11/06/2026
From dating podcasts to TikTok algorithms: Vicenta tells us how science on s*x differences is simplified, sensationalised, and sold. Illustrated by Jess Walton. Edited by Han Chong. 📱🫶👩🏾🔬
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"Once these findings leave academic journals, however, they often undergo a dramatic simplification.
On social media platforms, dating podcasts, YouTube commentary channels, and algorithm-driven feeds, probabilistic patterns are frequently reframed as fixed biological truths. For instance, a statistical tendency for men, on average, to prioritise youth in certain contexts becomes the sweeping claim that women inevitably “lose value” with age, which is usually accompanied by a graph created from non-peer-reviewed data, a ring light, and enough confidence to make one briefly forget what a sample bias is. Findings about short-term mating strategies are transformed into declarations that men are biologically incapable of monogamy. The context and variation embedded within the original research are gradually stripped away and replaced with narratives that are far easier to package into viral content."
Read the full article and the rest of Issue 10: Fact & Fiction using the link in our bio (www.omniscimag.com).
