Men are Smarter than Women… Trashed.

Early this summer, major news outlets crowed about some preliminary research revealing that men are, on average, cleverer than women. This research made a big splash with headlines around the world.

In an unusual move, the journal “Nature” published a critique which not only rebutted the conclusions and data used by the British team in the original study, but thoroughly trashed it.

The Observer noted how unusual it was for a published article in a scientific journal to so thoroughly and angrily debunk the claims made in a competing journal:

Science journals rarely attack studies at the same time as they are being published by a rival. Neither do they often use strong or intemperate terms. A delayed and measured approach is the norm in scientific circles.

The article further noted that, like Andrew Wakefield’s controversial MMR vaccine/autism link debacle of some years ago, the researchers involved seemed more interested in garnering publicity than in peer review:

They did not release their paper to fellow academics immediately. Instead, they gave it out to journalists two months before it was scheduled to be published in the British Journal of Psychology this month.

I’m skeptical. Any time a study comes out — like the previous study by the same researchers which indicated white people were generally smarter than black — which seems to reinforce existing prejudices, I’m doubly skeptical. The truly groundbreaking stuff seems to be the things which blows away common misconceptions, not the stuff which looks like it’s trying to reinforce racial or sexual stereotypes.

I came across a useful guideline on the entire process of meta-analysis by Vivienne Parry:

“[C]heck the statistics first. If you are quoted a risk increase, check what the risk was before. A 100% increase of a very small risk is still a very small risk. Find out what the absolute risk rather than the relative risk is – in other words, what the real numbers of women dying, or getting cancer or whatever, are. “Again, you may find that this huge risk turns out to be one extra woman per 100,000. Nasty, but not as bad as you thought. If no one can give you real numbers, then feel free to ignore it. It is also useful to find out who is behind the information. Do they have something to sell or an agenda to push? If they do, be doubly suspicious.”