>Cultural, psychological and perceptual changes in the wider population through the centuries and decades. The same scientific theory, put in 2 different cultur

>Cultural, psychological and perceptual changes in the wider population through the centuries and decades. The same scientific theory, put in 2 different cultural setups has a different chance of attracting its proponents and opponents. Science doesn't (or at least shouldn't) be a popularity contest as to how many proponents and opponents it attracts. The problem you're identifying is that dominant philosophies and ways of viewing the world change with time, but this is no more true for 'gender studies' as it is for any other field (of science, technology, or anything else) in which the philosophical foundation upon which it is built is so heavily involved in the results. I think a good analogy here might be interpretations of quantum mechanics, which similar to the philosophy of essentialism (for instance) can gain or lose popularity. Nevertheless, the discussion then becomes a matter of which philosophical underpinning makes the most sense or fits the empirical data. The fact this discussion is occurring does not make a whole field of study 'implausible' as a parent comment said; on the contrary, it makes it richer. It's fine for opponents and proponents to have equally reasonable arguments, but it's unclear as to how this makes a particular science untenable or equivalent to the old scientific racism, phlogiston, or phrenology.