The recently published article MRI assessment of cortical thickness and functional activity changes in adolescent girls following three months of practice on a visual-spatial task documents that playing simple computer games, like Tetris, have effects on the brain. Which is interesting, but not the main issue here. The design of this study is even more interesting, on the background of another article I read yesterday, discussing an increasing gap between natural sciences and the humanities: While the world needs interpretation, according to the humanities, it is simply out there to be studied, according to natural sciences. The subjectivity of humanist research is one of the reasons that (some) natural scientists object to it. Back to the MRI study. The researchers chose adolescents “Because developing brains are most likely to show potential changes”. Sounds good. And they chose girls, “to minimize bias based on previous video game experience”. Sounds problematic and not as “objective” as expected, based on the natural sciences/humanities debate. There are no natural link between boys and computer games. More and more girls play computer games, and - if you asked a social scientist or a humanist you would also know that - many girls downplay or even hide the fact that they play computer games. Thus, the real question is: Why didn’t the researchers choose “adolescents who do not play computer games” instead of “girls” with the implicit assumption “girls do not play computer games”? Even if the research method (MRI scan in this case) might give a precise result, the research design is still relying on an interpretation of the world (assumptions about girls and boys- in this case).

Move back to start. Read Haraway before you roll the dice to proceed.