As this story shows, something really quite odd is happening with the earnings of the children of immigrants in Canada.

What they’ve found is that earnings for daughters of immigrants are above average while those for the sons of immigrants are below average. This is after controlling for things like levels of education which are known to affect earnings. It’s also not down to language: all were born in Canada and educated there. Nor can it be racial discrimination, because that should affect the sexes equally.

The differences were quite startling. Women with two immigrant parents earned 15% more on average than those born to natives: and for the men there was a 38% decline in earnings.

One thought that I had was that while for the children of immigrants we were looking at just one age cohort, while for the children of natives we were looking at the total population, also turns out not to be true. So my thought that it could be showing a reversal of the gender pay gap, something which would happen in the younger generation, also wasn’t true.

So it’s all a bit of a puzzle. No one knows why this is happening at all. Any ideas as to why it is would be gratefully welcomed, both here and also by Statistics Canada, who are just as much in the dark as I am.

Here’s a theory I’ve not heard of before. That autism is a result of interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals all those tens of thousands of years ago. Now there is something interesting one can say about recent developments in the study of Neanderthals: for example, they seem to have had redheads amongst the population, just as we do.

However, there’s a couple of problems with this. For one, the definition of a species is that those who can breed together, their offspring being fertile, are the same species. So if we’re saying that the two different types of caveman got it on and then had fertile children, then they’re not two different types of caveman, they’re one species. The second is that of the red hair. What the research actually shows is that while they did indeed have redheads, it was via a different mutation from the one found in modern populations. This is known as convergent evolution: the marsupial wolf had a skull very like that of the mammal one, even though they had had no common ancestors for tens of millions of years. Any animal that hunts that way will develop a skull like that…perhaps redheads are a similar adaptation, but we and Neanderthals definitely got to it via very different routes.

But the final leap (we’re told that there might be a connection between red hair and autism, to support this Neanderthal tale) seems entirely wrong. For one there is not a scrap of statistical evidence showing that autism is higher in populations (like Scotland) with more redheads. The second is that the leading researcher into autism, our man Simon Baron Cohen, is pretty sure that autism is a result of excessive exposure to fetal testosterone. Now that might have a genetic component (for it does run in extended families) but linking it with swinging parties with the species in the next cave seems a little over the top.

A fascinating little piece of research has just been done which leads to lesbian worm sex! Well, not not quite, as this Reuters story points out. What they’ve actually done is changed a gene in female nematode worms (one of the first animals to have it’s entire genetic structure decoded) and found that, while all of them are female, they’re also now all attracted to other females. Thus the lesbian sex thing, in as far as worms actually have sex.

Now the interesting thing here is that it throws light on one of the long term puzzles about homosexuality. I don’t think there’s anyone serious who thinks that it’s purely a result of environment or upbringing. But why would something so obviously detrimental to having children persist if it were genetically determined? My own thoughts have been running along the same sorts of lines as our EQSQ personality tests. The hypothesis here is that sex, as in XX or XY, is determined by genes, but brain type is determined by development in the womb, specifically, the amount of exposure to fetal testosterone. I haven’t found it all that hard to believe that just as brain type can be so affected, so could sexual attraction.

But what this research does is show that my view could be very much mistaken. Yes, of course, there’s great differences between worms and humans, not just in genetics but in development (we being viviparous, for example) but if homosexuality can indeed be created by just one gene change, is that what happens in humans?

The next question, I guess, would be to ask whether, if it is indeed genetically determined, is it in fact an inheritable thing (which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen said) or is it a mutation? One that is in itself not heritable? But the problem with that is that non-inheritable mutations are pretty rare. So I’m left thinking that it must in fact still be something developmental, something which this research says it probably isn’t.

I’m thus entirely confused now: can someone hurry up and get on with the next stage of the research?

James Watson really is bright enough to know that you should engage brain before opening your mouth. He is, after all, a Nobel Prize winner (and not one of those faux ones, Peace or Economics) for his part in the discovery of DNA. His “crime” was the following statement, that he’s gloomy about the prospects for African development because:

” all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.”

Now the thing is that what he says is in fact true. If you take a random group of Africans and a random group of Europeans or North Americans then you’ll find that their results in an IQ test are lower. There are some obvious reasons for this: malnutrition is a known cause of mental stunting, such is known to happen in Africa, not so much in the other two places. It’s also true that “g”, the thing measured by IQ tests is defined as whatever it is that makes you a high functioning individual in the societies of N. America or Europe. Which may very well be not the same as the things required to make you a high functioning individual in the largely peasant economies of much of Africa.

Now what has gained attention is the idea that he’s saying that all “blacks” are dumb for genetic reasons. Which is near insane, for there’s more genetic variation in Africa than there is in the rest of the human race put together. There is no such thing as an “African” in terms of genes, they are wildly more genetically different than Europe or even the USA. I don’t think he actually is saying that. Rather, I think he’s making a point which thoughtful economists have been trying to make for some time.

Africa (in so far as you can make generalisations about a continent) has a different culture. Within that culture are different incentives and as any and every economist will tell you, people respond to incentives. It’s not because of any difference in intelligence that our own solutions to poverty won’t work, not because of any genetics: it’s the culture that will.

Note please that this doesn’t mean that there are no solutions. just that they need to be different ones.

There’s long been a supposition that oestrus in human beings has disappeared. Unlike almost all other mammals there is no outward signal of when a woman is in the fertile part of her monthly cycle, of when she is ovulating (see here for what baboons are like). The why this has happened is one of the interesting stories of evolutionary game theory. Humans are unique in the way that both parents are required to raise a child (at least, with much hope of success in an ancient environment) and for a very long number of years: vastly longer than even our cousins in the apes. As the story goes, women who concealed when they were fertile would gain attention all the time (when they might be fertile) rather than only at those times when they were. Thus is pair bonding created and the environment that the human child requires.

This view has been rather shaken by research into the earnings of lap dancers. By looking at those using the contraceptive pill and those not, it was possible to show that earnings rose significantly in the fertile parts of the cycle of those who were indeed fertile. So the logical assumption is that men can indeed tell, perhaps subconsciously, when women are fertile: which means that oestrus is back.

I think that the explanation of this is quite simple. There’s an advantage to women of not showing their fertility: men stick around. But there’s also a disadvantage to men of this: they have to stick around rather than impregnating the maximum number of women (please, leave the morality over there: this is evolution we’re talking about). So while it might be an advantage to women to conceal, it’s an advantage to men to pierce that disguise. Which it appears they can do.

As Matt Ridley pointed out in The Red Queen, evolution is a competetive game: you have to run ever harder just to stand still. So while it’s no surprise that one sex might develop a strategy to benefit from the other, it’s also no surprise that the second sex will attempt to counter that.

There’s an interesting little left brain right brain test that’s doing the rounds at the moment. Here. Depending upon which way around you see the figure turning, clockwise or anti-clockwise, apparently means that you’re either right or left brained. These are roughly analagous to our systemizing and empathising from the EQSQ personality tests.

It’s all very nice and just so but, unfortunately, isn’t really all that convincing as an explanation. This blog helps to tell us why.

Because the figure is a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional figure, with some care it can be designed so that you can see it turning either way. But which way you see it turning depends less on which side of your brain you use and more on which part of the figure catches your eye first. You’ll then interpret the rest of the sequence dependent upon that first glimpse.

Try doing what I did: look at it, then look away for a couple of seconds and then look back. You’ll find as often as not that the figure appears to have reversed direction. But your brain has clearly not gone from being right to left (or the reverse) in those few seconds.

So it’s an interesting optical illusion, certainly, but it’s not really telling you much about which side of the brain you use: rather, more about how the eye and brain can be fooled by the use of perspective.

A fascinating piece of research written about here. It speaks to one of the questions about our EQSQ personality tests. Should we use them to find out what we’re likely to be good at, systemizing or empathizing careers, or should we use the personality tests to find out what we’re not good at and thus need more training at?

What the researchers wanted to know was, how can doctors and nurses perform treatments that they know will hurt their patients? Sure, they will do the patient long term good, but the immediate pain would stop most people from starting (or continuing) even if intellectually they knew that in the long term it was a good idea? Most especially, how could nurses, known to be amongst the most empathic of careers, do this?

When the control group (the normal people) watched film of painful procedures, the part of their brain that feels emotions sparked up. When the doctors and nurses saw the same movies, that part didn’t: but the part of the brain known to control emotions did. The researchers concluded that it’s part of the training of the medical professions, to learn how to control these instinctive reactions. To move, if you wish, the consideration of pain and harm from being a short term matte, like it is for most of us, to a longer term perspective. Yes, this treatment may hurt, but it will do you good, save you more pain in the future.

Which brings us back to our personality tests: we still say that nurses need to be empathizers: but the training makes it possible for you to change your instinctive reactions, as you will need to to perform properly.

I do love these sorts of things. Deborah Cameron had an extract of her upcoming book, The Myth of Mars and Venus, in The Guardian a few days ago. She wants to take issue with, amongst other people, Simon Baron Cohen, the researcher whose work underlies our EQSQ personality tests. Excellent, this is the way science advances.

However, actually reading through it I think she really rather misses her mark. Her basic thrust is that the differences between men and women are socially created and enforced, rather than being anything innate or genetically based. Thus, say, the idea that men interrupt more than women could be based on the fact that the powerful interrupt more than the non-: and it’s men that hold the power in our society.

She might even be right on that specific point, but I think she rather spoils things by stating that the variability between men and women on many things isn’t actually all that great (well, quite, we are the same species, after all) and then going on to state that the variance within men and within women is greater than that between the averages between the two groups. This is true, of course, but she uses it as a refutation of Baron Cohen and thus the science upon which our personality tests are based. But, err, the whole point of using them is that being XX or XY doesn’t tell you whether you are systemizing or empathic. We’re actually insisting that the variance amongst men and amongst women is greater than the averages between them, that’s why you take the tests to find out rather than looking between your legs.

Telling us that what we’re doing is right is a very odd way of refuting the argument.