Okay, I finally got around to reading the various articles. I now posit two things: a) there is little present understanding of the brain, but one of the few things that is understood is that men and women have, as should be expected, slightly different brains*. For whatever reason. b) there's simply nothing sexist about trying to guess why. Did the mainstream media turn the issue slightly sexist to grab attention? Yep -- witness the Independent's "joke" about map-reading. Does that matter to scientists and should it? Nope. Should anyone intelligent even read that publication or care what it says? Course not. Once again, if scientists considered scientific pressure when publishing or researching (any more than they already do/did -- see Newton et al.) we would never have had Galileo, to use the most famous of many examples. So: should the idiotic, sexist conclusions that people draw matter to scientists? No. (This is the focal point of our disagreement, as I see it, and it's one people have been debating for a long time.) So, with that out of the way, we look for examples of actual sexism from the various scientists. If there is any, it's buried deep, and it cuts both ways. The bit you quoted could be construed that way, but I'd rather not be 21st-century PC, and just construe it as maybe they're trying to contribute to the debate. Never do they claim that one gender is better than the other. (It seems relatively clear and likely to me that men and women excel at different things -- generally -- and that this would naturally have to do with, among other factors, how our brains work. Both are good at lots of necessary things. Am I sexist? If I am, then I guess so are the U Penn people.) *I guess it is pretty incredible how similar they are, really. I couldn't say for sure without looking at parallel cases in other species.
Goddammit I just typed a long response and accidentally deleted it. In summation: Yes and No this question is sexist. It is sexist in this particular study because the bias lies in the data itself. Not that the data is biased towards the truth, but the goal of the research was to find differences or at least ascertain them. These differences are not just in "white matter connection strength" but, as the article itself begins to posit, in the translation of this to actual inferences and the story that this data contributes to. There are many similar studies where the data was not found to be different, but they "found" it this time. The curve fits for the scientists and the audience with respect to the idea that even you yourself already brought to the table, that "as should be expected", there were differences present. I do not think that they intentionally forged any data at all, other than the absolutely typical deletion of outliers, etc., and it may show exactly what they say, however, this does not make it true. Without elaborating as much as I was previously, from a genetic, biological and developmental standpoint with our current knowledge, the differences most likely do not exist, and more so, not with respect to a biological woman and a biological man being innately different in brain function from one another when removed from exterior influences. This is not considered in this study, (so far as we can tell since this isn't completely published) therefore this study doesn't matter, as it does not present a reductionist model with the necessary caveats, but literally men and women in our society. The philosophy of science as an deterministic endgame works wonders for basic chemistry, molecular biology, physics etc., but this determinism deteriorates rather quickly when it exposes itself to seemingly "empirical" viewpoint on a multi-faceted issue wherein the data this analysis is driven by is massive and stems from correlation, as well as being tangential and abstracted to the dialogue it contributes to. Science is not just numbers, they contain no truth in themselves. Science tells a story. What the hell kind of story is it trying to tell here?
I can't help but feel that finding differences is not sexist; assigning comparable worth to those differences would be. Searching for the truth regardless of societal pressure or what the truth may be. Whether differences exist or not is irrelevant to the question of sexism.Without elaborating as much as I was previously, from a genetic, biological and developmental standpoint with our current knowledge, the differences most likely do not exist
What the hell kind of story is it trying to tell here?