4 ms·

Uh-oh this is going to hurt a lot of people. Even if the article did not state anything about the actual effects of these differences. Just mentioning or hintin

Uh-oh this is going to hurt a lot of people. Even if the article did not state anything about the actual effects of these differences. Just mentioning or hinting at this nowadays will result in a lot of automatic flack and backlash. Notice how the incoming comments will be about the title and not the contents and the subsequent derived meaning of this. They will probably have to change the title to not offend anyone. Sadly this is our current state of approach on science.

pgsandstrom 8y ago
So far two comments like yours, getting meta-offended by theoretical complaints. People getting upset from the actual result: Zero. Sadly this is our current state of approach on science.
- larrykwg 8y ago
  the first reaction people had was to literally complain about the title, questioning the whole conclusion. I don't think he was too far off the mark
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  The first comment I saw when I came in to the post start off: "Title using 'very large' does not come from the article, which gives a more subtle image:" which sounds to me like someone taking offense to the title?
  - jjk166 8y ago
    They're taking offense to the title being a mischaracterization of the paper, not to the result in the paper
    - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
      ok thanks.
    - sanxiyn 8y ago
      The title is not the title of the paper, but it is a direct quote from the paper. The paper does say differences are very large. (Search for "very large".)
- flukus 8y ago
  It's been flagged already, so obviously people took offense and would like to shut down the conversation.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    “Not what I want on HN” ≠ “I am offended” Among other things, it can mean, “dear God, just from the title I can tell that the comments on this are going to be 90% people staying their preconceptions of how other people will feel about it and/or imputing motives to thread or comment moderation, 5% people reacting to the title, and 5% people quoting the article in response to the previous 5%.”
    - flukus 8y ago
      If it's not what the want on HN they can ignore it. The flag button is used as "stuff I don't want anyone discussing or knowing about".
foolrush 8y ago
> Even if the article did not state anything about the actual effects of these differences. You could have stopped typing there.
geofft 8y ago
Quite sad, indeed, when people are offended by untrue things being presented as true! How will we ever get science done in such an environment of easily offended people?
- Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
  It's unclear, do you argue that the linked article is "untrue"? Meaning, it is bad science that produced a made-up result? (or was it a typo)
  - geofft 8y ago
    I was replying to the sentence about offense, namely, "They will probably have to change the title to not offend anyone." The title of this HN post, "Mean differences in men's and women's brains are very large," is in fact untrue as the top-voted comment points out. They're statistically significant but not that large, and there's lots of overlap in the distributions.
larrykwg 8y ago
I think they should just remove the link, everyone knows you can't discuss these things in this community.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zhdc1 8y ago
There is a positive correlation between cranial capacity and height, some correlation between brain volume and height, and some correlation between brain volume and intelligence within gender. Women score as well as men on general intelligence tests, although men have higher levels of variance and score slightly higher on certain subsets (e.g., spatial reasoning). This study shows the former very well - although men scored slightly better on a verbal-numerical reasoning test, the results were statistically insignificant (p=.45). The relationship between body size, brain volume, and general intelligence only appears to apply within a given gender, and not between the two genders. As far as I can tell, all of this has been known for a long, long time, so I don't think anyone's feelings are going to get hurt from a study that looked at brain volumes in older (44-77 year old) adults in the United Kingdom.
IshKebab 8y ago
> Even if the article did not state anything about the actual effects of these differences. Yes it did. > We linked the structural brain differences to scores on two cognitive tests taken at the time of the imaging visit: verbal-numerical reasoning and reaction time (see Method). Descriptive statistics for the cognitive tests are shown in Table 1. Note that we coded both tests (reflecting the reaction time variable) so that higher scores indicated better performance. The test scores correlated positively, but weakly (r = .12). Males had a slightly higher mean score than females on verbal-numerical reasoning (d = −0.18) and slightly faster mean reaction time (d = −0.22); there was no significant variance difference for verbal-numerical reasoning (VR = 0.97, P = .45), though males had marginally more variance in reaction time (VR = 0.92, P = .03). I don't know why they didn't include any graphs for those results.

pgsandstrom 8y ago

So far two comments like yours, getting meta-offended by theoretical complaints. People getting upset from the actual result: Zero. Sadly this is our current state of approach on science.

larrykwg 8y ago
the first reaction people had was to literally complain about the title, questioning the whole conclusion. I don't think he was too far off the mark
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
The first comment I saw when I came in to the post start off: "Title using 'very large' does not come from the article, which gives a more subtle image:" which sounds to me like someone taking offense to the title?
- jjk166 8y ago
  They're taking offense to the title being a mischaracterization of the paper, not to the result in the paper
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    ok thanks.
  - sanxiyn 8y ago
    The title is not the title of the paper, but it is a direct quote from the paper. The paper does say differences are very large. (Search for "very large".)
flukus 8y ago
It's been flagged already, so obviously people took offense and would like to shut down the conversation.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  “Not what I want on HN” ≠ “I am offended” Among other things, it can mean, “dear God, just from the title I can tell that the comments on this are going to be 90% people staying their preconceptions of how other people will feel about it and/or imputing motives to thread or comment moderation, 5% people reacting to the title, and 5% people quoting the article in response to the previous 5%.”
  - flukus 8y ago
    If it's not what the want on HN they can ignore it. The flag button is used as "stuff I don't want anyone discussing or knowing about".

foolrush 8y ago

> Even if the article did not state anything about the actual effects of these differences. You could have stopped typing there.

geofft 8y ago

Quite sad, indeed, when people are offended by untrue things being presented as true! How will we ever get science done in such an environment of easily offended people?

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
It's unclear, do you argue that the linked article is "untrue"? Meaning, it is bad science that produced a made-up result? (or was it a typo)
- geofft 8y ago
  I was replying to the sentence about offense, namely, "They will probably have to change the title to not offend anyone." The title of this HN post, "Mean differences in men's and women's brains are very large," is in fact untrue as the top-voted comment points out. They're statistically significant but not that large, and there's lots of overlap in the distributions.

larrykwg 8y ago

I think they should just remove the link, everyone knows you can't discuss these things in this community.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

zhdc1 8y ago

There is a positive correlation between cranial capacity and height, some correlation between brain volume and height, and some correlation between brain volume and intelligence within gender. Women score as well as men on general intelligence tests, although men have higher levels of variance and score slightly higher on certain subsets (e.g., spatial reasoning). This study shows the former very well - although men scored slightly better on a verbal-numerical reasoning test, the results were statistically insignificant (p=.45). The relationship between body size, brain volume, and general intelligence only appears to apply within a given gender, and not between the two genders. As far as I can tell, all of this has been known for a long, long time, so I don't think anyone's feelings are going to get hurt from a study that looked at brain volumes in older (44-77 year old) adults in the United Kingdom.

IshKebab 8y ago

> Even if the article did not state anything about the actual effects of these differences. Yes it did. > We linked the structural brain differences to scores on two cognitive tests taken at the time of the imaging visit: verbal-numerical reasoning and reaction time (see Method). Descriptive statistics for the cognitive tests are shown in Table 1. Note that we coded both tests (reflecting the reaction time variable) so that higher scores indicated better performance. The test scores correlated positively, but weakly (r = .12). Males had a slightly higher mean score than females on verbal-numerical reasoning (d = −0.18) and slightly faster mean reaction time (d = −0.22); there was no significant variance difference for verbal-numerical reasoning (VR = 0.97, P = .45), though males had marginally more variance in reaction time (VR = 0.92, P = .03). I don't know why they didn't include any graphs for those results.