Jack, Jordynn. “How Good Brain Science Gets That Way: Reclaiming the Scientific Study of Sexed and Gendered Brains.” Feminist Rhetorical Science Studies: Human Bodies, Posthumanist Worlds, Southern Illinois University Press, 2018, pp. 164–182.
Jordynn Jack calls for feminist rhetoricians to look beyond the results of scientific research to better understand how the conclusions were reached. She uses several examples of how scientific studies begin from an antithetical commonplace about men and women, such as women like to shop, while men prefer to watch sports. In turn, researchers view this commonplace as objective data and seek to explain it by blending psychological and neuroscientific methods. Jack argues that if researchers make different rhetorical decisions, the study may be designed differently, thereby altering results. One such example is a study conducted on the differences in pain tolerances between men and women. The study participants were first asked to complete a questionnaire before rating their pain. Jack explains how this method is an example of Barad’s theory of entanglement, as the material, embodied pain response is entangled with cultural expectations. Using several studies as examples, Jack concludes that sociocultural expectations may prefigure experiments to implicitly evoke their own beliefs and material elements of the experimental situation may shape responses. Jack calls for feminist scholars of rhetoric and science to be careful not to overlook these elements when interpreting studies or drawing from its results.