Are men really just vain Demons mr. Robb Willer?
Welcome to the first issue of 'Popular Pseudo Science' in which we will undertake the unpromising feat of making sense of a study conducted by Rob Willer of Cornell University.
(willer's studies have been well recieved - though still unpublished in a peer-reviewed magazine - by the general media because it tells us what we want to hear - that men are pathetic creatures with fragile ego's. But, alas, the role of science is not to play up to the lowest common denominators of it's time. The role of science is to tell us something trhuthfull about the world.)
This study, allegedly about masculinity and overcompensation, has all of the characteristics of popular pseudo science and so will serve as a fine example here in this first issue. Characteristics are
bad methods
non sequitors
naive reductionism
subjective language
circular reasoning
conflicting reason with cause
and serious neglect of obvious underdetermination
tennis - metaphor
car speed metaphor - also see e-mail exhange with robb willer.
willer definitions about what is macho and what is masculine does nothing but expose his own prejudices. (eg spain 90% men against Iraq war but every bit as masculine and Macho as Danes if not more) ( SUV 's I do not even know what that is - some kind of truck ? )
Willer ' s study only gave a fixed set of actions and choices to choose from so can say nothing about choices that would be made in reality. Maybe SUV are percieved as more masculine than Ladas, but in reality people would also to be able to express masculinity in more productive ways which the study does not account for.
Being masculine in reality can be something good and constructive - the setting of study only allows for a scale from more to less ridiculous attitudes. Laughable an oversimplified choices has to be made by respindents, but there is no room for real choice or individual expression. Thus maybe respondents find nonen of the given choices really masculine, but will try to go to the constrained and oversimplified choices in the end they think would at least be pervcieved as more masculine than the other constrained and oversimplified responses.
The study has been met with a lot of media attention, and is very popular among bloggers - usually a good indicator that something is really unscientific, and very much political polemical.
Robb Willer does not get far before succeeding in turning his study into a parady of science: "Overdoing Gender: Testing the Masculine Overcompensation Thesis." Already this title reveals Willer confusion about research and science. The problematic word is overcompensation. overcompensation. Which is to say - too much compensation. When we are talking about too much, or talking about overdoing something we are being normative and evaluative. Science is not evaluative, nor is it normative - it is, or ought to be, purely descriptive.
Here, as opposed to other places, we will have a look a the scientific meret, or lack thereof.
The core of the study is the finding that men are affected by how they think they are percieved by others, and accordingly act to alter this perception in a way they find usefull. Women on the other hand, according to the study, are not affected, or, at least - they do not try to alter the attitudes, their preferences and their action on that account. In short - men are vain demons - women are rational beings
Circular
Underdetermination is an often encountered problem in science. It simply means that some available data cannot determine which among a number of competing theories is true.
When serious scientist encounter this problem they aknowledge it and conduct further experiments until most competing theories have been falsified.
Not so with Rob Willer of Cornell University, from an experiment on anumber a american frat boys he goes on to conclude that he has somehow proven the pop psychology notion that
Luckily scientists then have the pervasive and sourrounding biases of the time, the zeitgiest