Thursday, May 12, 2005
Agenda Science
Yesterday's Best Of The Web showed on of the great agenda science guffaws of all time. First they quote this article
But BOTW moves on to quote this article.
Proving a connection between things does not prove a casue -- it is the oldest rule of statistics, and data evaluation. I see it done wrong almost every day, at least in the popular press.
Negative feelings about black people may be subconsciously learned by both white and black Americans, suggests a brain imaging study. The research is among the first to test the brain physiology of racial biases in both black and white subjects.Here is the bottom line question -- how does a study that simply shows a reaction determine that the reaction is learned? Apparently the same part of the brain responds to not only to threats but also to what the call the "out" group and they attempt to distinguish between the two reactions. It seems to me that by definition the "out" group is a threat. Ever bring a new cat home when you already have a few?
The new study showed that both white and black people had increased activity in an area of the brain called the amygdala - which responds to fearful or threatening situations - when completing a matching task with images of black faces.
?I think the results are very specific to being raised in this society where the portrayal of African Americans is not very positive, on average,? says Matthew Lieberman at the University of California, Los Angeles, US, who led the study. ?It suggests that those cultural messages are not harmless.?
But BOTW moves on to quote this article.
Using a brain imaging technique, Swedish researchers have shown that homosexual and heterosexual men respond differently to two odors that may be involved in sexual arousal, and that the gay men respond in the same way as women.Similar study, far more honest conclusions and reporting.
The new research may open the way to studying human pheromones, as well as the biological basis of sexual preference. Pheromones, chemicals emitted by one individual to evoke some behavior in another of the same species, are known to govern sexual activity in animals, but experts differ as to what role, if any, they play in making humans sexually attractive to one another.
Proving a connection between things does not prove a casue -- it is the oldest rule of statistics, and data evaluation. I see it done wrong almost every day, at least in the popular press.
