Bad Science Reporting

Taking Sax and Brooks to Task

mixingmemory | June 24, 2006

Mark Liberman has two great posts over at Language Log debunking first a claim made by David Brooks in this article on the gender gap in education, and then Leonard Sax's poor use of science that inspired Brooks' claim. This is what Brooks wrote: There are a couple of reasons why the two lists might diverge so starkly. It could be men are insensitive dolts who don't appreciate subtle human connections and good literature. Or, it could be that the part of the brain where men experience negative emotion, the amygdala, is not well connected to the part of the brain where verbal processing…

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