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Women suffer more pain than men across the whole body, major global study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
123 points (91.8% liked)
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I would recommend you educate yourself on the limitations of surveys in scientific research. Humans have subjective responses to survey questions. It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of the results, without accusing anyone of lying or exaggerating. Understanding the experience of another person fully is impossible, and one of the core problems philosophers, scientists, and artists gave been wrestling with fot as long as humans have been sentient.
It is all the more reasonable to be skeptical of the ridiculous headlines from an outlet like the Guardian attaches to stories like these. It is stoking the flames of gender conflict to get clicks rather than providing any useful information.
If there’s something specific you’d like to address about my point feel free, because this just reads like “nuh-uh.” What evidence do you have that women, as a group, are more likely to over-report pain? What mechanism do you suggest would lead to women as a group over-reporting pain, since individual differences are flattened out in a sufficient sample size? Why is it consistent across 118 countries if it’s not something that is measurably occurring?
You accuse the Guardian of engaging in gender war clickbait while denying the findings of a scientific study? Doesn’t seem scientific to me.
Out of curiosity, would you also say this about a study with men and social isolation (another entirely self reported metric)? How skeptical would you be that they really feel isolated? If there’s a difference you should interrogate why.
I have absolutely 0 evidence for that because I never made that claim at all. That would an incredibly dumb claim to make. You're arguing in bad faith on behalf of a divisive culture war and putting words in mouth.
I accuse the Guardian of engaging in click bait in general. That's a significant portion of their business model.
This post is not the findings of a scientific study. It's a headline ans an entertainment article which is vaguely referencing an actual scientific study in an actual academic journal. That paper is titled "Global and regional reference curves for pain across the lifespan in 6.1 million individuals in 118 countries", not "Womrn Suffer More Pain Than Men..."
I never made any claims as to the "scientific" quality of this, and i'm really confused as to why you are suddenly focusing so hard on the word "science". FYI- tossing the word "science" around is usually not very effective at convincing people you are right.
This is an oddly phrased question but I'll try to read between the lines at what you're getting at here. "loneliness" is a far more abstract concept to even try to measure, so any results will be even more subject to the limitations of surveys than pain. It would be far more accurate to state "X group reports loneliness at a higher rate than Y group" rather than staying "X group experiences more loneliness than Y". The whole point i'm making is that the word "experiences" is different from the word "reports".
"Male loneliness" is just "loneliness" with more gender war spin applied to it. Loneliness is reportedly increasing across all genders, age groups, and pretty much any other way you slice it in countries with broad access to the internet.
Were you aware studies consist of more than a title?
Trying to spin this with philosophy about how knowable another person’s pain is frankly a horseshit response to a finding about a group that is taken less seriously in medical settings about the legitimacy of their pain.
Once again, the actual academics in the study use the phrasing "reported" rather than "experienced". Which is what is said is the better way to do it. The scientific paper is correct, the Guardian is sensationalist.
better question is, when isn't the Guardian sensationalist?
it's a known fact it has a left leaning bias, so of course it's going to sensationalize an academic study along those lines. they systematically lean into gender war stuff where they elevate women and denigrate men, because that's the standard leftist bias and it what scores the most clicks with their readership.
Right, the study reports this correctly. The article does not.
Implying a point is incorrect because it is philosophical makes no sense, as you said that's just going "nuh uh" and if there is something specifically wrong you should be able to point it out.
paul wasn't saying they definitely feel less pain than they report; he was saying that this study can only measure their reported pain, not their actual pain. He does not need to give you the specific disproof you are looking for because he is not claiming the study's conclusion is definitely false, just that its methodology is not sufficient to prove its conclusion.
That’s true of the men in the study as well, so why is the data about their pain more trustworthy? You need to come up with an explanation for why women or men would nearly universally, cross-culturally engage in over or under reporting without even knowing it if you’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and claim it’s all unknowable.
I should really stop responding if you aren't going to read the thread. Tl;dr: Their data is not any more reliable and it's insane that you think that claim was being made at any point.
And "You need to come up with an explanation"-- no, we don't. The article's title is an illogical claim to make based on the study's methodology. Pointing that out does not require coming up with a reason why the two values (reported vs experienced pain) might differ, it only requires pointing out that they are not necessarily correlated. The authors of the study knew this, which is why they did not make the claim that the article is making.
i mean, you're arguing with someone who is repeatedly demonstrated they don't care about science. they care about pushing an ideological gender narrative that women are superior to men, that agrees with the sensationalized reporting in the article.
they are engaging in bias confirmation and fighting back against anyone whose comments don't agree with their own bias.
‘All pain study findings are fake because you can’t objectively measure it’ is an even worse response to the findings.
It's also a more correct response though. The idea is to point out a potential flaw in the conclusion drawn from the study, not to say that it should be entirely ignored. Recognizing what is and is not being measured to identify limitations is like science 101, it's taught in every science class in school, and yet the article fails to do it; so we are doing it instead.
It absolutely isn’t ’more correct’, and it’s absurd to act like it’s scientific to pretend these basic questions aren’t addressed in study design. Go dig up the specific quotes from the study that demonstrate the specific methodology you have a problem with, you are not a better scientist than someone published in fucking Nature with this incredibly basic complaint about pain studies.
You have to be trolling. Again, the study is fine. The article's title is the thing drawing an unsupported conclusion. I've said this before:
I will not respond further. Please read arguments before responding to them.