1.) The view that genetics is an important factor in human behaviour, and sex-specific behaviour, attitudes, etc., is not "dubiously supported" at all
What is dubiously supported is that the differences in many gender roles, such sex differences in mathematics achievement or preferences, is driven by biological differences in sexes. This, unfortunately, is a strawman that demonstrates you don't even understand what you are criticizing.
2.) Only a fool would regard publishing in "lay forums" as indicative of being a "hack"; and by that reasoning, virtually all the greatest scholars/researchers of the last century would be considered hacks by you, including Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Noam Chomsky (as a linguist)...all of them. Even Elizabeth Spelke publishes in lay forums. So what?
The problem isn't with publishing in lay forums on its own. I said as much. Perhaps I need to quote Chris again:
"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."
The same problem exists for things like Dawkins, et al. use of the "meme" concept. Running to the pop-media to make arguments you have failed to adequately support in more rigorous academic contexts is the problem. It is a problem Spelke doesn't have.
3.) If by "omitting evidence", you mean that in a 1000 word piece for Time, The New Republic, or the NY Times, not every single scrap of evidence ever turned up by anyone on a particular topic is mentioned, then everyone necessarily "omits evidence". Again, Spelke would be as guilty as anyone. I even pointed out to you Spelke's admission, in the article you yourself posted, that she was NOT going to even touch on a mountain of evidence directly relevant to the question of to what extent there is a genetic basis in behavioural, attitudinal, emotional, etc., differences between human males and females. Instead, she focuses on ONE very narrow sliver of the issue. So, is Spelke a "hack"? NO, SHE IS NOT. And neither is Baron-Cohen. A focus made necessary by the constraints of the medium, or even of thought itself, is different than what you imply is some irresponsible, if not intentional, "misleading" of the public through sly omission of evidence. Very silly.
By omitting evidence, I mean doing things like failing to acknowledge that your unreplicated and, thus far, unreplicable study is contradicted by many, many similar studies on the subject. Leaving out little things like that kind of matters when you are a responsible scholar. This is one of the things Spelke pointed out through use of references which you completely glossed over.
"Baron-Cohen (2003) proposed that males are predisposed to learn about objects and their mechanical interactions,
whereas females are predisposed to learn about people and their emotional interactions. He cited as evidence an experiment conducted on newborn infants (Connellan, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Batki, & Ahluwalia, 2000). Infants
viewed, side by side, an active and expressive person and a similarly sized inanimate object. Male infants looked
longer at the object, whereas female infants looked longer at the person. Baron-Cohen suggested that male infants’
focus on objects leads them to become systemizers who engage both with the mechanical world and with abstract
systems like mathematics. Claims that by nature men orient to objects and women orient to people are not new (see Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974, for a review of older claims and Browne, 2002, and Pinker, 2002, for recent statements), but Connellan et al.’s (2000) experiment seems to have given them compelling support. The experiment is unusual, however,
in three respects. First, it stands alone. It is customary, in infant research, to replicate key findings and assemble
multiple experiments in support of any claim. No replication of Connellan et al.’s experiment has been published,
however, and no unpublished replications are mentioned in Baron-Cohen’s (2003, 2005a) discussions of their finding.
The lack of replication is particularly curious, because a large, older literature suggests that male and female infants are equally interested in people and objects (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Numerous experiments in the 1960s compared infants’ visual attention to faces versus inanimate patterns. One study, for example, assessed infants’ visual attention to a live person in a free play setting at one and three months and assessed their visual attention to pictures of faces and inanimate displays in a controlled setting at the latter age (Moss & Robson, 1968). Male and female infants looked equally at the live person at both ages. At three months, all infants looked longer at the face than the inanimate display, and this preference was greater for the male infants. These findings, like others from more recent research (see Rochat, 2001, for a review), provide no evidence that male infants are more focused on objects and female infants are more focused on people from birth onward.
Second, Connellan et al.’s (2000) experiment does not attempt to determine the basis for infants’ preferences between the person and object. Assertions that infants prefer one category of entities to another must address a range of critical questions. Does the preference depend on the categorical distinction between the entities or on other differences between the two displays, such as their rate of motion or distribution of color or contrast? Does the preference generalize to other members of the two categories, or is it specific to the tested pair? (For recent discussions of these issues, see Cohen, 2003; Mandler, 2004; Quinn & Oates, 2004; Shutts & Spelke, 2004.) Connellan et al. did not consider these questions.
Third, Connellan et al. (2000) did not discuss critical controls against experimenter bias. Because newborn infants cannot hold their heads erect, their visual preferences are influenced by the way in which they are positioned and supported; because one of the two stimuli was a live, expressive person, preferences also could be influenced by that person’s behavior. Baron-Cohen (2005a) has indicated that the experimenters attempted to minimize bias, but a replication with more stringent controls would be desirable..."
4.) Well, that's just brilliant - Mixing Memory announces that the NY Times features a pathological hater of women as a regular, prominent columnist, and that settles the matter for you.
What settles the matter for me is having read Brooks.
I'd be shocked if you could produce even one quote from David Brooks that any reasonable person would construe as misogynistic. Can you? Go ahead, Light - show us the David Brooks quote, or two or three, that betrays his seething hatred of females. And if you can't, since they don't exist, for what reason are you crediting the reckless and unfair MM? How does the lack of discrimination work with you, Light? Is it whoever gets to you first? Is it whoever has the coolest blog name? What is it?
Yeah, a bigot could never, ever write for the New York Times. Want some examples? Ah the beauty of the internet. Simply do a search on Brooks and the term "misogyny" and its cognates and you'll get many examples of his demeaning views towards women.
Lastly, nice distraction attempt on my evolution question. Why don't you just answer it instead? Are you, or are you not, aware that an official First Presidency statement enunciating official church doctrine precludes a Darwinian explanation for the origin of the human family on earth? This is easy. You just say, "yes, I am", or "no, I am not". What's the answer?
This is a loaded question like "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" I linked a book that explains why it builds a false assumption into it. It is, more or less, an expanded version of the BYU evolution packet. I've done what I can.