Shouting from water skis

Sometimes being a woman in a male dominated field feels a bit like trying to teach from water-skis.

No, water-skis are not the best platform to teach from.

No,  people don’t hear you as well over the roar of engines and water.

Yes, you will probably fail more often

You lose people’s attention more when people are focused on where you are, rather than what you are saying.

It’s exhausting, and even the easiest lesson is hard to do from a difficult place to stand.

But if that is the ONLY space you have to teach from, and people will watch because of the spectacle then what are you going to do?

Quit and lose your voice and audience?

Fight for a better space and risk people refusing to tow you?

Or carry on, and hope like hell that eventually someone sees how stupid this is and gives you a more appropriate space to teach from in the future.

All of the above options are entirely legitimate, and I wouldn’t judge anyone who took any of those options. I also don’t blame people who don’t even go into those spaces because they aren’t well enough, fit enough, have enough time, or can deal with the stress of such an unpleasant work environment.

Refusing to work on skis isn’t unreasonable.

Refusing to provide a better space for women to work and have a platform IS.

The fact that some of our most interesting scientists in New Zealand (I can name Siouxsie Wiles, Christine Winterbourn, Heather Hendrickson, Margaret Brimble, and Judy O'Brien off the top of my head) are not seen regularly in our media is a damn waste, and frankly it’s a bit of a surprise that even Souxsie with her bright pink hair and award for science communication, is mostly under the mainstream radar.

Dr Dickinson is getting there, and she is getting there on the shittiest water skis possible. BUT SHE IS GETTING THERE.

While we watch the rubbish she has to deal with, hoops she has to jump through, and unreasonableness of her environment, let’s take the focus off the stunts she has to pull, and on why that’s the ONLY SPACE SHE HAS FOUND AN AUDIANCE.

Because I’m pretty damn sure that if anyone had any kind of choice, they wouldn’t work with people who undermine them, degrade them, and bring their personal life into a professional discussion. But we do.

Because that is the only space we have.

Let’s stop pointing at the women who are the spectacle and start looking at why that’s the only space women have voices.

This post has been Crossposted from my home blog.

Bad science isn't sexy

Gender differences are science, dammit, when will you silly social constructionists get over yourselves and admit girls just like looking after people, trying to be pretty and only having sex if they really, really love him.

When gender differences underpin your scientific investigations into gender differences, we have the kind of causal loop which produces complete nonsense.  And perhaps the worst area for this, scientifically, is around sex and desire.

Scientists have "proved" that women want sex less than men and that men have more sexual partners than women, wanting to spread their evolutionary seed around.  It all goes back to Mr Darwin.

Except they haven't.  Turns out when we remove the gender difference assumption, we remove the gender differences.

In 2003, Michelle Alexander and Terri Fisher used a simple test to investigate attitudes and behaviours around sex, asking questions when their subjects were connected to a fake lie detector, or not.  When asked about sexual partners unconnected to the lie detector, more men reported getting jiggy with it than women.  When subjects believed the lie detector would catch them out - no gender differences.  In fact, women reported ever so slightly more, on average, sexual partners than men.

Then there is the long cherished idea that men will shag anything in the inner-drive-rooted-need to be the daddy.  Speed dating had been previously used to "prove" this.  Basically, men were less choosy in speed dating scenarios, more likely to be keen to give someone a go.

Until you switch who sits still and who approaches the potential date.  Turns out all the earlier studies had men moving around.  Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick swapped the roles in 2009.  Just being the approacher, rather than the approachee, is the key in dating situations.  You are more likely to have a favourable assessment of a potential date if you're the one putting it out there - regardless of your gender.

Finally, attitudes to casual sex might not be quite as different as more neanderthal scientists have previously proven either.  Terri Conley found in 2011 that if you remove situations in which women's assessment of danger might impact (a stranger asking you back to their place for sex), and focus on actual desire (a close friend you think is sexy invites you to spend a few hours of fun), gender differences in enthusiasm for sexual play without commitment disappear.  Again.

The evolutionists aren't going anywhere.  Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote an email to respond to these studies to the New York Times, saying:

“A study which shows you can push some phenomenon around a bit at the margins is of dubious relevance to whether the phenomenon exists.”

 The gender difference is there, dammit, there.  Just look harder.

Royal Society of New Zealand 2012 Research Honours Dinner

Cross Posted from my usual home-base.

The annual awards evening celebrating top NewZealand researchers was held at Auckland Museum on Wednesday.

Huge congratulations to Distinguished Professor Margaret Brimble, CNZM FRSNZ, School of Chemical Sciences, The University of Auckland, who last night became the second woman to win the Royal Society of New Zealand's Rutherford Medal.

She was quoted by Fairfax at stuff.co.nz

“I am personally very pleased that New Zealand has now recognised me, not for being a woman in science, but for my science.”

The Rutherford Medal was awarded to chemist Professor Brimble, for her world-leading contributions to the synthesis of bioactive natural products. Part of her work in chemical sciences has been research benefitting those who have experienced brain injury by modifying a naturally occurring peptide found in the brain after an injury, which helps to prevent secondary cell death.

If you are interested in reading more about her research, please go to the university website for more information.

Other women who won during the presentation of thirteen awards on Wednesday night were:

The Dame Joan Metge Medal for excellence and building relationships in the social science research community.

Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Pro Vice Chancellor and Dean of the School of Māori and Pacific Development, University of Waikato, for inspiring, mentoring and developing Māori researchers.

Professor Janet Holmes FRSNZ, Chair in Linguistics, Victoria University of Wellington, for her outstanding contribution to linguistics.

Congratulations to all the winners on Wednesday night, you are inspirations.

I am going to try and focus more on the amazing work of New Zealand women, who, unless they are in film and television tend to slip through the cracks of NZ media, making small headlines no matter how outstanding their work is. Those who are already in their field appreciate them for the work they do, lives they change, and ideas they bring forward.

I will be recognising them here with the original drive due to the fact this is a feminist space, but in the hope that the circle of people who appreciate the work being done will widen. Please don’t hesitate to link to further information on the work these women are doing, or information about their achievements.

Pipe dreams of fracking

Last night I went to see Gasland, a documentary about Josh Fox wandering around the United States and talking to people with fracking rigs nearby about what fracking was doing to their land, their water, their health, their animals.  I was expecting to find it interesting, and that I'd feel more sure we should know the impacts of pouring toxic chemicals and enormous amounts of water under high pressure into the earth in order to help it break apart and release natural gas before we expanded it here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

But I found it much more shocking than that.  Industry lobbyists testifying to US politicians that there is no need for regulation of fracking, because there is "no evidence" of any problems, anywhere.  That they shouldn't have to disclose the chemicals used, because there are no problems.

This is just after we've seen Mr Fox talking to dozens of people with water which looks like tea leaves, or concentrated urine, or the oily remnants of a fry up.  Families with water they can set alight, because natural gas is now one of the things coming through their taps.  Pets with hair falling out.  Prize-winning environmental scientists documenting connections between the chemicals being used in fracking and neurological disorders which some people in some parts of the US where fracking is happening are reporting.

Now I'm an evidence based kind of woman.  Two scientist parents and a healthy streak of "why would that group want me to think that" gave me that.  But I can think of no reason all of these people would be telling these stories of fracking unless they were true.  And I can think of no reason on Papatuanuku why anyone in Aotearoa would support more fracking here unless they cared only about making money. 

So I'm supporting Gareth Hughes in his call for a moratorium on fracking until we know it's safe.  We know it causes "small" earthquakes, hardly of no concern for any of us in our shaky isles.  We can celebrate the fact that Christchurch recently declared itself a no fracking zone. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if our world asked people wanting to profit from our land to prove their processes were safe?  Or even more wonderful, that instead of continuing to pillage our land, we put resources into exploring and establishing alternative and sustainable fuel sources.  It could happen here.  Time to cycle to work.

in favour of relaxed parenting

there was an article included in fairfax papers over the weekend called "why parents should just learn to relax". unfortunately i can't find an online version, though did find this similar piece at the guardian (via here).

basically, it's an alternate view to the tiger mother, all very scientific and based on research done on twins separated at birth and children who have been adopted. and of course bryan caplan has a book he's wanting to promote - which doesn't negate what he's trying to say. in fact, if what he says is true, i find it very comforting to know that there's very little that i do as a parent that will have an impact on my child's future.

here's a quote:

This new branch of science is called behavioural genetics, which uses mathematical models to compare the similarity of identical and non-identical twins, and the fate of adopted children. Behavioural geneticists don't just believe that your hair colour or your susceptibillity to breast cancer come trhough bloodlines. They test for a wide range of other things, such as happiness and income, that no-one had thought were genetic. Some of these are indirect effects - so, for example, when they say that genes matter for income, there doesn't have to be an "income gene", it's simply that other inherited traits (such as intelligence, or work ethic) matter for income. The age at which you start drinking or having sex relies somewhat on whether you are by nature a shy and cautious person.

[...] It could be good genes that produce good citizens.

Caplan is the first to admit that this can seem "too counterintuitive to believe... as the father of identical twins I readily accept the power of nurture but still struggle to deny the power of nurture." The answer is that parents can make a big impact, but this is mostly restricted to the early years. You can give a child a boost at nursery age, but by the time he or she has left school it has gone. As one twin study concluded: "Adopted children resemble their adoptive parents slightly in early childhood but not at all in the middle childhood or adolescence."

"If you think you're giving your kid a headstart, you're probably correct," says Caplan. Your mistake is to assume that the head start lasts a lifetime. By the time your child grows up, the impact of your encouragement and nagging will largely have faded away."

there's heaps more of this, quoting from studies and so on but i don't have the energy to type it out. i did like this bit though:

"By the time you're an adult, your parents' past mistakes are not the reason for your present unhappiness" says Caplan.

of course he clarifies earlier in the piece that the studies he's using don't "address neglect or abuse, which of course can damage a child". so, the good news is that i don't have to feel any guilt that my parenting style will cause any lasting impact on my kids. the bad news is that i can't blame my parents for my own misery. hmmm. the good news is that it doesn't matter whether you're a working parent or a stay-at-home parent (although i notice that the article stays well clear of that question, but surely one can extrapolate?). the bad news is that all the hard work we put into our children and the money we spend on them will have little impact on their future success.

mr caplan does spend a bit of time baggin amy chua and her parenting style, saying that the success of her children is more due to genetics ("Her girls are the daughters of two Yale Law School professors, and people are amazed that they succeed at the things they try at?") than parenting. he does fail to mention that ms chua's book was a family history rather than a parenting guide but there is no doubt that his message is the more comforting one, one that makes (some of) us feel less inadequate, less able to measure up to the very high standards of parenting that society seems to increasingly expect.

i'll finish off where the article finishes off:

Isn't all this a bit depressing? At least Chua offered us a parental work ethic as a way onward and upward. Genetic determinism smacks of eugenics.

Caplan counters that it is a happy message. He quotes from Mary Poppins. Stop thinking that children, as Mr Banks does, "must be moulded, shaped and taught, that life's a looming battle to be faced and fought!" And, well, just enjoy.

Not the next Marie Curie

Found via a friend's Facebook feed, from XKCD

marie curie lecture series

thanx to stef for alerting us to the marie curie lecture series. from the blurb on their website:

Female Chemists from New Zealand reflect on how chemistry improves our lives and society

The Marie Curie Lecture Series is a year- long national tour of talks by female New Zealand chemists in honour of Curie’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her ground-breaking studies in radium and polonium.

looks like a fantastic line-up of women who will be speaking, as well as good geographical coverage around the country. the first one is in wellington at 6pm on 24 february, at te papa's marae. professor margaret brimble speaks on the followin topic:

The intricate chemistry of nature has evolved over millions of years and we are in the exciting position to be able to recreate and craft the compounds that already exist in the world, in the laboratory.

This lecture explores such possibilities and how we can best use these discoveries to create new medicines. It will showcase how natural products derived from microorganisms that live in extreme environments, and natural products produced by algal blooms, can be harnessed to develop novel anticancer, antibacterial and antiviral drugs and drugs to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

hope our wellington readers will try to get along.

I wonder if it's possible to talk about gender differences without being mansplained in comments?

Cross posted

Which may account for what Prof. Barres calls the main difference he has noticed since changing sex. "People who do not know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect," he says. "I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man."

Read the whole thing: He, Once a She, Offers Own View On Science Spat


H/T: Ophelia Benson, at Butterflies and Wheels

FGC at Cornell University

Cross posted

Careful - this may be TRIGGERING, and the links may be TRIGGERING.

Dr Dix P. Poppas of Cornell University Medical School has been performing genital surgery on little girls, and then doing follow-up work testing how much sensation the girls have (left). Here is the abstract for the article in which he reported the research: Journal of Urology: Nerve Sparing Ventral Clitoroplasty: Analysis of Clitoral Sensitivity and Viability: Volume 178, Issue 4, Supplement, Pages 1598-1601 (October 2007).

Here is the article on Bioethics Forum which reveals the story.

Bioethics Forum: Bad Vibrations

The Hastings Center, which hosts the Bioethics Forum, is well known for its work in bioethics. I've been reading Hastings Center reports for years, in connection with my work. It is a reliable source. The authors of the post are Alice Dreger and Ellen K Feder. Dreger has been criticised by intersex people, but that particular line of criticism does not seem to have a bearing on this issue.

Alice Dreger has a follow-up post at her Psychology Today blog: Can you hear us now?.

I'm appalled. How could this still be happening, in the 21st century? Dreger and Feder compare the doctor's actions to the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, because he conducted his research in plain view, but I think there are closer parallels with Herbert Green and his non-treatment of some women at National Women's Hospital. In both cases, I see a doctor determined to prove that he is right, and to hell with the consequences for the people he is supposed to be trying to help.

The obvious question is how on earth did Dr Pappas get his work approved by Cornell's Ethics Committee? The answer is that he didn't.

How come the article says Poppas had IRB (ethics oversight) approval and we suggest he probably didn't? Because what he has approval for is retrospective chart review, a harmless little look back at what he recorded in the charts as having happened to his patients. What he didn't do was to get approval in advance for the "clitoral sensory testing" that he was writing down in the chart and then used to produce the systematic and generalized conclusions about his technique. This may sound like a technicality. It isn't. If he had sought IRB approval for the "sensory testing," the ethics staff might have sat up and asked him what the heck he thought he was doing to these girls, and they would have tried to make sure the parents were informed about the unknowns and risks, and the girls could have refused to participate.

Source: Alice Dreger's blog post.

This doctor has been using "medical vibratory devices" on little girls and calling it research.

I feel ill.

Melissa has opened a discussion about it: Discussion Thread: Cornell University and FGC, and Melhoukia has been writing about it: This makes me sick: There are not enough content warnings in the world for what you are about to read. I first heard about the article through Feminist Philosophers: FGM at Cornell.

You can contact the Dean of the Cornell Medical School here: dean@med.cornell.edu

Clelia Duel Mosher

The Stanford University magazine has a really fascinating article about Dr Clelia Duel Mosher, a woman who taught in the Hygiene Department of that university in the early 20th century. Dr Mosher undertook extensive research regarding the attitude of women to sex and relationships that predated work by Kinsey, as well as groundbreaking work in the area of female biology. The article also talks about the rediscovery in the 1970s of surveys Dr Mosher conducted of women regarding sex and relationships.

The survey's genesis—like its rediscovery—was a fortuitous accident. Mosher started it in 1892 as a 28-year-old biology undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin; she had been asked to address a local Mother's Club on "the marital relation" and as a single, childless woman seems to have used data collection to fill gaps in her knowledge. Afterward, Mosher continued conducting surveys until 1920, using variations on the same form and amassing 45 profiles in all. Yet Mosher never published or drew more than cursory observations from her data. She died in 1940, and the survey was entirely forgotten when Degler unearthed it.

It is the earliest known study of its type, long preceding, for example, the 1947 and 1953 Kinsey Reports, whose oldest female respondents were born in the 1890s. The Mosher Survey recorded not only women's sexual habits and appetites, but also their thinking about spousal relationships, children and contraception. Perhaps, it hinted, Victorian women weren't so Victorian after all.

Indeed, many of the surveyed women were decidedly unshrinking. One, born in 1844, called sex "a normal desire" and observed that "a rational use of it tends to keep people healthier." Offered another, born in 1862, "The highest devotion is based upon it, a very beautiful thing, and I am glad nature gave it to us."

Of those surveyed, 34 had attended a university or teachers' college. Nine were Stanford alumnae, six from Cornell; other alma maters included Wellesley, Vassar and the University of California. Thirty respondents had worked before marriage, mostly as teachers.
...

Slightly more than half of these educated women claimed to have known nothing of sex prior to marriage; the better informed said they'd gotten their information from books, talks with older women and natural observations like "watching farm animals." Yet no matter how sheltered they'd initially been, these women had—and enjoyed—sex. Of the 45 women, 35 said they desired sex; 34 said they had experienced orgasms; 24 felt that pleasure for both sexes was a reason for intercourse; and about three-quarters of them engaged in it at least once a week.

Unlike Mosher's other work, the survey is more qualitative than quantitative, featuring open-ended questions probing feelings and experiences. "She's actually asking these questions not about physiology or mechanics—she's really asking about sexual subjectivity and the meaning of sex to women," Freedman says. Their responses were often mixed. Some enjoyed sex but worried that they shouldn't. One slept apart from her husband "to avoid temptation of too frequent intercourse." Some didn't enjoy sex but faulted their partner. Mosher writes: [She] "Thinks men have not been properly trained."

Their responses reflected the cultural shifts of the late 19th century, as marriage became viewed as a romantic union, not just an economic one, and as people began to dissociate sex from procreation, says Freedman. One woman, born in 1867, wrote that before marriage she believed sex to be only for reproduction, but later changed her mind: "In my experience the habitual bodily expression of love has a deep psychological effect in making possible complete mental sympathy & perfecting the spiritual union that must be the lasting 'marriage' after the passion of love has passed away with the years." Wrote another, born in 1863, "It seems to me to be a natural and physical sign of a spiritual union, a renewal of the marriage vows."

Anxieties about unwanted pregnancies are also clear. This was a hot topic during the 19th century, when the marital fertility rate fell by half despite the criminalization of abortion and contraception, Freedman says. At least 30 respondents reported attempting birth control anyway. Many mentioned using douching, withdrawal or the rhythm method; a few had tried a "womb veil" or male condoms.

Mosher herself was born in 1863 and had an interesting life. In terms of her work:

Thanks to a steady supply of young female research subjects, Mosher's scholarly aim soon became clear: to prove that women were not inferior to men, and that frailties chalked up to sex were really the effects of binding garments, insufficient exercise and mental conditioning. Her master's thesis, for example, showed that women breathe from the diaphragm, as men do, rather than from the chest, as was believed at the time. She concluded that this so-called biological difference was really due to tight corsetry.

She also began tracking students' menstrual periods, hoping to upend "functional periodicity," the idea that menstruation debilitated women. It was a canny subject choice for an ambitious female investigator. "That was not research that men could do easily, so she definitely claimed an area that was not accessible to men for her own research," says Elizabeth Griego, who wrote her 1983 dissertation on Mosher for an education doctorate at UC-Berkeley and spent most of the early 1980s in the Stanford archives sifting through Mosher's papers. (Griego is now vice president for student life at the University of the Pacific.)

But it wasn't until after 1896, when Mosher had moved on to Johns Hopkins to obtain her MD, that she analyzed her data. Again, she blamed nurture over nature: Painful menstruation, she concluded, was in most cases caused by inactivity, poor muscular development and the very idea of "inevitable illness." Sending girls to bed to dwell upon their discomfort, Mosher wrote, "produce[s] a morbid attitude and favor[s] the development and exaggeration of whatever symptoms there may be." Mosher was not subtle about her motivation for seeking to discredit functional periodicity. "Equal pay for women means equal work; unnecessary menstrual absences mean less than full work," she wrote. Convinced that women should stay active throughout their periods, Mosher even invented abdominal exercises—dubbed "moshers"—to counteract menstrual pain.

‘The skirt, as modified by the vagaries of fashion, has a direct bearing on the health, development and efficiency of the woman. In 1893-96 I made a series of observations on the clothing of ninety-eight young women. The average width of skirt was then 13.5 feet. The weight of the skirt alone was often as much as the entire weight of the clothing worn by the modern girl.’
–Clelia Mosher, Strength of Women (c. 1920)

By the time Mosher received her MD in 1900, there were approximately 7,000 female doctors and surgeons in the United States (almost 6 percent of the total), but they still faced discrimination. Mosher turned down a job as an assistant to a gynecological surgeon when told that men would refuse to work under her. She returned to Palo Alto and opened a private practice, but struggled to get patient referrals from male colleagues or win grants to fund her menstruation studies. In 1910, Stanford offered her an assistant professorship in personal hygiene as the medical adviser for women, and Mosher eagerly returned to academic life. "I think she started out thinking she would like to be a doctor and perhaps a surgeon, but she found the doors closed to her very quickly," muses Griego.

Instead, Griego says, Mosher found what mattered to her: a living wage, intellectual freedom and access to research subjects. Mosher restarted her menstruation research and completed a study showing that the average height of Stanford's entering female students had increased 1.5 inches in 20 years, a change she attributed to better exercise and comfortable clothing. Mosher became a full professor in 1928, one year before she retired.

The full article is an interesting read and can be found here.

Shaken because stirred

Several people have drawn my attention to this stunner in various media today, here's a snippet from Stuff:

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

..."Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Click through for whole article.

So much wrong with this where do I start? How about you help me out in comments...

Weigh more! Weigh less! Think of the baby!!

Been on a bit of a break. Not away, just consumed by books (Robin Hobb again), stupid iPod games, spending time with family and sleeping.

But coming home from work tonight I heard a news interview on Checkpoint that has driven me back to blog.

It's Mary Wilson talking to a NZ paediatrician [audio] who has conducted some research that seems to show that women who do light exercise during pregnancy have babies with lower birth weights.

Now I'm confused. Lower birth weight is supposed to be one of the negative outcomes of smoking during pregnancy. But now lower birth weight is also a positive thing that can mean a child doesn't become obese, and later become an obese adult, who, if female, then becomes an obese pregnant woman, who then in turn gives birth to a heavier baby, which goes on to become... Obesity Epidemic WIN!

The paediatrician did say that the pregnant women didn't lose any weight as a result of the exercise, and that there were some positive outcomes for themselves as a result of their extra activity, so that's good. Nice to know it's not all about the fetus. But he did talk about how tired the women were before they got on the exercycle, and while the exercise alleviated that afterwards one of the standard pieces of medical advice about activity during pregnancy is if you are already tired you should stop and have a rest.

Yet again it seems you can't win. Exercise can be good for you and the fetus. Exercise can be bad for you and the fetus. A lower birth weight for the baby can be positive or negative, and should thus be enouraged/avoided.

Frankly I'll start listening to this stuff when they tell me I can eat feta while I'm pregnant. That's the kind of pregnancy advice I'm hanging out for!

R&D blues

there are so many things that have been happening in the last year and a half that make me angry, too many to count. cuts to things that matter, but apparently plenty of money for things that don't, including big tax cuts for top income earners.

and last week cuts to our research and development sector were announced. again. this reminds me so much of the nastiness of a decade ago, when science funding had to be applied for annually so that it was almost impossible to plan for long-term projects. when constant restructuring and layoffs meant an terribly stressful work environment.

according to the CEO of agresearch, the cuts are a result of farmers deciding to no longer pay the meat and wool levy. however, there is also the requirement for CRIs to now provide a 12% profit, even though we are supposedly in a recession.

this latest announcement relates to scientific staff, but once they are gone, it means that the jobs of all related support staff will be at risk. it's a significant contraction of the organisation, and a stupid move given that so much of our global competitive advantage arises from the research done by our CRIs.

when i think that we could have had secure funding based on a mix of government and private sector input via the fast forward fund, it makes me want to cry. how can we expect to have high quality research and innovation in an environment of constant cuts and restructuring? it just won't happen.

Smart & sexy up a tree

From Stuff today, big thanks to Tessa for this one:

Nerds take heart. Scientists have shown for the first time that being smart is sexy, and the smartist males get the most partners.

Although the find was made by studying Australian birds, it supports the idea that our big human brain evolved because it is a sexually attractive organ, not just a useful one.

Signs of intelligence - such as creating art, music, and humour - could have made the brainiest people luckiest in love, according to this theory, championed in the book The Mating Mind by an evolutionary psychologist, Geoffrey Miller, almost a decade ago.

Testing the idea in humans is very difficult, said Jason Keagy, of the University of Maryland in the US, which is why he chose to observe satin bowerbirds at Wallaby Creek in NSW instead.

Bowerbirds are intelligent, he said. ''But they're not as complex as humans.''

Click through for the rest.

Although if you do that, as I did from the link Tessa emailed me, you will miss the two pictures on Stuff's front page which they have used to encourage you to click through. Luckily T pointed them out to me. I've put them after the jump, see if you can guess what the subject matter might be before you make the leap...
But wait there's more, what smart man with sexy woman could we use as a real life example to prove our thesis? Hmmmmm:
I roll my eyes in Stuff's general direction.

Your boobs are someone else's intellectual property

God bless the American Civil Liberties Union: they're launching a lawsuit challenging the patent on BRCA1 and BRCA2, two genes which, if they mutate, significantly increase women's chances of breast or ovarian cancer.

Intellectual rights to the genes are currently owned by Myriad Genetics, which won't allow other companies to research or test the genes. Women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer sometimes choose to test for gene mutations, basing important life decisions on the results. Using its monopoly position, Myriad Genetics charges these women US$3,000 for the test.

The rationale for intellectual ownership of genetic material is a market one: the likelihood of profit motivates the owner to invest in research into the genes and related health problems. The Council for Responsible Genetics supports the ACLU's lawsuit, stating:

The patent, a tool originally created to insure that inventors could share in the financial returns and benefits deriving from the use of their inventions, has become the primary mechanism through which the private sector has advanced its claims to ownership over genes, proteins and entire organisms. No individual, institution or corporation should be able to hold patents or claim ownership rights over genes or gene sequences, whether naturally occurring or modified.

It's a good comment - but is there any ethical room at all for patenting in such fundamental areas of human wellbeing? What are the alternatives to market-driven medical science?

Diversity in science carnival

The second ever Diversity in Science carnival is up, at Thus Spake Zuska, celebrating women in science. I especially liked this post, Women scientists haven't exactly had a picnic of their careers.

While you're at it, make with the clicky and go visit Dr Isis and her blog, On becoming a domestic and laboratory goddess. She's got a deal going with the American Physiological Society, to fund an award for the undergraduate woman who submits the best abstract at a big experimental biology conference. She needs to double the clicks on her blog over a 30 day period (starting 19 March), and then she gets the money for the award. So if you have a moment, click through, even momentarily, and help out.