Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie

The psychologist and philosopher Cordelia Fine – a perspicacious critic of shoddy, often p-hacked studies that purport to explain behavioural differences between the sexes by straightforwardly linking them to testosterone levels, in the process forgetting about social explanations – has also addressed the issue of males being treated as the ‘default’ in medical research, with females being considered a secondary concern or even an aberration.107 In a 2018 opinion piece in the Lancet, Fine suggested that ‘feminist science’ could redress the balance by highlighting these kinds of omissions. She acknowledges that some will be sceptical: ‘common thinking is that while feminism is all very well for Gender Studies, it should be kept away from science, lest political preferences of how women, men, and the world should be lead to distortion of scientific evidence as to how they actually are.’108 But, she argues, aren’t we all biased anyway? Indeed, she says, ‘everyone has a standpoint; no one enjoys a “view from nowhere”. Opening the door to feminist science doesn’t open the door to political bias. It just means we’re not all looking through the same blurred window.’109