Cross-cultural reflections on science

Having noted results of research that seemed to indicate in a prima facie interpretation that children in some developing countries are less psychologically developed in some respects, the question is posed"Are children in these non-Western nations seriously delayed in their mirror self-recognition"
The interesting thing is that there may be, as the article points out, cultural reasons why the results might come out as they do. If science is blind to cultural hermeneutics in dealing with human 'subjects', then we could end up with some misleading interpretations of data and design of experiments.

'Our impression,' the researchers said, 'was that they [the children] understood that it was themselves in the mirror, that the mark was unexpected, but that they were unsure of an acceptable response and therefore dared not touch or remove it.

'BPS Research Digest: Cross-cultural reflections on the mirror self-recognition test:

Eeh, isn't research fun?

Any way, there's a bit more of this interpretive care needed in other cases too. Take this example;

"A well-established gene variant that is supposed to predict depression seems to predict just the opposite in East Asia." Dobbs argues that, in effect, a gene that seems like a predisposition to depression is really a predisposition to being sensitive to the social world. (http://www.iftf.org/node/3603)

 Context, context, context. There's no getting away from it. MY objectivity is your cultural misunderstanding, or something ...