8. The ‘Men are from Mars’ silliness...

Not surprisingly, the whole ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ plot is a load of old cobblers according to real psychologists. Quack psychobabbler John Gray was the first to hit the big time with this kind of book, but his was quickly followed by a whole bunch of copycats, the best known runner up being ‘Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps’, but the real psychologists (the ones that have to make their living backing up their theories with academically credible evidence) have pretty much scoffed at all Gray’s ideas.

One of the central ideas of Gray’s book is that men and women squabble because they are effectively speaking for two different reasons (like aliens from different planets, they just can’t make sense of what the other is on about). When Olive says ‘she’s sick of doing the ironing’ , Popeye chucks down a can of spinach and invents the frictionless ironing board. Instead of being grateful, Olive slaps his mush and calls him a dolt before storming off into the larder for a good old sob. Popeye scratches his head in bewilderment....

Gray tells us it’s all because Olive didn’t want a 'solution', she wanted a sympathetic ear. No problem with that. The trouble comes when Gray generalises this to all women, all men and all arguments. In fact, researchers have found out that men and women’s reasons for communicating problems are the same – both sometimes just want to unload, both sometimes just want something to get fixed.

Gray will also have his readers believe that men like pretty young lasses because its programmed into their genes that way. The researchers point out that if looks were the number one determining factor, there should be an evolutionary link between being a "hottie" and reproductive success: in short, fit girls should have more babies. Not so, say the scientists. There is no correspondence between fertility and physical appearance. Equally, the idea that women are genetically determined to prefer older men with more resources to ensure the security of their offspring is also scratched off the list of likely truths. It’s a trend that’s only found in societies where women are less wealthy and less well-educated. In modern Western societies, the trend has wholly disappeared, proving that the cause is circumstantial rather than genetic.

Despite making a mint from selling millions of copies of his books, turns out that Gray got his celestial geography wrong: men are from Earth, and women are too.