Curving Normality

Science changes, as does the way scientists report on their work. Reading a 1971 article in Science, on attitudes towards induced abortion, I was truly amazed by the sheer amount of apparent activism that might have influenced the interpretation of the findings. Let’s have a look.

Now that the Beijing Olympics have come to an end, people in the Netherlands are pretty satisfied with the amount of medals won by Dutch sportsmen and -women. Interestingly though, these medals have been predominantly won by Dutch women. This has been widely analyzed in newspapers and on television, but unfortunately I think some of these analyses were completely wrong.

It was often argued that it is inherent to women in general to have a stronger will and desire than men to reach the goals they set for themselves. This might very well be, but that cannot explain the relative success of Dutch women over Dutch men, unless this stronger feminine willpower is a phenomenon exclusive to the Dutch. Otherwise, the strong will-powered Dutch women just compete against other strong will-powered women from other countries, and the weakly will-powered Dutch male athletes compete with other rather weak opponents. Clearly, this did not seem to be the case …