Hi,
I'm not a scientist or medical man, but I've recently sent the following
email to Dr. Sandra F. Witelson (witelson at mcmaster.ca), of the Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience. She hasn't really had time to read
it and respond to it, but I heard her or Debra L. Kigar in a radio interview
once, and I wasn't impressed with the apparent reluctance to follow a train
of thought in a direction which led to un-Feminist conclusions, so I'm
posting it here, as well. I also have some experience of academics omitting
to answer my awkward questions !
"On page http://www.bioquant.com/gallery/einstein.html you write, " In this
same region, Einstein's brain was 15% wider than controls. These two
features suggest that, in Einstein's brain, extensive development of the
posterior parietal lobes occurred early, in both longitudinal and breadth
dimensions...."
You also state, "the findings do suggest that variation in specific
cognitive functions may be associated with the structure of the brain
regions mediating those functions."
and later you write, "Einstein's brain weight was not different from that of
controls, clearly indicating that a large (heavy) brain is not a necessary
condition for exceptional intellect. " I wonder, however, if that isn't a
bit misleading -- in other words, is that the sole, or main conclusion that
emerges from the facts ?
Your use of the words "15% wider" clearly refers to size, rather than
structure, so we are obviously talking about size as well as structure here.
So you are saying that the size of a particular part of the brain may be
correlated with enhancement in a particular form of intelligence. So, given
that you are only interested in differences > or = to 2 SD's from the
control mean (males with an IQ of 116), we must assume that this increase in
the *size* of one part of Einstein's brain was either at the expense of the
size of another part of his brain, or was not enough to push his otherwise
average/small brain to 2SD's larger than the mean of your controls.
Are all abnormally large sizes of a given part of the brain correlated with
abnormally (and to an equivalent extent) small sizes of another (e.g.
neighbouring) part of the brain, so that the size-differences cancel each
other out ? I assume that this is not the case.
Assuming, for the sake of simplicity, that there are n forms of intelligence
that are each associated with one particular part of the male brain, then
surely it is conceivable, and it will often occur, that some of these parts
will be, say, 5% larger than the male population mean, and some will be 5%
smaller -- and sometimes parts will be 10% or 15% or even 20% larger or
smaller than the mean. It seems to me obvious that, in some individuals,
the sum of these differences will result in a brain that is significantly
larger or smaller than the mean, and that we should expect this to be
correlated, respectively, with a higher or lower IQ, since the IQ is the sum
of scores in sub-tests of various forms of intelligence.
I would be very grateful to hear your comments on these matters."
What I am leading up to here is that the above webpage tries to ignore size
and concentrate on structure, for the simple reason that the two authors are
both female, and we all know that the average female brain is smaller than
the average male brain. If the female brain is smaller than the male brain,
then this must be either because all of its parts are scaled-down versions
of the equivalent parts of the male brain, or because there are
size-differences of various sorts between the various parts of the two types
of brains (including even the absence of one or more parts of the brain in
the male or the female brain), such that these differences, in toto, result
in a female brain that is smaller than its male equivalent.
If the fact that one part of Einstein's brain is 15 % larger than the mean
for a sample of brains that output a mean IQ of 116 is causally connected to
his "genius" (or whatever word you want to use), then there is a prima facie
case to investigate, as regards the size-difference between male and female
brains. In other words, if size mattered for Einstein versus the rest of
us, we would not be wasting our time following up the idea that it might
matter for male brains vs female brains. I gather from the radio interview
I heard that big men don't have bigger brains than small men, and big women
don't have bigger brains than small women -- so it's not a question of
body-size that's at issue here.
Now, it may well be that women's mean IQ is found to be the same as men's
mean IQ, but, in view of the above discussion, that result would have to be
a bit suspect. I have plenty of experience of academics preferring to state
what is politically correct than what is true. In fact, many academics
consider it to be the height of naivety to state something that is merely
true, when the opposite is widely known to be politically correct !
See also: http://members.tripod.com/peterzohrab/dumbfemi.html
Peter Zohrab
--
Domestic Violence Bibliography http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
New Zealand is run by Lesbians, and men are afraid they won't be real men if
they contradict them! Manufacturing Concern
http://mera.50megs.com/boycecnt.html The Next US President is a Batterer
http://www.glennjsacks.com/is_there_a.htm Review of Sex, Lies & Feminism by
J. Steven Svoboda in Everyman: A Men's Journal
http://mera.50megs.com/evereviw.html
