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Charlotte Allen Bashing

March 2nd, 2008 | View Comments

Everyone else is doing it, why can’t I?

Count me in as another one who wonders how this piece of utter garbage got published in the Washington Post.

I think hilzoy said it best

Note to Charlotte Allen: if you find yourself having to argue that you are an idiot in order to make your case, you might consider the possibility that an idiot like yourself is unlikely to get much right about women, or for that matter about anything.

but I want to address the nonsense that Allen tries to pass off as scientific truth.

The first sign that Allen doesn’t have the faintest idea what she’s talking about is this:

Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

First, if we are talking about crash rates, the datum about men driving more miles is unnecessary.

Second, the data might actually be used to show that women are safer drivers than men (which I believe is reflected in generally lower car insurance rates for women). The overall crash rate for women is only slightly higher than that for men, but women cause substantially fewer fatal accidents. The critical data we need here is the type of driving. I suspect that men do more freeway driving, which would lead to more fatal accidents due to the higher speeds. Never mind that this entire discussion ignores what is by far the best predictor of fatal crash rates: age.

Third, navigation is not crucial to good driving. Navigation is crucial to getting where you want to go. People can drive for miles and miles without having the faintest idea where they’re going, but be driving perfectly well. In fact, this is what a lot of driving simulators and driving tests have you do. You drive. Someone else tells you when to turn.

But she apparently likes the taste of her foot so much, that she sticks it in even further and starts chewing on her knee:

The theory that women are the dumber sex — or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents — is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception. Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy.

Wrong on all counts.

Brain size (and what do you mean by “size” anyways? Mass? Volume?) is not a reliable indicator of intelligence. Visuospatial skills encompass much more than mental rotation, and their link to math and science achievement is a) tenuous, and b) stronger for men than for women.

And then she closes with this:

While the two sexes seem to have the same IQ on average (although even here, at least one recent study gives males a slight edge), there are proportionally more men than women at the extremes of very, very smart and very, very stupid.

In other words, she knows so little about statistics or about how to construct a coherent argument that she steps on her own point.

Which might be why she spends the next three paragraphs arguing for her own stupidity.

Here’s a thought, if you’re so dim, how about leaving the big-shot publishing gigs to people who are capable of serious thought?

Tags: charlotte allen, driving, gender, gender differences, math achievement, spatial ability, spatial skills, washington post, women

Yvonne posted this on March 2nd, 2008 @ 3:51pm in News/Politics, Psychology/Neuroscience | Permalink to "Charlotte Allen Bashing"

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