Male and female brains wired differently, according to scientists who should be fired.

According to an article in The Guardian based on a recently published study in PNAS entitled Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain, "scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains." As a woman having read just the eight-word headline ("Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal"), my knee-jerk reaction is that this must be wrong, cannot possibly be good science; as a former cognitive psychology student having read the entire news article and as much of the journal article itself as are available to me, my more rational, analytic response is still that this is wrong, and is not good science.

But which is the lady brain? Neither is pink...
National Academy of Sciences

This is blatant intellectual dishonesty, and both this writer and the researchers themselves should be ashamed. As unthinkable as it is that an entire team of Princeton researchers could draw such wildly inappropriate conclusions from their research, it is even more disheartening to consider the reasons why they might have done so. They argue that patterns of neural connectivity divide along gender lines, where "men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking." For any Neuro/Psych students who are thinking, "Hang on, that's the opposite of everything we've learned about the development of the human brain, which is primarily influenced by its environment," you're right! This write-up and even the study's own abstract are bullshit. Here's the tip-off:

"Male and female brains showed few differences in connectivity up to the age of 13, but became more differentiated in 14- to 17-year-olds."

That is to say that pre-adolescent brains proved, in fact, to be more similar than different until a certain cultural/developmental turning point, which implies that differences in neural connectivity are a product of environmental influence, not based on any biological gendered difference. To be clear: that is exactly the opposite conclusion that this writer, and the researchers themselves are touting. They gloss over the obvious implications -- that these so-called "hard-wired" differences between men and women are the product of gendered roles being forced upon them and that, in turn, shapes their brain functioning --  and the difference between cause and effect in interpreting these results in order to serve lukewarm stereotypes that men are more X and women are more Y because they were made that way. This is not only an incorrect application of these kinds of research methods; it's irresponsible, incorrect, and absolutely disgraceful.

The science correspondent's bias is obvious in his lazy introduction about scientists confirming what the common-sense population "had surely concluded long ago" about women and men's inherently different ways of thinking -- nice universal generalization of your own opinions to society at large, way to go. Even more troubling is how readily one of the contributing researchers summarizes her findings in such complacently sexist terms:

"If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said. "Women are better at intuitive thinking. Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved – they will listen more."

Even the official news release from UPenn piles on the hackneyed stereotypes:

"For instance, on average, men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions, whereas women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group. They have a mentalistic approach, so to speak."

Women are more intuitive and better listeners, of course! Of course, of course. They are also better equipped to cook and clean because their brains are smaller in size, and thus cannot handle the cognitive load required for higher-order tasks like running a business, leading meetings, or being ordained into the Catholic Church. Men are better at learning -- all types of learning, all the time, no matter what. That's why they're so much smarter.

I had assumed this kind of thinking went out of fashion along with phrenology, but sometimes I can be wrong, too. I eagerly await follow-up brain scan studies confirming that white men are more likely to succeed in leadership positions, black women don't feel pain, and Asians are better than everyone else at math.