Certainly a question for the ages. If only there was some way to learn more about this topic… perhaps some kind of article. Maybe one that even addresses this very point. But alas…

Tap for spoiler

Abigail Anderson and Cara Wall-Scheffler, both then at Seattle Pacific University, and their colleagues reported that 79 percent of the 63 foraging societies with clear descriptions of their hunting strategies feature women hunters.

[–] Cypher@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (18 children)

Sigh, taking such claims at face value and not looking into how the underlying data was obtained is how we end up with so many successfully published but false scientific papers.

The paper referenced here is https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287101

The cultures 'surveyed' are

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287101.t001

Notice any uncontacted peoples missing from those data points? Here's a quick list of them from Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

Immediately I can tell you the Sentinelese, Awa, Toromona, Nukak, Tagaeri and the Taromenanepeople are not represented here. It's almost like the societies selected for this paper weren't a complete picture.

I wonder why that would be.... surely not to conform to any biases of the authors.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

I can’t believe so many people upvoted this comment. Do they just assume because there are lots of words and you referenced the original paper that this is a good critique? But I guess a lot of people just turn off their brain when they feel cognitive dissonance.

Do you know what a survey is? It’s not meant to be comprehensive, it’s supposed to be representative. Furthermore, it is based on existing ethnographic data, so it’s obviously not going to include data on tribes that are currently uncontacted, because there is little or none. The reasons why are obvious but since you don’t seem to understand, we can spell it out.

Conducting anthropological research on these tribes typically involves going to the tribe and living with, observing, and interviewing them for an extended period to fully understand their culture and way of life. This is not advisable with uncontacted tribes because it is dangerous for researchers and dangerous for the tribe which may lack exposure to endemic diseases in the rest of the world. It’s simply not done and I guarantee no ethics board would approve such research today.

Furthermore, it’s hilarious to suggest that the authors deliberately omitted cultures we know little about to reinforce their own agenda. How would they even know which tribes the exclude? And, as others have pointed out, even if all of these uncontacted tribes had only male hunting (a fact which would be highly surprising), it would barely change the conclusion here that in most forager societies, women engage in hunting.

Overall, this seems a very bad-faith critique. It’s good to delve into the science and examine whether a given paper was conducted in a sound way, but you need to approach it with an open mind, not just seek to undermine it with the simplest and most superficial criticism you can conceive of that supports your pre-existing position.

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