Women's Brain Reflection

WOMEN'S BRAINS

by Stephen J. Gould in "The Panda's Thumb"   

 1980 (pp 152-159)

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What is the general point that Gould is presenting?

Gould is presenting that even though men, on average, have a larger brain size, women are quickly climbing the ladder as the use of force is dying out. He is trying to show both sides of the story, and encourage the audience to withdraw from bias.

2. What is the general evidence on which that conclusion is based?

They retrieved the data from several studies, including tests on brain size, head size, and multiple opinions.

3. What is the gender of all the researchers producing those data and conclusions?

They are all men, except for one school teacher by the name of Maria.

4. What weaknesses or problems with those data and their interpretation does Gould point out?

They were biased, as they were men, and they didn’t take into account that women are shorter, and their heads are smaller.

5. a) Name the one woman anthropologist mentioned who studied the subject of this essay. b) What did she find after proper correction of Broca's data? c) What were her conclusions from that finding?

a) Maria Montessori b)  She analyzed how no matter what gender, the people with larger brains were smarter.  c) Women, she concluded, were intellectually superior, but men had prevailed heretofore by dint of physical force.

6. What conclusion does Gould reach about the central issue?

a) He had thought the whole ordeal was meaningless, and a waste of time.

7. Make a general statement about the role of bias and assumptions in the collecting, processing, and interpretation of data in scientific studies.

Everyone has a bias for something or another, the matter is not eliminating it, but minimizing it. It plays a role by influencing a persons thoughts in one way or another.

8. What other kinds of bias can you think of that might influence observations and interpretations in science?

The kind that per sways you depending on how many people agree with you such as Race, and Religion.

9. Describe your initial feelings (about the subject, the author, etc.) after reading the first 4 pages.

I was sort of mad at the author for dismaying the women about there smaller head sizes, but relaxed when he took into account -all- of the variables.

10. Describe your feeling after finishing the entire article

I was dismayed, I was hoping for a final answer, but in the end I agreed with the authors point of view; it was a meaningless conclusion.