Male Brain vs. Female Brain or How to take scientific studies and manipulate them into social discourse

In an article posted on CNN today "Love, Sex, and the Male Brain" Dr. Louanne Brizendine discusses her new book The Male Brain.  She claims that the physical make-up of the male brain differs from the female brain (ok....I'm with you on that one) and this difference causes men to to oggle big breasted women (sort of losing me here) want sex ALL the time (hmmmm....ok), but eventually leads him to want a mate for life and become an adoring father (wait...what...contradiction much?).  This book is a follow-up to New York Times Bestselling The Female Brain in which Dr. Brizendine discusses the make-up of the female brain and how that causes us to gab so much (the cover is even a telephone cord shaped to look like a brain).   So when I first read the article, I had no trouble getting on board with the fact that the male and female brains are in general different from one and other.  What I have trouble with is the connection between the differing size of certain nerve centers being the cause of certain social behaviors. Apparently I am not alone: http://158.130.17.5/~myl/languagelog/archives/003419.html ; http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003894.html ; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/books/review/Henig.t.html


 My favorite quote comes from the New York Times review

Some may chafe at these ideas as politically incorrect. But what bothers me is that Brizendine did not do a good enough job of presenting the scientific evidence. Instead, she peppers her text with cutesy language — brain hormones are described as “the queen” (estrogen); the “forceful seducer” (testosterone) and the “fluffy, purring kitty” (oxytocin) — and anecdotes about uninteresting, presumably composite patients. And then there’s the maddeningly vague “marinating” metaphor, used repeatedly to describe the way the brain is altered by the hormones it’s exposed to, not to mention the endless slang, as in the description of the “teen girl brain” that “begins to jones for that good intimacy drug, oxytocin.”

  I think the rhetoric of both books turns me off from reading them...I really hate having things boiled down to metaphors (especially metaphors that seem to be coming from an middle aged woman "jonesing" to be hip).  I feel like these book show a general trend in mainstream science-based book: a little bit of fact with an awful lot of speculation.  I understand people not having the background or patience to only read peer-reviewed journal articles to receive information about scientific studies, but it kills me that people will read these types of books and then share them with the world as facts.  It's opinion and conjecture that is NOT based on evidence...I have to remind myself that every time I read one of these types of books/articles because it's so easy to get swept up in the sensationalism (especially for causes/topics I want to believe are true).