Is There Neurosexism in Functional Neuroimaging Investigations of Sex Differences?

Neuroethics (2013) 6:369409 DOI 10.1007/s12152-012-9169-1

ORIGINAL PAPER

Is There Neurosexism in Functional Neuroimaging Investigations of Sex Differences?

Cordelia Fine

Received: 1 May 2012 /Accepted: 15 October 2012 /Published online: 7 December 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Abstract The neuroscientific investigation of sex differences has an unsavoury past, in which scientific claims reinforced and legitimated gender roles in ways that were not scientifically justified. Feminist critics have recently argued that the current use of functional neuroimaging technology in sex differences research largely follows that tradition. These charges of neurosexism have been countered with arguments that the research being done is informative and valuable and that an over-emphasis on the perils, rather than the promise, of such research threatens to hinder scientific progress. To investigate the validity of these contrasting concerns, recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigations of sex differences and citation practices were systematically examined. In line with the notion of neurosexism, the research was found to support the influence of false-positive claims of sex differences in the brain, to enable the proliferation of untested, stereotype-consistent functional interpretations, and to pay insufficient attention to the potential plasticity of sex differences in both brain and mind. This, it is argued, creates a literature biased

toward the presentation of sex differences in the brain as extensive, functionally significant, and fixedand therefore implicitly supportive of a gender essentialist perspective. It is suggested that taking feminist criticisms into account would bring about substantial improvement in the quality of the science, as well as a reduction in socially harmful consequences.

Keywords Sex/gender . fMRI . Gender stereotypes . Publication bias . Gender essentialism . Citation bias

Introduction

A now notorious claim of Victorian sexual science was that mens intellectual superiority could be explained by the larger male braina phenomenon described by one scientist as the missing five ounces of female brain [1,p. 23]. Developed under the assumption of a positive correlation between brain size and intelligence, it was only abandoned some time after the absence of such a relation became clear [see 2]. Historical examples of erroneous hypotheses regarding the neurological differences between the sexes and their functional implications are readily found [24], and it is not controversial to suggest that such scientific claims had political influence. Russett,...