Reality is always more complicated than you think.
Profile
Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.
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Gender:
I often rant about bad coverage of the psychology of sex differences, so it is always satisfying to see an article that really has their facts straight. Amanda Schaffer and Emily Bazelon, writing in Slate, have an excellent article reviewing...
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Posted on July 7, 2008 12:50 PM • 0 Comments •
New York Magazine has an interesting article about fertility in Europe. Most European countries have a huge fertility problem. Since they have gone through the demographic transition, their populations are actually declining. Many do not have the relatively liberal immigration...
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Posted on July 1, 2008 1:30 PM • 2 Comments •
Related to the question of why there is a gap between the genders in math and the sciences is whether there are possible means of remedy. With respect to possible remedies it is often a good idea to look internationally...
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Posted on June 4, 2008 12:09 PM • 12 Comments •
Daniel Drezner links to two articles with alternative interpretations to the gender gap in science. Both are looking at a female exodus from hard sciences, but explain it in different ways. First, Lisa Belkin in the NYTimes takes the angle...
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Posted on May 20, 2008 10:40 AM • 13 Comments •
What an astonishingly useful graphic (click to enlarge, source):...
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Posted on April 2, 2008 2:17 PM • 11 Comments •
Go read this post at Language Log. It is about race as a confound in interpreting psychological differences between the sexes: On the other hand, the samples used in sex-differences research are often quite small, and are not in general...
Posted on March 31, 2008 2:25 PM • 2 Comments •
Conventional wisdom + bigger microphone = excellent journalism! High fives all-around for Charlotte Allen who repackages conventional wisdom about sex differences to a degree rarely attained by print journalists. My favorite part: Depressing as it is, several of the supposed...
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Posted on March 3, 2008 11:22 AM • 11 Comments •
I read this article in the Economist that summarizes a paper showing that men wanting to attract women spend conspicuously and women wanting to attract men volunteer conspicuously. All I could think about when I read it was, "Well, I...
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Posted on August 13, 2007 11:05 AM • 4 Comments •
We have had an ongoing discussion on this blog about whether the disparity between women and men in the sciences is the result of a innate difference in cognitive ability or the result of some social phenomena such as selective...
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Posted on January 30, 2007 12:06 PM • 38 Comments •
I have tried to show that the gender gap in the sciences is not the result of cognitive differences, but that begs the question about what else to which it can be attributed. It could be that it is the...
Posted on November 16, 2006 10:49 AM • 0 Comments •
We're mad as hell, and we are not going to take it anymore: In recent years, women's health has been a national priority. Pink ribbons warn of breast cancer. Pins shaped like red dresses raise awareness about heart disease. Offices...
Posted on November 14, 2006 9:47 AM • 2 Comments •
In my previous post arguing for the relatively large psychological similarity between men and women -- in great contrast to the public conception -- I drew heavily on the work of Janet Hyde, a professor of Psychology at Berkeley. Now...
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Posted on November 2, 2006 1:42 PM • 1 Comments •
I have argued repeatedly that I don't think biological differences between men and women are sufficient to explain their different in representation in math and science (here, here, and here). Mixing Memory has a very thorough post arguing for the...
Posted on October 27, 2006 12:19 PM • 0 Comments •
No more excuses, men: "Comparing sexual arousal between men and women, we see that there is no difference in the amount of time it takes healthy young men and women to reach peak arousal," said Dr. Irv Binik, psychology professor...
Posted on October 2, 2006 9:56 AM • 4 Comments •
I have talked repeatedly here about how I don't think that genetics provide an adequate explanation of the gender disparity in science. I haven't mentioned that this gender disparity does not overly disturb me, primarily because I think that some...
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Posted on September 19, 2006 6:04 PM • 5 Comments •
Differing from the typical strategy of threatening potential suitors with castration, scientists speculate that phermones from fathers delay their daughters sexual development: Chemical cues from fathers may be delaying the onset of sexual maturity in daughters, as part of an...
Posted on September 11, 2006 11:37 PM • 4 Comments •
Keeping to my week long theme of gender differences in cognition (here and here), here is an article by Diane Halpern in eSkeptic. It not only summarizes a lot of what is known about gender differences (even though it is...
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Posted on August 11, 2006 1:24 AM • 0 Comments •
Earlier this week I argued that the gender differences in cognition, while real, are not substantial enough to explain gender disparities in science. We talked about the work of Janet Hyde; it shows that -- contrary to the popular conception...
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Posted on August 9, 2006 10:50 AM • 9 Comments •
I was at a wedding this weekend, and I was getting in one of those conversations that drunk people get into at weddings: what are the gender differences in cognition? OK, so maybe you don't get into conversations like this...
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Posted on August 7, 2006 1:14 PM • 5 Comments •
Apparently I will be spending today documenting differing opinions on the Ben Barres Nature editorial. Here is the man himself doing Q&A for the NYTimes: Q. What about the idea that men and women differ in ways that give men...
Posted on July 27, 2006 11:25 AM • 0 Comments •
Eugene Volokh from The Volokh Conspiracy has weighed in on the recent Nature editorial by Ben Barres that I commented about before. The editorial is about whether it was right for Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, to discuss the...
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Posted on July 26, 2006 10:05 PM • 0 Comments •
