2024-03-18 16:00:57
Friends from Legal Insurrection may recall I refer to Scientific American as the Bud Light of scientific journals. That particular article stemmed from the magazine’s editor using an example of a bird that has 2 distinct genders based on 4 chromosomes to argue the avian’s existence supported “non-binary” gender identities. She was heavily critiqued for the example by an exceptional evolutionary biologist.
The publication is back at it again, this time using the phrase “birthing parent” in reference to mothers.
The term was apparently also used in a Nature Neuroscience study that was being described in the magazine.
The study, published in January in Nature Neuroscience, followed more than 100 new mothers from near the end of their pregnancy until about three weeks on average after they had their baby. Previous research had examined birthing parents’ brain before they gave birth or during the postpartum period, but this study observed them both before and after birth, and it also took into account whether they had a vaginal birth or C-section.
The findings reveal temporary changes in some brain regions and more permanent ones in a brain circuit that activates when people are not engaged in an active task and that is also involved in self-reflection and empathizing with others.
Why not use the term “women” for mothers. 100% of all babies born to humans so far have been born by women. Until that scientific fact changes, the term ‘birthing parent’ is a signal that you are about to read woke blather and pseudoscience.
To promote the article, Scientific American released an X-post. The ratio it achieved was spectacular, and the comments were mix of mockery and derision for the use of the term ‘birthing parent’.
‘Scientific’ … Women give birth and only women.
Stop dehumanising us to please a few individuals with mental health issues.
You’re a disgusting gaslighting rag.— Lanee (@OakTreeLaneN) March 17, 2024
What a journalistic mess — the story uses “mothers” and “women who gave birth” on most first references and then tosses in the meaningless “birthing parent” on second references and the headline — possibly a serious reporter paired with an unserious editor?
— CindyHoedel (@CindyHoedel) March 17, 2024
“Stephen why don’t you put more stock in what scientists say?”
Gee I wonder
— Stephen Schutt (@schuttsm) March 17, 2024
Scientific American has been busy promoting agenda-driven pseudoscience. At my personal website, Temple of Mut, I did a detailed analysis of one recent review of sexual dimorphism research that was a cover for undermining the seminal work of Charles Darwin, an icon of Western science.
My post went deep into the science weeds, so head there for links to actual science and supporting documentation.
… English naturalist Charles Darwin studied and published at during the Victorian era. His seminal work, The Origin of Species, was written in an era when the modern approach to science and research into biology were being developed. And perhaps it is worthwhile to take a look at the data he collected and analyze it with fresh eyes.
By why? Is it for the love of science?
No…apparently it is an attempt to fight the patriarchy.
The next paragraph heads into the anti-Western/anti-Male territory that is sadly dominating current “scientific” thinking today:
“There’s been this really strong inertia toward the larger male narrative, but it was just based on Darwin’s hand-wavy statement, and the evidence doesn’t really support it,” says the study’s lead author Kaia Tombak, a postdoctoral evolutionary biologist at Purdue University. That this narrative has endured for so long “may reflect Western societal biases that tend to look at issues through a male lens.
As I concluded in that piece: Little wonder trust in both science and journalism is collapsing.
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) March 17, 2024
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