RE: Odlaylans [posted on wog]

From: samclau_at_EvOM9Y7nTQDwnnGBfCsGeso-V7tcCuPX0mGzokw0H9atVs2ZHPuL1XtSQ-McLSSmwP1w
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:27:20 -0300


> De: David Cake <dave_at_0HevFg2yHdD4yKhVtJPkAatiWXFnoTQ7C4gkTY64crv_jolDpHKKJsoyLWQai8cD9csnIjPrKtGlU7B8.yahoo.invalid>
> Also, evolutionary psychology explanations of human
> behaviour shouldn't be taken as seriously as they often are.

It doesn´t help that some of the evolutionary psychologists are such characters. My personal fave is the paper "The human female orgasm and male fluctuating asymmetry". It's partly my fave because it is by Randy Thornton who wears a ten-gallon hat.

Then there's the evolution of teddy bear traits paper - that´s an absolute classic (and makes perfect sense).

> Humans are quite capable of, on an individual or society wide
> scale, acting in defiance of what evolutionary psychology says they
> should do. And evolution itself is quite capable of having many
> oddities of behaviour fall out of the process.

Well yes. This is where people decide to take evolutionary explanations for behaviour as justifications for behaviour. But then, anyone who does that is a complete nob.

I'm just quite happy to sit on the evolutionary biology side of things and watch evolutionary psychologists (and Dawkins) get into trouble.

You guys wanna story...?

My former boss in Amsterdam, a lovely guy, had a nice little idea about negative feedback in a certain type of dynamic (i.e. quick) evolution (of virulence in this case) leading to what he called the boomerang effect. He published this in a book chapter - book chapters are less cited than are papers.

As scientists do, he was looking on Web of Science to see who was picking up on his stuff and citing him. Well, he does a search for his name plus boomerang and finds a paper - wehey! But...from the initials it seems to be his niece (sp?), which is odd as she works in a circus.

So he reads the paper.

Well, the paper is based on work done in a NMR Imager and his niece had helped out and got included as an author. His niece plus her boyfriend, being acrobats, got into the device and got jiggy, so their jiggy bits could be imaged (one has to remain dead still for this to work of course). Hence the boomerang...

Bet none of you knew that!

Sam.



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