Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century

Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century. Gabriel A. Vecchi, Christopher Landsea, Wei Zhang, Gabriele Villarini & Thomas Knutson. Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 4054. Jul 19 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24268-5

Abstract: Atlantic hurricanes are a major hazard to life and property, and a topic of intense scientific interest. Historical changes in observing practices limit the utility of century-scale records of Atlantic major hurricane frequency. To evaluate past changes in frequency, we have here developed a homogenization method for Atlantic hurricane and major hurricane frequency over 1851–2019. We find that recorded century-scale increases in Atlantic hurricane and major hurricane frequency, and associated decrease in USA hurricanes strike fraction, are consistent with changes in observing practices and not likely a true climate trend. After homogenization, increases in basin-wide hurricane and major hurricane activity since the 1970s are not part of a century-scale increase, but a recovery from a deep minimum in the 1960s–1980s. We suggest internal (e.g., Atlantic multidecadal) climate variability and aerosol-induced mid-to-late-20th century major hurricane frequency reductions have probably masked century-scale greenhouse-gas warming contributions to North Atlantic major hurricane frequency.

Discussion

One of the most consistent expectations from projected future global warming is that there should be an increase in TC intensity, such that the fraction of MH to HU increases6,20,21,22,25,26,27,28,29,30,31. This issue has become more pressing with the recent finding of a global increase in this metric since 1979 using homogenized satellite-based data14—a finding to which Atlantic HU contribute. We here build on the methods of refs. 9,10 to build a homogenized record of Atlantic MH frequency and MH/HU ratio since the 19th century. We find here that, once we include a correction for undercounts in the pre-satellite era basin-wide NA HU and MH frequency, there are no significant increases in either basin-wide HU or MH frequency, or in the MH/HU ratio for the Atlantic basin between 1878 and 2019 (when the U.S. Signal Corps started tracking NA HUs35). We suggest that the modestly significant 1851–2019 increase in basin-wide MH frequency and MH/HU ratio that remains after including the HU and MH adjustment reflects data inhomogeneity that our adjustment is unable to correct—rather than an actual increase in these quantities. The homogenized basin-wide HU and MH record does not show strong evidence of a century-scale increase in either MH frequency or MH/HU ratio associated with the century-scale, greenhouse-gas-induced warming of the planet. For example, the temporal evolution of the global mean temperature is not closely reflected in the temporal evolution of adjusted MH/HU ratio shown in Fig. 4.

Does this work provide evidence against the hypothesis that greenhouse-gas-induced warming may lead to an intensification of North Atlantic HUs? Not necessarily. Substantial multi-decadal variability may obscure trends computed over the past century16,17,18,20,21, and recent studies suggest the possibility for an aerosol-driven reduction in NA HU and MH activity over the 1960s–1980s (refs. 19,20,21,22,23,24), which may have obscured any greenhouse induced NA HU and MH intensification over the 20th century. For example, a statistical downscaling of global climate models (GCMs) that were part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) shows a robust and significant projection for a greenhouse gas-induced 21st century NA hurricane intensification; yet applying that same method to historical simulations the greenhouse-induced intensification over the late-19th and 20th century is masked by the late-20th century aerosol-induced weakening20. Historical simulations show that aerosol forcing may have masked the 19th-20th century greenhouse-gas-induced increase in potential intensity, the theoretical upper bound on tropical cyclone intensity, even though climate models show increases in potential intensity in tropical cyclone regions in response to projected future warming24,25,26. The homogenized MH and HU data developed in the present study serve as a target for century-scale historical simulations with high-resolution dynamical and statistical models that are used for 21st century projections.

The adjusted NA basin-wide MH frequency and MH/HU ratio show substantial multi-decadal variability (Figs. 2, 4), and the adjusted basin-wide MH frequency shows its lowest values over the 1960s–1980s (Fig. 2). These features show at least qualitative consistency with the notion of a strong influence of either internal multi-decadal climate variability and/or late-20th century aerosol-induced weakening of NA HU intensity during that period. Our homogenized records also correspond with document- and proxy-based reconstructions of Antilles and Atlantic HUs, which indicate that substantial variability in HU frequency has been present in the Atlantic, and the inactive period in the late 20th century may have been the most inactive period in recent centuries42,43.

The homogenized hurricane records suggest a consistent and marginally statistically significant decrease in the ratio of basin-wide hurricanes striking the USA as hurricanes (Table 2, row 3). Some models project an eastward shift in the location of NA TCs in response to increasing greenhouse gases (e.g., refs. 27,28), so this observed change may reflect the emerging impact of greenhouse warming on NA TC tracks. However, although there is a nominal decrease in the ratio of basin-wide MH striking the USA as MH (Table 2, row 4), the trends are not significant for any of the time periods explored.

Caution should be taken in connecting recent changes in Atlantic hurricane activity to the century-scale warming of our planet. The adjusted records presented here provide a century-scale context with which to interpret recent studies indicating a significant recent increase in NA MH/HU ratio over 1980–2017 (ref. 14), or in the fraction of NA tropical storms that rapidly intensified over 1982–2009 (ref. 15). Our results indicate that the recent increase in NA basin-wide MH/HU ratio or MH frequency is not part of a century-scale increase. Rather it is a rebound from a deep local minimum in the 1960s–1980s. We hypothesize that these recent increases contain a substantial, even dominant, contribution from internal climate variability16,17,18,20,21, and/or late-20th century aerosol increases and subsequent decreases19,20,21,22,23,24, in addition to any contributions from recent greenhouse gas-induced warming20,22,24,44. It has been hypothesized, for example, that aerosol-induced reductions in surface insolation over the tropical Atlantic since between the mid-20th century and the 1980s may have resulted in an inhibition of tropical cyclone activity19,20,21,22,23,24; the relative contributions of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols, dust, and volcanic aerosols to this signal (each of which would carry distinct implications for future hurricane evolution)—along with the magnitude and impact of aerosol-mediated cloud changes—remain a vigorous topic of scientific inquiry. It has also been suggested that multi-decadal climate variations connected to changes in meridional ocean overturning may have resulted in a minimum in northward heat transport in the Atlantic and a resulting reduction in Atlantic hurricane activity16,17,18,20,21. Given the uncertainties that presently exist in understanding multi-decadal climate variability, the climate response to aerosols and impact of greenhouse gas warming on NA TC activity, care must be exercised in not over-interpreting the implications of, and causes behind, these recent NA MH increases. Disentangling the relative impact of multiple climate drivers on NA MH activity is crucial to building a more confident assessment of the likely course of future HU activity in a world where the effects of greenhouse gas changes are expected to become increasingly important.

Children shared more treats when there was gossiping, regardless of whether the gossip receiver could identify them; this suggests that 4- and 8-year-old children attempt to manage their reputation when they could be a target of gossip

Children manage their reputation by caring about gossip. Asami Shinohara, Yasuhiro Kanakogi, Yuko Okumura, Tessei Kobayashi. Social Development, July 20 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12548

Abstract: Individuals engage in reputation management by adjusting their behaviour in front of others. As gossip plays an important role in human society, individuals need to concern themselves with not only a present observer's evaluations but also non-present people's impressions. In this study, we investigated whether 4- and 8-year-old children (N = 144) would adjust their sharing behaviours when presented with the possibility of an observer's gossiping. We manipulated whether the receiver of gossip could identify the child being gossiped about by using real-life group boundaries. The children shared their treats with an anonymous peer in front of an observer under three conditions. In the same-group gossip condition, the observer told the children that she would report their behaviour to their friends. In the different-group gossip condition, the children's behaviours were to be reported to an unknown peer (from a different kindergarten or elementary school). In the no-gossip condition, the observer would not gossip. Children from both age groups shared more treats in the two gossip conditions than in the no-gossip circumstance, regardless of whether the gossip receiver could identify them. These findings suggest that 4- and 8-year-old children attempt to manage their reputation when they could be a target of gossip.

White sclerae in primates are associated with increased cooperative behaviors (determining a conspecifics likely intentions from their gaze direction), & dark sclerae are associated with increased intra-specific lethal aggression

The evolutionary origins of primate scleral coloration. Alex S. Mearing, Judith M. Burkart, Jacob Dunn, Sally E. Street, Kathelijne Koops. bioRxiv Jul 25 2021. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.25.453695

Abstract: Primate gaze following behaviors are of great interest to evolutionary scientists studying social cognition. The ability of an organism to determine a conspecifics likely intentions from their gaze direction may confer an advantage to individuals in a social group. This advantage could be cooperative and/or competitive. Humans are unusual in possessing depigmented sclerae whereas most other extant primates, including the closely related chimpanzee, possess dark scleral pigment. The origins of divergent scleral morphologies are currently unclear, though human white sclerae are often assumed to underlie our hyper-cooperative behaviors. Here, we use phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) analyses with previously generated species-level scores of proactive prosociality, social tolerance (both n=15 primate species), and conspecific lethal aggression (n=108 primate species) to provide the first quantitative, comparative test of three complementary hypotheses. The cooperative eye and self-domestication explanations predict white sclerae to be associated with cooperative, rather than competitive, environments. The gaze camouflage hypothesis predicts that dark scleral pigment functions as gaze direction camouflage in competitive social environments. We show that white sclerae in primates are associated with increased cooperative behaviors whereas dark sclerae are associated with reduced cooperative behaviors and increased intra-specific lethal aggression. Our results lend support to all three hypotheses of scleral evolution, suggesting that primate scleral morphologies evolve in relation to variation in social environment.

From 2009... Good-death Beliefs and Cognition in Himalayan Hinduist Pilgrimage

Good-death Beliefs and Cognition in Himalayan Pilgrimage. Andreas Nordin. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 21 (2009) 402-436. https://www.academia.edu/21820655

Abstract: This article discusses the notions of a good death associated with Hindu pilgrimages in the Nepalese and Tibetan Himalayas. Using theories and concepts from the cognitive anthropology of religion and from the cognitive science of religion—particularly the cultural epidemiological method—my objective is to explain why certain systems of thought and behaviour are favoured over others in cultural transmission. My thesis is that the apprehension of contagion and/or contamination, combined with prevailing cultural representations, exerts selective pressure on the formation of beliefs about good death. Pilgrimage sites are associated with intuitions about contagious and contaminating contact, avert the pollution of death, and provide links to supernatural agents.

Keywords: Hindu pilgrimage, cognition, death, good-death beliefs

We can't handle the truth... From the paper, pp 427-8:

In a summary of pilgrimage sites in the Hindu textual tradition Saraswati refers to such scriptures as the Dharmashastra, in which suicide at pilgrimage sites such as Prayag, Gangasagr och Kashi was morally sanctioned under certain condition (1983: 24). Saraswati’s presentation of the dharmashastra prescribes various forms of sanctioned and meritorious pilgrim suicides for soteriological purposes:

Following are the meritorious modes of suicides: (1) starving; (2) covering oneself with dry cowdung cakes and setting it on fire and consuming oneself therein; (3) burying oneself in snow; (4) to plunge into the water at the sangam, enumerate one’s sins and pray till alligators come and devour the man; (5) hanging with the head down in the stream and feet up and drinking the waters of Ganga; (6) cut one’s own throat, or cutting off one’s flesh and giving it as food to birds; (7) by falling head-long from a cliff, at Amarkantaka, for instance (1983: 24).

Clearly, several sources confi rm that religious suicide at pilgrimage sites has been sanctioned.

This, however, was denied by most of the pilgrims interviewed in this study. Theological norms that sanctioned ritual suicide were rejected by most of the pilgrims who were travelling to Muktinath, Pasupatunath and Mt. Kailash and Manasarovar. The pilgrims’ aversion to suicide in a context that was otherwise declared to be positive may exemplify a “theological correctness-effect” (Barrett 1999) or, more aptly, the tendency towards theological incorrectness (Slone 2004). That is, this aversion may be strengthened by fast, “online-reasoning” (Barrett 1999) associated with social exchange intuitions, rather than a slow matching of theological reflection with religious sources.

Quotations from the dharmashastra were shown to some pilgrims as an example of a scripture that did sanction suicide at pilgrimage sites. But the pilgrims generally had a strong antipathy for suicide and rarely hesitated to condemn it. Some of the pilgrims who saw the excerpts from the dharmashastra claimed they were false even though they were specially trained in the theology of their tradition.

Across cultures, males dominate reputation in most areas, like Cultural group unity, Dominance, Social and material success, & Supernatural healing; women excel in Sexuality (less infidelity)

Garfield, Zachary H., Ryan Schacht, Emily R. Post, Dominique Ingram, Andrea Uehling, and Shane Macfarlan. 2021. “The Content and Structure of Reputation Domains Across Human Societies: A View from the Evolutionary Social Sciences.” OSF Preprints. July 2. doi:10.31219/osf.io/mk4wq

Abstract: Reputations are an essential feature of human sociality, critical for the evolution of cooperation and group living. Much scholarship has focused on reputations, yet typically on a narrow range of domains (e.g., prosociality, aggressiveness), usually in isolation. Humans can develop reputations, however, from any collective information. We conducted exploratory analyses on the content, distribution, and structure of reputation domain diversity across cultures, using the Human Relations Area Files ethnographic database. After coding ethnographic texts on reputations from 153 cultures, we used hierarchical modelling, cluster analysis, and text analysis to provide an empirical view of reputation domains across societies. Findings suggest: 1) reputational domains vary cross-culturally, yet reputations for cultural conformity, prosociality, social status, and neural capital are widespread; 2) reputation domains are more variable for males than females; and 3) particular reputation domains are strongly interrelated, demonstrating a structure consistent with dimensions of human uniqueness. We label these reputational features: Cultural group unity, Dominance, Sexuality, Social and material success, and Supernatural healing. Ultimately, through this work, we highlight the need for future research on the evolution of cooperation and human sociality to consider a wider range of reputation domains, as well as their patterning by social, ecological, and gender-specific pressures.

Greece: Gay people were not less likely than people of other sexual orientations to be in a relationship; gay men but not women experienced longer spells of singlehood than people of other sexual orientations

The effect of sexual orientation on singlehood: Evidence from the Greek cultural context. Menelaos Apostolou. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 183, December 2021, 111150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111150

Highlights

• Finds that, homosexual people were not less likely than people of other sexual orientations to be in a relationship.

• Finds that, homosexual people were considerably less likely to be married than people of other sexual orientations.

• Finds that, homosexual men but not women experienced longer spells of singlehood than people of other sexual orientations.

Abstract: The social stigma attached to same-sex attraction, along with the limited availability of same-sex outlets, are likely to cause difficulties to homosexual people in attracting intimate partners. Based on this reasoning, the current study aimed to test the hypothesis that homosexual people would be more likely to be involuntarily single, and would experience longer spells of singlehood than people of other sexual orientations. Evidence from a sample of 10,939 Greek-speaking participants, indicated that homosexual people were not less likely than people of other sexual orientations to be in a relationship than involuntarily single. However, homosexual people were considerably less likely to be married than people of other sexual orientations, with the effect being more pronounce for men than for women. In addition, male homosexuals experienced longer spells of singlehood than men of other sexual orientations, but no such effect was found for women.

Keywords: SinglehoodInvoluntary singlehoodSexual orientationHomosexuality

COVID-19: Across 17 countries with lower fluctuations in births, the number of births fell on average by more than 5% in Nov & Dec 2020 & 8.9% in Jan 21, YoY; Spain births plummeted by 20% in Dec 20 and Jan 21

Sobotka, Tomas, Aiva Jasilioniene, Ainhoa A. Galarza, Kryštof Zeman, Laszlo Nemeth, and Dmitri Jdanov. 2021. “Baby Bust in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic? First Results from the New STFF Data Series.” SocArXiv. March 24. doi:10.31235/osf.io/mvy62

Abstract: Past evidence on fertility responses to external shocks, including economic recessions and the outbreaks of infectious diseases, show that people often put their childbearing plans on hold in uncertain times. We study the most recent data on monthly birth trends to analyse the initial fertility responses to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research, based on new Short-Term Fertility Fluctuations (STFF) data series (https://www.humanfertility.org/cgi-bin/stff.php), embedded in the Human Fertility Database (HFD), shows the initial signs of the expected “birth recession”. Monthly number of births in many countries fell sharply between October 2020 and the most recent month observed, often bringing about a clear reversal of the previous trend. Across 17 countries with lower fluctuations in births, the number of births fell on average by 5.1% in November 2020, 6.5% in December 2020 and 8.9% in January 2021 when compared with the same month of the previous year. Spain sustained the sharpest drop in the number of births among the analysed countries, with the number of births plummeting by 20% in December 2020 and January 2021. The combined effect of rising mortality and falling birth rates is disrupting the balance of births and deaths in many countries, pushing natural population increase to record low levels in 2020 and 2021.

Additional wealth and unearned income effects: An extra dollar of unearned income in a given period reduces pre-tax labor earnings by about 50 cents, decreases total labor taxes by 10 c, & increases consumption by 60 c

How Americans Respond to Idiosyncratic and Exogenous Changes in Household Wealth and Unearned Income. Mikhail Golosov, Michael Graber, Magne Mogstad, and David Novgorodsky. Becker Friedman Institute, Working Paper 2021-76. Jul 2021.  https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/BFI_WP_2021-76.pdf

Abstract: We study how Americans respond to idiosyncratic and exogenous changes in household wealth and unearned income. Our analyses combine administrative data on U.S. lottery winners with an event study design that exploits variation in the timing of lottery wins. Our first contribution is to estimate the earnings responses to these windfall gains, finding significant and sizable wealth and income effects. On average, an extra dollar of unearned income in a given period reduces pre-tax labor earnings by about 50 cents, decreases total labor taxes by 10 cents, and increases consumption by 60 cents. These effects are heterogeneous across the income distribution, with households in higher quartiles of the income distribution reducing their earnings by a larger amount. Our second contribution is to develop and apply a rich life-cycle model in which heterogeneous households face non-linear taxes and make earnings choices along both intensive and extensive margins. By mapping this model to our estimated earnings responses, we obtain informative bounds on the impacts of two policy reforms: an introduction of UBI and an increase in top marginal tax rates. Our last contribution is to study how additional wealth and unearned income affect a wide range of behavior, including geographic mobility and neighborhood choice, retirement decisions and labor market exit, family formation and dissolution, entry into entrepreneurship, and job-to-job mobility.

JEL Codes: D15, J22, H21, H31, H53

Keywords: income effects; labor supply elasticities; lottery winning; taxation; universal basic income; wealth effects

Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades: Maybe recent socioeconomic changes, new technology, and social media are associated with a surge of those distortions

Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades. Johan Bollen et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 27, 2021 118 (30) e2102061118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2102061118

Significance: Can entire societies become more or less depressed over time? Here, we look for the historical traces of cognitive distortions, thinking patterns that are strongly associated with internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety, in millions of books published over the course of the last two centuries in English, Spanish, and German. We find a pronounced “hockey stick” pattern: Over the past two decades the textual analogs of cognitive distortions surged well above historical levels, including those of World War I and II, after declining or stabilizing for most of the 20th century. Our results point to the possibility that recent socioeconomic changes, new technology, and social media are associated with a surge of cognitive distortions.

Abstract: Individuals with depression are prone to maladaptive patterns of thinking, known as cognitive distortions, whereby they think about themselves, the world, and the future in overly negative and inaccurate ways. These distortions are associated with marked changes in an individual’s mood, behavior, and language. We hypothesize that societies can undergo similar changes in their collective psychology that are reflected in historical records of language use. Here, we investigate the prevalence of textual markers of cognitive distortions in over 14 million books for the past 125 y and observe a surge of their prevalence since the 1980s, to levels exceeding those of the Great Depression and both World Wars. This pattern does not seem to be driven by changes in word meaning, publishing and writing standards, or the Google Books sample. Our results suggest a recent societal shift toward language associated with cognitive distortions and internalizing disorders.

Keywords: cognitive distortionsinternalizing disordershistorical language analysis

Check also Individuals with depression express more distorted thinking on social media. Krishna C. Bathina, Marijn ten Thij, Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces, Lauren A. Rutter & Johan Bollen. Nature Human Behaviour, February 11 2021. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2021/02/individuals-with-depression-express.html

“You don’t believe in God? You ain’t Black”: Identifying as atheist elicits identity denial from Black ingroup members

Howard, S., Kennedy, K. C., & Vine, K. T. (2021). “You don’t believe in God? You ain’t Black”: Identifying as atheist elicits identity denial from Black ingroup members. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Jul 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000397

Abstract: Objective: Anecdotal narratives and recent qualitative research with Black atheists document experiences of racial identity denial from the target’s perspective. However, no research to date has examined whether Black perceivers perceive Black atheists as being weakly identified with their race. Because belief in God is often inextricably linked with Black racial identity in the Black community, we hypothesized that Black atheists would be perceived as less Black than nonatheists.

Method: Black/African American adults (n = 343) were randomly assigned to view one of three Black individual’s social networking profiles (i.e., a Christian, an atheist, and religion not explicitly mentioned). After, they reported their perceptions of the targets’ perceived racial identity and trustworthiness.

Results: Black participants, regardless of how strongly they identified racially, perceived a Black Atheist as less racially identified than a Black Christian or someone whose religious affiliation was unknown. Additionally, a Black atheist was perceived as less trustworthy than a Black Christian.

Conclusions: Black atheists experience general anti-atheist bias (e.g., perceived as untrustworthy), as well as unique anti-atheist bias in the form of racial identity denial. These findings extend previous research on identity denial and intragroup dynamics and advance our understanding of the relationship between religious identification and racial identity denial within the Black community.

Sexual Orientation, Sexual Arousal, and Finger Length Ratios in Women

Sexual Orientation, Sexual Arousal, and Finger Length Ratios in Women. Luke Holmes, Tuesday M. Watts-Overall, Erlend Slettevold, Dragos C. Gruia, Jamie Raines & Gerulf Rieger. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jul 23 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-021-02095-5

Abstract: In general, women show physiological sexual arousal to both sexes. However, compared with heterosexual women, homosexual women are more aroused to their preferred sex, a pattern typically found in men. We hypothesized that homosexual women’s male-typical arousal is due to their sex-atypical masculinization during prenatal development. We measured the sexual responses of 199 women (including 67 homosexual women) via their genital arousal and pupil dilation to female and male sexual stimuli. Our main marker of masculinization was the ratio of the index to ring finger, which we expected to be lower (a masculine pattern) in homosexual women due to increased levels of prenatal androgens. We further measured observer- and self-ratings of psychological masculinity–femininity as possible proxies of prenatal androgenization. Homosexual women responded more strongly to female stimuli than male stimuli and therefore had more male-typical sexual responses than heterosexual women. However, they did not have more male-typical digit ratios, even though this difference became stronger if analyses were restricted to white participants. Still, variation in women's digit ratios did not account for the link between their sexual orientation and their male-typical sexual responses. Furthermore, homosexual women reported and displayed more masculinity than heterosexual women, but their masculinity was not associated with their male-typical sexual arousal. Thus, women’s sexual and behavioral traits, and potential anatomical traits, are possibly masculinized at different stages of gestation.

Discussion

The present data confirmed that homosexual women had more male-typical sexual arousal patterns than heterosexual women, as indicated by both their genital arousal and their pupil dilation. However, there was no evidence that they had more male-typical digit ratios, or that digit ratios mediated the relationship between women’s sexual orientation and their male-typical sexual arousal patterns. Moreover, even though homosexual women were more masculine than heterosexual women in their self-reports or via observer ratings, this pattern, too, did not explain their male-typical arousal patterns.

The finding that homosexual women had stronger responses to their preferred sex than heterosexual women is consistent with previous research both for genital arousal and pupil dilation (Chivers et al., 2004, 2007; Rieger et al., 2015, 2016). However, the finding that 2D:4D was not significantly lower in homosexual women than heterosexual women is puzzling, as it was confirmed previously in a meta-analysis (Grimbos et al., 2010). This may have been due to methodological reasons: Although between-rater reliability was high, and computer-assisted measurement techniques, such as those employed in the current study, have been shown to have the highest reliability compared to other methods of measuring 2D:4D (Allaway et al., 2009), we cannot say with certainty that our measure was valid.

Indeed, there is an ongoing debate about the utility of 2D:4D: Although it is regarded as a valid measure with respect to sex differences and female sexual orientation differences, it is also the case that there is much variability in this measure across individuals, and findings only apply on aggregate and do not apply to single people (Swift-Gallant et al., 2020). Furthermore, the aforementioned meta-analysis suggested a publication bias in reported relationships of sexual orientation with 2D:4D (Grimbos et al., 2010), and the true effect could therefore be smaller than usually published. In the present data, the strongest linear relationship of sexual orientation with 2D:4D was r (or β) = − 0.12 in the right hand. With this effect, post hoc power analyses indicated a minimum sample of 542 women for it to be significant. If our a priori sample size estimate had returned such a large number, we would have considered it an unreasonable goal for a laboratory-based study like ours.

Another possible explanation for the present null finding with respect to 2D:4D is the ethnic makeup of the sample. We did not factor this into planning the present study because the meta-analysis pointed to an ethnicity effect only in men and not in women (Grimbos et al., 2010), although other research has found an influence of ethnicity on 2D:4D in women (Lippa, 2003). Indeed, excluding all non-Caucasian participants from the present sample made the association between 2D:4D and sexual orientation stronger (although still nonsignificant) in both hands (Fig. 4). Thus, future research measuring the relationship between 2D:4D and sexual orientation may wish to either employ a racially homogenous participant sample, or recruit enough participants that per-race comparisons are feasible. Note that even within the white sample, 2D:4D did not appear to explain (mediate) any relationship of women's sexual orientation with their sexual response patterns.

It is impossible to draw any conclusions from the present data about whether the relationship between 2D:4D and sexual orientation mediates the relationship between sexual orientation and sexual responses, simply because 2D:4D in itself did not relate to sexual orientation. With regard to masculinity–femininity, if anything, statistically controlling for any of the three masculinity–femininity variables made the correspondence of women’s sexual orientation with their male-typical sexual arousal stronger. This pattern—a strengthening of the effect of sexual orientation on sexual response when measures of behavioral masculinity are statistically controlled for—has been previously noted (Rieger et al., 2016). In combination with present findings, it appears unlikely that it was previously a chance finding.

If one assumed for a moment that the present findings are accurate, what could be their reasons? For females, it is possible that there exist several “sensitive periods” of masculinization during prenatal development, and that these periods differ for different traits (McCarthy et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2019). At least in non-human primates, exposure to testosterone at different stages of gestation may masculinize sexual behaviors independently from non-sexual behaviors (Goy et al., 1988). Specifically, Goy et al. reported that female rhesus macaques exposed to testosterone during their prenatal development had different behavioral outcomes depending on the timing, with those exposed early in gestation displaying male-typical sexual behaviors (e.g., mounting other females) and those exposed late in gestation displaying male-typical non-sexual behaviors (e.g., rough play). It is possible that behavioral traits and sexual arousal patterns are masculinized at different stages of development in humans also, and thus, are not necessarily interlinked within individuals—for example, those who have male-typical arousal may not have male-typical gender-related behaviors and vice versa.

A final point concerns bisexual women, who were intermediate between heterosexual and homosexual women in their sexual arousal and masculinity–femininity, but were significantly more feminine in their 2D:4D. One hypothesis is that due to intermediate dosages of genetic or prenatal hormonal influences, bisexual individuals, who could be considered to have sexual orientations between heterosexual and homosexual, also fall intermediate with respect to correlates of sexual orientation (Rieger et al., 2020). Thus, regarding bisexual women's 2D:4D, we assumed that they could also be intermediate between heterosexual and homosexual women on this measure. Contrary to this assumption, bisexual women had more feminine 2D:4D than both heterosexual and homosexual women (Table 1). It has been proposed that personality differences between homosexual and heterosexual women may be caused by exposure to androgens during prenatal development, whereas the distinct personality traits of bisexual individuals (e.g., higher sociosexuality compared to heterosexual and homosexual) may be a correlate of their higher levels of postnatal androgens (Lippa, 2020). If the present findings are valid, they would suggest that bisexual women also differ from heterosexual and homosexual women with respect to prenatal androgenization, but this would imply that they have been less masculinized than other groups, and we cannot offer an explanation for why this would be the case.

In sum, the findings of the present research suggest that there is no link between the male-typical sexual responses of homosexual women and putative markers of prenatal androgenization. Other purported markers of androgen exposure may reveal a different pattern than the one reported here. Such markers include the distance between the anus and the genitalia (Barrett et al., 2018) and otoacoustic emissions, which are tiny sounds emitted by the inner ear (McFadden & Pasanen, 1998). Another avenue for future research would involve individuals with conditions affecting the availability of androgens, or their sensitivity to them. To our knowledge, no studies to date investigated the arousal patterns of women with CAH. If androgen exposure does indeed impact sexual responses—and given the apparent impact of excessive androgens on the sexual orientation of women with CAH (Meyer-Bahlburg et al., 2008; Zucker et al., 1996)—women with CAH may show male-typical specificity in their sexual arousal.

In the U.K., he noted "a tendency to admire authoritarian China among scientists that surprised some people;" "scientists take a somewhat top-down view of the political world," contrary to bottom-up Evolution

How science lost the public’s trust. Tunku Varadarajan. The Wall Street Journal, July 24 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-china-media-lab-leak-climate-ridley-biden-censorship-coronavirus-11627049477

From climate to Covid, politics and hubris have disconnected scientific institutions from the philosophy and method that ought to guide them.

‘Science” has become a political catchword. “I believe in science,” Joe Biden tweeted six days before he was elected president. “ Donald Trump doesn’t. It’s that simple, folks.” 

But what does it mean to believe in science? The British science writer Matt Ridley draws a pointed distinction between “science as a philosophy” and “science as an institution.” The former grows out of the Enlightenment, which Mr. Ridley defines as “the primacy of rational and objective reasoning.” The latter, like all human institutions, is erratic, prone to falling well short of its stated principles. Mr. Ridley says the Covid pandemic has “thrown into sharp relief the disconnect between science as a philosophy and science as an institution.”

Mr. Ridley, 63, describes himself as a “science critic, which is a profession that doesn’t really exist.” He likens his vocation to that of an art critic and dismisses most other science writers as “cheerleaders.” That somewhat lofty attitude seems fitting for a hereditary English peer. As the fifth Viscount Ridley, he’s a member of Britain’s House of Lords, [...]

[...] With the Canadian molecular biologist Alina Chan, he’s finishing a book called “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19,” to be published in November.

It will likely make its authors unwelcome in China. As Mr. Ridley worked on the book, he says, it became “horribly clear” that Chinese scientists are “not free to explain and reveal everything they’ve been doing with bat viruses.”

That information has to be “dug out” by outsiders like him and Ms. Chan. The Chinese authorities, he says, ordered all scientists to send their results relevant to the virus for approval by the government before other scientists or international agencies could vet them: “That is shocking in the aftermath of a lethal pandemic that has killed millions and devastated the world.”

Mr. Ridley notes that the question of Covid’s origin has “mostly been tackled by people outside the mainstream scientific establishment.” People inside not only have been “disappointingly incurious” but have tried to shut down the inquiry “to protect the reputation of science as an institution.” The most obvious reason for this resistance: If Covid leaked from a lab, and especially if it developed there, “science finds itself in the dock.”

Other factors have been at play as well. Scientists are as sensitive as other elites to charges of racism, which the Communist Party used to evade questions about specifically Chinese practices “such as the trade in wildlife for food or lab experiments on bat coronaviruses in the city of Wuhan.”

Scientists are a global guild, and the Western scientific community has “come to have a close relationship with, and even a reliance on, China.” Scientific journals derive considerable “income and input” from China, and Western universities rely on Chinese students and researchers for tuition revenue and manpower. All that, Mr. Ridley says, “may have to change in the wake of the pandemic.”

In the U.K., he has also noted “a tendency to admire authoritarian China among scientists that surprised some people.” It didn’t surprise Mr. Ridley. “I’ve noticed for years,” he says, “that scientists take a somewhat top-down view of the political world, which is odd if you think about how beautifully bottom-up the evolutionary view of the natural world is.”

He asks: “If you think biological complexity can come about through unplanned emergence and not need an intelligent designer, then why would you think human society needs an ‘intelligent government’?” Science as an institution has “a naive belief that if only scientists were in charge, they would run the world well.” Perhaps that’s what politicians mean when they declare that they “believe in science.” As we’ve seen during the pandemic, science can be a source of power.

But there’s a “tension between scientists wanting to present a unified and authoritative voice,” on the one hand, and science-as-philosophy, which is obligated to “remain open-minded and be prepared to change its mind.” Mr. Ridley fears “that the pandemic has, for the first time, seriously politicized epidemiology.” It’s partly “the fault of outside commentators” who hustle scientists in political directions. “I think it’s also the fault of epidemiologists themselves, deliberately publishing things that fit with their political prejudices or ignoring things that don’t.”

Epidemiologists are divided between those who want more lockdowns and those who think that approach wasn’t effective and might have been counterproductive. Mr. Ridley sides with the latter camp, and he’s dismissive of the alarmist modeling that led to lockdowns in the first place. “The modeling of where the pandemic might go,” he says, “presents itself as an entirely apolitical project.

But there have been too many cases of epidemiologists presenting models based on rather extreme assumption.”

One motivation: Pessimism sells. “You don’t get blamed for being too pessimistic, but you do get attention. It’s like climate science. Modeled forecasts of a future that is scary is much more likely to get you on television.” Mr. Ridley invokes Michael Crichton, the late science-fiction novelist, who hated the tendency to describe the outcomes of models in words that imply they are the “results” of an experiment. That frames speculation as if it were proof.

Climate science is already far down the road to politicization. “Twenty or 30 years ago,” Mr. Ridley says, “you could study how the ice ages happened and discuss competing theories without being at all political about it.” Now it’s very hard to have a conversation on the subject “without people trying to interpret it through a political lens.”

[...]

The politicization of science leads to a loss of confidence in science as an institution. The distrust may be justified but leaves a vacuum, often filled by a “much more superstitious approach to knowledge.” To such superstition Mr. Ridley attributes public resistance to technologies such as genetically modified food, nuclear power—and vaccines.

If you spurn Covid-19 vaccination, Mr. Ridley says he would “fervently argue” that it is “the lesser of two risks, at least for adults.” We have “ample data to show that—for this vaccine, and for others, going back centuries.” He calls vaccination “probably the most massive and incredible benefit of scientific knowledge.” Yet it’s “counterintuitive and difficult to understand,” which may explain why its advocates have been vilified through the centuries.

He cites the example of Mary Wortley Montagu, a British aristocrat, who pushed for smallpox inoculation in Britain after witnessing its administration in Ottoman Turkey in the early 18th century. She was viciously pilloried, he says, as was Zabdiel Boylston, a celebrated Boston doctor who inoculated residents against smallpox during a smallpox outbreak in 1721.

Vaccines have been central to the question of “misinformation” and the White House’s pressure campaign against social media to censor it. Mr. Ridley worries about the opposite problem: that social media “is complicit in enforcing conformity.” It does this “through ‘fact checking,’ mob pile-ons, and direct censorship, now explicitly at the behest of the Biden administration.” He points out that Facebook and Wikipedia long banned any mention of the possibility that the virus leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.

“Conformity,” Mr. Ridley says, “is the enemy of scientific progress, which depends on disagreement and challenge. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts, as [the physicist Richard] Feynman put it.” Mr. Ridley reserves his bluntest criticism for “science as a profession,” which he says has become “rather off-puttingly arrogant and political, permeated by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias.” Increasing numbers of scientists “seem to fall prey to groupthink, and the process of peer-reviewing and publishing allows dogmatic gate-keeping to get in the way of new ideas and open-minded challenge.”

 The World Health Organization is a particular offender: “We had a dozen Western scientists go to China in February and team up with a dozen Chinese scientists under the auspices of the WHO.” At a subsequent press conference they pronounced the lab-leak theory “extremely unlikely.” The organization also ignored Taiwanese cries for help with Covid-19 in January 2020.

“The Taiwanese said, ‘We’re picking up signs that this is a human-to-human transmission that threatens a major epidemic. Please, will you investigate?’ And the WHO basically said, ‘You’re from Taiwan. We’re not allowed to talk to you.’ ”

 He notes that WHO’s primary task is forestalling pandemics. Yet in 2015 it “put out a statement saying that the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century is climate change. Now that, to me, suggests an organization not focused on the day job.”

In Mr. Ridley’s view, the scientific establishment has always had a tendency “to turn into a church, enforcing obedience to the latest dogma and expelling heretics and blasphemers.” This tendency was previously kept in check by the fragmented nature of the scientific enterprise: Prof. A at one university built his career by saying that Prof. B’s ideas somewhere else were wrong. In the age of social media, however, “the space for heterodoxy is evaporating.” So those who believe in science as philosophy are increasingly estranged from science as an institution. It’s sure to be a costly divorce.

Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University’s Classical Liberal Institute.