Month: September 2009

Nature/Nurture: Slash To The Rescue

Slash is cool – creative writing, community, and alternative imaginations all wrapped in one. Like I said at the end of my post Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail, if I want to understand slash, I’d read some.

And so I have, exploring recommend pieces over at Whispered Words. Cassandra Claire’s The Very Secret Diaries on the Lord of the Rings made me laugh and laugh. Greyworlf’s Kirk/Spock And In the Darkness Bind You was erotic, intense, and well-written, a classic of slash according to Whispered Words.

But today I want to expand on what I thought was a throw-away line in that post, and connect it to some of what Greg wrote about in his post on ethnography, hard-wired assumptions, and sexuality in SurveyFail Redax. (For more on SurveyFail, see Rough Theory; you can also follow the controversy in more detail through the links rounded up at Anti-Oppression Linkspam Community.)

The throw-away line was this: “But nature/nurture is dead (except perhaps in slash?).”

Today I am making it the punchline. Slash can save the day for nature/nurture.

Nature versus nurture refers to the debate of genes versus environment, human nature versus culture, of our animal side versus our civilized side, and so forth. As Greg said, it’s a very old theme in Western thought. In SurveyFail, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam operated from a restricted and dichotomized view of nature versus nurture, where nature, dictated by evolution and primitive brain circuits, dictate sex differences and sexual interests. Here’s how Greg put it:

In their responses to some of their critics, Gaddam offers the blanket explanation that, ‘When we talk about the ‘oldest parts of the brain’ [the subcortical regions], it is in the context of the tectonic tussle between these and the prefrontal cortices that give rise to the peaks of our culture and the terrain of our behavior.’ Daniel points out that Gaddam describes an opposition in the brain between the ‘oldest’ pre-cultural, primitive elements and these newer cortices that produce culture; nature v. culture played out in brain layers.

Slash can change that. Not by having nature and nurture meet in a bar (though if someone knows some slash on that, by all means leave a comment!), but in how slash works as an imaginative process.

Quite simply, nature vs. nurture is an oppressive division. Slash reworks the relationship between nature/nurture in ways that help us in our thinking and that are closer to the actual reality of how nature/nurture works.

Continue reading “Nature/Nurture: Slash To The Rescue”

SurveyFail redax: Downey adds to Lende

Daniel did a posting earlier today on Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail that explores a research project that self-immolated through bad design, horrible conflict management, and a number of other character flaws. I’m really glad Daniel did this because he’s the more tech-savvy half of this duo. I just saw this yesterday and started to read up on the commentary but quickly realized that I was over my head, having pretty much exhausted my ability to navigate communication technology and resulting subcultural movements with a Twitter-related post a while back.

But I did want to add a couple of points because I’m particularly interested in research design and ethics and because I like kicking researchers when they’re down. No, no, just kidding — because I find the focus of ‘evolutionary’ theorists on the supposed ‘hard wiring’ of sexuality to be one of the more irritating and, well, hard-wired theoretical assumptions, even in the face of OVERWHELMING evidence to the malleability of human sexuality.

I apologize for not putting up some clever graphic, but I spent most of today helping friends build their mud-brick house and then went to a Showground Association meeting, where I was elected president (that’s kind of like the County Fairground in my town). My brain’s fried, but I don’t want to let this post sit for too long or it’s moment will have well and truly passed.

Research ethics

In my brief and incomplete survey of the discussions of this research, it became obvious that slash fans were particularly irritated, not just by the initial bad research design, but also by the seeming inability to apologize, learn from criticism or even simply back off on the part of the researchers.

Continue reading “SurveyFail redax: Downey adds to Lende”

Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail

Slash Fail
Neuroscience researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam have done a massive FAIL through bad research, failed ethics, and greed. They created an online survey targeted at slash fiction fans that was a debacle start to finish.

Slash fiction takes prominent characters from movies, television, and fiction and explores their relationships in unconventional ways. The founding example is Kirk/Spock, where the slash indicates a story about Kirk and Spock getting it on. The creators and consumers of slash fiction are generally women.

Earlier this year Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam signed a deal with Penguin for a popular book with the initial title “Rule 34: What Netporn Teaches Us about the Brain.” Rule 34 is simply that online “If it exists, there is porn on it. No exceptions.”

Slash fiction fans became one of their “netporn” targets. Ogas and Gaddam created and distributed their online survey that aimed to prove their basic premise (well, my take on it): “When in doubt, the brain causes everything. When that’s something we don’t really understand, then it must be the primitive parts of the brain.”

Here’s how I derived that premise. First comes shaggirl’s description of Ogas’ response to criticism (Note: Ogas took down the survey and the livejournal that discussed the project, so I am relying on people who have captured their words):

He defends his comparison of women liking slash to straight men liking transsexuals because “some deep sense of pleasure or satisfaction ultimately rooted in subcortical circuits” compels us to seek out slash/transsexuals despite fearing exposure to society at large.

Continue reading “Sex, Lies and IRB Tape: Netporn to SurveyFail”

Last Day for Abstracts

Encultured Brain Photo
Today is the due date for abstracts for The Encultured Brain conference. I hope to see a bunch more come in!

ABSTRACT INSTRUCTIONS

Abstracts have a 200 word limit. Please follow the example below, and include the following information: name, contact info, title, abstract, and indication for a poster and/or speed presentation. We encourage people to indicate the “Format: Both” option, as this will help us accomodate more people. Note that co-authors are welcomed for posters.

LASTNAME Firstname (Affiliation; email). Title.
Body of abstract.
Format: Poster, Speed Presentation or Both

Here is an example:
LENDE Daniel (Notre Dame; dlende@nd.edu). Addiction and Neuroanthropology.
Approaches to addiction have been dominated by reductionist approaches in both the biological and social sciences…
Format: Both

Please email your complete abstract to: encultured.brain@gmail.com

If you want more information on the conference, here’s the main conference page.

Wednesday Round Up #79

It’s a day late and a dollar short. But at least my tenure package is in!

Top of the List

Gardiner Harris, Document Details Plan to Promote Costly Drug
The selling of Lexapro, a popular antidepressant, by Forest Laboratories. The marketing plan? “finding many ways to put money into doctors’ pockets and food into their mouths.” For more on how this sort of thing shapes research and expert opinion, see Furious Seasons’ More Possible Non-Disclosures For Depression In 3-Year-Olds Researcher

Research – EU, The Brain, Caught Between Science and Ideology
An interview with Catherine Vidal, with illuminating comments about men, women, and their brains

Neurocultures Workshop
You can get videos of talks by Nicolas Rose, Emily Martin, Allan Young, and Fernando Vidal

Brandon Kohrt, Returned: Child Soldiers of Nepal’s Maoist Army
A feature on the award-winning documentary film by Brandon and Bob Koenig. You can also go directly to the Returned’s website.

Vaughan Bell, Placebo Has Strength in Numbers
Excellent piece on how to understand the varied things meant by “the placebo effect”

Mind

James Winters, Continuity or Discontinuity: Are Our Minds Purely Shaped by Natural Selection?
A good piece covering some of the recent debates (even if some might call them debacles). For another rich post, see Iterated Learning and Language Evolution.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #79”