Science reporting can be inept, as Jender reminded us last month. So we should be glad that finally Nature Neuroscience is publishing the article on neurogenesis caused in female mice by exposure to the pheromones of dominant male mice, “Male pheromone–stimulated neurogenesis in the adult female brain: possible role in mating behavior” (Nature Neuroscience – 10, 1003 – 1011 (2007)). (In fact, the article was available online last month; but the print version is just being announced.) And since the discussion is technical, perhaps we should be glad for the less formal discussion provided. That’s the one with the title about alpha males winning again (Nature Neuroscience – 10, 938 – 940 (2007)).
Should we ask what the dominant male mice are winning? They are getting higher scores? In what? The number of females they have sex with, I guess. Or maybe it’s the number of encounters?
In any case, thanks to Nature for sharing your values with us! Glad you all are tracking the scoring in the animal kingdom.
Unfortunately, electronic versions of articles from Nature are expensive, unless you have access through a library, as many people in universities do. I’m copying below abstracts and the first sentence of the comment.
The comment, besides having a title that certainly reinforces a certain picture of the attitudes towards women that one can find in science departments, has some of the problematic content typical of work in this sort of area. The first sentence illustrates this. Pheromones are compared to a language and are said to contain cues to social status, health and genetic suitability. But if the analogy goes through, the cues should be cues to the individual female mice. However, it is not obvious that the pleasantness of the scent actually is that of genetic suitability; it seems more plausible that what the mice like is something well correlated with genetic suitability. The reason for this is that mice are clueless about genes, as we have been for most of our history.
Original paper:
Comment:
Interestingly, in the last week Nature has also decided to change its mission statement to acknowledge the errors in the previous statement’s gender-exclusive language (“men of science.”)
Here’s the link from Language Log.
Also maybe a good topic to plug Adele Mercer’s excellent paper which offers a myriad of arguments in support of the ameliorative use of gender-inclusive language.
Thanks, Rachel! That’s actually a really interesting approach. Instead of switching to gender-inclusive language, they’ve added ‘sic’ after ‘men’. I haven’t seen much discussion of this solution to the problem, but it’s a good idea in cases where one wants to preserve a quote for historical reasons.
Just a very small point about Rachel McKinney’s post: Please note that the last name of the philosopher to whom Rachel refers is is MERCIER, not “Mercer”.
Rachel,
Thanks so much for the link. The end of the quote from Nature is odd, particularly since no other initiatives by Nature or anyone else are mentioned.
They say:
Huge problems deserve small measures??
The reference to page 749 is to a letter about how minority women from overseas have some unique problems, and that letter in turn references two other articles, from one of which comes:
In the US, the percentage of women making full prof in the sciences is about 4%. I think, but am not sure, that industry has done much better.
Brief explanation: JP (immediately above) actually is JJ. And subject to some confusion.
Oops! My apologies for the spelling mistake.
[…] is the premier science journal that brought us “Alpha males win again.” Now we have an airbrushed model-perfect portrait on the cover. “Why?” one might well […]