Comments on: Missing Women Found

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Women Missing Again!

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 02:32:47 +0000

[…] Last May I thought I had found “75 percent of the missing women in China,” but new research done by Ming-Jen Lin and Ming-Ching Luoh at National Taiwan University seems to have cast serious doubt on Emily Oster’s work. As a result, those women are now missing again. […]

By: Kerim

Kerim — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 01:57:01 +0000

Funny that this post should come up again today. I just happened to glance at the BBC News and saw this article. Like I said above, the Hep-B study was primarily on China, while the BBC news article is about India, but still interesting nonetheless.

By: Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:36:13 +0000

Rather than condemning Emily Oster as a right-wing nut, you might go and read http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~eoster/witchec.pdf, a Durkheimian-materialist exploration of European Medieval witch-burnings as “a large-scale example of violence and scapegoating prompted by a deterioration in economic conditions. In this case, the downturn was brought on by a decrease in temperature and resulting food shortages. The most active period of the witchcraft trials coincides with a period of lower than average temperature known to climatologists as the “little ice age.” The colder temperatures increased the frequency of crop failure and colder seas prevented cod and other fish from migrating as far north…. Several kinds of data show more than a coincidental relationship between witch trials, weather and economic growth. In a time period when the reasons for changes in weather were largely a mystery, people would have searched for a scapegoat in the face of deadly changes in weather patterns. ‘Witches’ became target for blame because there was an existing cultural framework that both allowed their persecution and suggested that they could control the weather…”

By: Kerim

Kerim — Fri, 27 May 2005 15:34:49 +0000

The Patricia Williams article is not available on the Nation web site without a subscription, but I found it on Yahoo News

By: Kathleen Lowrey

Kathleen Lowrey — Thu, 26 May 2005 20:29:39 +0000

Sorrry — me again. It seems significant that Dubner and Levitt have promoted the work of a *female* student that undermines gender discrimination as a key basis for a real-world outcome (“missing” women) while also promoting the work of a *black* student that undermines racial discrimination as a key basis for a real world outcome (high rates of hypertension among African-Americans). More patterns, is all I’m sayin.

By: Kathleen Lowrey

Kathleen Lowrey — Thu, 26 May 2005 20:02:19 +0000

Hi,

I came across the same article, but what I immediately wondered was why Amartya Sen’s work in particular was singled-out for re-study; why Sen’s sociocultural /political economic explanation was challenged by a biological/epidemiological one; and what to make of the fact that the student presenting the work is in some way associated with Dubner and Levitt. In short, I felt awfully wary about swallering it whole.

Along these lines, see Patricia Williams’ commentary in the more recent issue of the Nation on another Dubner student’s report on the “genetic” link between slavery, salt retention, and hypertension among African-Americans.

A certain pattern begins to emerge.

kudos on the new group blog.

regards,
Kathleen