Talk:Delusions of Gender

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to Human Intelligence
You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:31, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Lead
99.32.187.33, thanks for working on this article. I undid the last change because there were some grammar/wording problems. Let's discuss here what you think the problems are with the current lead and what you think it should be changed to. Of course I agree that the book involves "critiquing certain ideas and their use," but I believe she goes farther. Let's find a better/clearer version of the lead together. --Aronoel (talk) 19:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I made a few changes based on some of the points I think you were making, so let me know what you think. --Aronoel (talk) 19:11, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Relationship of Fine's conclusions to biology of sexual orientation
One of my frustrations with Fine's book is that she very conveniently omits any mention of the literature on the biology of sexual orientation, which depends completely on the sex differences literature that she critiques so heavily. For example, she dismisses the work of Laura Allen and Roger Gorski on the sexual dimorphism of INAH-3 with a wave of her hand, quoting Gorski himself as saying “We’ve been studying this nucleus for 15 years, and we still don’t know what it does” (Fine, 2010, p. 104). It is important to note that Simon LeVay chose to study differences in INAH-3 in gay and straight men specifically in response to Allen and Gorski's work.

My students, many of whom come to my biopsych class having taken gender studies, do not seem to understand that it is logically inconsistent to say that socialization makes men and women different but biology makes homosexual and heterosexual people different. I do not know if this page is the right place to make that point, however. I intend to work on the INAH-3 page, which perhaps is more relevant. Your opinions would be welcome. Laura.Freberg (talk) 22:10, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Falsified quote?
I looked but I can't find the quote "...can be vexing in the (distorted) ways the scientific study of sex differences in brain and behavior is portrayed and (how) the current state-of-the-art is presented." The adjective "distorted" appears to be the user's personal opinion. Or am I missing something? --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 17:13, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * The word "distorted" is in parens, indicating it was not in the original. That does not make the quote "falsified."


 * In their review McCarthy and Ball make several relevant comments:


 * "The hostility is open and raw. But her critiques of the science are as weak and unfounded as she accuses the science to be."


 * " ...there is a "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" phenomenon in which the entire field is condemned by a combination of setting up straw men to knock down and an overemphasis on criticism of a few errant studies or errant interpretations."


 * "The use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect sex differences in brain activation during specific tasks is rejected by blithely dismissing the entire field of fMRI as too immature and as not capable of really measuring neural activity any way. She has a harder time with the elegant and provocative studies by Melissa Hines [3] and others on sex biases in toy choice in humans and primates, including dismissing studies in CAH girls in which the role of parental influence was carefully assessed and found not to be responsible for these girls' malelike toy preferences. Instead of acknowledging that perhaps there is something interesting going on here, Fine refuses to yield an inch..."


 * Given these comments, the word "distorted" does reflect these reviewers' evaluation of Fine's presentation of the relevant evidence. However, I have no problem replacing the sentence with one or more of the quotes above.  Memills (talk) 21:25, 1 January 2014 (UTC)


 * So the word "distorted" really was just something that you added to the actual quote. Please correct the falsified quote or misquote (or whatever you call it) as soon as possible, thank you. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 17:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * "Distorted" (dih-stawr-tid) adjective 1.  not truly or completely representing the facts or reality; misrepresented; false: She has a distorted view of life.
 * If you believe "distorted" distorts the true meaning of the sentence, I'll leave the edit to you to substitute your favorite synonym.
 * Or, if you prefer, substitute the "falsified" sentence with any of the quotes from McCarthy and Ball, above. Which is your fav?
 * Thank you. Memills (talk) 21:32, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Mixed praise in Science reflected as positive
The book is said to have received a positive review in Science, but this appears to reflect how Fine has misleadingly chosen to selectively quote the article in Science on her own website, which is given as the source rather than the article itself. The actual review is much more mixed.

Fine's version:


 * Carefully researched and reasoned, Rebecca Jordan-Young's Brain Storm and Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender offer antidotes to neurofallacies ... Clearly written with engaging prose, Delusions of Gender and Brain Storm ... are also serious academic books.

What was actually written in the review:


 * Carefully researched and reasoned, Rebecca Jordan-Young’s Brain Storm and Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender offer antidotes to neurofallacies such as these. [first paragraph of review]
 * Cleverly written with engaging prose, Delusions of Gender and Brain Storm contain enough citations and end notes to signal that they are also serious academic books. Fine and Jordan-Young ferret out exaggerated, unreplicated claims and other silliness regarding research on sex differences. The books are strongest in exposing research conclusions that are closer to fiction than science. They are weakest in failing to also point out differences that are supported by a body of carefully conducted and well-replicated research. The question is not whether female and male brains are similar or different, because they are both. [last paragraph of review]  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.182.10 (talk) 06:59, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

That sounded more like criticsm than praise to me. Then I noticed that the link was to the authors page and not to the actual review in science, so I believe that it needs to be removed. Revert if you must, but I agree that the author has cherry picked and mislead in her rephrasing of the review.

210.84.13.17 (talk) 22:39, 2 August 2016 (UTC)