For anyone who’s read the news flashed around the world this week about the latest supposed differences between “gay brains” and “straight brains”. Cognitive researcher Mark Lieberman has a great piece here dissecting the bunkum statistics in this latest piece of junk science. (Thanks to Adrian).
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‘Junk science’ and ‘bunkum statistics’ are a little harsh, Kate. The laguage log post was correct that news media radically misinterpreted the results and that the paper was a little inpenetrable. It did not contest the basic premise, that sexual orientation correlates with brain structures that are determined pre-natally. This is still a big result.
Absolutely, most press outlets made it sound like you could diagnose homosexuality by tossing people in an MRI, but this is still a pretty awesome research result.