anhinga_anhinga | Male monkeys prefer toy cars, females like dolls

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troubles with scientific establishment

Male monkeys prefer toy cars, females like dolls

Something seems ~~wrong~~ strange with this.

from http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/108552

The differences apparently date far back in evolutionary history to the time before humans and monkeys separated from their common ancestor some 25 million years ago, according to Gerianne Alexander, a psychologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who led the experiment.

"Human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior," Richard Haier, a neuroscientist at the University of California-Irvine, wrote in the journal NeuroImage.

Variety of toys used

In the monkey experiment, researchers put a variety of toys in front of 44 male and 44 female vervets, a breed of small African monkeys, and measured the amount of time they spent with each object.

Like little boys, some male monkeys moved a toy car along the ground. Like little girls, female monkeys closely inspected a doll's bottom. Males also played with balls while females fancied cooking pots. Both were equally interested in neutral objects such as a picture book and a stuffed dog.

People used to think that boys and girls played differently because of the way they were brought up. Now scientists such as Alexander say a creature's genetic inheritance also plays an important role.

"Vervet monkeys, like human beings, show sex differences in toy preferences," Alexander wrote in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. "Sex-related object preference appeared early in human evolution," she said.

Alexander speculated that females of both species prefer dolls because evolution programmed them to care for infants. Males may have evolved toy preferences that involve throwing and moving, skills useful for hunting and finding a mate.

What seems ~~wrong~~ strange is how the statement that female monkeys fancied cooking pots might fit into this evolutionary speculation... hmmm... hmmm...

Upd: probably this was because the cooking pots were red, and the authors of the paper decided to spin their conclusions somewhat.

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!!!

> Did you notice where this articles is published?

In a newspaper, by a syndicated columnist (Robert S. Boyd actually). The Seattle Times also has it.

In a newspaper, by a syndicated columnist - ever heard that journalists don't care to understand the results very well, are not at all good at conveying them to the public, and are after sensations? Did you read the original article? I think cooking pots could very easily be any other containers or devices. Or it could be that monkeys have been given videotapes of TV shows. Or that it wasn't monkeys in the study at all :-))

the original article - I mean the original research article.

In any case, it looks like we've already reached something resembling the consensus that it's inconclusive...

Given that the author does not have electronic links to her artciles on her Web site, I think I'll skip further investigation... Especially, since most scientific papers seem to be wrong even without help from the journalists:

http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4342386&no_na_tran=1

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7915

This is another bit of sensational journalistic crap! Sure, most scientific papers are wrong, let's not give our tax dollars to the f*ckers!

This story is much more to the point.

No, this looks just right to me (I know first-hand what kind of "quality" is typical for bio-medical research). And these are science-supporting publications. I also like the recursion in the last paragraph of the Economist story:

"It should be noted that Dr Ioannidis's study suffers from its own particular bias. Important as medical science is, it is not the be-all and end-all of research. The physical sciences, with more certain theoretical foundations and well-defined methods and endpoints, probably do better than medicine. Still, he makes a good point—and one that lay readers of scientific results, including those reported in this newspaper, would do well to bear in mind. Which leaves just one question: is there a less than even chance that Dr Iaonnidis's paper itself is wrong?"

> much more to the point

It's very interesing, and correctly describes the pathologies of the scientific community, but it's probably wrong on substance, judging by the discussion here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/avva/1494111.html

For one thing, let's keep in mind that there is rarely an article that's completely "true" or completely "false". The data is there, interpretations may vary, some factors may not have been documented correctly. Medical science seems to always generalize from a fairly small set of data to the entire population, that may be flawed by itself. But I still think that a huge part of the problem is the media's attention to "not-yet-cooked" medical results ("recent studies show...") and the cut-throat fight for grants where, again, no one is going to give you money for a negative result.
The whole "recursive" thing, again, is based on the same idea of "right" and "wrong", and is totally disgusting in this case (as much as I love recursion in general).
And, yes, I am in a crappy mood today. Figures, I am sure. :-(

I think that the fight for grants and careers is a much larger factor in low quality of the results than anything that media can do. It all comes from the internal dynamics of the field(s) involved. Overall, the media frenzy helps to increase funding and also to attract new researcher (both might actually be unhealthy in terms of pressure to get results and eventual quality, to tell the truth), but otherwise the media frenzy is irrelevant.

In hard sciences it's much better, of course. The significance sections in the introductions and conclusions suck failry often, but the results themselves are correct more often...

> is totally disgusting in this case

I don't see any reason for disgust. The study uses a methodology which is typical for the studies it criticizes. The question about its own validity is, therefore, entirely legitimate.

Yes, but the media is a huge factor in perception of science by - well, even educated people, not to mention the majority. And that's why the damaqge done by media to the society in general is very large: it undoes what colleges and universities try to do (at least the better ones, anyway).

And the disgusting part is, again, the believe in the absolute of "right" and "wrong". The article is certainly right, the numbers are certainly somewhat wrong - let's get over it and get back to life.

the believe = the belief

> The article is certainly right, the numbers are certainly somewhat wrong - let's get over it and get back to life.

My informal observation is that the articles are very often quite wrong in these fields, not just the numbers. And this is something that is (thankfully? because the society cannot correct this without inflicting even more damage?) underreported...

There is a difference between an informal understanding that a lot of published papers are, to a degree, wrong, and screaming in Washington Post "more than 50% of research papers are wrong!" (and not even bothering to say "in medical field" in the title!). People who understand how research process works are very aware of the degree to which the results should (or rather shouldn't) be trusted.

Yeah, her description of current research doesn't seem to fit the described project:

"Currently, we are investigating the effects of social-emotional context on gender-linked spatial cognition using eye-tracking methodology and measuring these effects in women and men, between menstrual cycle phases, and between groups with high or low mood complaints."

This is the other way around: influence of social factors, not of genetics!

Not here, I think:

Alexander, G. M., & Hines, M. (2002). Sex differences in responses to children's toys in a non-human primate (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus). Evolution and Human Behavior, 23., 467-479.

BTW, you might have electronic access to it, if your library subscribes to this journal.

Yep, sure does! I am sending it to you by e-mail! Enjoy, and kiss the monkeys for me :-))

thank you, thank you :-) I'll tell you what it says :-)

it - the monkey?? :-))

The 2 monkeys of the Homo Sapiens species who wrote it...

So the journalist presented it (the article) fairly, the details are correct, except on pp.8-9 the authors admit, that the reason might be color (red for the cooking pot/pan), nevertheless they do not try to separate these factors before proceeding to their conclusions, and mostly ignore the color thing in the conclusion (because the results would be less sexy?). So the paper might be defective (or not), but is the presented fairly. The cute monkeys are on page 7.

The whole sensation in this case disappeared entirely after reading the original paper. If it took us...hmmm.... at most an hour to find and read the paper, why, oh, why we can't have journalists who can do the same??? Sigh....

It would also be nice if journal reviewers would do a better job (it was wrong to publish the original paper in this form).

P.S. E-mailing the lj comments is less than perfect again...

Yeah, except there is this stupid assumption that a review should take 3 hours, or so. I am reviewing a paper now, I spent an hour on it already, and didn't even get to their main results! And you think anyone will appreciate my time at the end?

E-mailing the lj comments is less than perfect again... - yes, I had a misfortune to notice it already.

Of course! Men are always between menstrual cycles, aren't they?

Скорее, в перманентном климаксе... :-)
впрочем, я злобствую. Пусть живут.

Пусть живут. - Amen.

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Male monkeys prefer toy cars, females like dolls

Re: Eurika! :-)

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not my day...

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Чукча скорее слушатель...

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your library subscribes to this journal

Re: your library subscribes to this journal

naively

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reviewers would do a better job

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супер!

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