Brain-weight comparison studies adjusted their methods to always favor whichever sex they predicted

Evidence

Materialist scholars have claimed to posit the problem in a purely static way; full of the theory of psychophysiological parallelism, they sought to make mathematical comparisons between male and female organisms: and they imagined that these measurements directly defined their functional abilities. I will mention one example of these senseless discussions that this method prompted. As it was supposed, in some mysterious way, that the brain secreted thinking, it seemed very important to decide if the average weight of the female brain was larger or smaller than that of the male. It was found that the former weighs, on average, 1,220 grams, and the latter 1,360, the weight of the female brain varying from 1,000 to 1,500 grams and that of the male from 1,150 to 1,700. But the absolute weight is not significant; it was thus decided that the relative weight should be taken into account. It is 1/48.4 for the man and 1/44.2 for the woman. She is thus supposed to be advantaged. No. This still has to be corrected: in such comparisons, the smallest organism always seems to be favored; to compare two individuals correctly while not taking into account the body, one must divide the weight of the brain by the power of 0.56 of the body weight if they belong to the same species. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 103

Categorization

• CANDY: Fun, tweetable example: 19th/early-20th century scientists kept revising the brain-weight formula so that the conclusion matched their prior, first favoring men then women then men again.
• SEED: Essay angle: the history of ‘senseless’ quantitative comparison as a method that manufactures predetermined conclusions — a genealogical critique of psychometric determinism.
• XREF: connects to: Sexology borrowed its biological-difference methods directly from racial science — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 740

Broader Connections

• Sexology borrowed its biological-difference methods directly from racial science #expands (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 740