Scientific Research?
June 1st 2007 09:46
While traipsing round the Net last night I came across a comment on scientific research. The writer said that students were taught to work through famous experiments in order to teach them how to experiment, not because the experiments themselves had value.
When you read the paper you sometimes have to ask whether some students ever learn how to experiment, given the kinds of conclusions the papers report. Perhaps it's the paper itself getting hold of only half the information (which wouldn't be a first) or perhaps it's the fact that some researchers spend a good deal of time trying to prove things that tell us nothing new or valuable at the end of their experiments.
I felt that the former might be the case when reading about the so-called conclusions of some researchers that the relative length of children's index and ring fingers correlated well with how the said children performed on maths and verbal tests.
Boys whose index fingers were shorter than their ring fingers tended to excel at numerics while girls whose ring and index fingers were of similar length tended to do better on verbal tests. Huh?
After this piece of sci-fi, there's a great deal of stuff about testosterone and oestrogen, with testosterone making the boys' index fingers shorter than their ring fingers, and the oestrogen making the girls' index and ring fingers similar in size. Prenatal hormone exposure may also influence brain development. Ummm???
We're told that testosterone promotes the parts of the brain that affects spatial and maths skills, while oestrogen promotes language ability, the researchers say. But isn't it already well known that boys tend to be better at spatial skills and maths, and girls at language, at least in childhood?
Reuters in New York signs off on this article with the following paragraph: "Therefore, finger length may serve as a marker of foetal hormone exposures, and possibly our inborn math and language abilities."
I don't think that sentence tells us a thing. The 'therefore' isn't a follow-up to anything that's been proven, or even stated clearly in the article, and the 'may' is a way of the writer getting him or herself out of trouble if someone quibbles with what's gone before.
When you read the paper you sometimes have to ask whether some students ever learn how to experiment, given the kinds of conclusions the papers report. Perhaps it's the paper itself getting hold of only half the information (which wouldn't be a first) or perhaps it's the fact that some researchers spend a good deal of time trying to prove things that tell us nothing new or valuable at the end of their experiments.
I felt that the former might be the case when reading about the so-called conclusions of some researchers that the relative length of children's index and ring fingers correlated well with how the said children performed on maths and verbal tests.
Boys whose index fingers were shorter than their ring fingers tended to excel at numerics while girls whose ring and index fingers were of similar length tended to do better on verbal tests. Huh?
After this piece of sci-fi, there's a great deal of stuff about testosterone and oestrogen, with testosterone making the boys' index fingers shorter than their ring fingers, and the oestrogen making the girls' index and ring fingers similar in size. Prenatal hormone exposure may also influence brain development. Ummm???
We're told that testosterone promotes the parts of the brain that affects spatial and maths skills, while oestrogen promotes language ability, the researchers say. But isn't it already well known that boys tend to be better at spatial skills and maths, and girls at language, at least in childhood?
Reuters in New York signs off on this article with the following paragraph: "Therefore, finger length may serve as a marker of foetal hormone exposures, and possibly our inborn math and language abilities."
I don't think that sentence tells us a thing. The 'therefore' isn't a follow-up to anything that's been proven, or even stated clearly in the article, and the 'may' is a way of the writer getting him or herself out of trouble if someone quibbles with what's gone before.
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