I have a question...
Sep. 8th, 2005 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
If I say "men are, on average, taller than women", people would just accept that as true, right? Because it is true, even when, without a moment's preparation, one can easily think of many women who are taller than the average man - even some who are exceptionally so, and many men who are shorter than the average women - again, even some who are exceptionally short.
Still, you wouldn't go "what about my aunt Bertha or my uncle Oswald?", would you?
What if I said "men, on average, have more upper body strength than women"? This is also true (though women tend to excel when it comes to endurance and lower body strength - I remember reading a report about recruits at West Point. Those female recruits who disdained the "aids" designed to help them do things like the male recruits were just as capable of, say, going over a wall - but they climbed the wall in a completely different fashion from the way the men did, using their lower bodies to pull them over), for whatever reason. Would this merit anecdotes about people who don't fit the slightly less exact statement "men have more upper body strength then women"?
Probably not.
So why is it that when you turn this statement into something vaguely controversial (no matter how backed-up your statement is by scientific studies), such as "children who were breastfed tend to have less allergies than children who weren't" or "chihuahuas tend to be yappy, vicious dogs", people start listing every single exception to the statement that they can think of? Do they suddenly think that their anecdotal evidence is going to disprove the facts of the situation, when it wouldn't if they told me all about Cousin Betty, who was 6'9"?
I just don't get it.
Still, you wouldn't go "what about my aunt Bertha or my uncle Oswald?", would you?
What if I said "men, on average, have more upper body strength than women"? This is also true (though women tend to excel when it comes to endurance and lower body strength - I remember reading a report about recruits at West Point. Those female recruits who disdained the "aids" designed to help them do things like the male recruits were just as capable of, say, going over a wall - but they climbed the wall in a completely different fashion from the way the men did, using their lower bodies to pull them over), for whatever reason. Would this merit anecdotes about people who don't fit the slightly less exact statement "men have more upper body strength then women"?
Probably not.
So why is it that when you turn this statement into something vaguely controversial (no matter how backed-up your statement is by scientific studies), such as "children who were breastfed tend to have less allergies than children who weren't" or "chihuahuas tend to be yappy, vicious dogs", people start listing every single exception to the statement that they can think of? Do they suddenly think that their anecdotal evidence is going to disprove the facts of the situation, when it wouldn't if they told me all about Cousin Betty, who was 6'9"?
I just don't get it.
