Why Science Cannot Be Denied : New studies suggest physical differences that cannot be ignored
I am starry-eyed
and vaguely discontented
Like a nightingale
Without a song to sing
I’d say that I had spring fever
. . .but then again, young fellow, it may just be your time of the year.
Dr. Doreen Kimura, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, reports in a recently released study that every spring, male output of testosterone (the boys-will-be-boys hormone) drops off. Testosterone peaks again in fall, in what may be the survival of an old mating season that led to births in early summer when food was abundant.
Spatial reasoning is, statistically at least, a male skill, but Kimura reports that males do better on spatial reasoning tests in spring, when testosterone is low. The difference is not negligible: It might mean a 50-point spring/fall difference on an SAT test.
The timing of tests aside, what other differences might this difference make? Well, it would seem to follow, would it not, that men, if any there be, whose testosterone can be shown to be at a constant high level--classic studs--should be kept from occupations in which spatial reasoning might be crucial. They shouldn’t, for example, be airline pilots. And shouldn’t military decisions taken hastily by males driven mad during the autumnal rut be subjected to review by a committee of clearheaded females?
On the other hand, his testosterone hot flash may be, like her premenstrual syndrome, just a fact of life, something to face up to but nothing to flip out over. Dr. Simon Le Vay has shown in preliminary but persuasive research that the hypothalamus in the brain of homosexual males is smaller than the hypothalamus of heterosexual males. We know of other brain differences by race and ethnicity as well as by sex. Neurobiology is an infant science, and doubtless more such discoveries lie ahead.
Are we, as the saying goes, ready for it? We think so. Brain diversity, like other diversity, is to be prized as well as endured. Vivent les differences!
