Why 'imaginary voices' are male

“Psychiatrists believe that these auditory hallucinations are caused when the brain spontaneously activates, creating a false perception of a voice,” says Professor Hunter of the university’s psychiatry department.

“The reason these voices are usually male could be explained by the fact that the female voice is so much more complex that the brain would find it much harder to create a false female voice accurately than a false male voice,” he says. —Sean CoughlanWhy ‘imaginary voices’ are male (BBC)

You learn something new every day.

This story comes straight from the press release. But note how the university states the scientists “have explained” a scientific truth, while the news story says the researchers say they made a discovery. (If the research turns out to be junk science, it’s still true that university researchers said they accomplished something.)

I don’t know whether the journal in which the research appeared is one of the top publications in the field or a fly-by-night operation, but one would hope that an operation as like the BBC would check something basic like that. Still, I was looking for a paragraph that says something like, “Jim Smith, a University of Somewhere neuroscientist who was not involved in the study, says the findings are significant because…”

2 thoughts on “Why 'imaginary voices' are male

  1. “The reason these voices are usually male COULD be explained by the fact that the female voice is so much more complex”

    Someone needed to add to the BBC wish list an editor. There is a firm difference between HAVE explained and COULD be explained

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