Evolutionary biology gets squeezed from both the Right (many of whose adherents simply deny evolution) and now from the Left as well. A moiety of the Left, as I’ve written here frequently, has ideological reasons for attacking parts of evolutionary biology, especially those parts that involve genetics and behavior. So, for example, we see these kinds of views:The evolutionists are fond of attacking those who believe in the Bible, or in intelligent design. But these beliefs don't really have direct practical consequences.
1.) Psychological and behavioral differences between men and women are culturally based without evolutionary underpinnings.
2.) There are no meaningful genetic differences between ethnic groups, or “races”, if you will.
3.) In a recent development, there are now common claims that there are not two sexes in humans: that sex is a spectrum, with the implication that it’s continuous.
Meanwhile, the Ctrl Left denies evolution in a way that does have direct consequences. Currently, they use bad science to attack the Trump administration.
Update: Coyne also notes that the NY Times published an op-ed saying male and female brains are the same, without mentioning that the cited research has been rebutted:
Ideology trumps science once again: Daphna Joel and Cordelia Fine deny the notion of “male vs. female brains” ...
Yet on the same page of Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. where their article appears, there is a note that there are four rebuttals to the paper of Joel et al.:This article has a reply. Please see:
Multivariate revisit to “sex beyond the genitalia”
Yes, there is a female and a male brain: Morphology versus functionality
Patterns in the human brain mosaic discriminate males from females
Joel et al.’s method systematically fails to detect large, consistent sex differences
The titles more or less tell you what’s going on: multivariate analyses are actually quite good at discriminating male and female brains into two groups.
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