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How Bad Science Stays That Way: Brain Sex, Demarcation, and the Status of Truth in the Rhetoric of Science Author(s): Celeste Condit Source: Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4, The Rhetoric of Science (Autumn, 1996), pp.

83-109 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3886262 Accessed: 11-04-2015 12:38 UTC

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Celeste Condit

How BAD SCIENCE STAYS THAT WAY: BRAIN SEX, DEMARCATION, AND THE STATUS OF TRUTH IN THE RHETORIC OF SCIENCE

T here is a long-standing tension between the scientific community and rheto ricians of science with regard to the status of "truth" and the objectivity of

"knowledge." While neither the scientific community nor the community of rhe- torical scholars can be said to be monolithic in their views, the "scientific" view ascribes objective, permanent, and universal status to the facts produced by scien- tists, whereas the "sophistic" view supported by many rhetoricians describes facts as products of social conditions, and therefore marked by inter-subjectivity, tran- sience, and situational delimitations. The classical scientific account thus sees facts as "discovered," whereas the sophistic rhetorical account portrays them as "con- structed" (e.g., Fuller; Gaonkar; Gusfield; Latour; Latour and Woolgar; Lessl; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey; Taylor, Defining Science).'

As a variety of scholars have suggested, this bifurcation of views can be re- solved into a unified perspective that accounts for the major arguments advanced by those supporting each of the classical orientations (Bambrough; Bernstein; Laudan, "Explaining Success"). It is possible, in other words, to see facts as both objective and situated-both faithful to material realities and responsive to social conditions (Howe and Lyne). From this unified perspective, scientists can make errors either because their contact with asocial material realities are flawed (e.g., "cold fusion") or because there are flaws in their application of the linguistic and social codes that convey the character and meaning of the contact they have made with material realities. This essay explores the persistence of "bad science" of the latter sort by reporting and interpreting an interaction be- tween scientists and a rhetorician, one that occurred when I sent a letter to the journal Science responding to a publication on brain sex research by Gur et al. ("Sex Differences"), which appeared in that journal. I was later interviewed by a reporter for a major newspaper with regard to my letter and the Gur research. The texts for this study therefore include the Gur research article, my letter, a reply to my letter by the authors of the Gur article, the two reviews of my letter solicited by the editor of Science, and the journalistic account of my letter and the scientists' publications.

This essay interprets the response of these scientists and the integration of their work into the public sphere through theories of scientific demarcation. It suggests that "bad science," at least that which supports an ideology that is hegemonic in the social sphere,2 is maintained by a complex relationship be-

RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 83 Volume 26, Number 4 Fall 1996

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tween science and society in which a set of scientists demarcate an autonomous sphere of action through which they seek simultaneously to insulate themselves from social control and to exercise social influence. The insulation of the "scien- tific sphere" closes off consideration of alternative hypotheses and methodological possibilities, while the integration of scientists into the social sphere in the role of "conveyers of truth" amplifies their scientific products into public facts, even when those products are admitted to lack the standing of full scientific facts.

The treatment of brain sex research by the reviewers of my letter and the authors of the scientific research illustrates the tensions between the sophistic and scientific views of the products of scientific research. Before addressing the case of brain sex, therefore, it is necessary to explain briefly the tensions over rhetoric and truth that ground the controversy.

What is Truth? (in 500 words or less) I have neither the space nor the interest to give here a full proof of the relation- ship of rhetoric to objectivity presumed by this study. It is necessary that I ex- plain the perspective from which I am operating, but to provide an appropriate theoretical treatment would displace the case study-a form of deferral that seems all too prevalent in rhetorical studies, and far too costly from a feminist perspec- tive. Consequently, I will summarize rather than prove (though the theoretical under-pinnings of my perspective are available elsewhere: see Condit, "Crafting Virtue" and "Kenneth Burke"; Railsback, "Beyond Rhetorical Relativism"; and others working with related assumptions, e.g., Bernstein; Laudan "Explaining Success").

A major intellectual current of the twentieth century has been an exploration of the ways in which language operates as a structural-material network with its own internal dynamics, such as a tendency toward hierarchy/perfection, bivalence, and reification through the copula "is" (Condit, "Kenneth Burke"). Observing the strong power of these dynamics has led many scholars to conclude that state- ments have meaning only with reference to this internal linguistic system. Con- sequently, they argue that any claims toward factual status deriving from the "referentiality" of language are misleading. Words do not refer to an external world, but rather they reflect an arrangement of the linguistic network. Some scholars have tied this linguistic network back into the social body. Language usage thus references social arrangements (e.g., access to economic resources or social status), rather than material realities (e.g., "the sun"). Both the socio- linguistic and purely structuralist accounts of language are compatible with a sophistic view of rhetoric and with the sophistic rhetorician's view of scientific facts as social constructions.

There are strong reasons, however, for avoiding an acceptance of the equation of rhetoric and sophistic. This equation discourages rhetoricians from analyzing the possibility that scientific accounts are false. If the material realities of hu- man bodies are irrelevant to the question of brain sex, there is no reason for brain

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CELESTE CoNmITmHow BAD SCIENCE STAYS THAT WAY 85

sex researchers who are socially advantaged by dimorphic accounts of brain sex to choose polymorphic accounts of brain sex. Thus, for feminists, there are strong reasons for preferring accounts of reality that retain the possibility of portraying dimorphic accounts of brain sex as "false" in a strong sense.3 There are also a host of standard philosophical arguments in favor of retaining some modified account of the descriptive and moral functions of language (Bambrough; Cherwitz and Hikins).

It is not necessary to choose between the insights of theories of reference and structural theories of language. It is possible to fuse the accounts offered by traditional materialists and by contemporary sophists. That is, it is possible to portray language usages, including statements of "fact," as being responsive to a complex interplay among the three components of external material forces, so- cial forces, and linguistic structuration. Such a view of the source of meaning- fulness in statements produces an account of rhetoric as the deployment of ethos, pathos, and logos, where logos can be substantive and reasonable without re- quiring syllogistic rationality. This is to accept a fuller vision of rhetoric, that built not exclusively on the sophists, but upon a combination of Aristotelian and Isocratean insights as well (see Poulakos for the vision of these categories em- ployed here).

Healing the Ramistic dissection that assigned style to rhetoric and logic and truth to philosophy (and later to science) changes the scope available for inves- tigations of the ways in which science is rhetorical. No longer need the would- be rhetorician of science choose between the belief that science is not rhetorical or that science has no denotative moment. Instead a full rhetoric has accounts to give of parts of the process of denotation. Rather than merely reversing the "ei- ther truth or sophistry" divide offered by traditional epistemologies, a full rheto- ric can be described as a particular combination of truth and style. Such an ac- count of rhetoric assumes that both "material reality" and the complex network of language have their own internal structure and forces, and that these are mu- tually interactive and responsive. From this view, to say that a statement is "true" is not to say that it offers the one and only possible description of an external phenomenon. Rather it is to say that a statement employs the linguistic structure of a community to make an appropriately tight analogy to the phenomenon be- ing addressed. From this view, there are false findings and wrong answers, but in general truth admits of degrees. Some accounts are flat-out wrong ("the sun rotates around the earth"), but also some accounts are relatively poor ("the earth is round") and others more rich ("the earth is an oblate spheroid").

From this tripartite account of the sources of meaningfulness, scientific con- clusions can, at times, offer us useful information, solidly based in a particular kind of contact with the material world and appropriate linguistic forms. Scien- tific findings are, however, also open to challenge-not only for evident failings in the practices by which they contact the material world (e.g. errors in labora- tory procedure), but also for linguistic insufficiencies. Testing of would-be sci-

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entific claims on both dimensions is necessary because the truth of a scientific claim is a product not of the interface of an objective language with an objective material reality-nor merely a product of discursively mediated social forces- but rather it is the interface of a socially imbricated linguistic code structure with a selected material reality. Bad science can be bad, therefore, either be- cause its material procedures are faulty or because its linguistics are errant.4 While problems in material procedures will be highly field-dependent, the lin- guistic problems are more general. The language that scientists choose to use to construct their hypotheses, frame their research designs, or convey their results may contain inappropriately narrow, slanted, or misleading components. While all members of a culture may not have the tools to access the pre-selected mate- rial reality in the ways in which scientists do, all members of the culture have access to the code structure.

Scientists have attempted to sidestep the linguistic problems in scientific re- search by building disciplinary languages independent of common language codes.5 These specialized codes are nonetheless accessible to any interested party willing and able to engage in study, even though the materiel for scientific ac- cess to the selected material reality is not. More importantly for feminists and others interested in the interfaces between science and society, scientists cannot be completely successful in relying on an exclusively disciplinary code, espe- cially if their science is to have common purchase. For scientific findings to be culturally employable, the language of science must make use of the common language. In some arenas, scientists are largely successful in fiating this need for linkage through the production of technologies. Technologies like the VCR can be employed (more or less well) by those who do not understand electronics. However, in regions where science would work on the social basis of society (explaining the universe, influencing social policies on crime control, account- ing for race and gender), such a side-step cannot be successful. In such cases, in order for the scientific conclusion to be understood-to make literal sense to the society's members-there must be a bridge with common language. Scientists must therefore incorporate the common idioms into their language in order to have influence.6

I call this approach to the rhetoric of science a "broad" program because it requires incorporation of the material, social, and linguistic components of sci- ence. It requires a full-bodied view of rhetoric as including ethos, pathos, and logos. A rhetoric of science that would apply and flesh out these broad assump- tions is methodologically demanding. In contrast to the "anthropological" stance of ignorance of subject matter and practice advocated by Latour and Woolgar, this methodology requires that one understand sufficiently the scientific claims being made qua science. Such understanding is made necessary because the goal of this program in the rhetoric of science is not simply to explain how scientific facts get made, but rather to judge the facts and influence their re- construction by using rhetorical methods to reveal particular linguistic inadequa-

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CELESTE CoNDIT/How BAD SCIENCE STAYS THAT WAY 87

cies in the accounts offered by scientists in specific cases. This broad program suggests that the work of rhetoricians of science should, indirectly or directly, reform bad science. It suggests that understanding the social biases we harbor can help us to recognize linguistic biases in research and produce scientific find- ings less hobbled by linguistic short-comings, and thus more appropriate for our frames and interests.

This is a "broad" approach to the rhetoric of science, therefore, not only be- cause it sees rhetoric as richly deploying the resources of ethos, pathos, and logos, but also because it requires a repudiation of the monastic definition of academic practices that has been identified with the philosophical tradition. A full rhetoric of science not only analyzes the deficiencies of particular rhetorics of science for publication in academic journals, but also seeks to change errant practices by engaging in public and interdisciplinary discourse about those prac- tices. This broad program for the rhetoric of science thus requires that one be not only a rhetorician, but a rhetor.

Brain Sex For the past two decades, a variety of feminists have worked to demonstrate fallacies in the research of those who have purported to use the scientific method to declare that women are fundamentally different from men (Bleier; Haraway; Hubbard; Tavris). Theirs has been a losing battle. Today, the belief that women are fundamentally different from men is at least as strong, in both public and scientific spheres, as it was when Bleier began this line of research. The rea- sons for this failure are in part a product of social forces independent of basic practices of science. I contend, however, that a major reason for the failure to broaden visions of sex difference is that the biological research in this area is "bad science."

Bad science occurs when a set of research practices produce, in a sustained fashion, conclusions that are insufficiently rich to account for the material phe- nomenon under investigation in terms of the resources available in the linguistic code and with the available scientific resources. The reasons why I believe that human brain sex research constitutes science that is more impoverished than it ought to be will become evident as the essay proceeds. The goal of the essay is not to argue this point explicitly, but rather to describe a set of rhetorical forces that help "bad science" to resist revision. To begin, however, we must note the character of brain sex research and track the sources of its deficiency.

I. Hypotheses About Brain Sex A spate of biologically based empirical brain sex research has been produced and published in the past decade. There is a fairly wide variety of methods and objects to this research: glucose metabolism counts (Gur et al. "Sex Differences"), cerebral blood flow (Gur et al., "Sex and Handedness"), and measures of vari- ous volumes (Witelson; Allen et al.) and morphologies (Allen and Gorski). How-

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ever, these research programs all share a central framing hypothesis, that "men and women's brains are significantly different." This research hypothesis is clearly drawn from commonsense understandings of the nature of the dispute about male and female sex and gender. In the public sphere, that dispute has usually been framed as a question as to whether women and men are equal in capacities and therefore ought to be treated as equal by law. While historically this ques- tion arose as a contest between feminists and anti-feminists, today there are feminists who take both sides on the issue. Liberal feminists argue that men and women are fundamentally similar and ought to have the same opportunities avail- able to them (Jaggar), while cultural feminists argue that men and women are fundamentally different in their capacities and ought to be treated differently, although women should not be treated less well than men (Foss and Foss).

That the scientists currently producing brain sex research rely on these domi- nant public frames when formulating their hypotheses is evident in their own accounts of their practices. In reply to my challenges, Gur et al. responded with an appeal to what "makes sense" in common understanding. They replied that, "It made sense to us to ask the simple question of whether men and women are different, albeit 'on average"' before asking other questions. In an interview for Newsweek magazine they likewise described their interests from a common sense background. Newsweek (Begley 51) reports that "The pair got into the field of sex differences when they were struck by their own temperamental differences. He is more intrigued by numbers and details, she likes to work with people; he reacts to a setback by taking a deep breath and moving on, she analyzes it." These scientists thus decided that the relevant research question was whether or not their own perceived differences could be verified by their science, that is, whether gender was monomorphic (no differences between men and women) or dimorphic (men and women are different).

The choice of this hypothesis is not, however, a necessary choice, nor even the most academically sophisticated choice. As opposed to the "common sense" of the public arena, in the academic realm a third option is widely viewed as offer- ing more rich and precise conceptualizations of gender. Gender deconstructionists argue that sex and gender are inadequately understood via a bipolar model (But- ler; Kessler; Moi; Tavris). They suggest that human sexuality is multi-dimen- sional and that the bipolar model is an insufficient, procrustean cultural imposi- tion upon a biological foundation that is highly diverse. To illustrate the ways in which human biology is sexually diverse, gender deconstructionists draw atten- tion to a variety of biological phenomena. They point out the biological facts: first, that XY and XX chromosome types do not exhaust the genetic character of human beings (there being XXY, XYY, XXX types as well as various mosaics with other multiples); second, that chromosomal sex and morphological sex are not always the same; and third, that some individuals are "intersexed." Most importantly, advocates of the gender diversity perspective emphasize that all measurements of biological genders are wide-ranging distributions rather than

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CELESTE CoNDIT/How BAD SCIENCE STAYS THAT WAY 89

simple dichotomous qualities or quantities. Consequently, most men and women fall in a common numerical range on these measured quantities. Finally, gender deconstructionists also suggest that if recent research indicating that there are biological substrates to homosexuality is further substantiated, this means that there are at least four biological genders.

Gender deconstructionists conclude from these biological facts that the choice to raise the categories of "male" and "female" to central cultural facts (i.e. through the construction of a fundamentally gendered language) is a cultural option, not a biological predestination. The culture might, for example, make a four-part gender scheme central (male-homosexual, female-homosexual, male-hetero- sexual, female-heterosexual). It might make individual variation across ranges central. Or, it might hierarchicalize intersexed individuals as the "most com- plete" human beings (as some cultures appear to have done), as opposed to re- ducing such persons to a single sex through surgery and hormones, as our cul- ture prefers to do (Kessler). Gender deconstructionists conclude further that there is an almost infinite range of cultural genderings of human beings possible, and they tend to suggest that promoting diversity of gender is preferable to reinforc- ing the cultural categories of "male" and "female" that have been inherited from other cultural formations. Gender deconstructionists have in these ways col- lected substantial reasons for testing the hypothesis that human sexuality is multimorphic (rather than monomorphic, and rather than or in addition to being dimorphic). If the multimorphic hypothesis has reasonable potential to be sup- ported by the material facts of biology and is also linguistically more rich and appropriate to an increasingly diverse social body, then to continue to ignore that hypothesis constitutes bad scientific procedure.

It is possible that some scientists interested in brain sex research have enter- tained the possibility of gender diversity and resisted the proposition of gender dimorphism. There is, however, no published evidence that would suggest that human brain sex researchers have entertained structured polymorphism as a hy- pothesis.7 There are a variety of reasons for this. The most important is that biological scientists are more likely to be familiar with the public debate be- tween those supporting a monomorphic view and those defending the older di- morphic view than they are to be familiar with academic work in the humanities. In their reply to my letter, Gur et. al noted that "'gender deconstruction,' re- ferred to in Condit's letter, held no meaning for us." Simple exposure therefore is probably the major determinant of the linkage between scientific practice and the hegemonic public ideologies.

Exclusive exposure to the public accounts of human sexuality appears, how- ever, also to be reflective of a shared belief in one version of that ideology (di- morphism) among those currently publishing most brain sex research. That such a shared belief exists among the current controlling members of the brain sex research area shows up in the selection of studies for publication and the ways in which these studies are framed. The published studies on human brain sex tend

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to be cast as reporting that there are differences in men's and women's brains. This frame is used even when the overwhelming results of the study demon- strate that differences are minor and subsidiary to similarities. Gur et al., for example, close their article by noting that "the brains of men and women are fundamentally more similar than different" (530), but they have framed the study as proof of dichotomy, rather than as proof of similarity (as in their title, "Sex Differences").

There is no scientific reason why findings of "no difference" or of polymor- phism could not be reported as a central research frame. Both the topics of "dif- ference" and "fundamental similarity" are viewed as worthy of publication in a variety of scientific disciplines on a variety of topics, and in an earlier era were published in brain sex research (Byne and Bleier). Scientific articles focusing on sexual polymorphism have been published in other research areas (Gowaty and Bridges). 8 Moreover, there is no scientific reason why the location of a few isolated examples of dimorphic difference should count as fundamental dimor- phism or as innately important. This is especially true given that any fishing expedition for differences in means set at the x=.05 level is likely to find differ- ences in 1 out of 20 cases merely by chance, and many of these studies have measured multiple means in order to locate differences in only a few means.

The linguistics of hypothesis-formation are therefore crucial. Why is it that the hypotheses for brain sex research are framed in such a way that any finding of dichotomous difference outweighs all findings of similarity? Even were one to work within the confines of the monomorphic vs. dimorphic hypothesis, an alternative way of framing the research would be to ask whether the number of differences in male and female brains is greater than the number of similarities; that is, on total, are male and female brains more similar or more different? Such a frame would produce reverse results. Therefore, the process of hypothesis for- mulation has been such that it favors not only a particular range of alternatives (monomorphism vs. dimorphism; excluding the consideration of polymorphism), but also a particular ideological outcome (dimorphism). It is not solely exposure that accounts for this framing, but also these scientists' own prior beliefs-that any differences in brain sex must manifest themselves in putatively significant behavioral differences between those persons assigned to the two genders (rather than, say, merely differences in the reproductive systems; see discussion below). My effort to introduce an alternate perspective revealed strong control mecha- nisms against both outsiders and consideration of alternative possibilities.

II. Science Resists Critique Scientists seeking to understand biological sex differences should, according to the tenets of the prevailing objectivist philosophy of science, test multiple hy- potheses about sex. They should not merely test the culturally hegemonic propo- sitions of sexual dimorphism or monomorphism, but also the other possibility of morphological diversity. In response to the publication of the Gur et al. analysis

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CELESTE CONDIT/HOW BAD SCIENCE STAYS THAT WAY 91

of glucose metabolism, I made that suggestion in a letter submitted to Science (see appendix I; note that the journal specifies a preference for a length of 250- 500 words for such letters). If scientists were operating on fully open and objec- tive approaches to the search for knowledge, one would expect the response to such a letter to be "you're right, we need to test that hypothesis too." The scien- tists responding to my letter saw my suggestions not as an alternate hypothesis, but rather as an illegitimate ideological attack.

The response of the reviewers, author, and editorial board of Science was to delegitimate the need to consider the hypothesis of gender diversity in a variety of ways. Most notably, they refused to publish the letter.9 I would not wish to claim that this was an indefensible act. There are certainly flaws in my letter. I would rewrite it, given the chance. Moreover, it was probably enormously naive to believe that I could convey sufficient information about gender diversity in a short letter to convince anyone of anything. These difficulties notwithstanding, the replies offered by the reviewers and original authors are instructive because they reveal not only that these scientists responded negatively to my proposal, but also how they framed the proposal so as to see it as illegitimate, and not worth incorporating into a research program. Because Science and the authors refused to make it possible, I cannot reprint their responses in full here,10 but they can be summarized in three categories: 1) the author of the proposal is too emotional, 2) the view advanced in the proposal is ideological, and 3) our design and methods do not allow this option.

Reviewer #2 advanced the argument that the critique was "emotional." As evidence of this, s/he cited word choices that I employed, specifically "rather banal finding," "relatively minor biological differences," and "unreflected-upon ideological framework." While it is clear that these word choices were critical, and that they reflected a negative judgment of the conclusions offered in the Gur et al article, the equation of critique with emotionality would seem to be inaccurate. At the least, this equation would rule out any form of critical com- mentary from scientific argument. This is obviously not a general rule in sci- ence. Many letters to Science contain not only critique, but also emotional lan- guage. For example, a letter complaining about the funding available for biolo- gists concluded that "the extremely low likelihood of permitting excellent re- search ideas to be pursued at the present time implies that many outstanding peer-reviewed projects are now being denied funding.... Breakthroughs in biotechnology that have signaled major advances for mankind and the U.S. economy could also be delayed" (Mandel). On other topics, emotional lan- guage in published letters has included, in recent issues, "heartbreakingly inad- equate" (Kramer), "the speed and scope of this exciting initiative" (Cohen and Emanuel), "valuable and informative" (Olshevsky), and "exaggerated statements and unwarranted extrapolations" (Barrett). Thus, the use of critical or even emotional language does not seem, per se, to disqualify an argument from ap- pearing in a scientific venue. Instead, the acceptability of such usage seems to be tied to the topic and the status of the person using it.

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As a consequence of this reply, I surveyed letters published in the last two years of Science to explore what rules for use of emotional language might exist in this genre. I found that three types of emotional language appeared in these letters, the rules for which might be summed up in this way: one may use praise descriptors of other scientists, one may use language critical of those who would withhold resources from scientists, or one may use critical and even emotional language in general if one holds a highly visible position in science.

The rejection of this letter on this particular ground may have been influenced by its female authorship. In the public sphere, ridicule of women's emotionality has been a long-standing strategy used by men to counter women's critique of reigning gender ideologies. However, the reviewer's perception of relatively mild critical language as "emotional" suggests that any critique of gender research that challenged exclusive reliance on a bipolar model would be interpreted by this reviewer as "emotional" and non-objective. Thus, any critique of the hegemonic ideology as it manifests itself in the hypotheses and research on gen- der is ruled out via this mechanism.

The second reason for rejection of the critical response letter was the assertion that the letter was "ideological." This objection showed up in both reviewer #2's comments and in the reply by the authors. The authors did a responsible and credible job of trying to reply to the letter. Their tone was accommodative and they sought outside help to deal with the material with which they were unfamil- iar-the concept of gender deconstruction. Unfortunately but perhaps predict- ably, they were linked with humanist scholars who merely parroted the hegemonic ideology rather than with those who were experts in the area of gender research and therefore capable of assessing or accurately explaining the material. Gur et al. referred to a humanistic journal editor who took a position that was even less ideologically self-reflective than the scientists themselves. Professor D.I. Grossvogel of Cornell was introduced as an expert witness on deconstructive theory and was quoted as saying that

Condit seemingly fails to comprehend a fundamental difference between scientists and politically-motivated sociologists: the scientist begins re- search without knowing, until research evidence confirms it, whether a particular hypothesis has any validity. On the other hand the ideologi- cally-motivated social scientist knows beforehand what the argument's conclusion will be and the body of that argument devolves from the con- clusion. The fact that this is the norm for social scientists with a political agenda (a norm justified by that agenda) does not justify attacking those who, seeking a non-determined truth, do not reason that way.

Grossvogel hereby ruled out any "attack" (i.e. critique) by nonscientists because, like Condit, they are all inherently "strapped within this ideological straightjac- ket," whereas scientists are free from ideology.

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One ought not reject Grossvogel's claim that Condit is ideological. Like ev- eryone else in this exchange, she has a set of beliefs about biological sex that she would like to see explored. However, Grossvogel is clearly and stubbornly wrong when he asserts that Condit is unconcerned about the niceties of scien- tific verification, whereas the scientists are concerned solely about the niceties of scientific verification. My letter explicitly requested exploration of gender diversity issues-it did not assert as an established fact any parameters of gen- der diversity.

Even the scientific reviewers recognized the falsity of Grossvogel's implication that "humanism=mere ideology' whereas "science=mere objective truth." The re- viewers conceded that "science= objectivity plus some (minor) ideological compo- nent." Reviewer #2, for example, said 'The point of this commentary is that one's assumptions, both explicit and implicit, have a powerful role in guiding the kinds of questions asked and the interpretation of the findings. This is a valid point." This concession, however, did not cost these scientists much. The reviewer argued that the same point had been raised with regard to research on male homosexual desire and cited a humanistic journal. He concluded, therefore, that "Condit's comments adds [sic] nothing to what has already been published on this topic."'I The scientist's concession that ideology is involved therefore made no difference. It denied the appropriateness of applying that insight in evaluating individual pieces of research, and it rerouted publication of such analyses to humanistic journals where they would not be read by many scientists. From this frame, "science" may include a minor ideological component, but because humanism lacks the scientific component it is mere ideology, and therefore does not deserve a hearing, or even entry as a hypoth- esis in a scientific journal.

The most ideologically self-aware of these scientists therefore conceded an ideological component to their work (though they used the common language term "bias" rather than the more technical term "ideology"); however, they dis- missed the significance of that component, and they still rejected analytic criti- cism as merely ideological, and therefore not worth attending to as a regular part of science. From the pattern of letters appearing in Science it appears that such criticism can only be entertained when it is accompanied by countervailing natu- ralistic data. Letters that address problems in research presented in Science are accompanied by counter-vailing data from other scientists who present results from other empirical studies. This requirement functions as an extraordinarily powerful gate-keeping device. Only scientists have this type of data, and they are unlikely to be well-informed on extant humanist, social scientific, and criti- cal theories.

The definition of worthy critique as requiring accompaniment by scientific data insures that only other scientists working in the area can publish criticism of scientific research under the imprimatur of a scientific journal. All other ana- lytic critique of research, and therefore all critique by humanists, social scien- tists, and critical theorists, is thereby ruled out of consideration by Science, even

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in a "letter." Publication in other venues (such as Rhetoric Society Quarterly) immediately delegitimates an analysis as merely ideological.

The final basis on which the critique of brain sex research was rejected was portrayed as a technical ground. Reviewer #1 and the authors argued that "sug- gestions for alternate or more exploratory data analysis schemes, while of in- terest, may not be possible given the sample size and experimental design." There are two components to this analysis that deserve attention. In the first place, one should note that the whole basis of the response letter was that the experimental design is problematic. While one cannot object if some brain sex research tests a bipolar model, one can well object if this is the only hypothesis that is tested, since it rules out the possibility that multivalent gendering could be found even if it existed. This is especially of concern given that social scien- tific studies have shown that multipolar gendering may give false positive re- sults to bipolar research (e.g. Condit and Williams). Further, as many scientists themselves have observed, scientific research is too often driven by the techni- cal tools available. It is a widely accepted (if too rarely followed) proposition that scientific research should be driven by conceptualizations (and the data that it produces/that it supports), not by tools and method. Therefore, even on scientific grounds a critique of hypothesis selection is inappropriately rejected by a claim that the experimental design does not permit such a hypothesis- such a rejection puts the cart before the horse. The experimental design should be shaped after hypothesis formation. Experimental design should not deter- mine hypothesis formation.

In practice it is frequently the case that experimental methods, including sta- tistical dogmas, drive the formation of research hypotheses. Reviewer #1's fo- cus on the problem of using "exploratory data analysis schemes" was more ex- plicitly articulated by the authors when they argued that using factor analysis and cluster analysis would have been inappropriate because "given their highly exploratory nature, safeguards will be needed to protect from Type I (experi- menter-wise) error. We used design and analysis procedures, such as testing for statistical significance of differences between group means, that are rather stan- dard research tools in our field." The authors were correct in indicating that they were using tools that are widely accepted by scientists (both natural and social scientists). Concerns about introduction of biases are widely articulated in basic statistics books, and concern about Type I and Type II errors consume substan- tial space in most books. This, moreover, is not an unreasonable concern. Espe- cially with regard to a topic as ideologically pre-loaded as gender research, one would hope that the researchers are not introducing strong biases based on their predispositions within the hypothesis design (for example, one hopes that the reading of the measurements of glucose metabolism was done in a double-blind fashion so that the experimenters were not able to skew the measurements based on subject genders). All the same, such concerns about statistically induced or experimenter-induced errors can be taken too far, and it may well be the case

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that the Cartesian emphasis on certainty has led to an overweighting of these issues. Concern with such errors becomes overweighting when it leads to a fail- ure to test some conceptual possibilities merely on the grounds that errors might be introduced which would require complicated procedures to address. In that case, our knowledge is shaped not by the character of the world around us, but by our fear of error. This would lead us to conclude that overly simplistic analy- ses were "truths" when more complex accounts would offer more faithful repre- sentations of reality, but the latter are ruled out because they are more techni- cally demanding.

This excessive reductivism is clearly illustrated in the Gur et al. study. Visual inspection of their "gender typical" score (their Figure 3) shows that the over- whelming majority of men and women have the same glucose metabolism rates in various parts of their brains. Only 5 out of 25 women have scores that are not matched by some man and only 11 out of 37 men have scores that are not the same as some woman. Most men and women are therefore similar. For the aver- age person, there is no difference between men and women; only outlier (ex- treme) men and women are different from each other. Gur et al. themselves note that more than a quarter of the research participants are not what they call "gen- der typical." Highlighting these direct features of the data would lead to identifi- cation of the overwhelming similarities between women and men, but instead Gur et al. offer this linguistic frame: "the findings indicate sex differences in the regional topography of resting cerebral metabolic activities." They arrived at that articulation of the meaning of the data through a reductive statistical proce- dure. They reduced all men and women to a mean, rather than treating the popu- lation distribution as a set of interesting variations. They defended this reductive interpretation on the basis of the normalcy of the use of means as a statistical tool and of the use of tests of statistical significance of means as indications of population distributions as the gold standard of science. A focus on the character of population distributions instead might lead to different conclusions, ones more open to the possibility of what in other arenas has been demonstrated to be the simultaneous unity and diversity of biological life.

In sum, the response of Science to a critique of the research on brain sex they had published suggests three trends that ought to be attended to in analyses of science and efforts to correct biased scientific findings. First, this incident sup- ports previous feminist theorizations (Farnham) that have suggested there are substantial rhetorical defenses in place to protect scientific research that is bi- ased in favor of the status quo. As Taylor ("Defining the Scientific Community") and others (e.g., Laudan, Working Papers) have demonstrated, those scientists who wish to protect and defend their research perspectives can delegitimate al- ternatives by demarcating them as outside science. These brain sex researchers did so by portraying alternative hypotheses as mere ideology and by perceiving their presenters as "emotional" rather than logical or scientific. This tendency is strengthened by publication norms that require the inclusion of scientific data

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for validation of any critique (except if launched by someone who has already established high standing within the scientific field).

This set of rhetorical defenses not only delegitimates challenging arguments, it also rules out the participation of non-scientists. The results of this exclusion, however, are paradoxical, at least in cases where scientific research has direct cultural relevance. Even as demarcating discourse sets science off from society and the rest of the academy in terms of agents and institutions, it simultaneously works to confine science to the society's dominant hypotheses, rather than to a broader and more creative range of insights. Scientists may be socially and structurally arranged to be closer in thought to "the average citizen" than they are to their colleagues in the humanities and social sciences only a few build- ings down the street. As a consequence, a rich flow of ideas between the wings of the academy is cut off (in both directions). This paradox suggests that there is a broad and general need for rhetoricians to re-orient understandings of sci- entific procedure so that both scientists and the public comprehend that the linguistic component of science requires analysis to the same extent as does laboratory work, and that scientists are not the only (and perhaps not always the best) sources of that analysis.

Second, the results of this study suggest that key sites for this form of analysis are the linguistic components of hypothesis formation. Sandra Harding (Science Question) has previously suggested that the selection of hypotheses and research tools both constitute major loci where biases can be introduced into science. Latour has urged us to recall that science is never an accomplished fact, but rather an on-going process of fact construction. This incident allows us to com- bine those two insights: hypothesis and tool selection are not one-time inci- dents, but on-going decision processes that must be continually remade and de- fended. Bad science may occur where hypotheses are drawn unreflectively from a hegemonic ideology and where resistance to alternate hypotheses is particu- larly strong. In the case of this brain sex research, hypotheses have been formu- lated such that difference is framed only as dimorphic, such that any minor lo- catable difference counts as substantive and important, and such that averages are taken as signifying essential differences. Each of those linguistic choices is insufficient and biased.

Finally, this research study highlights the linkages between the choice of sta- tistical methods and the linguistic options available for conclusions. A variety of scholars have previously indicated that statistical tools harbor biases (Hawkins). This study emphasizes the extent to which concern with Type I error may func- tion to produce overly simplistic analyses of complex natural phenomena. To the extent that concern with Type I error discourages multifactorial research in favor of reductive comparison of means, scientists employing these methods may be driven to present a world view dominated by bipolar thinking and lan- guage. To the extent that research hypotheses are covertly driven by what are taken to be "standard methods," which are implicitly biased toward bimodal

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thought and speaking patterns, methodological norms may be inappropriately restricting our understanding of the diversity of the material world. Selection of appropriate statistical tools should not, therefore, be determined merely by what is "standard" in a science at a given moment, but rather be interrogated for the richness of the linguistic options they make available. This clearly requires com- plicated multifactorial assessments entailing knowledge of the material case under investigation, the statistical methods available, and the relevant linguistic issues. Tightly demarcated scientific spheres mitigate against the type of inter-disci- plinary work that would enable such analyses.

My encounter with Science in these ways suggests that while some scientists are willing to admit that ideology leaks into science, the current demarcation of the scientific realm, which is in turn to some extent based on a faulty bifurcation of linguistics and "truth," insures that there is no systematic way in which that leakage can be assessed, attended to, or incorporated into the scientific research and review process. Where scientific practices are ideologically faulty, reforms are delayed or forestalled. The consequences of this resistance to external input are heightened by the way in which the demarcated sphere of science is reinte- grated into the public realm through the mass media.

III. The Mass Media Close the Circle: Ideology as Science At least two major views of the relationship between science and society exist in current academic literature. One group has attended carefully to the ways in which scientists "demarcate" their work from non-science (Taylor Defining Sci- ence). In contrast, a variety of feminist scholars, along with rhetoricians of sci- ence (Latour; Laudan; Haraway), have argued for the need to dissolve the dis- tinctions between science and society, suggesting that these boundaries are mis- leading because science and society act in concert to produce scientific/social results, through both funding and discursive mechanisms. These apparently com- peting views can be seen as compatible within a model that conceives of (some) scientists as working more and less successfully to construct rhetorically a sphere in which they have complete autonomy and control, while simultaneously seek- ing to infuse their influence in the broader public realm through a variety of means including public advocacy. The model presumes that demarcation of a separate sphere can never be completely accomplished, but that relative increases in power are possible through simultaneous efforts to preserve autonomy within the demarcated sphere and to influence inputs to that sphere through public cred- ibility and advocacy. Juxtaposing these scientists' replies to the letter on brain sex with their participation in journalistic accounts of brain sex in the mass me- dia highlights the ways in which scientific findings can simultaneously be de- marcated from and integrated within the broader society.

A variety of research projects have demonstrated that, by and large, media reporting of scientific findings is uncritical, treating the results as unquestion- able truths and deifying the scientists themselves (Hall et al; Nelkin). The case

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of brain sex research provides a clear illustration. A reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution visited me shortly after I had mailed my letter to Science. I gave him my response letter and spent over an hour explaining to him the problems with the brain sex research (basically as I described them above). About two weeks later, his article appeared in the newspaper (Hendrick). In contrast to claims made by feminist critiques of most media treatments of gender, Hendrick's article portrayed women's brains as superior to men's brains on all graphed quali- ties. In spite of this adaptation to prior feminist complaints about the media's denigration of women, Hendrick nonetheless portrayed the natural scientists as offering truth and Condit (described as a "behavioral scientist") as emotional and ideological. He wrote that

She was so upset at a recent article in the journal Science that she fired off a letter to the editor, even though it was done by a husband-wife team, Drs. Ruben C. Gur and Raquel E. Gur of the University of Pennsylvania, who are considered among the top brain experts in the world.... The Gur study that raised Condit's hackles offered convincing evidence that men and women handle emotions differently because of differences in brain structure.

Hendrick here not only repeated and amplified the scientist's equation of criti- cism with emotionality and scientists with truth, he also set up the semiotic equivalence critic=female=emotional (ideological) < scientists=male/ female=objective.12 Also, like these scientists, Hendrick emphasized difference alone, ignoring all of the statements that indicated that these differences are minor exceptions to basic patterns of similarity.

Hendrick did not simply report and repeat the scientific studies; he made ex- plicit and factualized the social implications that the scientists had only pointed toward. Gur et al., for example, had concluded their article in Science by noting that "Nonetheless, the results suggest neural substrates for domains of human behavior related to both cognitive and emotional processing. They support a neurobiologic explanation of some sex differences in these behavioral dimen- sions and thus may help to explain sex-related differences in behavior" (531). This statement makes a clear suggestion that the study is related to behavioral differences. This suggestion is, however, unsupported-the authors admit in the previous sentence that the study itself concerned only "topography of the human brain while it is 'idling"' (531), and there are no citations to gender differences in behavior listed in the references. The authors could assert these unsupported social implications because they chose to do so in a single paragraph at the close of the article-a place often reserved in scientific writing for speculations and implications. As a component of a scientific article, it is a small and non-defini- tive portion.

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In presenting the study to the public, Hendrick remedies the scientists' disciplinarily imposed modesty. He claims that the Gur et al. study provided "convincing evidence that men and women handle emotions differently because of differences in brain structure." This statement is patently untrue. The study offered some evidence that there are mean differences in the brain, but it pre- sented no evidence that this is related to putative differences in the handling of emotions by men and women (differences which are themselves also unproved). Building on his interviews with the brain sex researchers, Hendrick further claims that differences in the cingulate gyrus "may help women react with frowns, scowls, rather than fists or physical action," a rank speculation that is treated on a par with the scientific findings of minor basic differences. (It is also internally incoherent: if, as the Gur data indicate, most women and men score in the same region on brain measurements, the fact that use of fists is normative for men, but frowns and scowls are normative for women, cannot be accounted for based on those measurements, even if the means are different. People with the same scores are being attributed behaviors that are different).

Not only does Hendrick magnify the speculative paragraphs of the Gur study into a statement about elaborate male and female behaviors, but he also claims that this evidence is "convincing." None of the brain sex research studies have yet attained the level of "convincingness" by scientific standards. None of these studies has been replicated. Replicability is generally a key issue in science (as the proponents of cold fusion found). In the case of gender research it is particu- larly crucial. Not only do most of these studies rely on very small sample sizes of very particular populations (e.g., young adults recruited in a homogeneous fashion), but gender research in other areas, such as communication studies, has found very little success in replication. Instead, contradictory outcomes are more common than confirmations (Pearson et al.; Rakow). That this may be true in brain sex research as well is suggested by the fact that the Gur et al. study itself notes that it contradicts findings of earlier studies on some related measures (529). The reporter thus transforms the scientific article-presented as a single, preliminary piece of research-into a definitive public fact.

Hendrick thus went far beyond what the scientists can be said to have demon- strated. He also did not report any of the substance of the objections to the re- search I had offered. Even after having had the difference between means and distributions explained to him, he reached only for the conclusions, and only for those subcomponents of the conclusions that fortified the dominant ideology's hypothesis-men and women are different. The fact that Hendrick was narrow and biased in his reporting does not transfer responsibility for the social conclu- sions from the scientists to the reporter. A public fact can be constructed by the appropriation of the credibility of science, even though it is not a scientific fact, but such a misconstruction requires the cooperation of the scientists. It is clear that what Hendrick says, the brain sex researchers believe. They participate ac- tively in interviews. They promote the vision of bimodal gender in a variety of

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ways including their selection of hypotheses, their framing of results, their con- cluding speculations, and their public statements (Begley; Hendrick). As their premature insistence on presenting their research as proof of sex difference in behavior indicates (those concluding paragraphs in their article), they are not, as Grossvogel maintained, disinterestedly asking whether there are dimorphic sex differences, but actively pursuing proof that brain sex is dimorphic.

The Gurs and others in the area of brain sex research are thus able to maintain their preferred ideology as (bad) science by functioning from the closed sphere of expertise they have demarcated for themselves, while utilizing their ability to influence the public sphere because of their status as scientists. They are screen- ing out entry of critiques of their work from scientific venues on the grounds that these are "not scientific," while they are infusing their own views, laced with non-scientific elaborations, into the public sphere. Their work simultaneously gains legitimacy in the public sphere and reinforces the dominant gender ideol- ogy. By publishing their work publicly in this way, Hendrick works to reify the dominant gender ideology, which was, not surprisingly, his own (personal com- munication, 1995). Hendrick and the brain sex researchers thus functioned as allies, serving each others' interests. Hendrick gained credible support for the claims he wished to make, while the brain sex researchers gained publicity for their work as well as legitimation of their status as a source of logic and fact.

Conclusions Research on brain sex that is currently being done by several prominent re- searchers in the field is bad science, not because it produces results that make errant contact with material reality (as in the case of cold fusion), but rather because it produces results that are far less rich than they should be, given the available scientific tools and linguistic structure, as well as the reasonable pos- sibility that human biological sex features diversity. Brain sex research contin- ues to expend enormous resources to report that there are a few minor differ- ences, of unknown consequence, in the brains of those who are culturally sorted into the categories of female and male. This intellectually impoverished scien- tific practice is maintained and supported because it can be amplified in the mass media to the "fact" that men and women are fundamentally different, a "fact" that has political implications for affirmative action, the assignment of child-care duties, and the prevention of women moving through the "glass ceil- ing." Poor science is thus transformed into a set of errant public facts via an interlocking but carefully demarcated relationship between a group of scien- tists and a group of social gatekeepers.

The claim that science is ideological, that it functions through standard rhe- torical processes common to all forms of human endeavor, is not new for either feminist science studies (Carter and Spitzack; Harding and Hintikka; Fox Keller) or non-feminist studies (Lessl; Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey; Prelli). Such a claim, however, does not have to be taken as denying that science also has unique

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features, which in other ways set it off from other practices (e.g., a relatively rigorous use of the experimental method and heavy reliance on what Latour and Woolgar call "inscription devices"). Scientific practices can be understood as featuring both linguistic components typical of all human interactions and also as offering unique forms of contact with material realities. Scientific products and practices should therefore be open to assessment on both counts.

This essay suggests that the demarcation of a "scientific realm" is problematic to the extent that this demarcation is dependent upon a vision of truth that pre- sumes that the structural characteristics of discourse are irrelevant to the articu- lation of truth. The demarcation of the sphere of "science" is faulty, therefore, when it excludes the linguistic component from the practices of science, and when it excludes analysis of errant language from consideration by scientists. When analysis of the linguistic components and implications of hypotheses and statistical methods are viewed as outside of science, conditions are established that permit "bad science" on social issues to flourish. With that type of separa- tion, any critique of research on human sex can be immediately dismissed as emotional, categorized as an ideological claim rather than an alternative set of hypotheses, and excluded from publication in scientific venues. In those condi- tions, tentative scientific findings and speculations can then be promoted as "pub- lic facts" without serious contest.

The barriers used to resist reform of bad science identified herein are probably not the only rhetorical mechanisms available and will probably not be used in all cases of resistance to reform. The rhetorical resources identified here constitute a set of available resources, not a universal set of invariant mechanisms. Under- standing such resources is useful, though it does not allow us to predict what forms "bad science" will take in every case. Given this understanding of these barriers, it is not surprising that my effort at intervention failed. To my knowl- edge, no biologists were convinced of the need to consider the gender diversity hypothesis. It was, as well, a painful experience-no one enjoys being pilloried in private and public as an example of a raving emotional harpy. However, we may continue to expect that repetition and better arguments may still make a difference. The obstacles on the roads to both scientific truth and social change are formidable, but they are not absolute ones.

It is possible in the long run that efforts to encourage a richer set of investiga- tions of human sex might succeed. A rhetorical perspective portrays scientists, like everyone else, as holders of multiple interests and insights. Rarely is just one of these interests definitive of the rhetorical visions that can be made per- suasive. Because each person and institution has multiple interests and perspec- tives, they may find attractive elements of multiple, often apparently conflicting, rhetorical visions. Good arguments-i.e. good rhetoric-can therefore convince them to move to a different ground. Scientists, as well as members of the public, can potentially be encouraged to stop fixating on the relatively minor differ- ences between "men" and "women" and begin to seek better understandings of

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the diversity of human sexes, for these diversities affect the texture of our lives and constitute important components of our identity. I believe the effort to ex- pand these horizons will be assisted by promotion of the view of the rhetoric of science that has been offered here-a view of science as including the interface of linguistic, social, and material components and a view of rhetoric as encom- passing ethos, pathos and logos.

Notes For their assistance on this essay, thanks to the anonymous reviewers of an

earlier draft and to the editors. I Many of these sources do not overtly claim that material facts are irrelevant;

they adroitly side-step the issue of the status of material reality. However, my claim is that to the extent that their approach and methods negate any attention to or significant role for material reality in their models of science, they have effectively supported the claim that there is no accessible component of truth in the products of science. I recognize that there remains a strong contingent of those in the rhetoric of science who do not support this program (Gieryn; Hikins; Laudan "Explaining Success").

2 I define my usage of "hegemonic" in Condit (1994). "Bad" and "good" science are always a matter of degree; they are defined below.

I I do not claim that most feminists doing science studies would agree with me. While I believe that most feminist scientists would agree with me (Bleier; Gowaty), some would probably not (Hubbard; Haraway), and a majority of femi- nists in rhetoric and in science studies who are not scientists would probably agree rather with the more standard view offered by Latour et al. (e.g., Belenky, et al; Biesecker; Crowe; Gilligan; Martin; Spallone; Sutton; but see Harding, Whose Science). My claim is merely that feminists and others interested in the possibility of progressive social change should adopt this stance.

I These two are always in interaction with each other. I separate them here for purposes of exploration. Neither criterion has priority. Both must be met for a scientific statement to be "true." Hence, this approach to rhetoric of science would not accept that we should, to be culturally appropriate, proclaim that men's and women's brains were on average identical if such a material referent were non-existent.

I this see Gowaty, although she is trying to avoid translation of scientific find- ings on animals into social control mechanisms.

6 The case of law is similar, and a more elaborate account of the process is provided in Hasian, Condit, and Lucaites.

7 In the mid-1980s, there were scientific studies that refuted brain sex dimor- phism in favor of monomorphism (Byne and Bleier; and see their references), but these drew on individualist rather than polymorphic perspectives on gender

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and sex. Furthermore, these studies did not receive either public media attention nor scientific acceptance as measured by citation by others working in the area. Although those who found no differences cited and refuted earlier studies that had found differences, the current work that identifies differences appears largely to ignore those studies which found no differences. Brain sex research thus ap- pears to feature a pattern of unequal citation noted by Latour and Woolgar. The hypothesis that this pattern is correlated with the existence of a hegemonic ide- ology deserves further investigation. Latour and Woolgar noted that such a pat- tern has an apparent correlation with resource availability. Throughout this es- say I am referring to the later wave of studies (mid-1990s). The project of ex- ploring the resistance of marginally placed scientists to more centrally powerful groups is an important one, but it does not negate the importance of tracing the ways in which dominant groups protect and disseminate their perspectives.

8 studies, however, portray diversity as a response to specific environmental conditions, rather than a direct biological diversity.

I The only reason for rejection offered by the journal editor was that "We receive many more comments than we can accommodate in the available space." Such a reason only hides the fact that there are unstated priorities at work (espe- cially considering that in the next issue there was space for an article on the ways in which baseball outfielders judge fly balls).

10 The editor of the letters section of Science refused to forward the request to reprint the letters to the authors. The reason provided was that this would violate the anonymity of the review process, but I had provided mechanisms via which that anonymity could be protected. I had direct contact with the authors by mail, and they promised to reply to a series of questions I raised to them, but they never did so.

11 nterestingly, the reviewer also explicitly described the article on male ho- mosexuality as "unemotional."

12 While statistical measures such as t-tests incorporate the concept of stan- dard deviation within their measurement framework, and to that extent can be said to "account for" variation to some degree, that is different from saying that they explore variation. The use of the standard deviation in these formulas is to "control" for variation, which means to make variation irrelevant or invisible in the final conclusion. It is such procedural eradication of the signs of difference that is problematic in the first place.

"Given that researchers in ecology and the social sciences have found ways to use statistical methods that explore diversity, however, one remains unsure whether method drives brain sex research toward its bipolar conclusions or whether the desire for bipolar conclusions drives the choice of method. Either case is undesirable.

14 This semiotic structure is evident in his association of Condit, identified as a female (and thereby associated with the graphics demonstrating female brain characteristics including emotionality) and personally identified with "so up-

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set" and "raised hackles", whereas the Gurs are associated with "convincing evidence" and are identified as "top brain experts" as well as a "husband and wife" team. The "even though" makes the relationship between the two parties a < relationship. Note, however, that Raquel Gur's choice to adopt her spouse's last name suggests to the wary that the male/female dialectic on this side of the equation is not one of equivalence.

APPENDIX Sex, Brains, and Ideology, by Celeste M. Condit submitted to Science, February 10, 1995

Biological and physical scientists are often highly resistant to claims by social scientists and humanists that the truths generated by scientists are "socially con- structed." Hard scientists tend to interpret this claim as meaning that their truths are fabrications resulting solely from ideology. As a result of this misinterpreta- tion, contemporary science continues to be insufficiently self-reflective about its ideologies and therefore impoverished qua science. The article by R.C. Gur et al. (17 Jan., p. 528), "Sex Differences in Regional Cerebral Glucose Metabo- lism," provides an instructive case for understanding what it means to say that scientific claims are "socially constructed," without implying that they are simple fabrications, and also for understanding the limitations on scientific progress imposed by a lack of ideological self-reflexivity.

In their article Gur et al. argue that their work supplies evidence for the "hy- pothesis that differences in cognitive and emotional processing have biological substrates (p. 528)." Given the ideological frameworks they have used to set up this research, this is a true statement. However, it is clear from the detail of the results that they report that their framing of the research project is, in fact, deter- mined by the dominant ideological approach to sex, which frames the important issue in terms of deciding whether and how much "men" and "women" differ. They, for example, employ data analysis techniques that focus on average differ- ences and they construct "sex-typical" templates against which to measure male and female subjects. As a consequence of this approach, all they are able to offer us is the rather banal finding that, by their mid-twenties, men's and women's brains on average feature relatively minor biological differences.

If, in contrast to this unreflected-upon ideological framework, they had used an ideological framework based on gender deconstruction, they would have been able to explore a richer and more complex biological world. Instead of starting with the a priori assumption that there is something like an "average man" and "average woman,"' the gender deconstruction framework would have led them to ask "what types of brain maps are there and what linkages do they have to differ- ent gendered configurations?" Instead of reporting means or matching people to researcher-generated "sex-typical" scenarios, this framework would have en- couraged the use of more statistical tools such as factor analysis to explore the

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range of types of brain profiles. It might then have led to questions about the correlations of these types with different gender types.

That this would be a more interesting and significant finding is suggested by their sidenote that "Only 17 of the 61 subjects (13 men and 4 women) had scores opposite to their respective sex-typical indices" (p. 529, my emphasis). This evidence suggests that more than a quarter of all people might be found not to fit the averages and sex-biology stereotypes that the dominant ideology and Gur et al. construct. Their evidence thus suggests that a more nuanced account of brain- sex biology would be appropriate. Instead of taking this rather stunning clue, Gur et al. are led by their lack of reflection on the dominant ideology into dis- missing this 28% of the population with the deprecative adjective "only." It seems insufficient, however, to conclude that human sex difference is adequately de- fined by a schema that excludes well over a quarter of human beings. Instead of trying to force their data into the procrustean model generated by true but insuf- ficiently complex average figures, Gur et al. ought to use this insight to begin asking questions about the variety of gender configurations. Their data lead to such questions as "are there several types of brain activity profiles or are there two types with individual variations," or "are the males in the sex atypical cat- egory simply mirrors of sex-atypical women or are there structured differences and subsets in this variation," or "are there developmental and environmental correlates of sex-role typical and atypical biological formations," and "why are more men than women sex atypical? (and isn't this surprising given our cultural beliefs that women are now more androgynous than men)."

Science can only be as good as the questions it allows itself to ask. When scientists are unreflective about the ideological frameworks from which they work, they allow dominant ideologies to shape and thereby sharply limit those questions and the findings they can offer. Hence, to say that scientific evidence is socially constructed is not necessarily to say that it is false or unsubstantiated, but to say that it is sharply limited in what it can offer us by the ideology that governs it. Moreover, the more limited the framework, the more likely that all that science is able to do is to reinforce dominant understandings, rather than to take us to new and interesting understandings of human life and behavior. Hope- fully, it is time to end the shouting match between the social critics and the scientists and begin a collaboration that will stretch the understandings both of humanists and of scientists.

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