The magazine did not present the actual report on a study, so they were a secondary source. They just presented a brief summary of it along with an interpretation that made me go "What?"
Essentially, what it said was that
Quote:
"It is now proven (wtf? proven after one study?) that there is no inherent difference in intelligence between men and women. The perceived difference is entirely psychological, because women are taught not to believe in themselves."
So far, so good. Except for the "proven" bit, I can buy this. I don't believe there is any great inherent difference in intelligence between men and women. What strikes me as crazy is the actual procedures:
Quote:
"Scientists reached this conclusion after presenting a text to a group of women, stating that women have less advanced brains than men. These groups performed much worse on a mathemathics test than women who were presented with texts saying that men and women are equal in terms of intelligence."
Now, the above statement does not "prove" anything. It doesn't even state anything significant at all about the question at hand. For those of you who haven't spotted the problem, it can be summarised like this: All the above study proves is that the women were influenced by the texts. It does give evidence that yes, believing you will succeed at something will make you succeed better. It does not, however, compare women and men in any significant way. That is, sure, the women's performance changed when they read texts, but it doesn't compare them to men, nor does it tell how good they were to start with. It is entirely possible that the women, in fact, all scored worse than men did on the same test, regardless of the text they read. The study doesn't answer this question, though, because it doesn't mention any men taking the same standardised test.
Furthermore, the study only applies to mathemathics - so that even if there were men involved, it doesn't give any idea of their intelligence, only their capability of abstract thinking - if even that.
Now, I'm not saying that women are less intelligent than men. I'm simply ranting about the fact that this study simply does not give evidence in either direction, and still it is posted in a magazine as though it were fact. This is, therefore, advanced lying through statistics - except it is being presented as cold, hard, scientific fact.
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So I'm gonna just say "I agree."
I agree.