather, current insecurities are manufactured, emanating from government policy and the greater exposure of the economy to market forces."

Good to see some push-back on this. (I was once able to reduce a statistical geneticist to hysterics by reading aloud from a table of heritabilities from the paper being critiqued here. I am not sure if they have quite forgiven me yet.)

Gladwell does his usual (very good) summarize-with-illustrative-anecdotes job on research on creativity over the life-cycle.

Ans.: No.

Obviously, Brumm is acting as a propaganda agent for the Mole People.

Andrew Gelman et al.'s forthcoming book about American voting habits.

Very nice.

Earnest, wonky evisceration.

Looks interesting, but only superficially skimmed; to read

No, Woodrow Wilson did not regret creating the Federal Reserve. Yes, the supposed statement to that effect circulated among wingnuts is a fabrication, stitched together from unrelated statements and whole cloth.

"The problem of actually changing the world for the better is not going to be finessed with clever "online argumentation" software. To pull off that trick you have to get your hands dirty capturing, and wielding, political power."