A great review of Deborah Cameron’s new book, "The Myth of Mars and Venus." From the reviewer, :
[Cameron] cites the slew of news reports last year claiming that
women on average utter 20,000 words a day, while men on average manage only
7,000. This “fact”, from a popular science book called The Female Brain,
turned out to be based not on research, but on a self-help book, which
itself cited other self-help books, each featuring wildly varying figures.
As Cameron concludes, “All the numbers were plucked from thin air. The
claims were so variable because they were guesswork.” The invented figures
were quietly deleted from reprints of the book — without headlines.