I'm not a scientist. (Said in the voice of a politician trying to evade a question to his policies.) Chances are, neither are you so we are dependent on what scientists tell us in order to understand scientific topics. Thing is, we don't read their papers, which are written for other scientists, instead relying on journalist and popularizers, or worse, pronouncements of others who rely on popularizers. In the end, there are several levels of politics operating, from the lowest level as pointed out by [a:Thomas Kuhn|14249553|Thomas Kuhn|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]Kuhn, to the distortions of marketing/capitalism and alternative truths. In other words, we are informed ultimately by our culture. In such a climate, how do we know what to believe? Some ideas seem to make sense superficially but are easily debunked. E.g. "it's those illegal immigrants that are taking our jobs". Others are more complex such as "Islam is a religion of peace" or "Sexual dimorphism through evolution has made males more comfortable with taking risks."

One particular cultural distortion which I am claiming as my own personal issue lately is the denial of our interiority. It is the attitude that our awareness, being private data and outside the domain of science is generally to be ignored in favor of the public data of brains and hormones and measurable behaviors. Now that you know my prejudice, you can see why I would be attracted to a book whose thesis is that sexist culture has distorted how we organize and theorize about gender related data and that the evolution based theory which supports the natural outcome of male dominance does not have the rational backing that is claimed for it.

Ms. Fine makes an excellent case for the set of theories she is calling Testosterone Rex doesn't have the scientific support many people have assumed. And she does so in an interesting, intelligent and entertaining style. I learned a lot from this book and had a good time doing it. I only gave her 4 stars because I sometimes got tired of reading so much technical stuff. I wanted to be entertained more.