The Genetic Lottery

I wrote a review of a new book that’s made a splash in academic biology: The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige Harden, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin.

Harden makes the argument that educational success is determined by nature as well as nurture, and that this fact means we ought to reconsider whether meritocratic ideals are really so ideal after all. This is a radically egalitarian and progressive argument- but it is not being treated as such by some progressive academics, who accuse Harden of ‘eugenics’. I think this is in part simply because talk of genetic influences on intelligence makes intelligent people very uncomfortable, leading readers to engage in strange, partisan mental gymnastics and not really engaging with her argument at all.

Click here to read the full article at The Critic.

Here is an excerpt:

The Genetic Lottery is not the only book published this summer to tackle controversial topics in biology. Testosterone: The Story of the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us is a politically dispassionate appraisal of testosterone’s responsibility for sex differences, from Harvard biologist Carole Hooven. Evolutionary psychologist David Buss — known for his cross-cultural studies of relationship preferences in women and men — discusses the evolutionary roots of sexual violence in When Men Behave Badly (UK: Bad Men).

Neither of these received the same level of attention as Harden’s book. But they are similar in coming to conclusions that — despite sounding like truisms to most people — are unpalatable to cultural elites. The accepted beliefs are that sexual violence is about “power, not sex”, and that differences between men and women are not in their physiology but how they identify. Again though, you won’t hear anyone making their position explicit: “I think the principles of evolution that hold true in other species do not apply to humans”. When stated like this, the idea is difficult to defend — it is easier to simply avoid thinking too hard about topics outside one’s comfort zone. Smart, highly educated people may be especially good at this cognitive manoeuvre, with more confidence in their own reasoning and more ability to “lawyer” away opposing arguments.

Darwin’s Second Brainwave

Have you ever wondered why males and females are different? Or why animals choose mates using ornaments like colourful feathers, big horns and fancy dances? Or whether there’s any truth to the idea that women are more keen on monogamy than men?

If yes, then you have wondered about sexual selection!

Sexual selection is a theory thought up by Charles Darwin over a decade after he published On the Origin of Species. The theory of sexual selection sought to fill in some gaps left unexplained by his earlier theory of natural selection; namely, why is it that so many animals have what seem to be decorative features (like a peacock’s tail) that don’t contribute to their survival?

A century and a half later, biologists are still making exciting discoveries in the field of sexual selection. In this video, I give a brief outline of the theory of sexual selection and some newer developments in the field. The talk was written for an intended audience of 6^th form students; hopefully it’s of interest to some other people as well!

Female Mating Strategies in Situations of Sexual Coercion

A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at a virtual conference. The talk was on a mathematical model I’ve developed to predict what how females ought to optimally respond to sexual coercion, which is extremely common in the animal kingdom.

A review of Attenborough’s latest series, A Perfect Planet

Click here to read this review on The Oxford Blue online, with beautiful illustrations by Alicia Hayden.

Despite being a longstanding fan of anything Attenborough, I have lately come to view the announcement of a new series with some trepidation. Gone are the days when the environmental stakes were a seabird covered in oil, or a dolphin choking on litter: we are now being warned of an urgent existential threat to life as we know it, and naturally, like many people, this fills me with fear, guilt, and a strong desire to look away.

If you’re like me, then I’m afraid to say the latest BBC series is no exception. Each of the first four episodes of A Perfect Planet devotes substantial attention to the climate crisis, with the fifth and final episode dedicated entirely to this subject, and bringing in three independent climate experts for a more serious, educational tone. It’s not just doom and gloom, though; the effect is not simply to terrify, but to provide detailed information and realistic hope.

Attenborough’s series with the BBC never fail to deliver stunning footage of the natural world. Since this often doesn’t come with an in-built narrative, one challenge in building a TV series seems to be finding some sort of ‘hook’, some way of organising the material so that it tells a fresh and original story. Many previous series organise themselves continent by continent, or ecosystem by ecosystem, but we’ve also had more unusual offerings in recent years- The Hunt, with its focus on predator-prey dynamics, and Dynasties, which zooms in on the family life of one species each episode. A Perfect Planet takes the opposite approach, zooming back out to look at the inorganic features that conspire to make our Goldilocks planet uniquely hospitable to life.

UK High Court rules on paediatric gender transition

In October, Emily Wheater and I wrote a piece for The Critic on gender transition in children and young people, and growing numbers of detransitioners (individuals who regret seek to reverse a gender transition).

As a follow up, we also wrote a news article covering the controversial December 1st 2020 ruling by the High Court of England and Wales that under 16s are not likely to have sufficient maturity to consent to puberty-blocking treatment. This ruling was the result of a judicial review headed by Keira Bell, a woman who believes her treatment by the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service was negligent and harmful.

Read more by following this link.

Transitioning to a medical scandal

I wrote this piece for The Critic with my friend Emily Wheater, who is studying for a PhD in neuroscience at Edinburgh University. We looked into the issue of detransition (when somebody medically changes gender, and then changes back again).

In the last decade, the number of teenage girls seeking to change gender has increased meteorically. With the increasing popularity and accessibility of gender transition, we have also seen a subsequent increase in numbers of individuals who detransition, many of whom consider themselves to have been harmed and treated with gross irresponsibility by the medical profession. One such young woman, Keira Bell, who we spoke to for the piece, recently launched a legal challenge against the clinic that treated her, saying that minors do not have the capacity to consent to irreversable sex change treatment. The outcome of this judicial review has not yet been announced.*

Despite the increasing numbers and public profile of detransitioners, the official view in progressive circles is that detransition is a non-issue, and the object of faux concern from conservatives who wish to restrict access to gender transition. We looked into the arguments given by organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids, and uncovered some extremely dodgy usage of statistics as well as some extremely troubling attitudes towards young people who have been left with irreversible bodily alterations.

Click the link to read more.

* Update: On the 1st of December 2020, the High Court of England and Wales ruled on this case that under 16s are unlikely to have sufficient maturity to consent to medical gender transition. Read my and Emily’s news coverage of this ruling here.

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https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2020/transitioning-to-a-medical-scandal/

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-child-trans-judgement-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction/

Review: There’s No Such Thing as The Female Brain

This is a review of an online debate organised by Intelligence Squared that took place on May the 6th. You can watch the debate here (£).

Is there such thing as ‘the female brain’?

The orthodox feminist position, taken to the extreme, is that there are no innate, evolved differences between the brains of men and women. According to this view, brains happen to be found in either a male or a female body, and any differences found between those brains (and between the behaviour of women and men) are incidental and can be explained by the sexism of society and the gendered way in which boys and girls are raised.

The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science. A review.

“Why do obviously intelligent people believe things in spite of the evidence against them? Will Storr has travelled across the world to meet an extraordinary cast of modern heretics in order to answer this question.“

Based on its blurb, what I was expecting from Heretics was essentially Louis Theroux in the form of a book. What I found is something much more thought provoking. Will Storr provides no shortage of Theroux-style gawping at humanity— the chapter recounting his undercover tour of Poland’s concentration camps with notorious Holocaust denier David Irving and a group of neo-Nazis being a particularly incredible highlight. But this book is more than just a series of drive-by debunkings of homeopaths and creationists.

It is easy to dismiss those with crazy-sounding beliefs as stupid, but this isn’t true at all. The question of why conspiracy theories have so much sway in the world is much more interesting when you understand that their proponents are often very intelligent, educated, and curious. Why, then, is their interpretation of evidence on these issues so different from other people’s? Delving into neuroscience and psychology, Storr shows that all of us are subject to powerful biases, which mean we are much, much less objective than we like to think.

Notes from the henhouse: How the Rooster got his Crow

In my previous blog post about chickens, I mentioned that roosters crow a lot, and that they are surprisingly loud for such a small animal (male junglefowl typically weigh just slightly over a kilo). I spent last summer growing progressively more astonished at the sheer stamina and unflagging dedication these birds showed to the production of noise.

Notes from the henhouse: mansplaining chickens?

For my PhD, started earlier this year, I am studying the behaviour of chickens. Chickens are easily the most populous bird on the planet, as about 50 billion of them live on farms worldwide: an ideal study population, with lots of data easily accessible. What’s more, because chicken eggs and meat form part of the diet of so many people, and because they’re much cheaper and more environmentally friendly to raise than many other animals, a detailed understanding of chicken behaviour can only be a good thing from a food security point of view, perhaps giving insights to keep them healthier and happier. Our species has such a significant relationship with these birds; shouldn’t we get to know them?

Much like the relationship between dogs and wolves, the chickens we are familiar with were domesticated thousands of years ago from a species called red junglefowl, which lives in the forests of Southeast Asia. Significantly smaller, more agile and active than their farmyard cousins, their behaviour is thought to be more ‘natural’ since they haven’t been extensively bred by humans.