You may have seen an article being reprinted on major news sites that describes the “evolutionary” and “scientific truth” about women being “bitchy.” It’s appeared in The Atlantic, CNN, Bloomberg Businessweek and elsewhere. It’s since made its way into our Science on Google+ community, and was subsequently removed because the discussion quickly devolved into gender stereotypes and emotional personal arguments that strayed off topic. I am reproducing my response and expanding my argument to show the dangers of bad science reporting. In particular, articles that use social science to validate gender stereotypes only serve to encourage the public to generalise on individual gender experiences. This is the antithesis of social science.
The social sciences use empirical evidence and social theory to show how culture, history and place shapes social experiences of gender. To put it another way, while it’s tempting to think that the way in which you experience gender has some innate and biological purpose, most gender experiences vary according to social class, ethnicity and other variables. My post will show why two contentious fields of social science – sociobiology and evolutionary psychology – appeal to journalists eager to stir up controversy. This is a lazy media route that misses out on the opportunity to advance the public’s understanding of social behaviour.
