The book is called Gender in the Brain, which I've pictured here, and the focus of this book is actually really on debunking a lot of the bad science that has come out about gender and the brain, and the ways in which with the advent of MRIs and scans showing the brain with those highlighted areas of activity making their way into popular media
Alex Fox Rudinski
@alexfox · 1:00
I mean, you look at the history of what's been in the DSM, like, homosexuality being considered a mental illness. We're not super great at knowing. And I think that hurts us in so many ways. But I think it's really critical what you're saying to kind of be in a not necessarily skeptical, but like, not skeptical in the sense that it implies, like, dismissal immediately. But like that questioning attitude of, like, okay
Sudha Varadarajan
@sudha · 4:38
But then there are certain ailments that perhaps lifestyle choices, diets, different alternative therapies can help cure you of those diseases, rather than going down the traditional pill popping approach, which just suppresses your symptoms. So yes, I question science. I question science for many years. Physics is another area that there's a lot to question in physics. Physicists themselves cannot agree on so many things. So it's a fascinating field in which to question each other and coming to gender and brain
So questioning results, questioning current dogma, current theory of science and current accepted facts is again, the very nature of how scientific knowledge works, how scientific progress happens. I think the thing to keep in mind is the people doing the science are also human, and tour is human. They do make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes can be very costly. But that is just the nature of how knowledge grows
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 4:41
And when they looked, a lot of people challenged a lot of scientists. Neuroscience challenged the findings because there were things about how they conducted the studies, et cetera that just did not make it in layman's terms called good science. But the danger is that the headline had already gone out right
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:08
And you also reminded me of one of my favorite classes I had the chance to take in College was a history and philosophy of science class, and it was so fun and mind blowing to read in so much detail about so many things that we thought were held to be as true that were then expanded upon, proved to be false and wrong. It's a little scary as well
Tim Ereneta
@Tim · 3:45
But I would say, rather than question science, we should improve science communication, improve the way the mainstream media covers science, improve science education so that people are better able to be critical thinkers, because when you say, yeah, we should question science because, you know, there's some bad science and there's good science. That's true for any institution, government, religion, capitalism, education. There's good and bad implementation. There's flawed implementation