As the posts so far in the Fray have already pointed out, The XX Factor is clearly misinformed when it comes to evolutionary psychology. This is especially ironic considering their lament of pop-science and journalistic handling of ep, which they are all horribly guilty of themselves.

They take some fairly non-consequential ep experiments and then after a weak analysis of these few experiments, they (especially Anne, with her absurd comparison of ep with Marxism and Freudianism) discredit ep as legitimate science. This, as La Rana points out so effectively in his post <link> is ridiculous.

I would love to see them engage Pinker's The Blank Slate.

I can't say I agree with all of the XX factor's points, but I thought The Blank Slate was a sloppy, trite work. A good critique of it is here <link> .

don't challenge the xx factor with science. pearls before swine.

My feeling is that, at heart, XX isn't really objecting to evolutionary psychology because it is "soft" so much as that much of it contradicts the notion that socialization accounts for gender differences. It seems a bit too convenient to dismiss any scientific study that goes against the way you wished things were as "pseudoscience."

I think there are two important things to note about the context in which these articles have been written:

1) A great deal of scientific research is just plain bad. This is why peer review is a fundamental part of the scientific method; other people familiar with relevant material will read and critique research, and an understanding of the principles that underly natural phenomena will emerge with consensus. Everyone is now persuaded that findings like the Theory of Gravity or Laws of Thermodynamics or Germ Theory accurately describe the natural world because there has been, at length, a careful consideration of the evidence presented to explain the phenomena by scientists. Not every scientists, however, is necessarily persuaded by the conclusions of any study merely because it is published; publication is a part of scientific process, not the product.

2) A great deal of journalism regarding scientific research is just plain bad. In large part, this is because of journalists who don't understand the aforementioned circumstances, but in any case, science journalism very simply isn't going to be good among people for whom the scientific method was really only the subject of that really boring lecture at the beginning of every science class they ever took (if even that), and not a fundamental basis for actual research. A great many articles regarding scientific theories and findings from news sources like the AP, NYT, and (gosh, even) Slate demonstrate a failure on the part of their writers to understand the subject they address by featuring mistakes like exaggerating the implications of research, confusion between correlation and causation, and an ignorance of individual studies' context in the greater body of research (which is what a scientific article's introduction is supposed to remedy, but- then again- a lot of articles are bad). This speaks poorly not only of the recent articles on Slate about evolutionary psychology, but also of the Times of London article that they use as one of their few sources.

I miss Carl Sagan.

The Blank Slate was certainly not a trite book. It had problems, of course, but any book with that ambitious of an undertaking is going to get some holes poked through it. It helped lay the foundation for many researchers today who are now working to fill the gaps of his work. That's how science works. I can't think of anytime in history where someone published a book that got everything right on the first try.

Menand's critique of Pinker isn't all that impressive. He basically points out the places that Pinker gives nature a bit too much credit, but that hardly defeats the main thrust of the book.