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Pink, Blue, and Bad Science
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Sep 04, 2007 01:26 PM
from the drawing-conclusions-out-of-inappropriate-orifices dept.
from the drawing-conclusions-out-of-inappropriate-orifices dept.
DocDJ writes "Ben Goldacre writes an excellent column in The Guardian called Bad Science, which regularly demonstrates how poor the mainstream media are at reporting science. He recently pointed out the flaws in the reporting of research that purported to show the evolutionary basis of 'blue for boys, pink for girls'." Another Guardian writer, Zoe Williams, has an even more acerbic take on the research.
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Pink is like 'pussy' (Score:4, Funny)
Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Alanis Morissette is your soul-mate. (Buy ear plugs.)
Re:Heh (Score:5, Funny)
Science Journalism - Thumbs Down (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing that makes me angrier than "New fossil rewrites human evolutionary history" and then when you actually go and read the source, it does not such thing.
Re:Science Journalism - Thumbs Down (Score:5, Interesting)
Discovery Channel did a 30-minute segment about this, which I decided not to participate in, and will be happy not to have done so till the end of my days. When I saw the final product a couple months later, I just sat with my mouth open for about 20 minutes... because I couldn't figure out whether I've been an idiot and couldn't figure out what my colleague was doing until I saw the segment, or the editors/journalists massacred the subject to the point that the research was rendered unrecognizable within the mounts of selectively quoted pseudo-science bullshit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My curr
Re:Science Journalism - Thumbs Down (Score:5, Insightful)
It's rather like having a reporter covering Congressional sessions who doesn't understand any of the rules of the house, or what Constitutional powers and limits it has.
Well there's an interesting tangent! But wait, it could get worse! We could also have congressmen who don't understand any of the bills they're voting on, or serving on committees without having any knowledge of the field they represent.
I'm glad that'll never happen.
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Is the problem the media, or the research? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, grants seem to awarded to any post-doc with an itch to scratch. The problem is that most of those idiots (for want of a better term) can't tell the difference between the itchiness caused by an ingrown ass-hair and the ass-hair itself. That's what Zoe's ripping on in her article.
There's something to be said for "pure research" which theoretically expands our collective knowledge. Without pure research, we wouldn't have found penicillin, US America, or bread-yeast. However, I can't even begin to understand what kind of expectations the grant awarders had when they supported "Boys like blue, Girls like pink" research.
For a couple bucks, the researchers could have just as well satisfied their itch with a tube of Preparation H.
Re:Is the problem the media, or the research? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a couple interested parties:
1. Those who for various religious and political reasons look for essential gender differences, to justify very stable, often traditional gender roles.
2. Businesses who produce goods that are marketed to gender-based expectation, and who dislike it when their markets diverge too far from the behavior that is expected of them.
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3. The same PC advocates who attempt to "prove" with fabricated research that men and women are the same, that nature has a small influence
Along those lines (Score:3, Interesting)
It's like driving on the left (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's like driving on the left (Score:5, Funny)
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Alien observers must have boggled their minds over this.
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But that's essentially the "researchers" argument: it's a really strong correlation, so it must be genetic, not societal. Bolloc
Global Warming vs. Number of Pirates (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Rise of waterlevel leads to 'Waterworld-scenery'.
You've seen the movies; lots of pirates.
A [mutual stimulating] outcome in this research.
Re:Global Warming vs. Number of Pirates (Score:5, Funny)
"My dear friends, I am here to warn you of a tremendous crisis we are facing today. We all remember times when we could go to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that our homes and lives are safe. But today, this is no longer so!
Here are two charts, one showing the violent crime rate in our fair town as it has increased in the past decade, as reported via calls to 911!
The second chart shows the rapid proliferation of telephone poles that have been placed in our fair community!
Clearly, you can see that as the number of telephone poles goes from zero a decade ago to the dizzying heights we have today, the rate of crime being reported via 911 has drastically risen as well!
The answer is clear! To protect our town we MUST cut down the telephone poles!"
I remember (Score:5, Funny)
Dan Rather, new at the job of anchoring liftoffs, said: (I am not making this up)
"The skies are clear this morning, so we should be seeing some spectacular entrails...."
Re:I remember (Score:5, Funny)
I read the zoe williams article (Score:3, Insightful)
pure guesswork on my part.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, males (if old enough) want to see females naked, while females don't seem to have the same desire to see males naked. Observe the dress of the sexes in Western cultures: the standard formal male dress leaves hands and head (not including neck)
Hey, it's fun to read and hurts nobody (Score:2)
It's not as troublesome as plain lies from governments presented to you over and over again from all 'respected news networks' to gain support to nullify amendements, for example.
You don't think it hurts anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, that's nothing compared to the 6 billion pounds we've just spent upgrading our Channel Tunnel rail system so that wealthy commuters between London and Paris can shave 20 minutes off their journey.
What... is your favourite colour? (Score:5, Funny)
Favorite color, favorite number...? (Score:2)
The REAL lesson is the media is bad at everything (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an extremely low opinion of journalism, and when I hear the term "journalistic ethic" I cringe. In addition to the reporter's biases we also have to account for their stupidity and laziness. Meanwhile, reporters run around and act like journalism is some sacred religion, exempt from the law, to be placed above God and country. Nonsense.
Re:The REAL lesson is the media is bad at everythi (Score:3, Funny)
You mean a liberal arts degree doesn't have anything to do with the real world?
I'm shocked... SHOCKED I say!
Well ok. Not that shocked.
[snicker]
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And coming from a lawyer it really drives the point home how bad journalists are.
You Do Not Know What You're Talking About... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're absolutely right -- a degree in journalism doesn't teach you much about the real world. It's not designed to. A journalist's *sources* are supposed to teach readers about what's important in science, technology, medicine, politics, legal affairs, etc. Journalists' own thoughts on any given subject should never be apparent in the finished product, specifically because journalists often do not know the first thing about science, technology, medicine, politics, legal affairs, etc. A degree in journalism isn't supposed to educate on any of these subjects; the degree teaches you how to write well, how to interview sources and, most importantly, how to get out and find news that's interesting to the average reader.
Interestingly enough, many journalists I know also have an extremely low opinion of today's mainstream media too. Over the past couple of decades, most working journalists have witnessed a strong shift in their organizations, from a previous focus on high-quality news gathering and journalistic integrity towards a profit-centered business structure that leaves little room for in-depth and/or investigative reporting. While I won't argue the stupidity comment -- but do keep in mind that it takes time to educate yourself in a subject, and time is a commodity few working journalists have much of these days -- I think you're dead wrong that today's journalists are simply 'lazy' in their efforts to report the news. Most modern newsrooms I know of have sharply reduced the number of reporters on staff from what they enjoyed a few decades ago, yet these organizations continue to churn-out the same number of news stories in a given period of time. See this recent memo [penpressclub.org] from a Bay Area news organization to get a first-hand look at newsroom consolidation in action. Consolidation certainly doesn't speak to lazy reporters; is speaks to journalists who are, in almost every case, overworked, poorly-paid and under constant stress to produce something on deadline, anything that will help fill the daily news-hole. If you want to point the finger and place blame for the increasingly piss-poor reporting in newspapers, magazines and on television these days, you might want to try aiming your mark a little higher in these news organizations. I guarantee you that the problem is a lot more complex than the shoddy work of a few 'stupid' or 'lazy' reporters.
Sadly, the 'sacredness' of their religion is just about the only thing left to motivate modern news reporters, so don't knock their faith; they sure as hell aren't in it for the money, and they definitely aren't in it for the respect. At least in my area, starting salary for teachers is higher than the starting salary for reporters, and I don't see too many teachers threatened with legal action or bodily harm just for doing their jobs.
You may not like how today's reporters do their jobs, but keep in mind that their job is still an important one. I'm glad that someone is still willing to do that job. I don't think it's an easy one. But before you pop-off on the poor journalist, do yourself a
This just in! (Score:2)
"Caveat Emptor" applies to just about everything you see, read, or hear as well. Be (at least) skep
What about global warming... (Score:2)
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Why should they report science accurately? (Score:4, Interesting)
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In this [michaelcrichton.com]
What an absurd hypothesis! (Score:5, Funny)
Women prefer pink because the thick Venusian atmosphere blocks the higher wavelengths of light.
Ben Goldacre's article is excellent (Score:3)
Rob
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you wanted http://www.whitehouse.gov/ [whitehouse.gov] as should be fairly easy to tell if you'd loaded & read your own link.
Re:China prefers Pink (Score:5, Informative)
In anthropological etymology, it's common for the first two words for color in a language to represent warmer colors (reddish) and cooler colors (bluish or greenish, although which one of these comes first is split somewhat). They often appear just after the words for shades of light (light/dark). As a language evolves to have more vocabulary, it's typical that finer distinctions are made among colors and more words are added to represent them. Some languages today still share a name for blue and green, while others have two names for two different sections of blues.
There are also psycho-linguistic differences as well. Russians can visually discriminate lighter blues from darker ones more quickly if they happen to fall across the divide for those two categories [pnas.org] that is provided by their language. English speakers, having a word for blue and words for many shades of blue, but no distinct separate single-word categories for lighter blue vs. darker blue, were used as a control group. Another such experiment is between Tarahumara and English [cognews.com].
It's possible the color words which are perceived differently by a particular race or which made the most difference to survival (think poisonous plants and animals vs. food sources) for people at the time and place of the language's early development lead to different color words coming about in different orders. It's being studied now whether the words and the groupings the words represent themselves limit and enhance color perception ability.
Heck, in the book of Revelations in the Bible, Death rides a green horse in the original Greek. It's a black horse in most English translations. Why? Well, the "black death" plague and black being a symbol of death mean that's fitting symbolism in modern English. At the time, though, there wasn't embalming, and as this list of Bible translation corrections says [ittybittycomputers.com], green's the color a dead body turns, just like any rotting meat. The symbolism is completely different, though, when green from the leaves of plants is considered the color of life.
So there's a lot more to thoughts about color than gender. People's eyesight is involved, the colors in nature in different parts of the world, the language those people speak, the literature and symbols they know, and personal preference all figure in. Even if gender does play a role (other than through a societal reenforcement of perceived norms), it must be in conjunction with all of these other influences.
Re:China prefers Pink (Score:5, Informative)
You have the wrong horse. The "green" horse is described by the greek word "chloros." Theyer's Lexicon defines it as 1) green, 2) pale yellow. By my brief review on biblegateway, most English translations, especially the most common ones, NIV and NKJV, translate it as "pale," following the KJV, which followed the latin vulgate, which did likewise. "Pale green" is a close second, and "ashen" a close third. So if "chloros" was translated to "pale" in the 382 AD vulgate, which was a revision of multiple older latin translations, I think it's safe to assume that the earliest readers made the same inference from the context, rather than picturing a bright green horse.
The one who rode the black horse, who came before, wasn't Death, but the horseman who held the balances. The greek for his horse's color is "melas" which means black or black ink.
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Re:China prefers Pink (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, you're falling into the same problem that the author was complaining about in that you're attributing to biology that which is generally cultural. The reason for the ordering of colors is likely not from biological or evolutionary constraints.
Having words for light/dark (intensity) is the first and foremost necessary, as it distinguishes linguistically the difference detected by rods in the eye. Even with the rainbow of colors, we still distinguish between them internally with lighter tints, and darker shades.
Following that is red, then blue/green (as one word) then following less reliably a progression of colors. When the list typically hits blue/green again, that is when the old word is concreted to one, and the newer word is given to the other.
This does not mean that we can visually distinguish these colors better than other colors. In fact, we know by empirical biological evidence that humans can actually distinguish the variations of green the best of all shades.
What has happened here is that a language by assimilating, aquiring or generating a new word for a color or concept is now able to linguistically distinguish color or concept. While we read the rainbow as: Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Violet, Russians read it as Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Cyan-Blue-Violet, and the Japanese natively read it as Red-Orange-Yellow-Green/Blue-Violet does not mean that one is able to distinguish the difference in the colors, but rather than mentally categorizing it allows that color to be compressed as information in a category, rather than remembered for the complexity of the color it really is.
There have been tests looking for tetrachromats, people with 4 types of cones (essentially, a normal set of cones, and a color-blind set of cones) which can typically only occur in women (as the genes controling this are sex-linked onto the X gene. Yes there are males with more than one X chromosome, but of the 1:500/1000 births that rarity is, along with having only one X chromosome with color-blindness, and the mosaic property occuring in their eye... it's a vanishing small number.) Testing this, they asked women to pair colors together that match, notably giving a number of options that could only be distinguished if visually recognized by a tetrachromat. They found a few, however, the tetrachromats can't tell you why the colors don't match, because there exist no words to express the difference, despite their ability to recognize the mismatch.
It's not that Russian speakers can visually recognize more types of blue than English speakers, it's that they have an easier time categorizing the difference.
Re:China prefers Pink (Score:4, Informative)
That's funny... my Russian textbooks say it's true. Well, technically the words themselves are different but they are derived from the same root "kras-" What "evidence" do *you* have to the contrary? Oh nevermind... let me just embarrass you [ukraine-observer.com].
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This being Slashdot and all.
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Wikipedia: Red Square, Origin and Name [wikipedia.org], which says it means both "red" and "beautiful" although the latter is an archaic meaning of the word.
says specifically that "krasny" has lost the meaning "beautiful" over time and the meanign has been [rusmuseum.ru]
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What they said was was girls are genetically predisposed to like red, and boys are genetically predispos