We need more knowledge (and less spin).

It's no surprise that the scientific and medical research in which the public tends to show the most interest is the research that is somehow connected to practical issues, like living longer and healthier lives. Scientists who depend on public monies to support their investigations have gotten pretty good at painting the "so what" for their findings.

The problem, of course, is that the "so what" painted for a non-scientific audience is frequently oversimplified, glossing over a lot of the complexities that the scientists deal with daily. It's hard to cram complexities into a sound bite. As well, these sound bites telling us why a certain finding matters often play into the pre-existing biases and social expectations of the non-scientific audience at which they're aimed. Unfortunately, this can persuade that audience that, with a particular finding, we know all that we need to -- or, perhaps, that we at least know enough to justify particular ways of doing things (surprise!) toward which we were already inclined.

Consider, for example, a New York Times op-ed piece by Marianne Legato on gender and health. She writes:

What emerges when one studies male biology in a truly evenhanded way is the realization that from the moment of conception on, men are less likely to survive than women. It's not just that men take on greater risks and pursue more hazardous vocations than women. There are poorly understood -- and underappreciated -- vulnerabilities inherent in men's genetic and hormonal makeup. This Father's Day, we need to rededicate ourselves to deepening our knowledge of male physiology.

On the surface, this sounds reasonable. But Echidne of the Snakes worries that it is not only vulnerable to being spun, but also engages in some oversimpliciation and spin itself:

I feel as angry about this reverse take on the relative health of the sexes, and the reason for my anger in both cases is the same one: Discussions like these may or may not be the springboard for better health research, but they certainly will be used to perpetuate the status quo of power imbalances between the sexes.

As Echidne points out, the old scientific consensus that women were the weaker sex (whose ovaries would shrivel if they got too much education, etc.) was used to support policies that kept women out of the classroom and many sectors of the work force. Can we expect research suggesting that men are the weaker sex to have similar results, hustling them off the sports fields or the shop floors and into the sewing room and the nursery? Not hardly. From Legato's op-ed:

Considering the relative fragility of men, it's clearly counterintuitive for us to urge them, from boyhood on, to cope bravely with adversity, to ignore discomfort, to persevere in spite of pain and to accept without question the most dangerous jobs and tasks we have to offer. Perhaps the reason many societies offer boys nutritional, educational and vocational advantages over girls is not because of chauvinism -- it's because we're trying to ensure their survival.

(Bold emphasis added.)

This is certainly a "hook" that grabs a broad readership who might not be interested in scientific results in themselves. However, it's not clear that this conjecture has anything like the "scientific support" the casual reader of the op-ed might assume it has.

I'll let Echidne take it from here. She writes:

None of this should be intended to read that I don't care about men's possible fragility, compared to us stoic and almost-unkillable women. I do care. Good research in the field is much encouraged, and we might also do something about all those wars that still kill men disproportionately. Also the murders and car accidents which pick out young men more often than young women.

But Legato is exaggerating some of the findings to make her point. For example, there are still more boys than girls being born, even in the industrialized countries. We should remember that when interpreting the sad description of the difficulties that boys have in becoming born in the first place.

The question of depression rates by sex is interesting. I remember reading a study on depression among the Amish sect in the United States. It suggested that the rates were fairly equal by sex, whereas the general consensus is that women are much more likely to suffer from depressive illness. One suggested explanation for the findings among the Amish was that the Amish don't self-medicate with alcohol and that for some reason there is no cultural ban for men to say that they are depressed. Both these factors might disguise male depression in the wider American context. But this was just one study and I can't recollect whether it was well done or not.

We clearly need good research on these issues and probably also programs that support seeking help earlier among men. But I still don't like this current trend of thinking about all of us as just simply generic examples of "male" or "female". A good female friend of mine died young and another woman I knew committed suicide. I had a great-uncle who died at ninety-nine. Programs that would lump all people into treatment groups by sex alone would be as ham-fisted an approach as ignoring the question altogether.

Instead of blurring all the complexities to reach a non-scientific audience, maybe it's time for scientists to help non-scientists embrace complexity. Then we can move on to some real communication that shares insight about what science can actually tell us.