Vagina Dentata

This is a great slideshow on a topic I have written about a few times; computer science, women’s brains and gender differences in what are perceived to be ‘male’ subjects.

Slide 21 is particularly helpful for the intelligence debate…

People need to realise that the diagram below works for women and men. Oh and how it does.

Nerd Venn Diagram

Previous posts on female/male intelligence and women and open source software.

New Top Shop designer Christopher Kane came up with this lovely number.

I’ve actually seen someone wearing this in the street and now pretend that they are secret fans of my blog

It is distasteful to see a number of anti-vax headlines (which have subsequently been taken down) reporting the tragic death of a 15 year-old girl after she had received the cervical cancer jab. Of course we learnt soon after that Natalie Morton had a malignant chest tumour but that was after the vaccination programme had taken a hit.

None of this furore really leads to a conducive atmosphere in which we can talk about possibly extending the vaccination to boys, but I’ll give it a go.

This week the British Medical Journal published a study into the cost-effectiveness (or not) of extending the HPV vaccine programme to boys as well as girls. Of course, cervical cancer is not the only cancer associated with HPV 16 and 18, which the Cervarix vaccine covers, but also vulvar, vaginal, and oropharyngeal, anal, and oral cancers.

The vaccine would therefore not only have direct health benefits for males but also to indirect health benefits (for sexual partners) through reduced transmission of HPV.

To be clear (unlike the Sunday Express) this was research done in the US on Gardasil not on Cervarix which is being rolled out in the UK. There has however, been similar research in the UK by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation which lead to the current recommendation that the vaccination programme should only cover girls (cost-effectiveness of vaccine to girls here).

The BMJ research continued that:

Given currently available information, including boys in an HPV vaccination programme generally exceeds conventional thresholds of good value for money, even under favourable conditions of vaccine protection and health benefits.

Put simply, there would not be enough benefit from boys being vaccinated to make the extension to the programme value for money. What is interesting is that it does highlight where a pure cost-effectiveness analysis can miss important social policy aspects.

The British Medical Association voted at its last Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) for the vaccine to be rolled out to boys as well as girls. The arguments did not rest only on the effectiveness of the extended coverage but also on the impact that limiting the vaccine to girls – namely, that both men and women should take responsibility for eradicating HPV from the population rather than women taking sole responsibility.

This is not just a political point or an abstract notion of ‘fairness’, it is also a public health one. Due largely to the risk of pregnancy, women routinely take more responsibility for sexual health then men (I won’t go into it here but this still has implications for lesbian and gay people). Therefore, gender discrimination and inequality impacts on sexually transmitted infections when for example, women are not in a position to insist on condom use. This is not just the role of sexual or public health education, our systems and programmes need to support the principle of men and women taking responsibility for sexual health matters.

This is why the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo spawned the ‘Cairo Consensus‘ which acknowledged the need to increase male responsibility for family planning and recommended expanding services in ways that protect the reproductive health of both men and women. However, cost is always going to be a barrier.

Before I’m accused of being in the pocket of Big Pharma on this one (er, unlikely) it is important to acknowledge the well-founded concerns regarding Merck’s aggressive marketing of Gardasil in the US and the suspicion that Merck would be behind any extension to the vaccination programme. Believe me the last thing I want to do is contribute to Merck’s profits.

I am not arguing that Cervarix should definitely be rolled out to boys as well as girls, simply that (rather ironically) focusing on evidence-based medicine can be overly simplistic if it fails to take into account important social factors and the cumulative impact of focusing sexual health interventions on women and girls. I also acknowledge the economic need to ration health care and that cost-benefit analyses are important but necessarily cannot factor in every eventuality.

Vaccine policy based on QALYs alone? Unfortunately society’s a bit more complicated than that.

This is cross-posted on The Lay Scientist.

I thought I’d cleverly launch my new site by guest blogging somewhere else. I’ve helped hijack The Lay Scientist which is run by my good friend Martin Robbins who is too busy being lofty and writing for the Guardian. I’ve cross-posted the article below – but this is by way of an explanation for why it sounds like I’ve never written about vaginas before….

Waiting for clitoromania

I’m very excited to be guest blogging at The Lay Scientist and have to say its a bit like being in someone else’s flat without them being there. I obviously don’t do that too often and am just managing to keep myself out of Martin’s knicker drawer.

I thought I might start as I mean to go on, by writing about vaginal orgasms. Call me an attention seeker.

I was sent a study from the Journal of Sexual Medicine by the fabulous and recommended Dr Petra Boynton and have to say that, however angry it made me, I will be forever in debt to Prof Stuart Brody for introducing the word ‘clitoromania’ into my life.

Needless to say, the study is more than a little Freudian. Feminists have frequently had a problem with Freud, mostly on the basis that he was talking bollocks (heh), but also because he was often hugely simplistic and lacking in evidence. Somewhat like our new friend Prof Brody.

Dr Petra makes some excellent points about the flaws in the methodology of this study, notably that it was a questionnaire which was asking the female participants to estimate and recall such things as partners’ penis length, duration of penetrative sex and what they had been taught about female orgasms. Questionnaires asking for estimation and recall may return interesting information on attitudes but does not lead to very credible factual information. For example, you may be likely to say that your lovely partner has a larger than average cock because you’re a nice person not because its true.

But I can’t shrug off the feeling that Prof Brody has an agenda here, most notably because of his reference to women’s studies courses (codeword for hairy-armed, feminist, lesbians):

Many North American university courses, including women’s studies courses, promulgate texts that falsely claim that vaginal orgasm does not exist, is very rare, or is essentially the same as clitoral orgasm.

Really? Do they really? Really, do they? There is no evidence offered to support this statement or indeed most of the statements made in the discussion of this paper which specifically do not follow from the evidence reported by the survey.

There is an illustrious history of ‘scientific’ fascination in female sexuality and genitalia; from hysteria (meaning literally disturbances of the uterus, hence hysterectomy) to the widespread myth (for I’m afraid it is a myth) of the vagina dentata. The problem is how bad science, and bad science reporting, can be irritating but also damaging – to health, sexual satisfaction, and relationships.

This study generated the headlines “Women’s ultimate fantasy: Size not foreplay“, “Wait. Size Matters, After all?”, “The elusive orgasm” and “Oui, la taille du sexe, ça compte’ (roughly translates ‘Yes, the size of the sex counts’, but check out the less than supportive accompanying picture).

So there’s pressure to orgasm, to have multiple orgasms, to not take too long and now according to this study, have the right sort of orgasm. Listen Stuart Brody – back off.

It is a concentration on “doing sex right” which leads to the medicalisation of male and female sexual ‘dysfunction’. I don’t deny that sometimes drugs and treatments for sexual dysfunction are necessary and beneficial to individuals but often, and certainly historically, we are being told that there is a right and wrong way to have sex and if you’re not doing it right then you have to be corrected.

Humans, together with other animals notably the bonobo (great article, doesn’t link to animal porn. Honest), have sex for pleasure not simply procreation. By sex, I don’t share Brody’s fixation on heterosexual penetrative sex (believe me it is a fixation, see here, here, here) I would include oral sex, same-sex sex and all number of sexual practices which I’m not going to list here because you all have access to the internet.

Focusing on heterosexual penetrative sex is therefore frankly boring, unrealistic and makes us less adventurous than our ape cousins.

Instead let me recommend this study to you, which is also survey-based but is explicitly collecting data on attitudes, on the health impacts of women having positive attitudes towards their genitals. Debby Herbenick the lead researcher draws attention to how our culture portrays women’s genitals as dirty and in need of cleaning and grooming and how this impacts on sexual health and satisfaction.

Although the point of science is to check for biases and strive as far as is possible for objectivity, it still takes place – and importantly is reported – within a cultural context. A cultural context which is full of inequality, prejudice and discrimination.

This is why when you read the headline “scientists say size does matter” followed by a story of a flawed study that certainly doesn’t prove penis size increases the prevalence of vaginal orgasms; stop and think – I wonder why? When you do, you would have taken your first step on the path to feminism 😉

Naomi Mc blogs as Vagina Dentata. She was dragged by our over-centralised economy to London from Scotland and finds it to be “not that bad”. She’s a human rights activist and hearts epidemiology.

Boo-hoo. My Mac is not well and I have to wait till Wednesday to see a Genius to cure the little mite. In the meantime, read this fabulous blog by Dr Isis on misogynistic breast cancer campaigning.

This reminded me of PETA campaigning which has been frequently branded sexist. Feel the anger from Feministing (Vote for the worst PETA ad), Jezebel (PETA explicit ad “banned” but actually not), Opposing Views (Save the Whale ad), Julie Bindel. A colleague of mine used to work for PETA and said that their strategy was to be as shocking as possible regardless of the fall-out – all publicity being good publicity. Defence from the President of PETA, Ingrd Newkirk here and audio here.

Hilarious The Onion take on this:

Advocacy Group Decries PETA’s Inhumane Treatment Of Women

The Royal Institution in London was packed to the rafters last night (I know because I was in the rafters) with bloggers, academics, journalists, bloggers, science communicators and bloggers for the Drayson/Goldacre face-off (watch the full debate here or read New Scientist’s report).

Less rumble in the jungle, more grumble in the letters page of a peer-reviewed journal (come on, it half rhymes if you say it quickly).

The debate didn’t really set the world alight and neither of them strayed away from their (after numerous radio interviews) well-trod arguments. My issue, as ever, is the trouble with gender and on this Lord Drayson used a pretty annoying headline to illustrate his point on the benefits of sensationalism. The front page story from The Sun on HPV and cervical cancer has a killer headline…

[thanks Kate Arkless Gray @radiokate]

What I found interesting is the sub-heading ‘ALERT TO ALL WOMEN’. To all those who read the Daily Mail, you will know that the Government has been rolling out a comprehensive HPV vaccine to girls and young women. The Daily Mail is running a series of scare stories about this continuing a rich tradition in anti-vaccination journalism.

(As an aside: If any of the researchers I know from my old alma mater who did some work on Cervarix and Gardasil are reading this, please do comment/link to your research).

One thing that this policy decision does is put the responsibility for sexual health again squarely with females. And before, you roll your eyes and exclaim ‘boys can’t get cervical cancer’, they can and do pass on HPV and they do get genital warts. I acknowledge that there is a cost-effectiveness argument but this call did get passed at the last BMA ARM – not the most rabidly feminist organisation I’ve ever come across.

My point is not to get into the ins and outs of the HPV vaccine, but more to take issue with Drayson’s, and to some extent Goldacre’s, view that sometimes ‘sensationalism isn’t such a bad thing’, that it can publicise an issue that should get a high profile. Drayson used the Sun headline above to illustrate the benefits of sensationalism. My concern is that there are negative fall-outs from such an approach to medical or scientific PR; namely, that sensationalist stories can reinforce and feed society’s prejudices, stereotypes and negative attitudes.

This is infuriating for those who campaign to challenge social attitudes whether on gender, race, immigration status, sexuality etc. It is hard enough to combat the Melanie Phillips’ and Richard Littlejohn’s of this world, without having scientists ‘proving’ that immigrants are coming over here stealing our women, eating our swans AND giving us HIV and TB.

I’m not advocating censorship, I’m pleading for responsible reporting. Sensationalism can and does regularly undermine scientific reporting of delicate and nuanced findings. This can both lead to health scares and dangerous health practices but can also feed negative stereotypes about social groups being diseased, stupid, promiscuous or all of the above.

However much we might point to outstanding examples of science journalism in certain papers, all newspapers are writing for their specific audience, influence their audience and have a political bias.

Plus there is a huge amount of research into the way people read newspapers and news online. Using eye-tracking and socio-semiotic research, we know that people tend to read the headline and first couple of paragraphs if you’re lucky (this is a fascinating article on some eye-tracking research). Which means that if you leave the caveats, the nuances or other statistical ‘health warnings’ to the end of the article – they’ll rarely be read.

Science reporting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It takes place in a society with historical legacies, prejudices, tensions and pretty low levels of scientific understanding and critical thinking. Journalists and scientists need to take responsibility for the presentation of findings (assuming it’s good research in the first place) that can fuel discriminatory or unhelpful attitudes.

I only picked on one small aspect of the talk, coz I knew the blogosphere would do the rest. Here’s some more on the talk and arguments:
From Ben Goldacre himself
Basheera Khan at The Telegraph
New Scientist
Skeptobot
Nathan Chantrell
Skeptic Barista
And many many more.

Further to an earlier period post (which interestingly has been the most commented on post both here and from friends in person) I’ve only just stumbled upon the fantastic blog by the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.

I particularly liked the post on the hidden nature of menstrual blood in film and TV as opposed to the graphic depiction of blood via fighting, shooting and crashing.

Oh, and having just moved into a new flat, THIS is the shelving unit I’ve been looking for!

Periods and science: a veritable wellspring of menstrual blood!

”]

Inspired by a blog sent to me about EA Games ‘Booth Babes’ at ComicCon, I thought I’d write a blog about spanking. You know, as you do. Issues of Bondage, Discipline/Dominance, Sado-Masochism (BDSM), pornography and objectification are so huge I’m not going to pretend that I’ve done them justice here, but these are my initial thoughts so lets get, erm, cracking….

I’ve written before about misogyny in the gaming industry (here and here frinstance), which is ridiculous when 40% of (US) gamers are female. There was also a lot written recently about EA Games employing ‘Booth Babes’ and then asking for them to be sexually harassed by ComicCon delegates. But the most interesting blog (not worksafe) I have read on this was from a submissive model on the UK spanking scene.

This was interesting because it challenged me and my preconceptions about women engaged in BDSM. It wasn’t what she said on the EA Games issue, all of which I agree with: this objectifies women, ‘Booth Babe’ is a demeaning term, it encourages sexual harassment not just of the ‘Booth Babes’ but all women attending ComicCon etc.

There are two things that I find challenging about this: empowered feminists being sexually submissive and BDSM models criticising the objectification of women.

Now I’ve read a couple of blogs by sexually submissive feminists (such as the very good Girl With a One Track Mind) and it’s something I’m really trying to get my head around. It seems counter-intuitive to me because my instinct is to encourage women to be powerful and assertive against a historical backdrop of oppression. But this blogger dresses up in school uniforms and other costumes, and is spanked, dominated, tied-up and sexually submissive.

Plus she is a model on the BDSM scene and so is photographed in these situations and yet identifies the fact that encouraging men to get dodgy pictures with some ‘booth babes’ crosses a line into objectification.

I realise that finding these two things ‘challenging’ is an emotional response rather than an intellectual or philosophical one. So here’s why my emotional response is wrong….

What is definitely unfeminist, is a feminist telling another woman how to have sex and what she can and can’t get her kicks out of. I want my feminism to include, for example, those women who have a gendered analysis of the world, they campaign for women’s rights, they challenge people’s everyday sexism and yet they’re also down with consensual arse-slapping.

The counter argument is: these women are perpetuating rape myths, they’re playing out their own internalised misogyny and they are making it harder for other women who are fighting against patriarchy. I simply do not think that this is true.

Firstly, I have found that those involved in the BDSM scene or burlesque tend to have far greater social rules and sexual etiquette than in society at large. Because of the nature of the activities, trust, self-awareness and boundaries are far more strictly defined. These are people with a greater awareness of their own sexuality and the concept of empowerment through sexuality than your average non-handcuff owner.

Secondly, if you believe in the empowerment of women you have to accept that they should be empowered to do things you personally wouldn’t want to do. This sometimes manifests itself as ‘feminism going too far’ or ‘women just acting like men’. Well yes, because if you want to give women choices you can’t then try and make those choices for them.

If a woman chooses to engage in a bit of ol’ spanking then that is her choice. To say that I have a greater analysis of her motivations and am more aware of her sexuality than she is herself is deeply patronising, condescending and simply wrong. And it is particularly wrong when the women in question clearly demonstrate their political awareness, identify themselves as feminists and critically engage with debates around consent, sexual freedom and privacy.

This doesn’t mean that non-spankers can’t engage in debate about the issues, but it does mean you have to do so from an informed position and with a sophisticated understanding of human sexuality which goes beyond ‘sexual practice A is wrong, sexual practice B is alright – says me’.

Finally, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that individual women are responsible to women at large for their personal sexual proclivities. Women regularly bear the burden of their gender; if they succeed they are personally responsible for breaking down social barriers. If they fail, it in some way implicates all women in that failure.

The second ‘thing I found challenging’ was a BDSM model criticising the objectification of women in the EA Games example. The simple question being “isn’t that what you’re doing?”. Again this needs a little more sophistication on my part.

Two (linked) issues involved in the ‘pornography: right or wrong’ debate are female sexuality within the broad context of patriarchy and whether all porn is therefore objectification.

As a society we tend to make a direct link between female sexuality, what women wear, how they behave and how the rest of society should therefore react to them. This is the basis of the ‘she was asking for it’ rationale for rape, as though an outfit can consent to sex on behalf of its wearer. Just try and think what a man would have to wear in order to be asking for rape or sexual assault.

Putting aesthetics and scaring little children aside, a woman should be able to walk down the street naked without the risk of being raped. Clothes, lack of clothes or the wearing of sexualised clothing (for want of a better phrase) does not over-ride your ability to consent to sex. Your clothes do not remove the ability of another human being to stop themselves committing an assault.

Plus, I don’t think there is something intrinsically wrong with looking at sexual images of people. Yes there is a historical legacy of oppression of women, of women exploited by a male-dominated porn industry. That is context, not intrinsic so we try and change the context. This comes down to what sexual objectification means and its impact. Do all sexualised images, female or male, necessarily separate the physical appearance from their existence as an individual?

I think not. And while I understand the corrosive effect that pumping out degrading images of people can have (whether women or indeed, starving Africans) that is not true of all representations or all ‘consumers’. There is no getting away from the class, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, age etc etc aspects of this. But they simply make this more complicated rather than less as many marginalised groups, identities and sexualities find great empowerment in representations of their sexual liberation.

All pornography and/or erotica is exploitative, sexist, racist, homophobic, size-ist? I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.

In sum, if there is any walk of life where I want there to be feminists it’s in the BDSM scene.

So, ahem, more power to your elbow.

I am genuinely interested in debating this issue and am open to different points of view on it. Just don’t be pervy – I’ll just not publish your post and regard you a sad wanker.

I think we get the artists we deserve, which is why our money-grabbing, commercialised, shallow, turn of the millennia, Western society has produced Damien Hirst.

Last century, and for century’s before, most artists died in poverty usually syphilitic, earless, reputationless – apart from a reputation for opium and shagging prostitutes – they were on the fringes of society. OK not the court artists, but you get what I mean.

Now they are multi-millionaires, who employ people to produce their art in three factory workshops for them and swagger around threatening to sue 17 year old artists who make collages of their work and then getting them arrested.

Art has always involved copying and appropriating. It’s how the Greats learnt their craft. Mentors would encourage their protege to learn from them.

But not today. Today we live in a world where art is brand and brand is money and all that matters is how much Saatchi will pay for your pile of shite (which is my idea fuckers – any of you try and sell your own pile of shite I’ll sue!). In 2009, we get a multi-millionaire shitty brand artist like Hirst with a righteous desire to stamp on a 17 year old street artist.

So what happened? Street artist Cartrain made some collages using an image of Hirst’s disgustingly expensive diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God. These collages were put up for sale on an art website. Hirst reported him to the Design and Artists Copyright Society and sent a bundle of legal letters to Cartrain’s art dealer, Tom Cuthbert, at 100artworks.com.

After the legal threats, 100artworks.com surrendered the offending pictures to Hirst with a verbal apology. Cartrain, the artist in question took this all very well, and in the spirit of the Dadaists went to Tate Britain and stole a box of pencils part of Hirst’s £50m Pharmacy installation. Cartrain was arrested, released on bail, and is waiting to find out if he will be formally charged with causing damage to the artwork. His father was also arrested in connection with the theft from Tate Britain, on suspicion of harbouring stolen pencils probably.

It doesn’t feel a lot different from McDonald’s stopping local family-run businesses using the name ‘McDonald’s’. In fact there are a lot of similarities, as the McLibel Two will tell you.

So Twitter has been buzzing with #hirstisacock and some have been debating whether Hirst is a shit artist or Cartrain is a shit artist. Both may be true but neither are important. What is important is a rich, establishment, art figure trying to stamp on a child artist because he can. This is why Hirst is a cock. He is a bully, a hypocrite and a sickening anti-competition capitalist.

Cartrain and 100artworks.com have asked that bloggers and twitters bring attention to this story. Woop here it is.

[Jessica Drew was down with the spiders, that’s radiation for you]

At the risk of copyright infringement, I would like to quote directly from the BBC story on girls being afraid of spiders. This is a report on an article in the New Scientist which has a worrying habit of reproducing this kind of shite.

A new study in the US suggests that women have a genetic aversion to dangerous animals, such as spiders.

Let’s focus on the words ‘genetic aversion’, what kind of evidence do you think you would need to establish a ‘genetic aversion’? I would, for example, expect a geneticist to perhaps be involved in the research or maybe for it to be a twin-based study. But…

The research, published in the New Scientist, says women are born with character traits that were ingrained in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

FACT. This research PROVES that women (i.e. all) are born with character traits (presuming manifesting in behaviours) that were ingrained (genetically pre-programmed?) in our hunter-gatherer ancestors (a catch-all term but where our character traits were cemented and untouched by 10,000 years of agricultural and pastoral society). Again, for this assertion I would expect an archeologist, palentologist, ethnographer, paleoanthropologist, or someone with some understanding of prehistoric societies to be involved in this research.

Previous research suggested women were actually up to four times more likely to be afraid of creatures like spiders.

Previous research. Not this research. Not credited research. Just other research.

The new research was headed up by developmental psychologist, Dr David Rakison, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, 10 baby girls, and 10 baby boys were subjected to a number of pictures of spiders to gauge their reactions.

OK, so let’s recap shall we: no geneticist, no archeologist, no paleontologist, no ethnographer, no paleoanthropologist. A study on 20 babies where they GAUGED their REACTIONS to PICTURES.

A sample of 20 individuals who cannot adequately communicate were show pictures of things that they may have never seen before and the claim is that this research shows that women have a genetic aversion to dangerous animals.

Methods

First the babies were shown a picture of a spider with a fearful human face, followed by images of a spider paired with a happy face – alongside an image of a flower twinned with a fearful face.

This is supposed to be science. They are showing babies pictures of spiders with happy and sad faces (learnt behaviour) and stating that this in any way contributes to evidence for genetic aversion.

Results

The results showed that the girls – some as young as 11 months old – looked longer at the picture of the happy face with a spider than the boys, who looked at both images for an equal time.

The researchers concluded that the young girls were confused as to why someone would be happy to be twinned with a spider, and were quick to associate pictures of arachnids with fear.

The boys, it seems, remained totally indifferent emotionally.

“The researchers concluded that the girls were confused”. Seriously, why do these people bother working in a university when they could just prop up a bar somewhere shouting “I reckon…” into the air? Oh yeah, its on the BBC website…

I particularly like the caveat “it seems” in the last sentence. Because of course they don’t know, they weren’t even measuring heartbeat never mind any other tests of emotion. They just reckon.

Discussion

Mr Rakison attributes this genetic predisposition to behavioural traits inherent in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Men, he purports, were the greater natural risk takers, the ones who took greater risks were more successful when going out to hunt for food.

With women, in their role as natural child protectors, it made sense for them to be more cautious of animals such as snakes or spiders, Mr Rakison adds.

By contrast, the research concludes that modern phobias such as the fear of hospitals – or that of flying – show no differences between the sexes.

Only at this stage in the article do words like ‘attributes’ or ‘purports’ come into play. It is interesting to compare what Dr Rakison is quoted as saying above and what he says when he is interviewed on the BBC’s The World Today. The interview is worth listening to for the vox pops they do with a few women at the beginning (none of whom are afraid of spiders) where one says she’s not frightened of spiders but is of men. Anyway, Mr Rakison says in his interview explicitly that this is a learnt response and that “its not that we’re born with the fear”.

Also the study is published in Evolution and Human Behaviour and is about fear learning.

So where does the ‘genetic’ and ‘hunter-gatherer’ bullshit come from? It’s made up. It had no basis. It’s just a cultural meme perpetuated by repetition. I’m not saying that humans do not have ‘instincts’ or that everything is environmental. I’m saying that the hunter-gatherer concept pisses me off. It invokes an image of big strong men hunting mammoths and home-bound women collecting berries which feeds cultural stereotypes about male and female characteristics which are false.

Apparently Dr Rakison thinks men are greater risk takers despite later stating that the is no gender difference in things like the fear of flying.

And on the point that this was a study of 20 babies, I came across this fascinating article in The Psychologist about psychology’s problematic relationship with empiricism.

Oh, and this was another one for #bullshitbingo and its sister game #BSbingo (bad science bingo).