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Post details: Evolutionary psychology racket alert: Serious news, not just another embarrassment for science

06/25/10

by Denyse O'Leary 06:17:14 am, Categories: Commentary - Announcements, Commentary - OpEd, 446 words

Evolutionary psychology racket alert: Serious news, not just another embarrassment for science

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Someone tipped me off about this MIT Press book, attempting to explode the "evolutionary psychology" racket:

The claims of evolutionary psychology may pass muster as psychology; but what are their evolutionary credentials? Richardson considers three ways adaptive hypotheses can be evaluated, using examples from the biological literature to illustrate what sorts of evidence and methodology would be necessary to establish specific evolutionary and adaptive explanations of human psychological traits. He shows that existing explanations within evolutionary psychology fall woefully short of accepted biological standards. The theories offered by evolutionary psychologists may identify traits that are, or were, beneficial to humans. But gauged by biological standards, there is inadequate evidence: evolutionary psychologists are largely silent on the evolutionary evidence relevant to assessing their claims, including such matters as variation in ancestral populations, heritability, and the advantage offered to our ancestors. As evolutionary claims they are unsubstantiated. Evolutionary psychology, Richardson concludes, may offer a program of research, but it lacks the kind of evidence that is generally expected within evolutionary biology. It is speculation rather than sound science -and we should treat its claims with skepticism.

I say "attempting" because - from its blurb - the book sounds far too timid to me. (Prove me wrong, publisher, by sending me a copy.)

For one thing, evolutionary psychology is right up there with recovered memories as the kind of nonsense that professors of therapy get into because they don't have anything more useful to do. The trouble is, if anyone takes them seriously, they can cause problems.

Frankly, evolutionary psychologists come up with stuff so stupid that it falls beneath mockery.

I am still mad at Bill Dembski for scooping me on the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution, but I forgave him eventually, and in the meantime there is "why middle-aged men have shiny scalps" and "why dad can't dance" - supposedly, except when he can and does. And in many world cultures, he just must.

Whatever we want to call this stuff, it is not science. Science is about fact, not free-floating, idle speculation. But - as noted earlier - I expect this book to accomplish little because the publisher and maybe the author are far too concerned with placating the tenured profs they should just dismiss. Prove me wrong.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

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Evolution has become a favorite topic of the news media recently, but for some reason, they never seem to get the story straight. The staff at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture started this Blog to set the record straight and make sure you knew "the rest of the story".
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A blogger from New England offers his intelligent reasoning.
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Telic Thoughts
We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.
The Design Inference - The Writings of William A. Dembski
The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA)
www.themonkeytrial.com
Website dedicated to comparing scenes from the "Inherit the Wind" movie with factual information from actual Scopes Trial. View 37 clips from the movie and decide for yourself if this movie is more fact or fiction.

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A Brief View of Time and Those That Live There
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Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.
Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove
Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
ID The Future
Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
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A Philosopher's Journey: Political and cultural reflections of John Mark N. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at
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