Skeptics in the Pub, Oxford

Skeptics in the Pub, Oxford feed:

Copy the feed link and paste it into your aggregator

Copy the feed link and paste it into your aggregator

Subscribe to this podcast with iTunes

Subscribe to this podcast with iTunes

This is the podcast feed for Skeptics in the Pub, Oxford. For the main website, including a calendar of future events, please go here.

Creative Commons Licence
This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Oxford Skeptics in the Pub events podcast

Thinking and drinking. That is the unlikely goal of our meeting. Each month we invite a speaker to talk about an area of belief and to invite critical debate. We encourage skeptical thought and we enjoy challenging discussions.

Gina Rippon: Blame the brain - How neurononsense joined psychobabble to keep women in their place

29-07-2016


							 Gina Rippon: Blame the brain - How neurononsense joined psychobabble to keep women in their place

25 November 2015

There is a long history of debate about biological sex differences and their part in determining gender roles, with the 'biology is destiny' mantra being used to legitimise imbalances in these roles. The tradition is continuing, with new brain imaging techniques being hailed as sources of evidence of the 'essential' differences between men and women, and the concept of 'hardwiring' sneaking into popular parlance as a brain-based explanation for all kinds of gender gaps.

But the field is littered with many problems. Some are the product of ill-informed popular science writing (neurotrash) based on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what brain imaging can tell us. Some, unfortunately involve poor science, with scientists using outdated and disproved stereotypes to design and interpret their research (neurosexism). These problems obscure or ignore the 'neuronews', the breakthroughs in our understanding of how plastic and permeable our brains are, and how the concept of 'hard-wiring' should be condemned to the dustbin of neurohistory.

This talk aims to offer ways of rooting out the neurotrash, stamping out the neurosexism and making way for neuronews.

Gina Rippon is Professor of Cognitive NeuroImaging in the Aston Brain Centre at Aston University. She has a background in psychology and physiology and uses brain imaging techniques such as Magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the relationship between patterns of brain activation and human sensory, cognitive and affective processes. Most recently her work has been in the field of developmental disorders such as autism. She has served as President of the British Psychophysiology Society (now the British Association of Cognitive Neuroscience).

She also writes and speaks on the use of neuroimaging techniques In the study of sex/gender differences, recently featured in the BBC Horizon programme "Is your Brain Male or Female?". She is additionally involved in activities around the public communication of science, particularly in challenging the misuse of neuroscience to support gender stereotypes, and in work to correct the under-representation of women in STEM subjects. She has recently been appointed as an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association.

Categories

Download

Filetype: MP3