
Sex differences in functional connectivity during fetal brain development - dschuetz
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929318301245
======
pmarreck
Can someone (likely younger than me) explain to me why the concept of gender-
associated cognitive differences has become so controversial, and why the
“blank slate hypothesis” is the only one considered acceptable? This was an
entirely different story when I was in college.

90% of all nurses are women, does that mean that 100% of the difference (from
the 50/50 ideal-world gendersplit assumption) are men purely socialized _not_
to do that?

I have no interest in sports, yet 90+% of men seem to, but I kinda get it, it
makes sense to me that most men would be into that.

And then we get to programming, and raw interest in mechanisms... and
_possible_ correlations to gender with that, and all hell breaks loose.

Have all the “monkeys prefer gender-stereotypical human toys” studies been
discredited? You can’t IMHO use the socialization argument there:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/)

Happy to hear anyone out on this though.

~~~
gotocake
There are two main reasons I’m aware of. First, a certain kind of person tries
to make a deeply sexist argument and reaches for “science” to back it up. The
overall experience with that kind of thing is profoundly negative, and it has
a pretty grim history, so there are strong reactions to it. It’s true that
well-intentioned people do ask uncomfortable questions, but especially online
they’re dwarfed by trolls and people arguing in bad faith. All told this isn’t
an insurmountable problem, and more and better research can help to shine some
light on the issue. It’s also not impossible to determine whether or not
someone is pushing a predetermined agenda and using a given study (while
ignoring others) as a bludgeon.

The second, radioactive topic centers around trans people. I’m not going to
touch that topic with a 10 foot pole, because online the discussion rarely
develops more nuance than mysticism dressed up as science on one side, and
bigotry dressed up as “common sense” arguments on the other. All told it makes
for a difficult topic to discuss in good faith, absent agendas on or offline,
but online it’s pure poison.

~~~
mancerayder
Granted, but should 'purpose' of a scientific research project or conclusion,
you know, matter? If the science is bad, it won't get published or it will get
published and destroyed.

Why should politics get in the way of our accumulation of data?

Get the data first, worry about interpretations after that. The moral question
should not block / impede the inquiry of a topic and quest for more data.
Perhaps, with the possible exception of some superweapon or bio weapon
research?

Didn't we learn anything at all from the grim history of religious authorities
impeding scientific inquiry because the conclusions were uncomfortable?

What exactly is going on in the last 5 or so years that we've decided to spurn
Reason?

~~~
mhermher
I don't think the controversy you're describing exists in the academic world,
at least not in the neuroscience field (that I can partially attest to). That
controversy you're describing just exists in popular culture. It's not
inhibiting any scientists I have ever worked with or for.

~~~
stcredzero
_It 's not inhibiting any scientists I have ever worked with or for._

It is inhibiting scientists from communicating with the public. Tenured
professors in the field are fearful or hesitant to do this now. Some
professors are being actively targeted.

Many members of the public have highly distorted views of the science. In only
the past two years, I've heard more times than I can count on the digits of
all of my limbs, from well educated professionals, that _all_ gender
differences are the result of a patriarchal conspiracy.

~~~
mhermher
Well, maybe I should walk back my comment a bit. I haven't worked in academia
for a half decade or so. The topic may have become hotter than I imagined from
where it was. I don't know. And point taken about affecting communication with
the public. That is sort of outside my perspective. Academia always felt super
insular to me and that scope was beyond anything I ever had to deal with.

~~~
stcredzero
Just today, another story surfaced of a professor targeted for writing a
reasonable contrarian view. His office door was vandalized, and a mob
assembled. (Some would call this a "protest" but given the mild pretext and
the problematic implementation and its disconnection from philosophically
sound principles, I would call it more of a mob.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60w0DZX5-SM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60w0DZX5-SM)

This sort of thing seems to surface every month or so now. The field of
evolutionary biology seems to be targeted in particular. Many of the targeted
professors report that many of their colleagues offer them support in private,
but dare not speak up in public for fear of also being targeted -- even
tenured ones. In some cases, it looks like unverifiable accusations of sexual
misconduct are being weaponized for this purpose. Trigger warnings and
microaggressions and the like seem to be a favorite weapon to be used against
professors.

During the Evergreen protests, students were marauding campus with baseball
bats, looking for professor Bret Weinstein. More disturbingly, he was frozen
out by most of the mainstream press, who only began covering him when their
silence became deafening.

~~~
KirinDave
I have 0 desire to engage in a protracted debate on Hacker News, so I will not
respond to any specific aspect of this post with the traditional fisk-and-rant
format. Instead, I'd like to encourage any reader who chances upon this thread
subsequently to scrutinize this post carefully, because it attempts to suggest
multiple equivalencies that I feel are not only inappropriate for the
discussion at hand, but suggest a rather stark worldview.

In particular, there was lots of press coverage on the Evergreen event and any
observer can go and read a variety of perspectives on it. It's also worth
noting that Evergreen was an extremely unusual style of university, and as
such already had a lot of interesting customs. Suggesting that Prof.
Weinstein's protesting of white people also having a venue to participate in a
longstanding tradition of a black student walkout is somehow relevant to
conversation about biological gender differences is chilling, because it
raises the question if in this poster's mind there are relevant biological
_racial_ differences. Is this poster asking us to take a careless leap between
questioning biological differences of the sexes to biological differences
between races? If not, why are nearly all examples given in reference to an
issue about race relations?

Similarly, one can investigate the claim that conservative professors and
students are unfairly targeted. The numbers there are interesting, but don't
tell a convincing story. You can also investigate the implication that
conservative and traditionalist _students_ are treated unfairly is not well
supported by the numbers.

Finally, one need only look towards the career advancements and growing
department sizes of evolutionary biology to see that they're actually doing
fine. Evolutionary _Psychologists_ are having a hard time, but they're also
facing many challenges actually demonstrating consistently testable
predictions (as is the larger field, as statistical expertise becomes more
normalized in the field).

You shouldn't trust links provided in threads like this, particularly on this
website. They're often carefully selected (and I say this in a non-partisan
fashion; everyone does it). You're much better off investigating these things
organically.

~~~
mancerayder
_Suggesting that Prof. Weinstein 's protesting of white people also having a
venue to participate in a longstanding tradition of a black student walkout is
somehow relevant to conversation about biological gender differences is
chilling, because it raises the question if in this poster's mind there are
relevant biological racial differences. Is this poster asking us to take a
careless leap between questioning biological differences of the sexes to
biological differences between races? If not, why are nearly all examples
given in reference to an issue about race relations?_

Look, I don't know what was in the poster's mind. However, it seems the common
theme you picked out (biological differences of the sexes and a dangerous leap
to racial differences) is one common theme. If you hadn't said anything, I was
assuming the poster's comparison here was to show that we're targeting
academics with dissenting opinions. Whether that's correct or incorrect is
worthy of debate, fine, but your interpretation was particularly ominous.

Edit: and perhaps manipulatively so. If something is ambiguous, why not ask
rather than assume? There's an unfortunate epidemic of people who know other
people better than other people know themselves.

~~~
KirinDave
> Look, I don't know what was in the poster's mind. However, it seems the
> common theme you picked out (biological differences of the sexes and a
> dangerous leap to racial differences) is one common theme. If you hadn't
> said anything, I was assuming the poster's comparison here was to show that
> we're targeting academics with dissenting opinions.

I am simply aware of the larger context. The reason I made that leap was
because Weinstein himself has said things to this effect. But also, because of
the particular framing of the Evergreen Protests (which saw arguments across
the political and social spectrum) as a dangerous pack of leftists wielding
baseball bats stalking the campus (which is a hotly contested claim). Faculty
who were there and had their offices occupied as part of the specificallu
leftist protests do not consistently report

And quite frankly? It doesn't stand out in American politics at all. We've
been rioting as part of political discourse since before the Constitution's
ink was dry.

But presenting the event in that way leads an informed reader to wonder if
there is are other inaccuracies.

Look at the poster's responses closely for a clear and logical refutation. I
think the absence of anything other than "it's name calling and that's what
_they_ do" is not a very powerful way to dismiss these concerns. Someone
genuinely interested in setting the record straight would probably do it
differently

Am I "the far left?" I don't know. I'm a successful fintech founder postexit,
so it's pretty tough for me to look credible to that crowd. If I were, would
simply naming me as such actually be a valid answer to the concern I raised?

~~~
stcredzero
_And quite frankly? It doesn 't stand out in American politics at all._

Because the mainstream press wants the public to move along and not pay too
much attention.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf5fAiXYr08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf5fAiXYr08)

 _But presenting the event in that way leads an informed reader to wonder if
there is are other inaccuracies._

I'm sincerely hoping that people will look into different coverage of
Evergreen. Really, it speaks for itself. Your description of "Antifa blocking"
speaks to your bias. I know from personal experience that _not all_ Antifa are
toxic thugs who lack any philosophical basis apart from "might makes right." I
also know from personal experience that many are, and it's very telling how
those who wear those colors who know better don't call them out. I have no
idea how an informed person could support them. The only thing they have going
for them is that Nazis are worse than they are. As I mention above, many of
them will even outright tell you that it's their guiding philosophy.

History has many examples of people trying to intimidate others politically.
Some wear masks. Others think their special status shields them. Over time, we
all know them as villains.

------
mhermher
I worked in an MRI lab (academic) for a few years (as a
tech/programmer/statistician) and honestly these kind of sex difference
findings were really common.

We never did fetal scans, but we were also studying resting state fMRIs
connectivity in adults. I'm semi ashamed to admit it, but a lot of times, if
your main hypothesis didn't come to fruition in the data, you could usually
just fall back on some sex-difference finding. You wouldn't even need to fish
very hard for it. There is probably no other single 2-way split you could make
that would more reliable give you large magnitude differences.

I don't know how else to present that idea though. It's not completely
unreasonable that there might be some inherent bias in the processing. There
are really a handful of tools that everyone uses. It's possible that there is
some undiscovered bias somewhere. But if that is not the case, then I am
pretty convinced from my time there that the differences are real, and they
are usually of large magnitude. At least larger than the more interesting
findings researchers look for.

Pretty crazy that they did fetal scans though. We had a lot of trouble
normalizing even toddler brains on one study. I can't even imagine fetal ones.

------
danharaj
ITT: People discussing how difficult it is to discuss this article without
vicious pomo leftists censoring them.

Not ITT: The logical bridge for the conceptual chasm between observing sex
differences in the brain and an explanation of how these differences in the
sexes somehow always end up causing women to be in an economically and
politically disadvantaged position subordinated to men.

------
stcredzero
First and last phrases from the Abstract:

 _Sex-related differences in brain and behavior are apparent across the life
course...These observations confirm that sexual dimorphism in functional brain
systems emerges during human gestation._

------
fwip
As is nearly always the case with sex differences in brain tissue, the
variation between sexes is swamped by the variation within either sex.

Here are some figures from this paper that illustrate what I mean:

[https://ars.els-
cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S18789293183012...](https://ars.els-
cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1878929318301245-mmc4_lrg.jpg) [https://ars.els-
cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S18789293183012...](https://ars.els-
cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1878929318301245-mmc5_lrg.jpg)

This is not intended to disparage their work. Rather, I mean to clarify that
sex is not particularly predictive of what is being measured, and differences
only appear when observed in aggregate.

~~~
insickness
This is like saying that the variation in height between women is much greater
than the variation in difference between men and women. The outcome is still
the same: The average man is taller than the average woman.

When the variation is cognitive, it will produce very real world statistical
differences between men and women. You can't pick a random woman and a random
man and assume the woman is inclined toward X and the man isn't. The
statistical difference is too small to predict that. But take a thousand men
and a thousand women and the percentages will bear out the small statistical
difference.

~~~
fwip
"Brains appear different in an MRI" is several steps removed from behavioral
differences.

Height is 0 steps removed from height.

------
Symmetry
I wonder if the sex correlation would go away if they controlled for digit
ratios?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio)

When I started reading that they talked about sex hormones differentiating at
8 weeks and I was thinking that we'd have to throw out a lot of things we
thought we knew about sexual development if they'd actually seen differences
before that but, no, it was was later that this was measured.

It would be nice to have some notion of the effect size. That is, what
fraction of female infants would have more FC-GA connection than the typical
male. I'd bet that the dimorphism here is smaller than, say, height dimorphism
but I wouldn't try guessing by how much.

------
stared
Compare and contrast with "Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have
different brains"
([https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x),
discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19316221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19316221)).
Not to deny that gendered socialization makes differences (it does, as any
activity). Still, I am puzzled by the dogmatic "there is no nature, there is
only nurture; and don't dare to ask questions!" (maintained by some, including
people I know personally).

Vide

\- [https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-
sex...](https://quillette.com/2019/03/11/science-denial-wont-end-sexism/)
(discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19360744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19360744))

"Not a week goes by without yet another research study, popular science book,
or mainstream news article promoting the idea that (a) any differences between
men and women in the brain are purely socially constructed and (b) these
differences have been exaggerated beyond any meaningful relevance. More
recently, this argument has evolved to contend that (c) there are, in fact, no
brain differences between the sexes at all. Eliot’s article appears to
subscribe to a hodgepodge of all three perspectives, which not only contradict
one another but are also factually incorrect."

\- [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-
complicity-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-
and-the-parable-of-lightning/) (discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15539675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15539675))

"Did Giordano Bruno die for his astronomical discoveries or his atheism? False
dichotomy: you can’t have a mind that questions the stars but never thinks to
question the Bible. The best you can do is have a Bruno who questions both,
but is savvy enough to know which questions he can get away with saying out
loud. And the real Bruno wasn’t that savvy."

And pretty much as a side note, while some social differences ARE due to
sexism, some others are because of more gender equality (and people being able
to choose what they prefer, regardless of their gender):

"As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from
men"
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/eaas9899](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/eaas9899)
(discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379943))

~~~
DC-3
> there is no nature, there is only nurture; and don't dare to ask questions

The entire post-modern left worldview is deeply rooted in the blank-state
hypothesis. Very few people - across all political and academic spectra - have
the scientific discipline to react rationally to criticism of the scaffolding
supporting the lens through which they view the world.

~~~
alexpetralia
Would you have any reading you could suggest on this? A lot of my thinking is
informed by postmodernism (mostly from that essay by Larry Wall, the original
author of Perl), but I realize it's such a broad term that there may be a lot
of other ideas (especially ones I disagree with, like the blank-state
hypothesis) tucked in there as well.

~~~
DC-3
I'm sorry, I wouldn't be able to provide any specific reading on this. My
comment above was rooted in two things. Firstly, my own observations from
several years immersed in the massive internet culture war between left and
right that seems to define and frame the politics of our time. Secondly, my
understanding of postmodern thought which I have gained through university
tuition. As such, my thoughts on these topics tend to be based in intuition
not rigor, which is perhaps ironic (or even hypocritical) given that it is
postmodernism which I am criticizing, but I feel that my point stands
nonetheless.

~~~
alexpetralia
Haha fair enough. Well I am always open to more perspectives on it - even
intuitive ones - so thanks for that.

------
fromthestart
What do people do when confronted with research that challenges the very
fabric of modern gender politics?

As more research like this gets out, indicating that males and females really
_are_ genetically predisposed to different psychology, what happens to a
sizable chunk of leftist politics, which currently allege men and women are
identical and that differences in equity are entirely cultural and sexist in
nature?

What does this say of modern cultural hiring and university admittance
policies that are driven by untested assumptions contradicting research like
this?

Perhaps our past measures of merit have not been so skewed as some people with
an axe to grind would have you believe.

~~~
camdenlock
Panic. The tools used to confront such inconvenient truths are, as always,
censorship and bullying.

~~~
vorticalbox
Agreed, most people when faced with an valid point that disagrees with their
argue end up being labelled sexist, bigoted and racist because they have
nothing else to use

