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David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.

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dobbspic Author and journalist David Dobbs writes on science, medicine, nature, education, and culture for the New York Times Magazine, Slate, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. He is also the author of three books (see below), most recently Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral. For more on him and his work, see About or his website.

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Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral.
Oliver Sacks calls it "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant... The coral reef story becomes a microcosm of the conflicts -- between idealism and empiricism, God and evolution -- which were to split science and culture in the nineteenth century, and which still split them today."
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The Great Gulf
An epistemological pissing match disguised as fish fight.

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The Northern Forest (with Richard Ober)
An environmental debate misses the most essential relationships in the ecosystem at hand.

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« Placentas as evidence of common descent | Main | Bad financial decisions: Low-balling risk, high-balling certainty »

Testosterone and the recession: What goes around comes around?

Category: Brains and mindsEconomics
Posted on: March 10, 2009 10:05 AM, by David Dobbs

Back in October a study found that high testosterone levels were associated with higher levels of financial risk-taking. Now comes the blowback, as Andrew Sullivan notes:

Tina Beatie attacks testosterone:
...it is interesting to note that Pope Benedict has recently suggested that there is a close connection between original sin and the greed that has created the current economic crisis. It is also notable that the credit crunch has been created by a profession that is almost exclusively male. In the line-up of failed bankers, not a single woman's name has appeared. Male greed has proven to be a murderous sin, destroying the livelihoods of millions, bringing down economies and social institutions and threatening starvation to the most vulnerable people on earth.

But it's not as if men have escaped the brunt of recession. They are losing their jobs in far greater numbers than women.

That people take risks and get greedy shouldn't be news, of course. The crash was due to a wee few regulatory problems as well -- and the mistaking of a fuzzy risk formula as a save haven, as described beautifully by Felix Salmon recently in Wired.



Comments

Feh. If it wasn't for women, men would just live like bears in the forest. The cause of greed is that women will only mate with the man with the biggest spear, the most goats.

See? Sexism works both ways.

Posted by: Paul Murray | March 10, 2009 11:52 PM

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