[withad]

I'm calling bullshit on the title (which, in the hopefully likely event it gets changed, is currently "Hormones Explain Why Girls Like Dolls and Boys Like Trucks"). One study showing a correlation might suggest something worth looking into further but it hardly "explains" anything.

The results with the monkeys are interesting, if both the research and the reporting of it are accurate. However, animal models, while certainly useful indicators, are still just animal models and can't say anything definitive about human biology and psychology.

And as for those studies on young children, it's a mistake to think that just because a child is only a few months old they haven't been exposed to enough cultural influence to skew what they prefer to look at. If just a few of those parents have put a football mobile above their baby boy's cot or decorated their little girl's room with Disney princess wallpaper, that familiarity could easily explain the results.

Do biological differences exist between genders? Absolutely. Are some of those differences driven by ancient evolutionary pressure rather than modern culture? It's a reasonable hypothesis, worth investigating. Have those differences now been explained by a single factor and a few small studies, half of which were on monkeys, and do they just happen to line up with traditional gender stereotypes? You'll have to do a lot better than a Live Science blog that cites nothing but other Live Science blogs to convince me of that.

EDIT: Well, at least the title was changed to better fit the article, even if it still doesn't line up with the actual science.

[wmil]

Your information is badly out of date. Studies have been consistently showing biology beating culture for the last 20 years.

[dalke]

What are these studies? The metadata studies I've heard about say otherwise. That is, some studies say one thing, other studies say the opposite, and so it's impossible to really conclude anything by choosing a subset of the literature.

For a recent lay presentation on this topic, see http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2014/02/03/ftbcon2-e... . At the top is a link to a Google document ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1slJbQpPTlg_m6cKgsarzGLqY... ) with full citations.

[ll123]

Here are some I think are interesting. http://www.isna.org/node/564 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

They talk about male babies who were sexually reassigned at birth and given female hormones. However many of them decided to reidentify as males later on life, showing that even with female hormones and a female upbringing, it was not enough to make them adopt a female gender identity.

I wouldn't say this is conclusive evidence. But I think it's enough to show that people should keep an open mind about this subject.

[hcarvalhoalves]

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

I'm learning about this now. Shocking. This could pass as some story about medical experiments during nazy germany.

[withad]

Can you show me some of these studies? I just pointed out the problematic lack of citations in the article and your dismissive comment alone isn't going to change my mind. If there's solid evidence one way or the other, I'd be genuinely interested to see it.

And even if they do happen to agree with actual good science, the few studies presented here still don't "explain" anything and this Live Science post is decidedly shonky science reporting (and calling it that is frankly generous).

[aestra]

Your information is completely without citation.

[saraid216]

Well of course. Culture is a function of biology. So biology has been beating biology. QED.

[nerfhammer]

> If just a few of those parents have put a football mobile above their baby boy's cot or decorated their little girl's room with Disney princess wallpaper, that familiarity could easily explain the results.

This cannot explain how prenatal hormone exposure can predict toy preferences better than "socialized" gender.

Testosterone etc. exposure predicts toy preferences:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12414881

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/3/3/203.short

Comparing socialization and hormone exposure directly:

http://people.uncw.edu/hungerforda/Infancy/PDF/Prenatal%20ho...

[withad]

I never said it could. It's just something that has to be very well controlled for and this article showed nothing to suggest it was in the studies it sort of cited.

It's entirely possible that the results in those studies you provided are solid. I don't know, I don't have the expertise or the access to go through them thoroughly, let alone run a replication. I would just urge everyone here to keep in mind that, as pointed out very well in aestra's comment above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7213317), this kind of research is subject to heavy cultural biases, both through the parents and experiments and through poor science reporting in the media.

And, even if it weren't, this Live Science linkbait blog post, the one rapidly climbing the front page of Hacker News with the sensationalist headline, is still uncited bollocks.

[nerfhammer]

How could digit length ratio be affected by socialization or cultural biases?

[gus_massa]

All the subject if full of conflicting information. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio

> Assuming a normal distribution, the 95% confidence interval for average length is 0.889-1.005 for males and 0.913-1.017 for females.

> In Manning's words, "There's more difference between a Pole and a Finn, than a man and a woman."

> 2D:4D is being used alongside other methods to help sex Palaeolithic hand stencils found in European and Indonesian caves.

[nerfhammer]

if digit ratio were meaningless, why could it happen to predict toy preference?

other hormone effects, congenital adrenal hyperplasia can also be detected with blood tests, as was the case e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12414881

[withad]

It couldn't. And I don't recall ever saying it could so I really don't see what you're getting at here.

[nerfhammer]

"this kind of research is subject to heavy cultural biases"

[withad]

"This kind" being the research we've been discussing, which is about socialisation and toy preference. Finger length and other easily-measured physical differences haven't been part of it.

[pistle]

I'm supporting this calling of the BS. I have a some reliable data points pointing in the opposite direction of this link-baity volksciencemeinschaft.

Get this off the front page.

[judk]

Less meinschaft, more mineshaft and minecraft.