Go Grey Lady Go!

Compare and contrast:

[A] study released Wednesday, bolstered by magnetic resonance imaging, suggests that men may be the more natural avengers.

Men appear to get greater satisfaction than women when witnessing retribution, research suggests.

Both leads highlight the gender differences found in the study, which, whatever – gender disparities uncovered by such studies are often greatly exaggerated*, but I can’t find the actual study to check. But only one lead** manages to conflate the presence of a gender difference in a single study of a more-or-less monocultural*** group of adults with Mother Nature’s own sexual dimorphism in a way that, mirabile visu, supports our cultural biases.

*Cathy Young inhabits a strange alternate universe****, but sometimes manages to make sense anyway! Who’d'a thunk?
**Not counting the lead author, who appears to have either bought in to idea that bullshit evolutionary psychology makes a good prop for patriarchy, or been quoted out of context.
***Or so one assumes. London’s a diverse town, but the default recruitment methods have some inherent biases.
****That’d be the universe where Larry Summers was just a guy trying to talk about biology in a conversation with no connection to his position of power, who couldn’t possibly have been expected to consider the actual research in the field in his remarks. I think it’s also the universe where Dr. Pepper is made by Coca-Cola, instead of Cadbury-Schweppes.

Comments

  1. fledermaus wrote:

    Technically the Grey Lady’s lead was also the Lord Byron quote, but you could hardly fault them for that. Wootles.

  2. yami wrote:

    Oh, you and your facts…

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