Letters to the Editor
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wow, it's 90% troll in here!
hi carol. i took the angle part of the test, and got 19/20. the bbc immediately concluded that i have a "man brain" that was probably exposed to testosterone in the womb.
or... it's that i not only took geometry, but paid attention. i hate the man brain/woman brain angle on this study. they couldn't think of anything but testosterone that might affect one's ability to understand "parallel"?
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I wonder what the sample size was?
Seriously- why do people even get into this silly gender crap? I can read maps, circuit diagrams, cat ears, books, chicken entrails, computer entrails, and stars.
And I'm a straight female. When I was in the military, my male colleagues used to squabble over who would get to have me as their navigator, because I cannot get lost. Sure, maybe we'd take the 'scenic route', but we always got there, and usually before everyone else. In Germany. In the dark. In the boonies.
I think that navigational ability (along with a lot of others) has more to do with culture and environment than it does with gender. If a woman is raised to be dependent on another and doesn't get around much- she'll be a crappy navigator. Hey, so will a guy! If a woman gets to live in different places and travels, and learns how to navigate, she'll be a great navigator.
I always know where I am. Nine times out of ten, I'll even tell you where North is. And I pore over maps- getting the 'picture' in my head, and then mapping it to the real place. It's something I do everywhere I go. It's always cool to be able to give natives directions in a place I'm visiting!
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Logic like this ...
[...] and, finally, that pinnacle of self-navigation, the dude in the car who won't ask directions. I could come up with some juicy generalizations about locating G-spots and looking for monuments and how bedding down with certain partners affects your mind, but I won't even go there.
Denials that she's pawning off generalizations: 1
Number of generalizations in that same 50-word block: 4
Let's also count the number of logical fallacies in the write-up. Taking statistics about a group, comparing them to an individual, and using that sample size of 1 to declare the entire study bunk: check. Comparing anecdotal evidence to a group of statistics: check. Stripping away any qualifiers or conditions from the original study's conclusions, declaring those now-unqualified conclusions to be that of the study, and declaring that new (obviously sensational) conclusion to be wrong: check. Decrying the study for supporting stereotypes, then using multiple (6, at my count) stereotypes in the write-up: check.
Haven't I seen logic like this before? This all seems eerily reminiscent of the global warming debate. "The earth can't be getting hotter. It snowed here yesterday!" "The earth can't be getting hotter. My city's never had a cooler summer!" [Pointing to the worst-case scenarios in a study.] "See, those scientists are way off with their predictions!" [This done while ignoring the prediction tagged as 'most likely', which is in fact accurate.] "Why would you listen to those scientists? They're just a bunch of tree-huggers!"
Shouldn't Broadsheet (and Salon) give its readers better than this? Shouldn't intelligent people follow the data wherever it leads, regardless of personal biases? Can't we discuss the study more than Carol's family or divined-with-the-help-of-a-proctologist comments (3 paragraphs for the former versus 6 for the latter)?
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Should have studied effect of cell phone usage on navigation
Until recently, I didn't have a cell phone -- and therefore had to rely on my own map-reading and navigational abilities when driving in unfamiliar places. I am pretty good at finding places. I may get lost once in a while, but can soon figure out how to become un-lost.
Many of the people I know who've had cell phones for a long time, though, tend to call someone for directions the minute they can't find their way in unfamiliar territory. They depend on others to tell them where to go and have not developed good map-reading or navigation skills.
Same thing goes for GPS systems. My suspicion is that people who totally depend on directions from their GPS don't always grasp the larger context of the road network, which reading a decent road map will give you.
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This test's baloney
I fail to see the purpose of conducting a test relating map-reading to rotational ability when, as the scientists themselves state, the link between the two "is not backed up with empirical evidence." So on what basis, exactly, are they making this "intuitive" connection? (Maybe the researchers are all female.)
As a gay male, and one who scored spectacularly low on the rotational-abilities test (although I did fine with angles), I should evidently be a terrible map-reader. In reality, the opposite is the case: I took a cross-country trip with a straight male friend, who (I know from experience) is excellent at the whole rotating thing – it's what makes him good with mechanics, and other tasks that for me are completely baffling. But the man can't read a map to save his life, and if I'd left him alone we would've ended up in Alaska. I, on the other hand, am an excellent map-reader, and got us from New York to California almost without mishap.
To study the relationship between gender and certain performative abilities can be interesting; to make groundless connections with unrelated tasks is frankly dumb, and in complete violation of the scientific spirit. I was interested to learn that I have a more typically "feminine" brain (but also, like other males, am more attracted to feminine features, in this case in other men), but fail to see any connection with map-reading... nor do the researchers put forth any arguments in favor of this connection. What a stupid study.
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Is there a difference between by road and by foot?
Just wondering, because my partner is far better than I am at driving directions, but I am much better than she is on foot. Maybe it comes from my years of developing land navigation skills in the Army. I think of roads, streets, traffic circles, etc. as some sort of obstacle course set up by someone else who wanted to control how I get someplace. But in the woods, in a cave, in Manhattan on foot, I'm terrific.
A few years ago, I was showing a friend around in Manhattan and, without thinking, popped out of the subway, made a U-turn and started at a brisk pace up the street. My friend yelled to me, "Stop! Stop! How do you know that's north?" I stopped and realized, I had no idea why I knew I was heading north. We weren't near the river, there were no landmarks I recognized, but somehow, I knew that way was north, and I was right. Similar situations have occurred several times. But again, when I'm behind the wheel I'm crap. I get made fun of all the time.
So, I think the authors of this study might want to look a little harder at different methods of navigating and reading maps and see if some people might perceive and process directional information differently than others.