Let’s All Major in Feminist Biology

PS: When people hear about a biology study, what are some things they can ask themselves to check for gender bias in the study?

JH: The first step is always to say, ‘Does this finding replicate?’ Because we’ve so many of these flash-in-the-pan things where a study gets tons of publicity and there’s so much competition in biology to be first with your breathless finding. So that’s the first question to ask, ‘Has anybody else gotten this?’

There are certain phrases that tip people off about gender bias. For example, if people do some kind of neuroscience study, let’s say it’s an MRI study with humans. These researchers will often say, ‘This is a hardwired difference between males and females.’ Well, if these are adults [who are being studied], it’s not hardwired at all, right? They’ve had 20 to 25 years of experience that has shaped their brains. Typically, you don’t find good neuroscientists using the phrase ‘hardwired’ because they know how plastic the brain is. Differential experience between males and females could account for brain differences as easily as any kind of brain differentiation that depends on hormones or something like that.

— PopSci has an interview with Janet Hyde, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison who helped spearhead the school’s new fellowship [PDF] in “feminist biology,” our new collective major. (PopSci has more words on the “hardwired” issue here, too.) [PopSci]