Never before in the history of our species did we have as much access to information as we have today. A simple Google search can answer all of your questions, supply you with various facts and ideas, as well as provide you with all sorts of life skills. One would assume that the ease of access to this vast amount of potential knowledge would result in a generation thirsty for learning, a generation of doubters and critical thinkers who would take advantage of the abundance of information to become the most knowledgeable humans to have ever existed. But a simple visit to various social media reveals something worrying. A common, disturbing trend amongst people – especially younger ones – seems to be emerging. It appears that the majority of individuals, instead of using the plethora of information online to form or even alter their beliefs, they actually use the internet to find just the right ideas which will verify and re-enforce their current, often radical, biased and scientifically unfounded life theories and convictions.
To make things worse, modern ‘journalism’ appears to be following the same trend. Unknowledgeable and biased article writers have suddenly become experts in physics, biology, psychiatry and human evolution as they use science as a weapon to promote their ideologies and blind beliefs. Writers and readers feed off from one another as they engage into a circle jerk type of ideology re-enforcement while throwing critical thinking out of the window. Stuart Chase’s quote couldn’t have reflected this phenomenon any better: ‘For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.’ Such an article from a famous website and Facebook page, ironically named ‘I fucking love Science’, has been the most recent cause for me to write this blog post.
THE MANIPULATION OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES
The scientific research in question was a relatively straight forward one. The goal was to observe by the use of an MRI how the brain activity of pre-puberty and adolescent children with and without Gender Dysphoria (GD) changes during olfactory stimulation with the steroid Androstadienone. Previous studies in adults have shown that this steroid, found in much higher quantities on the skin and sweat of men, can act as a pheromone by provoking sexual responses and hormonal changes in women. The study wanted to examine whether children with ‘Gender Dysphoria’ would react to this steroid according to their gender at birth or their ‘experienced/preferred gender’. To study this, the test subjects were divided into four groups: control boys and girls and gender dysphoric boys and girls. Pre-pubertal and adolescent individuals were used in all groups.
The ‘I fucking love Science (IFLS)’ writer in question, used the results of this research to write an article named ‘Born This Way: Transgender Brains Show Similarity To Those Of Their Desired Gender From A Young Age’, highlighting that this research constitutes yet another piece of evidence that young transgender brains do not actually correspond to the natal gender but rather to the desired gender. Hundreds of people with such ideologies rushed on social media to celebrate this latest scientific discovery (which is actually just a revived one as it was published more than 4 years ago). They cheered loudly that finally the truth is out there, that now any opposing opinions should be labelled as hate crimes and that this article convinced them more than ever before that their beliefs were the only and undeniable truth. But how many of those (including the article writer) actually read what the research results stated?
The first issue, one that even the article writer doesn’t seem to understand, is that Gender Dypshoria and being Transgender are not the same thing. According to research the majority of gender dysphoric children do not actually become gender dysphoric adults and even fewer become transgender adults. Therefore, this research was not even about transgender brains as the title of the article falsely claims.
Moreover, despite the fact that this research specifically states that pre-puberty GD children show the exact same brain reaction to Androstadienone as control, non-GD, pre-puberty children, the writer once again wrongly (but probably purposefully) used the term ‘Born This Way’ in the title of the article. The research did show that GD adolescent children show a brain reaction to Androstadienone typical to their chosen gender and not to their natal gender. A very likely reason for this, according to the authors of the study, is actually sexual orientation and not gender identity. Homosexual men for example also show increased brain activity when they smell Androstadienone and gender dysphoric boys are much more likely to be homosexual, as even the research states. Of course the writer of the article, once again, completely ignores this piece of information. Additionally, this study provided evidence of obvious biological differences between the pre-pubertal male and female brain. The article writer completely left this information out as it probably doesn’t fit the gender identity beliefs of her readers.
People’s reactions to this article, both writer’s and readers’, show that most individuals today are willing to sacrifice their critical thinking in favour of their blind ideologies. One could argue that it is the writer’s choice to write what she wants, but how objective you are plays a vital role when you have potential audience of 25 million people (IFLS facebook page fans). These people, instead of training their brains to be resistant to biased media reports, they actually welcome them and encourage them. Especially younger people have learned to use the internet to search for clues and information which fit into their pre-existing ideologies and world views instead of using it to find the appropriate evidence to form these beliefs. One of the biggest advantages that human beings have over other animals is our cognitive power, complicated thought processes, our reasoning and ability to think in a doubtful, critical way. Instead some prefer to waste all these and open themselves to mass manipulation by the media and indoctrination by political figures. The few of us still resisting hard must try to put an end to this and remind people to ‘Take nobody’s word for it – Nullius in Verba’.
http://www.iflscience.com/brain/born-this-way-transgender-brains-show-similarity-to-those-of-their-desired-gender-from-a-young-age/ http://www.science20.com/news_articles/gender_dysphoria_brain_reaction_to_male_odor_shifts_at_puberty-137309
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4037295/
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Commented 10 seconds after I posted the article! You are one fast reader...