Travesties of pseudo science, part 831

My institution puts out a daily email news brief listing developments of note around the campus. This came through today:

RESEARCH:

WVU economic study: Expenses for women can be higher in Morgantown According to the latest edition of the Morgantown MSA Economic Monitor, published by WVU's College of Business and Economics, the purchasing decisions that women make may lead to more expense than for their male counterparts in Morgantown. For example, the cost for a trip to the hair salon, pair of khakis, bottle of wine and dinner at home for one woman was $10.71 more than what the cost was for a barbershop haircut, dress shirt, six-pack of beer and medium pizza that a Morgantown man might choose.

Sigh...

I'm not sure which is worse:
(1) The stereotypical assumptions about "typical" men and women and their choices of consumption, or
(2) using stereotypical assumptions about "typical" men and women to make apples and oranges comparisons and then conclude that these assumed differences reflect reality.

I went to the actual press release that describes this "study" in more detail. It begins as a comparison study for cost-of-living index items. The economist gathered price data on 61 items items; the Morgantown prices can be compared to San Fransisco, New York, Pittsburgh, etc. That's valuable and important work.

But then....

Then, she took the comparison a step further by looking at the prices of items and services men might purchase compared to those women might buy.

Yeah, it costs more to go to Vavoosh's Salon than Jake's barbershop. I'll concede that. But on what basis do we assume that women are more likely to purchase a bottle of wine than beer, expensive khaki's over a dress shirt? And dinner at home over pizza? Moreover, what the hell went into that dinner at home? I've had dinner at a couple of female friend's houses here in Morgantown; I would bet that the total cost of the ingredients for the meal was approximate to the cost of a large pizza with toppings. Behavior can be observed and verified empirically. To project one economist's assumptions about how women and men might possibly differ in the consumptive behavior is flat out bad science.

Though they do have numbers.... so it must be truth.