Today's Science Friday is a bit of a potpourri. First up is a brief article poking holes in the contemporary version of Social Darwinism, which currently goes by the name of "evolutionary psychology."
They may have spoiled a good name by glomming onto that one. Real biologists do come up with observations that actually do shed some light on human psychological evolution, as in studies of primate social behavior. But the "evolutionary psychologists," who are really Social Darwinists in (thin) disguise, basically try to argue that some version of a conservative white guy ideal of social behavior, particularly relating to gender roles but not restricted to that, are hard-wired in the human genes. This article jabs at a few of their favorite claims. As the article indicates, today's Social Darwninists are long on speculation and analogy, short on empirical research.
Love, Lust and Homo Sapiens by Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Barnett Los Angeles Times 02/14/05
What about the notion that men seek out very young, presumably fertile women? Many economists have noted that in these days when men's wages are flat or stagnant, their mating strategies are changing. More often they seek a woman who has completed her education. In fact, today, the more education a woman has, the more marriageable she is. Forty percent of married women earn more than their husbands, and studies show their marriages are as happy — and at least as stable — as those in which the male is the major breadwinner.
Men indeed do like good-looking women, but they don't have to be very young. In one experiment, when men were shown pictures of plain women in their 20s and more attractive women in their 30s and 40s, the men chose the good-looking older women. However, for men, beauty is not the prime ingredient in a mate. A worldwide study found that for both men and women, "kind and understanding" were the most sought-after traits in a mate.
And do women set their caps for older, wealthy men? No. In societies with a high degree of gender equality, where women have their own resources, they seek out men who are caring and able to bond with children, report psychologists Alice Eagly of Northwestern and Wendy Wood of Duke. In truth, what men and women look for most in a mate may simply be someone like themselves.
In the March 2005 Scientific American, Michael Shermer writes in his Skeptic column on "The Fossil Fallacy," a favorite of creationists. (This column is usually made available online, but the Web site doesn't have the March issue available yet.) He writes:
When I debate creationists, they present not one fact in favor of creation and instead demand "just one transitional fossil" that proves evolution. When I do offer evidence (for example, Ambulocetus natans, a transitional fossil between ancient land mammals and modern whales), they respond that there are now two gaps in the fossil record.
This is a clever debate retort, but it reveals a profound error that I call the Fossil Fallacy: the belief that a "single fossil"— one bit of data—constitutes proof of a multifarious process or historical sequence. In fact, proof is derived through a convergence of evidence from numerous lines of inquiry—multiple, independent inductions, all of which point to an unmistakable conclusion.
He expands on the point, referencing Richard Dawkin's The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (2004), which he recommends as "convergent science recounted with literary elegance." He even says its "[o]ne of the finest compliations of evolutionary data and theory since Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species."
Shawn Kimbro provides an description of the phenemenon of "sleep paralysis": Letters, Oh We Get Letters! 02/07/05. Responding to an inquiry from a reader, he says:
"Out of body" experiences like the ones you've described have been documented in sleep research. They are often associated with a sleep disorder called sleep paralysis and they sometimes occur in REM sleep.
It's normal for us to have no control over our muscles in REM. But sometimes, for various reasons, our mind wakes up and our body remainsparalyzed. This can result in feelings like the ones you decscribed. Since this has happened more frequently in recent weeks, you mightconsider speaking with your doctor about it.
The doctor would probably ask if you were under more stress than usual, or if you were sleeping less. It's unusual to go into REM sleep immediately upon falling asleep, and that can sometimes be an indication of narcolepsy.
At least some of the reports that are interpreted by "UFOologists" as being a memory of being kidnapped by space aliens are very likely based on sleep disorders, including this one, that produce weird sensations or visual hallucinations. A lot of them, of course, are just made up.
Noami Oreskes of the University of California-San Diego takes novelist Michael Crichton to task for siding with the "climate-change deniers" who are that global warming is unproven: 'Fear'-mongering Crichton wrong on science San Francisco Chronicle 02/16/05.
Climate scientists have been in agreement for some time that global climate change is real and happening now. We know that humans have changed the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere, most measurably through the addition of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossils fuels. We also know that these changes are having a detectable effect on Earth's climate. These are not speculations, guesses or predictions, but observations over which there is no significant scientific argument.
Moreover, given that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and the theory of greenhouse gases is well established, it is nearly certain that a continued rise in carbon dioxide will lead to more changes: increased average temperatures, melting of polar ice (and a subsequent rise in sea levels), and, perhaps, an increase in floods, droughts and hurricanes. Finally, we know that the predicted changes could occur rapidly, giving both humans and nonhumans little time to adapt. Anyone who denies this has simply got the science wrong.
Also in the March 2005 Scientific American, astronomers Charles Lineweaver and Tamara Davis clear up some "Misconceptions About the Big Bang." Ones that have been troubling me, and proabably a lot of others. First of all, the Big Bang that beganthe universe wasn't like a lump of stuff exploding, it was all of space exploding. And one of the lingering effects of that event is that galaxies are receding from the center of the universe at faster than the speed of light.
What, you thought Einstein's special theory of relativity ruled that out? No, no, no, mis amigos. "This is not a violation of relativity," they write, "because recession velocity is caused not by motion through space but by the expansion of space." So let's not be talking trash about how galaxies can't recede faster than the speed of light, okay? But since they're receding faster than the speed of light, we can't see them, right? You know, the light waves have to get here, and so forth. Wrong again! They slow down after a while so we can see them!
And if you thought that light-wave thing meant that space couldn't be any bigger than 14 billion light-years in radius, the Big Bang having been 14 billion years or so ago, you're wrong about that, too. Nope, the part of space we can see has a radius of more than 14 billion light-years. So there!
And that expanding space is the reason there is a cosmic redshift, even though some people say it comes from receding galaxies that exhibit a Doppler shift. Can you believe people actually would think that? I mean, how out of it can you be?
And one last piece of disillusionment. It's the universe that's expanding, y'all, not the stuff in the universe. Swelled heads and expanding waistlines can't be blamed on the Big Bang. So live with it. I mean, you had to find out this stuff sooner or later, right?
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