Why so many female forensic anthropologists

I was listening to NPR the other day (actually, I'm just about always listening to NPR) when I heard a grisly but interesting story about a new 'body farm' in Texas where forensic scientists study how the human body de-composes by leaving them around the grounds and digging them up later. What struck me was that all the interviewees (a professor and three students) are female.

A little googling shows that this is not a fluke:

People are often surprised that in the UK, 98% of undergraduate students, approximately 80% of all postgraduate students, and nearly 90% of professional practitioners in the field of Forensic Anthropology are female. No-one knows why. There are some subjects that are deemed more attractive to women and forensic anthropology seems to be one of them. It may seem surprising, due to the harsh and often unsettling, never mind dangerous aspects of the work, but often the feminine touch is crucial. Forensic Anthropologists work in an area where science, politics and society meet, and they often require a delicate touch of diplomacy.

Now as we all know, there is also a huge phenomenon of crime fiction starring female forensic anthropologists. Kathy Reich's books is probably the best-known example. So what came first, the chicken or the egg? Did the fictionalization of female forensic anthropologists capture the imagination of young women? Or is there a broader compatibility (as the above quote suggests, between female attributes and forensic anthropology work? And why is the ratio so lop-sided? Are men discouraged from pursuing forensic anthropology now that it is a female-dominated field?

Say it ain't so. But how?

Human beings are stupid in interesting ways:

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."

When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.

Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.

The psychological insights yielded by the research, which has been confirmed in a number of peer-reviewed laboratory experiments, have broad implications for public policy. The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.[snip]

...once an idea has been implanted in people's minds, it can be difficult to dislodge. Denials inherently require repeating the bad information, which may be one reason they can paradoxically reinforce it.

Indeed, repetition seems to be a key culprit. Things that are repeated often become more accessible in memory, and one of the brain's subconscious rules of thumb is that easily recalled things are true.

Basically, until people start paying attention, we're doomed as a democracy. When information is absorbed passively in a peripheral manner, strong denials of untruths might have a counterproductive effect of strengthening the untruth instead of debunking it.

This reminds me of that Far Side cartoon where the exasperated owner is telling off his dog, saying "Ginger, you bad dog, if you keep misbehaving like this then you won't be getting any more yummy food..." and all the dog can hear is "Ginger...yummy food." Fill in analogous example with "Saddam" and "9/11" here.

An interview with the reporter who wrote the article above, Shankar Vedantam, from On The Media:



By the way, a collection of Vedantam's Department of Human Nature columns can be found here.

We really are different

Liberals kick ass at the most boring computer game in the world. WooT!:

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

How to interpret results like this?

First of all, it's fascinating because it's just so unexpected. We like to think that the way we arrive at our political orientations is a complex journey. "I read so-and-so, and suddenly the scales fell from my eyes"; "it was then I realized that x value was the most important to me" etc etc. It's rather startling to find that, in the aggregate at least, a factor as simple as "how likely are you to incorporate new information versus acting upon established patterns?" can predict where we are on the left-right spectrum. Since I'm very fond of clever-clever psych experiments that cut through complexity despite simple parameters, I say kudos, UCLA team.

Secondly, tempting as it may be, liberals shouldn't be smug about the results. The important thing this study showed is that liberals and conservatives have different thinking styles, not that one is superior to the other. I'm sure there can be other games where the conservative style trumps. Maybe it will be interesting to rig the same game to see under what conditions conservatives start to win (perhaps increase the frequency of the flashing letters to the point where thinking too much about it decreases performance?).

Thirdly, even though I just said liberals shouldn't be smug, I think there is one instance where it is totally legitimate to use this study to beat the conservatives with like a stick. Next time I hear any variant to that old "Conservatives are from Mars and Liberals are from Venus" trope, I'm going to say "You know there's another way to explain why conservatives and liberals think the way they do..."

(Via the Drumstir)

Two jaws are better than one?

photo by Jeff Jeffords

Do click through. The video on the NPR website has to be seen to be believed.

Morning Edition, September 6, 2007 · Scientists in California have reported that Moray eels have a set of teeth within a second set of jaws, called the pharyngeal jaws, that help them capture their prey.

Once the Moray eel secures its prey with its first set of jaws, the pharyngeal jaws reach up from its throat, grabbing and pulling the prey down through its esophagus.

Other Moray eel-related fun facts:

• In addition to their extra jaw, some species of Moray eels are poisonous.
  
• "Publius Vedius (died 15 BC), was the son of a freedman from Beneventum. He amassed a large fortune, gaining equestrian status and serving Augustus in the province of Asia; he had a repuation for cruelty, punishing slaves by throwing them to his moray eels." -- Who's who in the Roman World by John Hazel
  
• Despite all this, some Moray eels become very friendly and tame after being fed by divers. The eels "An An" and "Ping Ping" were star attractions at a popular diving site on Taiwan's Green Island, until media reports attracted the unwelcome attention of fishermen and the pair promptly "disappeared". Here's a video of divers swimming with a friendly Moray.
  
  

Save the Earth, Shoot a Moose

Moose: the hummer of ruminants:

They are dubbed the “Kings of the Forest” and are regarded by Norwegians as their national symbol.

Now, though, scientists have claimed that because of their burping and farting, the placid moose is an eco killer. During a single year, according to new research, a full-grown moose expels – from both ends – the methane equivalent of 2,100kg of carbon dioxide emissions. That is said to be as destructive for the atmosphere as the emissions released by 13,000km (8,000 miles) of car travel.

“To put it into perspective, the return flight from Oslo to Santiago in Chile leaves a carbon footprint of 880 kilos,” said the biologist Reidar Andersen, a biologist. “Shoot a moose and you have saved the equivalent of two long-haul flights.”

Perhaps it's time to switch to a less-polluting hybrid model?

Fidelity

I've never been obsessed about the sound quality of CDs versus MP3s. And while I can "hear" the difference in warmth between vinyl and CDs, the latter never bothered me to the least. I almost never go to live performances. So am I trading away a fuller enjoyment of music for convenience without realizing it?

MP3s have won the war of the formats because of technology, not because of their audio quality. "It's like hearing through a screen door," says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin of McGill University, author of "This Is Your Brain on Music."

But what is the price of inferior audio quality? Can poor audio touch the heart as deeply as better sound? John Meyer, who designs and builds some of the world's best speakers at his Meyer Sound Labs in Berkeley, Calif., doesn't think so.

"It turns you into an observer," Meyer says. "It forces the brain to work harder to solve it all the time. Any compression system is based on the idea you can throw data away, and that's proved tricky because we don't know how the brain works."

It could be that MP3s actually reach the receptors in our brains in entirely different ways than analog phonograph records. The difference could be as fundamental as which brain hemisphere the music engages.

"Poorer-fidelity music stimulates the brain in different ways," says Dr. Robert Sweetow, head of the University of California-San Francisco audiology department. "With different neurons, perhaps lesser neurons, stimulated, there are fewer cortical neurons connected back to the limbic system, where the emotions are stored."

Science I wish I understood

My mind boggles.

In a recent study, mathematician George Sparling of the University of Pittsburgh examines a fundamental question pondered since the time of Pythagoras, and still vexing scientists today: what is the nature of space and time? After analyzing different perspectives, Sparling offers an alternative idea: space-time may have six dimensions, with the extra two being time-like.