Shemeska said:
I'd look at the aims of who is reporting any particular number, what they were asking, how they were asking it, how solid their science and statistics were, if their tested population was representative of the overall population, and what goals they might have in the numbers.
Exactly my concern.
Shemeska said:
but since the Hamer work on the topic I think most of the evidence weighs massively against it being as simple as that. That said, recent work is strongly suggestive of it being a physical thing, with persuasive evidence for an underlying biological influence on prenatal brain development being the root cause (hormonal influence in-utero is one possibility).
No doubt. What is this recent persuasive evidence?
EDIT: The Mercer article appears credible enough from the abstract ... I can't download the article but the sample size is n=6399 women and they rely on interviews and "computer-assisted" interviews. British National population data certianly has the ring of decent sounding science. The Aaron article uses a population n=2185 and is localized to Allegheny, PA. They also rely on interviews. Hmm.
As to the quality of their science, it is difficult to judge without the articles in front of me. Not to be snobby, but neither of these articles were published in Nature or Cell or Science or JAMA or even PNAS here (and I'm sure we both know how PNAS does business).
So far ... not terribly compelling. Sociologists can probably interview and run the stats with as much ability as a biologist. My point here is that, just because a paper is written from "a biological perspective," that doesn't give it any more credibility if they are doing the exact same experiments as the sociologists ... namely interviewing people and collecting statistical data. A lot of laypeople will automatically credit hard science research > soft without looking any further ... including me a lot of the time.
EDIT: and then you go and post a PNAS article. that's totally funny!!! for the non-biologists here: PNAS has a "back-door" through which non-peer reviewed studies can be published if they are sponsored by a member of the special club. a large number of this journal's articles are published this way, and they do not all stand up to the scrutiny of repeatability.
anyway, thanks for indulging me, Shemaska. i'll have to read those other articles and see what i think. whether i find them "persuasive" or not, they don't speak to frequency in populations. in the end, whether the stats are 5% or 15%, any value within this range is impressive and significant, whatever that
true value may be. even 5 people out of every 100 is a lot! alas, i must away from the computer for a while, as much fun as this is!!!
Shemeska said:
I'm more trusting of peer reviewed research suffice to say.
Yup. Me too! That's what I was getting at above in citing my preferences for certain reputable scientific journals. Okay ... must sleep.