Rationally speaking, is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry and science education. For more information, please visit us at NYC Skeptic's Doug. Welcome to Russian speaking the podcast, where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense. I am your host, Mussomeli. And with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Gillard. Julia, what's our topic today?

Masimo. Today, we have a guest joining us all the way from Melbourne, Australia. Cordelia Fine is an academic psychologist at the University of Melbourne and the author of the book Delusions of Gender The Real Science Behind Sex Extensors. The book examines common beliefs about innate differences in the way men and women think, especially differences in which women are held to have more empathetic minds and men have more systematic minds, which is used to explain why we find more men than men in fields like math and science and engineering.

So the book goes through all of the research that allegedly shows these hardwired differences from developmental psychology to social psychology, neuroscience, and concludes that the vast majority of it is either poorly conducted or poorly interpreted or are simply ambiguous enough that we should really be much less certain than we seem to be about whether these differences are, in fact, innate.

Cordelia. Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me on the program, Cornelia. I read your book actually at the suggestion of a previous guest by a Russian speaking Carl Tavaris, who wrote. Mistakes were made by Not by Me, which was a delightful book in and of itself. And when she was here actually in our studio at the time, she was reading your book and she gave such glowing reviews that I said, well, I got to read this thing now. Would you mind the weather for those of us that have not read the books summarising the very most important points that you are trying to make throughout?

Well, really, I see I think Julia's already made a rather summary of the book, which is that we should be closing the scientific door on the idea that there's a possibility of much greater equality in society than we have now. So what I really do in the book is called Into Three Parts. And I think that the core of the book is the idea that we need to turn to biology for that. So we have this very egalitarian society. We're trying very hard to be a gender neutral children.

And yes, you know, look around. There's still this extraordinary amount of gender inequality. And because we sort of society, we have the answers to that sort of inside the head of the brain. So in the first part of the book, I take a closer look at the idea that the sort of functioning in an agenda, equal society. And I look at the sort of a not so subtle ways in which gender stereotypes influence our behaviour, how on Earth and so on and so forth.

And the last part of the book, I look at this idea of the failure of gender neutral parenting. To look at my own psychology really suggests that this is a very naive idea, that we are achieving, that that's not even possible. And then at the core of the book is to look at the supposedly very compelling evidence that there are certain hardwired predispositions between the sexes. And so what I did was I look at what is seen as being sort of the strongest lines of evidence, that kind of idea.

So looking at foetal testosterone in the brain, that something that you don't want to we were just as in the book that I ended up writing in a rather different book to the one that I originally intended to write. So I have noticed that people some people assume that I sort of set out with a political agenda to disprove anything that might suggest that there are things that this is actually not the case. What happened was that I'm a parent and I'm reading a parenting book that suggested that the boys and girls have different brains and therefore educators and parents in different ways as a result.

And that it's quite interesting that, you know, being an academic, controlling access to the journal articles and so on, I looked at one of the claims that boys and girls gave, and I really thought that the connection between what was being planned for the text and what the actual imaging studies show. And at the time, I was involved in the project on media ethics, which was interested in how it was using technology, changing our conception of ourselves as we.

What are the ethical implications of that? I thought, gosh, you know, I wonder how this sort of popular how this. Dangerous chemicals in the brain of the doctor, right? So I started to look at other popular books about gender differences and I saw things that are even worse and it's horrible mangling of the data. And so what I want to do is really write a book about the misrepresentation in the popularization of it. Also seem to be ignoring very interesting evidence and social psychology, showing how our minds are influenced by gender stereotypes and some support and environmental cues.

Well, I can look at the and I look at my initial book proposal. There's nothing there about critiquing the scientific literature itself. It's mostly about the. When I came to the scientific literature myself, I am a sort of sort of in a strange place where nothing seemed to quite add up. So there were all these instances, the assumptions that were perpetuated and never tested. Irving's methodology, which I think, you know, the poor and and I sort of extensional the book ends up being a very different book to the one that I initially intended to write, because I just I was surprised by how that I found.

So let me ask you about one specific aspect of this problem, which is actually you alluded to a minute ago with so many parents talk about sort of the anecdotal evidence that, well, you know, we really tried hard to raise our kids in a gender neutral way. And yet, guess what? You know, my daughter started doing things when my boys started doing things that are boyish. And there really seems to be nothing that I could do about it, therefore, as you pointed out a minute ago.

So the default explanation for this outcome, despite the best attempts at the parents, is, well, there must be something biologically unchangeable going on in. You point you point out in the book were the driving factor that explanations of the situation is more complicated than that. Right.

I for a number of reasons, and I have to say this, that this notion of biology as back as a fallback is a lovely state police officer just called and they came to interview a lot of parents of preschoolers and said this is a very common theme, particularly amongst the sort of upper middle class parents who are very sort of egalitarian minded. And yet, despite what they thought of as sort gendered behaviours being manifested in their children. And and I have to say that, you know, there's a standard joke in commentators in this debate that, you know, the people who think that gender differences are socialized, my parents name them, they're called toddlers.

So, you know, when I have my own children, I didn't realize what an incredible asset they would be to me in of the I get the feeling that I ever did that to myself. And it didn't matter how many scientific articles I've read in the newspaper, but luckily I do have children. And not only that I have, but yes. So when I say to people have money provided to other parents, it's very, very common. We try and fight that.

You know, I think the policy is core to part of that effort. And I think the issue with this interpretation and just to be clear, I'm not saying I don't dismiss the possibility that there might be some kind of biological predisposition, but you definitely the sex is what I'm saying is that the issue with gender socialization is that sort of thing, because there are two aspects of it. So I think that this way of thinking about children and their acquisition of sort of gender types, behaviors before and after children have a sense of their own, which side of the sex drive that they fall for, the fact that children are born into a society where what sex is really the most important social division.

So it's about continually through through language, through appearance, through symbols that they live in. The children's media are absolutely that. For less information about gender correlates, what goes is being male and female and so forth. And we all have to bear in mind that parents are what they say, sort of consciously dorsa that gender isn't really the whole story about their psychology. So social psychologist think that, you know, the way the. See, by the people in the more fully explained by what sort of conscious force that I sell of my beliefs and values, and it's clear that, you know, children from the moment they're born are born into an environment where, you know, the little girl is going to see a lot more things, a lot more than just a tiny little boy, see a lot more and a lot of other things, including there's a very strong sort of gendering of choices.

And so what I would say is that the actual sex differences in behavior across the age of two, which children can say, yes, I'm the girl boy, the Russians are very subtle and it's not clear to me, it's not clear whether this is chalk this up to political decision or whether it be to do with, you know, unconscious behavior on the part of the parents, the violence that they have. For once, you get beyond the age of two, you have to understand children as having said the greatest threat to society where they understand gender is a terribly important thing.

There's a huge amount about it. And then suddenly they learn which side of the spectrum they belong and that they motivate themselves to to sell social life. So it doesn't matter if Mommy hates people that they know perfectly well that it's true equals female and they know they're female, they're not where they dress. And the fact of life, if they can't stand it shouldn't be taken as evidence that the gender and, of course, the child's behavior.

So your book goes through this really damning catalogue of all the ways that people infer innate cognitive differences between the sexes when when really they shouldn't.

And and you give plenty of examples of how many children are at a really young age socialized into these these expectations of how they should be, what they should be good at and what they should prefer because of their gender. And that even triggering very subtly the awareness of their gender and making their gender more salient can can cause them to fall into these roles and can cause girls to do worse on tests that are purportedly measuring something that girls don't think that girls are supposed to be good at and so on, so forth.

And and even more so when people try to interpret evidence of, say, innate variability in IQ scores and they do that or they they interpret evidence of variability in IQ scores as being innate when there's really no reason to expect it to be innate, given that by that age, boys and girls have already gone through this process of socialization that you're describing. So I guess what I'm wondering is, what is it even possible to do an experiment that would actually demonstrate an innate difference?

Is it is there an age young enough that we can we can say, OK, we're safe? There hasn't been any any evidence hasn't been tainted by culture or socialization yet. And at that young age, is there anything really meaningful that we could measure that we would be interested in?

Well, I think that's a really excellent question for one of the sort of one of the studies that's really been seen as a lot of of the politicians that have been placed on is done in some of laboratory. And the very idea behind this study was, let's look at sex differences as well as any possibility of socialization. So for the baby to have an average about a day and a half so, you know, these little socialization sections occur by then, but that's the idea.

And what the study did was to show the influence, the experience of faith, and also separately, a sort of mobile that was made a face to face like things in a sort of random order that was moving in NaturalMotion. And the interest was right for all the girls to be more like more interested in the face and a lot of people and a the boys being more interested in the mobile objects in constant motion focus. And I do go through this study and the methodology in excruciating detail is just because so much things that have been placed on it, I mean, it's just now satisfactory for both boys and girls more interested in looking at people, in fact.

And but in fact, there were a number of methodological difficulties in that particular experiment to do with the possibility of experiments, bias in terms of the extent of experimentation herself to stimulate. The fact that the political confirms unconsciously at that time that the results were inadequate when someone in the mobile right to determine Trevallyn holding people in the mobile home. And we know that they sensed a commotion and I gave them some support. There are ways in which she could have influenced the results.

But the question is so I think did the experiment better and say we both still find the subtle fact that they were consistent with the idea of girls being allowed to be more interested in the safe than the mobile. What would that actually mean for? One of the assumptions that was made in that experiment was that the premise that the newborn had is somehow indicative of the future of an enterprise or a system like that. And that was really that assumption was unaccounted for.

And there's no evidence to support or contradict that. But, you know, no one could try and look to see whether there was a relationship between the two. But I think what we need to think about looking at some of the new as a way of trying to look at what is the difference between the sexes. Is this the sign off from the reception area? That was an implicit concession of development, which is that the development in the past to some extent already encourages.

And, of course, experience can push you one way or to one side or the other. But this is a development. And part of that to the past, in a sense, is already, already in there. Whereas to me, a better way of thinking about some of biology is this notion that the developmental path isn't in there, but it's constructed to step by step through the continuous interaction through throughout the lifetime of actually getting the natural experience for three.

And what's the difference? You know, at first between fact that we have to be? I think that that would be an interesting thing to show. But we have to be careful about saying, well, you know what? In relationship to this baby can't be like that. You can't do that. But I think, look, what is the relationship between, say, early in your classroom and you say complex, socially dependent behaviors that we be many years down the track, but also, are we so removed from of our thinking that it's in the right and the right kind of way, so that when you were talking a different part of your book actually came to mind that.

I want to ask you about it in a second. But but first, I'm talking about the deep problems, the technical problems of carrying out these these experiments correctly. I think you're essentially right that in human beings, this is exceedingly difficult for a variety of issues that you bring up in the book. Of course, plenty of good studies on nature and nurture have been done on non-human systems and animal systems and of course, plants. I mean, my career as a biologist was about gene environment interactions in plants, and I'm familiar somewhat with the literature in in the animal models.

Another thing that struck me several years ago is that we actually have very good evidence of how complicated the gene environment reduction can be in in rats, for instance, all the way back to the 1950s. There's this classic experiment that was done by Cuban Zubac, I believe, at the time. And what they did, they started out with a genetically heterogeneous set of of rats. And then they selected for a line that was genetically superior at, you know, finishing a maze in a number of areas.

So they called those the superintelligent. And then they also selected for a line of really super stupid rats that were making a lot of mistakes and they were just not doing very well. So the first part of the experiments showed that, yes, you can definitely select genetically for differences in intelligence measured in this particular case, as I said, by the number of mistakes that these animals were making. But then the really interesting part of the experiments was that they then picked the same lines and they raised both of the lines of superintelligent and the super stupid under the same environmental.

Decisions which were different from those of the original experiment and experiment was carried out in a sort of a standard cage and it was repeated under two very different environments. In one case, both lanes were raised in a very dull situation where there were no collars in the cage, no toys, nothing to play with. And in the second case, both lines, genetic lines were raised in a very rich environment with a lot of with a lot of toys to play with and so on and so forth.

And Kuprin Zubac showed very clearly that the clearly demonstrable genetic difference in intelligence in these animals was completely erased in both directions. That is, in the doll environment. The super intelligent animals became stupid. And in the the rich environment, the allegedly done that became in fact as intelligent, essentially a statistically indistinguishable from from the smart ones. Now, that, to me is the quintessential wear which you should do. This kind of expands for obvious reasons. You can't do that with human beings.

Which brings me to the question about another part of your book, which is one of the things actually struck and struck me the most. As surprising is when you show discussed experiments showing how subtle changes in the social context of adult individuals, of adult young women, for instance, actually have a surprisingly dramatic effect on the way they score on standardized tests about math, science or whatever it is that that really surprised me the size of that effect. You want to sort of summarize what what was happening in that case?

Yes, I think the stereotype threat study come back to those fascinating experiments that you describe, I think, for reading this kind of aggression. You know, reading impressions, Max, versus mild math and science that's of them. And I think that's what the study is really bring home the point that there is no such thing as your real biology that can be understood as sort of separate from the environment in which you develop as a biological system. And I think that's something that scientists have been thinking about and come back to the stereotype threat.

So now I wrote my first book on and I touched on this topic, stereotype threat, and that was published so that some five, five years ago now. And that has really been slowing of research in the area of the analysis and not somebody liking the study. That does provide pretty compelling evidence that the social context in which women were maths for math is not the main thing that they're being looked at. So happens that on and on and on and on and so forth.

The experiment you presented the math test under either threat or you just don't have back now, you actually don't have to do anything to create stereotype. So the sort of natural default social environment is one in which women are especially could have been there, for example, that they had, you know, very aware of the fact that there is a stereotype that women are so used to do that in a the position you that exactly the same. But you say actually in this case, no sex differences and anything you can do now is you are taking away the sort of setting that for the women that if they screw up, they will just be proving that, you know, women really can't do math and have been trying to work out as well.

What is it about stereotype threat that the mathematical therapy and part of it seems to be that it's just the anxiety, it creates intrusive thoughts and triggers unhelpful stereotypes of anxiety. And all of these have to be sort of suppressed and managed, which uses up mental resources that are actually doing that. But rather than making it constantly harder to do these rather difficult mathematical tests. And I think what's nice about the stereotype threat studies, we have a tendency to think of our mind as being the greatest speech, anything but in fact, this kind of thing and that thing that's developing and functioning in constant interaction with the social environment, the social environment will influence your.

He wasn't demanding that, but it's triggering thoughts and feeling in you that will actually use up the cognitive resources that you need to actually perform that kind of test and also influence your motivation on the person with the ability. A very important part of how about doing things that is not the money. We are what they find with their a lot of understanding. What people are thinking and feeling is that if you sort of frame it as being a feminine thing, then women tend to outperform and then becomes a social norm that they should do well.

But if you make understanding of people's thoughts and feelings that you know your own money for, you might be able to have success with women. If you're good at, then you get sort of improvement, motivation. And after that, were going to get to see or hear something that presented in the way you see identical performance. And so against the backdrop, the picture and social psychology that we think of sort of spontaneous ability that we have to do that we have to see the person's mind in the larger social context in which they operate and the standard pictures from that gender stereotypes that is quite subtly.

Then you can see the behavior of self-deception. It's very tough. But when you push gender and psychological background, for example, by hiring people to think of themselves in a non gendered way, oh, I'm a student at the university or I'm from I'm from Melbourne, then men and women's performance becomes remarkably similar, even in the mainstream educational centers and perform.

Cordelia That reminds me of a response that I read to your book by by Simon Baron Cohen. I think it was in the November psychologist and he was addressing this argument you make about stereotype threat and talking about all these experiments that you describe in which people are primed and in such a way as to either reduce the gender difference or to enhance it. And he says, you know, showing that a manipulation of social variables changes behaviour does not prove that it was those very social variables that caused the spontaneous sex differences in the first place.

So I was trying to figure out why you two seem to be interpreting the results differently. And as best as I can tell, it's that he believes that there there's this sort of baseline that, like, when people aren't primed, there's no effect of socialization, our culture that's influencing people's performance.

Does that seem like a good characterisation to you or why do you think that that he disagrees with you about what we can infer from these types of studies?

Yeah, I think yeah. I think some of our argument is that, you know, when when social psychologist manipulation, when they say, well, it's no different than the fact that women are just as good as this or this is a different kind of neutral. You have kind of information can influence Zarkasih or motivational the but that the gender stereotypes are normative, especially in bad and saturated society, have absolutely no effect on on a lot of thought and behaviour now that they're extremely implausible.

Right.

Well, you know, it's interesting because it seems to me that even if Gordon is right and of course is really you characterize it as implausible, I don't know.

It seems to me that at the very least, it's something that he would have to defend independently. As Julia pointed out, he's essentially starting with an assumption of a baseline which is far from being established. But let's even give him the best possible scenario. And imagine then, yeah, sure. There are, in fact, some differences between in general performances and certain certain behavioural characteristics that are, you know, biologically based. Fine. But then at the very least, what these experiments show is that it simple environmental manipulation essentially erases the difference which right there, Kansas is any argument in favour of?

Well, you know, the differences are biological. Therefore, we just have to go with them because they are impossible to overcome. Clearly, they're not impossible to overcome, even if they're there.

Yes, I think that's right. But I also think that. But there's no such thing as a neutral social environment against which we can, you know, we can affect people on science, unemployment or unemployment ability. We have to recognize that that people are functioning and developing the social contract that we're where. There is no for gender inequality. There are well known gender stereotypes, but these things are all represented in people's minds and people's minds are influenced by other people's beliefs.

But you can also take your take your point. I think that's a very important one. But at the same time, I think we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that there is conservative, socially neutral environment, which we can, that that people have true biological ability and there's no social contact. Contact us some sort of special thing that's created and allowed the social psychologist, you know. Oh, but the world right now, we are in a cultural context.

So so, Julianne, I keep having a good number of questions. So this is going to go on for a little bit longer. But but before we go on, some of you said a little earlier reminded me of another issue that that sort of underlies all these these debates. You were talking about how people conceive of development and that, in fact, a lot of people think of biological development in a way that it's not really reflective of what biologists themselves know of development.

A colleague of mine, Richard Lewontin at the Harvard University, who's actually done a tremendous amount of work on gene interactions for decades, once he explained the how gene environment interacts and how the interaction is complex in the following way, it's a really interesting, simple metaphor. He says, look, if you ask yourself how a house is put together, a house is made of bricks that are layered with wood, the use of lime. He says, you know, you can certainly ask the question at the end once the house has been built.

Well, how much weight of the house is due to the bricks? How much weight is due to the lime? And he said, you know, and that question does in fact have an answer, except that it doesn't tell you anything about how to build a house, because the whole trick is to layer the bricks. And that in a particular sequence without which you don't get a house, you just get a mess. And so they're just measuring the number of bricks and the number of, you know, and the weight of the line doesn't tell you anything of relevance.

His analogy was with the idea that, well, can you separate in principle at least the effects of genes and environment? And he said, well, even if you can do that, there still doesn't tell you anything because the way in which living organisms develop, it's by putting all the genes on one side and all the environments on the other side. And then and then you sort of add them up. It's in the way they're layered throughout the development.

And this seems to be a very difficult concept for a lot of people to actually swallow. A lot of people really cling on this very additive, very, OK, use the genes over here and there's the environment over there. And we just didn't need to sum up to figure out what's going on there. Julia, you had a mixed question.

Yeah, well, I wanted to while we were talking about stereotype threat. This brings me to the biggest thread on the rationally speaking blog in response to the teaser for this episode, which was the question of whether until, if and when the evidence comes conclusively about what degree gender differences are innate.

Until that point, what should our default position be in terms of just like publicly how scientists frame this issue? Should it be to assume that all the difference we observe between the sexes is the result of nurture? Or should we assume that it's part nurture, part nature? In other words, one of these positions sort of hold the burden of proof more strongly than the other. And and, of course, part of this question is about the consequences of believing, of holding each defaults hypothesis are the consequences of believing that the sex differences are all nurture.

Are those less harmful than the consequences of assuming that that part of the differences are in our nature?

But yes, but the thesis of my book is not that we should assume that there are no biological predisposition, but I think the thesis of my book was that the evidence that's been presented and. Basically, you know, and then you get into the more populous and the constant aggressive, but nonetheless there are scientists themselves are drawing conclusions from from their research that has shown that most single testosterone influences sex types, preferences or behaviors or cognition and who the thesis of my book is.

Actually, that's the actual scientific evidence for those conclusions is not as strong as it is assumed to be. So I'm not really putting forward a solution that we should assume sex until such a time. I wish to see in life in such a time, but simply saying the evidence for the idea that there are high rises. It's simply not as compelling as it used to be. But I think this way of thinking about this question is because we reconcile the science.

Douglas, who says, well, we can nobody wants political values to interfere with the assessment of the scientific evidence itself. So the fact that we've lost the world's biggest take away should never count as evidence for or against the second hypothesis. And that is just completely undermine the whole point of science, obviously. Right. She does put the point that we can we can we can we can allow an indirect role for political values by saying, well, how much evidence is good enough before we come to a particular scientific judgment?

So if we're. It was sort of what do it for an experiment show that particular conditioner will make our hair glossier than another cup of conditioner. Then we're not happy with a lower standard than for something that suggests this will prevent you from catching malaria. So the social costs of the error, because, of course, all scientific data has the potential for error and built in the wrong way. One of the social costs of error, and then we can have a discussion about, well, what are the costs of error and how do we feel about those costs should our scientific judgment prove to be wrong?

So I think this is a useful way of thinking about six different debates of neuroscience data, for example, neuroscience research on sex differences in the brain. If you see a lot of studies that report sex differences in the brain, that will often suggest some functional indications of differences based on some small sample size is very often the most businesses with fewer than 20 and 22. Now, all of the very popular and influential long standing idea and sex differences in the brain, which is that the male brain is more natalya's than the scene of some of the language.

The idea that the men are processing language, the left hemisphere where women have a tendency to want to use both sides of the brain. Now, this was a very popular idea and there was a neuroimaging study that was done in 1995 that was one of three types of language. This is what they do, find more bi lateral activation in our brain, but not compared to the male brain. In 2004 and 2008 are some of her colleagues. The nationalities of all the studies that looked at language processing and Envestnet analysis, they failed to find evidence for a sex difference in language localization.

And it's really interesting to look at the benefits from this on their metamorphosis. You see this extraordinary variability in the results that are coming up in your study. So what you see are these studies of very small sample sizes to 20 men, women and fewer eyewitnesses on the fringes. And as the sample sizes get larger, they are converge towards zero zero effect. And really what this is showing us is that, you know, that neuroimaging data are very noisy and these sorts of studies are not reliable.

We have to be extremely cautious about any one particular study for the sex difference in the brain, because it's a small sample size. There's a good chance of that. That's just going to be a serious result, particularly given that this is this is a test for sex differences by default, which creates a publication bias towards both of these findings. So I have to ask yourself, well, when someone publishes a report of a sex difference in the brain, we can ask ourselves.

And it's you know, you don't have a terribly large sample size. It's not an objective scientific fact that there is a difference in the brain that one has to be political to to criticize. You're saying particular standard of scientific evidence in your scientific judgment, in the conclusion that you draw that. Yes. And we have found a difference in science. And I think what what I've tried to do in my book is to show over and over again that really the actual physical, the actual one that we have a mathematical, scientific claim is not as strong as the scientists appear to think.

So, for example, if you find a relationship between amniotic testosterone levels and type behavior, often the actual physical relationships that you observe aren't really consistent with the proteins, that these neuroimaging studies are very unreliable. There are there are concerns and so on and so forth. So I think a lot of times the disagreement is actually actual Senate once asked all the time so they could be very useful and very valuable to have a sort of open and honest conversation about what what do we see as being sufficient for these kinds of scientific findings is that the European study is adequate.

Is it adequate to talk about the relationship between foetal testosterone and major gender type behavior when you go actually. How have data to support your assumption that you measure your proxy for testosterone? Actually has the relationship to equal exposure to that same platform? So I think I would actually be quite useful to talk about social values in this in this area, because I think sometimes there is genuine disagreement about the actual empirical support in some cases. But sometimes I do wonder whether they should actually do a standard.

And it's interesting that I've seen that because we recently had a podcast on a complete separate topic with another guest, Steve Novela, where we were talking about what you just referred to as the epistemic warrant of certain conclusions from scientific research. In that case, the topic was recent meta analysis showing that a significant number, if you're a big number of medical research is inconclusive precisely because of the reasons you just talked about. That is the sample sizes tend to be very small.

These are files where every fact there is a selection bias of fact and so on and so forth. And this is actually a general problem and in particular in science that is very expensive. As you know, it's expensive to do mathematical or psychological research on large numbers of of of subjects in a large number of environmental conditions. And some people, of course, cut corners and we end up with a lot of studies that are at best inconclusive and at worst that really shouldn't really have been.

And so the problem is not that specific to the debate that we're in today about, you know, gender differences, but in fact, it's even more general in terms of medical research. And in fact, my experience has been that we had the same problem in areas like ecology or evolutionary biology, which are other sciences. It's difficult and expensive to carry out a long term expense on the subjects.

Well, I, I really like this clip for responsible use of statistics and attention to publication bias. So I'm going to take this opportunity to wrap up the section of the Russian speaking podcast. And we will move on now to the Russian speaking.

Welcome back. Every episode we suggestion from for our listeners that has taken our rational fancy, this time we ask our guest, Caudill, 11 first responders, their substance, Cordelia. Thank you. Well, my my pick would have to be a horse that I've just read by someone who I mentioned in the interview had a lot to and those who opposed a book called Science Policy and a value free idea. So does this book really is arguing that not only is the idea of free science unattainable, but it's also perhaps not even desirable?

And that's an example. And that includes some of the academic papers themselves and focus on the natural sciences, but also think her arguments are very relevant to the topic of sex differences. It's a really very fascinating book that really sort of illuminating as to how without realizing that social and political values are really can be built into even the internal stages of research without even realizing it. So I think people who are interested in the politics of this debate, of course, in science generally, this is a really fascinating book.

Well, thank you so much, Cordelia.

It's been such a pleasure having you on the show today. And I would recommend your book, Delusions of Gender to all of our listeners. It's really it's really a pleasure to read.

Thank you. So this concludes another episode of rationally speaking. Join us next time for more exploration on the borderlands between Rebin and nonsense.

Cool. Is that. Oh, it's the schedule of speakers for Nexus. The. Yeah, it's the Northeast Conference for Science and Skepticism. Oh, are you going. Yeah. Nice. Tell me, what does Nexxus what's next?

Oh, well, it's an educational conference held annually in New York City. Nexxus explores the intersection of science, skepticism, the media and society for the purpose of promoting a more rational world.

How does that spell Nexxus? What how does that spell nexxus is emesis? Should be. Jesusa, what should to be pronouncing processer? I have no English. So good. But any assessment not spell nexxus. Well, ok. Yeah, but yet just to get a sense of what's wrong with nature society.

Yeah. Jesusa, I have a brother in law, his name and says you do not. But I could just say the rolls of the tongue, your tongue maybe but nothing.

So who is speaker going to be a nexus, a nexus, whatever. Telling me. Well, scheduled to appear are Brooke Alcina Villa. Evan Bernstein, Steve Novela. How did John Allen, Paul, Julia Gillard, Masimo and Garden. John Rennie, Thomas Gilovich, Todd Robbins, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Eugenia Scott George, Rebecca Watson, Daniel Khanum, Carl Zimmer, Bob Novela and keynote speaker Phil Plate Blowies Death from the Spaceman from the skies. How you do that.

Do what? Make it so bouncy, bouncy like that. Well I am a pod or oh is very nice.

Tell me, what does podcasting Nexis search the Northeast Conference for Science and Skepticism, April 9th and 10th in New York City. Go to Chicago or check out our Facebook page and Twitter feed. The rationally speaking podcast is presented by New York City skeptics for program notes, links, and to get involved in an online conversation about this and other episodes, please visit rationally speaking podcast Dog. This podcast is produced by Benny Pollack and recorded in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York.

Our theme, true by Todd Rundgren, is used by permission. Thank you for listening.