{"id":43544,"date":"2018-05-25T03:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T07:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43544"},"modified":"2018-05-24T17:49:28","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T21:49:28","slug":"progressives-gender-is-a-social-construct-science-wait-just-a-second-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/05\/25\/progressives-gender-is-a-social-construct-science-wait-just-a-second-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Progressives: “Gender is a social construct!” Science: “Wait just a second there…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toby Young<\/a> wonders why a woman can’t be more like a man:<\/p>\n

A fascinating paper about sex differences in the human brain<\/a> was published last week in the scientific journal Cerebral Cortex<\/em>. It\u2019s the largest single-sample study of structural and functional sex differences in the human brain ever undertaken, involving over 5,000 participants (2,466 male and 2,750 female). The study has been attracting attention for more than a year (see this preview in Science<\/em><\/a>, for instance), but only now has it been published in a peer-reviewed journal.<\/p>\n

For those who believe that gender is a social construct, and there are no differences between men and women\u2019s brains, this paper is something of a reality check. The team of researchers from Edinburgh University, led by Stuart Ritchie, author of Intelligence: All That Matters<\/em>, found that men\u2019s brains are generally larger in volume and surface area, while women\u2019s brains, on average, have thicker cortices. \u2018The differences were substantial: in some cases, such as total brain volume, more than a standard deviation,\u2019 they write. This is not a new finding \u2013 it has been known for some time that the total volume of men\u2019s brains is, in general, larger than that of women\u2019s, even when adjusted for men\u2019s larger average body size \u2013 but all the studies before now have involved much smaller sample sizes.<\/p>\n

Does this paper have any implications when it comes to men and women\u2019s intellectual abilities? The answer is yes, but they\u2019re not clear cut.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toby Young wonders why a woman can’t be more like a man: A fascinating paper about sex differences in the human brain was published last week in the scientific journal Cerebral Cortex. It\u2019s the largest single-sample study of structural and functional sex differences in the human brain ever undertaken, involving over 5,000 participants (2,466 male […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,16],"tags":[254,513,43],"class_list":["post-43544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-science","tag-gender","tag-research","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bkk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43545,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43544\/revisions\/43545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}