Simon Baron Cohen is a hack
For instance see here:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Elds/sexsci/
This, by the way, reminds me of an old Mixing Memory post that expresses a sentiment worth sharing:
Just minutes after I finished writing the previous post on "dangerous ideas," I stumbled across this post (via Pandagon) on a NYT opinion article by David Brooks. Unfortunately, the David Brooks article is available by subscription only, but the part of the article quoted in the post has exactly what I needed: a dangerous misuse of one of the ideas mentioned in the "dangerous ideas" post. Here's Brooks:
Her third mistake is to not even grapple with the fact that men and women are wired differently. The Larry Summers flap produced an outpouring of work on the neurological differences between men and women. I'd especially recommend "The Inequality Taboo" by Charles Murray in Commentary and a debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke in the online magazine Edge.
One of the findings of this research is that men are more interested in things and abstract rules while women are more interested in people. (You can come up with your own Darwinian explanation as to why.)
Oh look, there's Simon Baron-Cohen again, this time in the mouth of Brooks, helping a misogynist hack to argue that women should stay home with the family instead of having careers. But there are two problems with the way Brooks uses this. First, "abstract rules" and "systematizing" aren't quite the same things. I don't know of any recent researcher who has argued that men are more interested in abstract rules specifically. I suppose it depends on what kinds of rules we're talking about.
The second problem, is that there's really no good evidence for Baron-Cohen's systematizing-empathizing distinction, and there aren't really any other explanations in cognitive science of the old stereotype that men like objects and women like people that get any attention. Elizabeth Spelke did a good job of describing the research that bears on Baron-Cohen's theory, and pointing out how none of it really supported his theory, in her in press paper on sex differences in math ability, which you can read here (the discussion of B-C's work is in the first section after the introduction, beginning on p. 5). Thus, Brooks is using a theory with no empirical support to argue for his misogynistic beliefs.
And you can't really blame Brooks; he's a rabid misogynist, and he will look for anything to justify that. You have to blame Baron-Cohen, and people like Steven Pinker, who make these claims public before they've undergone rigorous scientific scrutiny. Once they're out there, it's damn near impossible to get rid of them, no matter how many scientists come forward to say that it turns out the evidence tells a different story. Responsible scientists don't build large theories on one or two unreplicated studies, and then spend a great deal of time talking about them to the media, or writing books for laypeople about them, all the while ignoring a wealth of conflicting evidence. This, I think, is the main reason why people like me have such a strong dislike towards Evolutionary Psychologists, a dislike that goes beyond simply believing that their work is subpar. They are dangerous, not because of what they say, but because of whom they say it to.
http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2006/0 ... ly-is.htmlYou, unfortunately, are the credulous dupe that can make people like Pinker seem so annoying.
It's really wonderful that you speak about following where the evidence leads when the state of the evidence to those minimally informed on this topic points to the opposite conclusion of what you are arguing. You do this while you hang onto a few theorists on the academic fringe publishing pop-sci books as a means to condescend others. You might as well tell people that evolution is false story held by dogmatic ideologues and then tell people to read Behe and Wells.
There are innate differences between male and female brains. It turns out those innate differences do very little explain why, for example, men have traditionally done better on math tests than women in comparison to social factors. One of the things that should clue you into this is how performance gaps have changed in various nations in tandem with social changes towards gender roles. There are very few people who deny there are innate (hereditary) differences in male and female brains. But that is not what you are arguing. You are arguing that those differences are what explain differences in things like ability to read a map or verbal skills in men or women. The vast majority of academics you tried to say are on your side actually disagree with you at this point. They do this because the evidence against you is overwhelming (see, for instance, the paper I linked.)
1.) Sire a boy and a girl. Ensure they receive equal treatment and care. At the age of one, hand each one a car and a Baby Alive. Observe.
Step 1 is impossible.
2. ...
3.) Go to your next neighnbourhood Halloween party. Keep track of the costumes worn by both boys and girls. See if you can find any patterns.
etc. etc.
Yeah. It turns out those differences are most significantly explainable in terms of socio-cultural factors. Go figure. Your thesis is a matter of causes in differences, not the mere existence of them. Simply going out and observing aggregate gender differences doesn't support your thesis. Asian women outperform European men on math achievement scores. Therefore, Asian women are genetically predisposed to math aptitude relative to European men? No, not necessarily. (And no, not in actuality either.)
Have fun reading actual peer-reviewed research instead of pop-sci books. It might help you go beyond your shallow understanding of the subjects you pontificate on.