The Times says girls prefer pink because of their role as "gatherers"

Most of the British media covered the study by Anya C. Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling in the journal Current Biology on “Biological components of sex differences in color preference”. As its title suggests, the paper deals with differences between men and women in colour preference, and can be found here, but there are a couple of things that bother me about the reporting of this study.

The first is an ongoing problem: without an academic login, you can’t read more than the paper’s abstract. This means that a layperson wishing to keep abreast of current developments in science cannot look at the actual science, whilst journalists from the national media – like those at the Sun newspaper to pluck an example from thin air – can.

My more perceptive readers might sense the sort of issues that could arise in circumstances like these; where the nation is beholden for its view on scientific matters to a few writers whose primary purpose is not to disseminate hard won evidence and the theories that try to explain it, but to sell copy to a public largely ignorant of how science works: issues to do with arbitrary filtration of data, misrepresentation and so on.

The second issue has to do with the reporting of the study. It seems its authors are evolutionary psychologists, or are dabblers in the waters thereof. This is a marvellous field because you can say whatever seems plausible without being hindered by data that might contradict you. The sort of claims one sees are such as this: “Girls like texting because in the Pleistocene they were the ones who had to communicate efficiently to other females about the gathering, preparation and cooking of food as well as matters such as what the children were doing. Texting is simply the modern outlet for this built-in urge.”

The flaws in this approach only become apparent when one can show that absurd claims can also be made to match the evidence. Ben Goldacre has something to say on the subject here. For my part, it suffices to say that unlike xenobiology, which is a science without a subject, evolutionary psychology is a subject without a science.

In addition to the dangers of evolutionary psychology we also find that the article covering the story in the Times confuses the evidence with the hypothesis. Certainly the title “At last, science discovers why blue is for boys but girls really do prefer pink” leads you to suppose that the researchers have discovered the reason for colour preference. In fact, all they actually found was the existence of a colour preference in the subjects they tested. The researchers hypothesised that “the explanation might date back to humans’ hunter-gatherer days, when women were the primary gatherers and would have benefited from an ability to home in on ripe, red fruits,” but other explanations might also explain the known facts.

In the article itself, the journalist was a little more careful and hedged about his assertions with “may”, “might” or “could”. Nevertheless, the average member of the public is likely to come away from the article thinking the title sums it all up.

I’m all for trying to find out why psychological traits might have evolved in the way they have, but it does seem as though the field is very young, and could benefit from more responsible reporting.