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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (96455)	1/23/2005 12:36:08 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793905

Assuming, for the sake of the argument, that left-handed Lithuanians were better at math than anybody else on earth, why in the world would we be better off with a study that attempted to prove that? A scientific study can't actually "prove" things like that, all it can do is suggest that it is statistically more likely than not. If you happened to be a left-handed Lithuanian who was terrible at math, such a study might make you feel better about yourself, but so what? Would it make good policy sense to put all left-handed Lithuanians into math enrichment classes from an early age? No, you'd still only want to accelerate the left-handed Lithuanians who were actually good at math, and that's not hard to discern from the beginning.

To: aladin who wrote (96455)	1/23/2005 12:58:55 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793905

A study on gender differences in brain function should be a clear winner. A study trying to prove anything should not. PC environments do not help getting real science done. I agree with you, a study on gender difference in brain function would be legitimate science. The problem with that is there are no legitimate scientists doing that. We know far too little about how the brain functions. There are far more useful research to be done with brain research (tumors, disease, etc, etc.) The kind of research that you suggest is way beyond our capabilities at this time. The problem is, there are too many stupid scientists and stupid univeristy presidents who don't know the difference between correlation and causation. Lot of things correlate, but they have nothing to do with causation. It must be very easily observable if you go into any scientific laboratory that blond(e) haired people (male or female) are grossly underrepresented. You can probably do statistical analysis on blond haired people. It may turn out that blond haired people score significantly lower on SAT and other standardized tests including those that measure Intelligence. But Blonde hair does not cause stupidity. You can try it out yourself. Take an IQ test before you use a bottle of peroxide and turn your hair blond and then take one afterwards. The scores should be about the same. Okay, I am being facetious using blondes as an example. I should be using height, or skin color, or religion, or place of birth, or political affliiation. That may sound silly to you, but Nazi scientists did just that. They did learned papers on the differences between Aryans and Jews. They measured the length of people's noses. A lot of stuff is bogus. A lot of supposedly smart people do and say bogus stuff. They should not be in a position of authority. Don't blame political correctness.