…and this is a 
Utter nonsense
Category: Stupidity
Posted on: October 18, 2006 9:41 AM, by PZ Myers
What the hell? How can the BBC News publish this tripe?
But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.
Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.
Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.
Ignoring the fact that you cannot predict long-term evolutionary trends without knowing long-term environmental trends (and not even then), I would like to see the evidence for any of this. For instance, I doubt that there's even a speck of credible data showing that men with square jaws have greater reproductive success than men with more rounded jaws…or that large penises and fertility are correlated. The author of this claims is just making things up, I assert.
On what basis does he make these claims? It's all about his perception of what sexual selection should do.
People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
In other words, because he (and the advertising world) has set up hairless women with pert breasts and glossy hair as the ideal, well, they must get lots of sex and produce lots of children who will propagate that Cosmo state of airbrushed perfection. Meanwhile, no man is going to breed with the majority of women (you know, those women who have body hair and whose breasts actually sag a little bit…the "squat goblins") unless they are chinless, lopsided dwarves, so we're going to see that subhuman breed spontaneously segregated from the noble Eloi.
I might have believed this nonsense could come from some late 19th century eugenicist, but now? Is there any evidence of the kind of sympatric speciation event described going on? Humans are a happily interbreeding group, with no hint of the separation of genetic classes corresponding to this prediction emerging, or that real-world human beings make mate choices as simplistic as that, or that the people who best fit those stereotypes are at all superior in reproduction. What competent biologist could even suggest such silly nonsense?
The source is not a biologist, which helps. It's Oliver Curry, who recently received a Ph.D. from the Government Department of the London School of Economics, and now teaches Political Theory. "Eh, what?" I hear you say—what does training in government, economics, and politics teach you about how evolutionary biology works? Apparently, next to nothing. Worse still, this fellow is a member of something called the Evolutionary Moral Psychology Group. I roll my eyes at everything Evolutionarily Psychological, and sticking the word "Moral" in there just makes it worse. There is good work in morality by psychologists and social scientists, but calling it "evolutionary" seems to be a universal corrupter, as the practitioners, who rarely have any knowledge of population genetics or evolutionary biology in general, strive to tangle their misperceptions of biology with the complicated business of how their brains work.
It's a good thing Larry Moran and I didn't know about this garbage during our trip to London, or we might have been tempted to forego some of the generally fun and wonderful items on our schedule for the less savory effort of snarling at these guys.
I've heard that the movie Idiocracy also tries to predict human fate in the next millennium…but it is satire. The BBC article shows no such self-awareness of the parody of evolution they are promoting.
Wilkins and Hawks also give this crap a good flush.
Comments
This has been a problem for years - the BBC's coverage of science matters is overly simplistic, verging on the sensationalistic.
Posted by: Caledonian | October 18, 2006 9:44 AM
Is it the BBC news that distorted this stuff? Or is the work they're reporting on simply crap?
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 18, 2006 9:47 AM
My best guess is that it's just garbage, which the BBC is reporting because they believe it will draw attention.
My only claim to even approaching expertise is in human psychology, but the BBC's broadcasts and reporting on that subject have been seriously flawed for a very long time. Important points are dumbed down, exaggerations are made, and half-truths are presented as true, and caveats aren't aired.
This is the same sort of treatment, now involving biology and the study of human evolutionary development. The only point that can really be said to be correct in this article is that humans are shown to prefer mates that are similar to themselves in background and personality traits, so that it is possible that freed from standard selection pressures, people with specific traits might become more likely to breed with similar people. (This has been speculated to be a mechanism potentially responsible for the rise in reported cases of autism, but there's little evidence one way or another, and plenty of alternate hypotheses.)
Posted by: Caledonian | October 18, 2006 9:52 AM
No surprise that a crank "evolutionary psychologist" (with no credentials vaguely related to even that debased field) is at an economics school. They're good at promoting unevidenced 'theories' and models based on wishful thinking. And making predictions that always turn out to be false.
I'm sure the creationists will find a way to smear the entire biology community with this guy, all thanks to the Beeb's careless reference to this guy as an "evolutionary theorist". Yeah, and every bad sci-fi writer who ever predicted that we'd evolve into sexless, lightbulb-headed supergeniuses in the year 5000 are "evolutionary theorists" too.
Posted by: minimalist | October 18, 2006 9:53 AM
Curry forgot the part about the noble subspecies of humans evolving the ability to become richer.
'Cause, you know, that's powered by genetic selection too.
*cough*
All in all, I think this would make a fantastic article for The Onion.
Posted by: Sarah | October 18, 2006 9:53 AM
So the guy's a fan of anime?
Posted by: Rick @ shrimp and grits | October 18, 2006 10:03 AM
@Rick:
Yeah, his next paper will be about how thirteen-year-old girls will evolve short skirts and thigh-high socks, while men evolve tentacles.
(Did I just say that out loud?)
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 18, 2006 10:10 AM
I for one will welcome our pert breasted future masters.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | October 18, 2006 10:12 AM
PZ, I don't doubt you're right on the main points here, but I'd like to make a small side observation.
My wife's family belongs to an old-money country club in our area, and on (very rare) occasions I go over there for one of their holiday things. (Note: I am the furthest thing from old money myself.) Most of the members are part of a highly interbred economic elite, whose families run the upper echelons of this midwestern city's big companies and institutions. These people go to the same private schools, marry and have affairs with each other, get each other hired into management, and when they're old, all go to the same blue-haired restaurant where no small number die at their tables face-down in their schnapps or whatever.
Whenever I've over there, I'm always struck by how incredibly tall they all are. Even the women. It's like going to an ents convention. I'm 5' 9" i.e. average height, and balding, and these people make me feel like a squat goblin. The pervasive non-baldness probably has something to do with Hair Club for Men, but the height thing you can't fake.
I don't think this differential is necessarily leading to a speciation event, but it is striking.
Posted by: jimBOB | October 18, 2006 10:14 AM
Mmm... tentacles...
Posted by: Joshua | October 18, 2006 10:14 AM
Rick,Blake - you two rock
And I can discount this 'theory' in 2 words without even using any scientific method or any knowledge gained from book learning:
Frat Party
I have seen virile young men 'hit' females that were a far cry the nigh perfect creatures this article described.
But I had to admit, my mind immediately went to anime and LOTR with the Orcs and Elves. LOL
Posted by: flame821 | October 18, 2006 10:18 AM
Of course, height is one of those things that is highly sensitive to environmental factors, like diet. I don't think post-WWII Japanese have seen such a rapid increase in average height because only the tallest Japanese are having children.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 18, 2006 10:19 AM
& gotta love the assumption that intelligence and height and beauty go together, while ugliness and stupidity and lack of height go together. Did he provide any reason for assuming those traits go together?
Posted by: Mandolin | October 18, 2006 10:23 AM
Not to mention that those models he touts as the ideal quite often are amenorrhagic due to keep-us-thin poor diets; not exactly bastions of fertility, they.
Posted by: Carlie | October 18, 2006 10:26 AM
Come on, PZ. You are just unhappy that you were born one millenia too late. You want to have all those benefits of the genetic upper class, but are just afraid to admit it, you white, round chinned goblin! [/snark]
Posted by: Robster | October 18, 2006 10:35 AM
Both; it's distorted crap. I saw this article and thought, "WTF?" It makes more sense when you know it's coming from an economist.
Expect to see it forwarded somehow as an argument against evolution.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | October 18, 2006 10:42 AM
But now evolution can explain PYGMIES and DWARFS!
Posted by: Tracy P. Hamilton | October 18, 2006 10:43 AM
I was wondering if you'd notice that. It struck me when I read it as a wretched combination of silly predictions and total ignorance of biology.
Glad you're back, BTW, particularly given the hideous state of the States of late. I'm not sure I could have been convinced to return.
Posted by: Warren | October 18, 2006 10:44 AM
um.
So he's asserting that men are AVOIDING women who shave their legs and armpits, etc., so that they can find the rare naturally hairless females?
Or... maybe he's saying that women who have to shave less will survive to reproduce, while those who DO have (and/or choose to) shave will be more likely to die in fatal armpit-shaving accidents?
what?
Posted by: craig | October 18, 2006 10:49 AM
you missed the best part! The sun has the picture
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/1,,2006480199,00.html
Now all you need is a little photoshop, and change the label "genetic elite" into "scientists" and "the rest" into "creationists" and you're all set!
I love the guy from 12,006. It's like his mouth is specially designed to suck beer out of a six pack.
Posted by: eric taylor | October 18, 2006 11:02 AM
Its fairly obvious that Lamarckian evolution is about to make its long awaited comeback. All that leg shaving and high heeled pain will be worth it in the end (errr not me, well maybe at weekends - but only as a comfort thing, you understand !).
To be serious for a second, the report says more about the quality of the BBCs science reporting than anything else. This Oliver Curry guy prepared this study for a 'mens TV channel' -you know the sort, basically a sportscar and bikini clad bimbo channel, not somewhere to show programs about proper science. Its about one step up from 'Hustler'.
Posted by: MartinC | October 18, 2006 11:04 AM
I'm confused. Does the bit where humans all interbreed to form one coffee-coloured melting-pot happen before or after the bit where they speciate by refusing to breed outside their own station?
Posted by: Geoffrey Brent | October 18, 2006 11:05 AM
Posted by: Silmarillion | October 18, 2006 11:15 AM
Craig: Exactly. And women who get boob jobs tend to experience silicone leakage into their ovaries, torquing their fertility, while the naturally pert-breasted have tons of babies. Maintaining the pertness of their breasts throughout, mind you.
Furthermore, there will be this remarkable reproductive segregation into upper and lower classes of hawtness, even though all ethnicities will be simultanously breeding indiscriminately with each other so we can become "coffee-colored." It's the miracle of evolution!
Sadly, all this will never come to pass if our celebrities keep cruelly and unfeelingly adopting 3rd-world kids. Angelina Jolie, we need your genes! Especially if collagen syringes are heritable.
Posted by: Anton Mates | October 18, 2006 11:16 AM
Oh, ick. That Sun article is even worse.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 18, 2006 11:18 AM
Wait--if women are going to have lighter skin, how does that square with interbreeding causing a uniform shade of skin? Or will men and women simply become totally seperate species who simply create their unstoppable 2m army of fembots in a lab?
Posted by: Jeff Fecke | October 18, 2006 11:28 AM
Even as one of your non-scientist readers, that first quoted paragraph almost gave me an heart attack.
The scary thing about news stories like this is that the general population reads them and believes them because a "scientist" said so.
I wonder if creationists will use this as some sort of ammunition againt the "evils" of evolution.
Posted by: Nandes | October 18, 2006 11:42 AM
Hey, the sun article is way better because it's made clear that the people at Sun think it's The Onion style of space-alien science. Just look at the title, man, "All men will have bigger willies", that's definitely there for the humor element. The BBC article on the other hand, seems to take it all seriously. That's much worse.
Posted by: eric taylor | October 18, 2006 11:48 AM
CNN also reported it, I believe, verbatim as did all our local papers in Cape Town, SA. At least the Gaurdian took it with a pinch of salt. The thing was commissioned for the "Bravo" satellite channel for chrissake. That should have been a clue to the Beeb.
jester
Posted by: midnightjester | October 18, 2006 12:03 PM
Jeff: That's about the only part that wouldn't be total nonsense in that whole mess. The average skin color of women in the same ethnic group is generally slightly lighter than the average for men.
Posted by: Andreas Bombe | October 18, 2006 12:04 PM
Wow!
From the Sun article
"The predictions appear in a new report by evolution theorist Dr Oliver Curry, of the Darwin@LSE Research Centre at the London School Of Economics."
How in the world does being an economist qualify you as an evolution theorist?
Posted by: Pygmy Loris | October 18, 2006 12:40 PM
So when do we get our bigger willies?
Posted by: Zeno | October 18, 2006 12:42 PM
Pygmy Loris, I think the title "Evolution Theorist" is granted to a person who buys the Platinum Package at the University of Phoenix diploma mill.
Zeno, I think we'll get them by around 2020.
Posted by: Stanton | October 18, 2006 12:54 PM
Zeno, the problem with the big willy evolution thing is that men tend to worry about that stuff a heck of a lot more than we do, ergo there isn't much of a selective pressure for that. Besides, if we are supposed to stay virgins until we are married how would we ever know? ;^)
Posted by: Mena | October 18, 2006 1:14 PM
Mena, can't you ask a man to strip for you and then decide whether his penis is large enough for you to marry him?
Geoffrey, Razib actually pointed out why the "We'll all be the same shade of brown" argument is crap.
Posted by: Alon Levy | October 18, 2006 1:33 PM
From the Evolutionary Moral Psycholgy Group:
As if this was the easy part.
I haven't thought much about this "research" for about 10 years. It hasn't changed a bit! Thanks for the laugh and the link PZ. Laughing until I cry: I agree that it's very distressing that crap like this (still) gets mainstream attention.
Posted by: Pamela | October 18, 2006 1:33 PM
So if you already have a big willie, does that mean you're ahead of your time, or just a head?
But seriously, when I taught college biology I was appalled at the general lack of understanding of natural selection, sexual selection, and inheritance. But I shouldn't be surprised. I did research at a dental school and overheard a PhD/Dentist tell someone that parents of differing height will produce children who's height is between the two.
Posted by: King Spirula | October 18, 2006 1:41 PM
I'm still stuck on the bit where men evolve more facial asymmetry whereas women evolve less. Is facial asymmetry supposed to become sex linked somehow?
Posted by: Dianne | October 18, 2006 1:43 PM
I think I did see an article somewhere that said that blonde hair would be gone in another few thousand years or so, but that's about as close as I've seen. I'm no scientist, but it seemed somewhat credible to this reader.
Posted by: Liam Morley | October 18, 2006 1:45 PM
No surprise that a crank "evolutionary psychologist" (with no credentials vaguely related to even that debased field) is at an economics school.
First, this guy is a nutjob, at least on this hypothesis. Whether it's because he's a total nutjob or just way over his depth I don't know. But you can find nutty evo pysch people at lots of different universities, just as you can also find some good ones, scattered here and there. You don't always hear about them as much because they don't say such headlineably stupid things.
And the LSE is a good school, not just for economics. I know their anthro dept had had some really good people, and best of all, they have this great little library room where I went to the best conference I've ever been to -- not too many people, everybody talked to everybody, and best of all, if you got to the room early you could grab one of the comfy chairs (the comfy chair? the comfy chair? the comfy chair? the comfy chair?). Any of you who've been to the usual hotel conference room conference and sat in those awful chairs for hours, day after day, know what I'm saying here. :)
Okay, they did have the usual crappy dorm rooms to stay in, but at least it wasn't like being in a stone floor dorm in Durham in December.
Posted by: QrazyQat | October 18, 2006 1:46 PM
If we're dead set on speciating, we need to start keeping groups of people as pets so that they don't need to maintain their general competence as organisms and can become extremely specialized like dog breeds--badgermen with tiny little legs, Bullmen with flat faces and bow legs, poodle people with dry-clean only white hair and cute tails... Well, we've already developed horndogs.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | October 18, 2006 1:47 PM
I must say that the bit about the Eloi strand having recessed jaws as a result of years of eating softer processed food is ludicrous, particularly in light of the fact that he attibutes jaw structure to sexual selection among the genetically superior class.
This will show up again as a straw man attack on evolutionary biology, I just know it.
Posted by: Jason Taylor | October 18, 2006 1:54 PM
"Der Spiegel" reported it, too, without any of the snark they occasionally afford. My guess is that the author had read "The Time Machine" before going to sleep and this great idea then came to him in a dream, or something like that.
Or it's a simple case of, "if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" -- using an economics toolkit on evolutionary biology.
Posted by: inge | October 18, 2006 2:05 PM
The whole LSE thing comes about because Helena Cronin, Dawkins' old friend, ran and now runs again a very sociobiological programme there called Dawkins@LSE: Oliver Curry used to be her assistant. Then he went to Bath or Bristol (somewhere in the West Country anyway). He picked up then the knack of getting into the papers. I note that this was released as a Sunday-for-Monday.
They have had all the gang over, one way or another -- Trivers, Pinker, Dawkins himself, most recently Dennett.
PZ, I put up a reply to your last on my own blog.
nice to meet,though.
Posted by: Andrew Brown | October 18, 2006 2:08 PM
PZ, I believe that the "square jaw" thing comes from studies of male attractiveness. IIRC, square jaws correlate with high testosterone are are a visual cue that a man has high fertility. Women when ovulating, if given a choice, will prefer men with squarier jaws. They prefer something else when not ovulating. It seems to be an adaptative strategy for cuckoldry. However, given current population levels and culture, I doubt that "square jaws" have much higher reproductive success than "round jaws".
Height is similiar. Last time I TAed undergrad evolution, the prof displayed a chart of pre-WWII Poland in which taller men had more children that shorter men. It was funny to watch how the men in the class couldn't understand what was causing it, but the women knew right away: female choice; taller men were more attractive. Then he showed a post-WWII chart, in which the effect of height had disappeared because the sex ratio had changed and women couldn't be a choosy any more.
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | October 18, 2006 2:08 PM
Sure reminds me of the movie Bulworth, wherein the main charcater advocates: All we need is a voluntary, free spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep f*ckin' everybody til they're all the same color.
It also brings to mind The Marching Morons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
Posted by: Charles Hargrove | October 18, 2006 2:21 PM
Looks like this clown put together a combo of general trends and badly understood science to make up unbelievable predictions.
Lets see:
1. 6-7 feet tall.. Check. There has been a general trend for taller people. Problem is, its hard to say if its due to just diet or there are genetic factors triggered by a general improvement in diet that are making people taller, or both. I would tend to think both. My parents where not exactly starving, but I and my brother are 6'5" and 6'4" respectively, which is almost a foot taller than "either" parent. Not sure where he gets the 1,000 years goal for when everyone would be that way, but its bloody unlikely to be universal, even if the average would some day be 6'.
2. Age... Well, this one "might" be a reasonable prediction. The problem is, its close to the limit without genetic manipulation, and one would presume that in 1,000 years either a) we will have done so, or b) we will have found ways to cheat without doing so. In either case, I think 120 is more likely to happen in 50-100 years, not 1,000.
3. This is where things start to get completely silly. The only way symmetrical characteristics are going to appear universally is either through Nazi style Eugenics or more careful manipulation of genetic markers. Why? Because while symmetry is generally, according to every study ever done, "preffered" from a physical stand point, scent is still a factor according to others, since it signals some vague genetic compatibility (or rather, "I am less likely to pass on the same defective gene and produce a kid with two copies.", signal) and then there is social factors, which are pretty much certain to muck up any "intentional" attempt to produce less ugly in the world, unless by intentional you are again describing some sort of breeding program to "perfect" society.
4. Interbreeding = uniformity. Umm.. No. Black people that move north have lighter skinned kids, white people that move south have darker skinned kids. Sure, it takes generations, but if every person from Africa moved to Europe and everyone in Europe moved to Africa, within 10-20 generations you would have an African continent filled with European looking black people and a European contitent filled with white people who all had African features. Unless we stop the earth from wobbling and all live half way between the equator and the poles, this isn't going to happen. It would require that nearly 70-80% (guessing) of the entire population shift every generation to random places on the planet, then produce kids with the locals, only to have their kids move to yet another random location, with no physical preferences or racial distinctions in that selection at all. Ain't happening!
The rest just gets *really* idiotic. Especially since, as has been pointed out, pretty can mean dumb as a stump, so the premise as to what the "subclass" is going to look at is flat out stupid, even if it didn't fail to include those that, through a series of errors, mistakes or accidents, find themselves financially and socially incapable of staying in the "upper" class. Why it would happen now, when there have been plenty of cultures that have developed such drastic seperations and enforced them, but none of them produced massed of goblin like people, is just nuts.
Like I said, the guy has probably read a lot of the same stuff I have, failed to read about half the rest, and barely comprehended *any* of it. This rediculously silly mix of half right, but invalidly reached, conclusions and pure gibberish is the result.
Posted by: Kagehi | October 18, 2006 2:25 PM
Andrew, the program at LSE is called Darwin@LSE, not Dawkins.
I noticed that Oliver Curry has a first name Nature article listed on his publication list, but looking it up it turned out to be a book review.
Im not sure he didnt write the whole thing as a bit of a joke for the Bravo channel and its being taken out of context - the context being that its simply a joke for a 'Mens channel' about the future being full of pert women and all the men getting huge willies (causation or merely association ?)
Posted by: MartinC | October 18, 2006 2:32 PM
Bullshit like this makes me embrassed to be an evolutionary biologist
Posted by: JJP | October 18, 2006 2:35 PM
Last time I TAed undergrad evolution, the prof displayed a chart of pre-WWII Poland in which taller men had more children that shorter men. It was funny to watch how the men in the class couldn't understand what was causing it, but the women knew right away: female choice; taller men were more attractive. Then he showed a post-WWII chart, in which the effect of height had disappeared because the sex ratio had changed and women couldn't be a choosy any more.
How much pre and post WWII was this? Sounds a bit strange, I doubt that female mortality was greater in WWII... But perhaps WWI killed more Polish men than WWII, causing male scarcity between the wars, and the difference levelled off after WWII?
But anyway, it sounds doubtful. Were illegitimate children surveyed, or was the effect supposed to be wholly due to the most fertile women choosing the tallest men and leaving the shorties without mates? What if the tallest men were tall as a side-effect of being affluent and better-fed? Maybe these men could afford to marry and have kids earlier, and pass some of the affluence to their kids and raise more surviving children?
Posted by: windy | October 18, 2006 2:35 PM
I have the opposite theory. I think that the widespread adoption of plastic surgery will make the wealthy progressively uglier. Once they're ready to mate they've had the human growth hormone, the bariatric surgery, orthodontic work, Accutane, hair extensions, Lasik, personal trainers, etc. But they pass on shortness, mangle-tooth, baldness, obesity, bad skin, nearsighted genes to their kids. They pay for their mutant offspring to get "up to code", and then those children breed even more hideous progeny. No child of privilege will see the light of day until they are old enough to get through their 1st round of surgery.
Actually, this would be kind of funny to see.
Posted by: superBadGirl | October 18, 2006 2:47 PM
Could be worse - over the water at the University of Ulster they've got a full-blooded eugenicist named Richard Lynn.
Posted by: Bartholomew | October 18, 2006 2:50 PM
So we're all going to be Tiger Woods? Will we then have to recalibrate what constitutes a "par" golf score?
Posted by: CJColucci | October 18, 2006 2:53 PM
Windy, I believe that this is the paper that the figures came from.
The effect was comparing post-war Poland (114 Women per 100 Men) with more recent decades (105 Women per 100 Men).
There is also a study on West Point graduates, which found similiar results for height. They attribute the effect to taller men being more likely to have more than one family. (I guess that means remarriage.)
Posted by: Reed A. Cartwright | October 18, 2006 2:56 PM
What a pile of codswallop!
I really hate it when people start speculating about the evolutionary future of our species. It either ends up being a senseless extrapolation of past trends in the species--which is insupportable, as much of the selective pressures which shaped our past are no longer acting on us--or silly, wishful thinking nonsense like this article.
What's truly sad is the degree to which this man has displayed his biological ignorance. He clearly has no notion, for instance, of the realities of the genetics behind skin color. A high degree in interbreeding freedom will do nothing to alter the allelic diversity of the species. Even if you could achieve, for one brief moment, a human population of universally coffee-colored individuals, the second they started making babies--and reassorting all those nicely diverse alleles again--you'd lose it. The only way to actually establish consistently uniformly-colored humans would be to somehow actually eliminate all of the high and low pigment alleles of the skin color genes, and that's not going to happen by interbreeding ;^)
And of course, all the wishful thinking about pert-breasted beauty queens and over-endowed, square-jawed Hercules impersonators is also nonsense, particularly in view of the measures to which so many are willing to go to artifically alter all of those aspects of sexual attraction. Utterly silly.
And the hairless women are also a fantasy. Humans may *look* less hairy than our primate relatives, but it's essentially an illusion. We have as many hair follicles per square cm of skin as they do. We just have little wussy hairs instead of big robust ones ;^) There's been no real sign of a trend to *lose* hair, and as males and females are *not* separate species, it's highly unlikely that such a change would exclusively depilitate females, leaving males as hirsute as ever.
Guess I'd better cut myself off--I think this is my first blog-rant LOL! And if I don't get to class my students will all run out on me.
Lynn
Posted by: Lynn Fancher | October 18, 2006 3:02 PM
superBadGirl - that would be a terrific cheesy Sci Fi movie plot.
Posted by: Buffalo Gal | October 18, 2006 3:06 PM
Can`t it just be that this was meant sarcastically by the author and was taken out of context?
Anyways I foremost agree on one thing: It has virtually become impossible to predict future evolutionary trends of the human race. Ultimately we are a product of our environment and we can`t even predict environment since we are constantly inferring with it on a massive scale with each technological revolution.
We even know now that plane trails significantly impact the weather. Due to economical benefit the future says that we will do cloud seeding, and already are we planning on creating plasma mirrors in the ionosphere. But then again even a major sunburst has an impact on nature, and so on...
Posted by: lo | October 18, 2006 3:06 PM
I heard this on the radio this morning. Nice to see that I more or less correctly labeled it as BS when I heard it!
From the Sun article:
"If we are all popping pills, diseases such as cancer won't be weeded out of the gene pool."
Now, I'm not a doctor, nor even a biologist for that matter, but aren't some (if not all) cancers caused by an error when copying DNA when a cell divides (or something like that)? And if that is the case, then wouldn't it really not make a difference one way or the other if we were popping pills, since that could happen regardless of how "perfect" our genes were?
Posted by: Nes | October 18, 2006 3:32 PM
In 1000 yrs Dr Curry's decendants will have evolved past verbal communication -- they'll just have to open their mouths and pure tripe will pour out on to the floor. Thus guarenteeing understanding to all in line of sight and granting the underclasses a solid meal.
Posted by: colin | October 18, 2006 4:07 PM
Check out this photo, and then ponder whether a squat goblin hobnobbing with another squat goblin, visiting a monument to a third squat goblin, and complaining about the term "squat goblins" is a coincidence.
Posted by: Slippery Pete | October 18, 2006 4:07 PM
Let's try this again -
Check out this photo, and then ponder whether a squat goblin hobnobbing with another squat goblin, visiting a monument to a third squat goblin, and complaining about the term "squat goblins" is a coincidence.
Posted by: Slippery Pete | October 18, 2006 4:14 PM
What about short but non-squat people? Do we turn into elves?
Posted by: MJ Memphis | October 18, 2006 4:19 PM
OK, I just saw that fellow's picture on the Sun, and he reminded me of "Skip Hammond" from this fine article on The Onion; Actual expert too boring for TV
He's an "expert" on a field with nothing to be expert about
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | October 18, 2006 4:34 PM
So the BBC is inaccurate when it comes to science, but spot on with it's Antiamericanism and coverage of world events. I'll be sure to keep the distinction in mind the next time I'm harangued about ignoring the BBC's latest Truth about America.
Posted by: Ted | October 18, 2006 4:36 PM
My reading of the original article left me in tears (crying? laughing? I'm not sure - perhaps both).
However, I'd have to say that evolutionary psychology stands as a real science (at least when practiced by responsible scientists), certainly more so than some of the psychology tht continues to get bandied around by educational psychologists and psychoanalysist. Steven Pinker is a good example of a researcher who provides good, and justifiable, evolutionary psychology mechanisms and explanation (no long range forcasts!)
Posted by: Dan | October 18, 2006 4:58 PM
A few people have suggested that Curry may have written this with tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek, which could explain this nonsense. If Curry takes himself seriously as an academic then I don't think this is likely.
I have, on a couple of occasions, had articles done on my own research, research that I was serious about and for which I was glad to get publicity. More than once, the resulting article has made me cringe, as the reporter did such a ham-fisted job of quoting or interpreting what I had said, and demonstrated such complete ignorance of science that the end result was just embarassing. I understand that this often happens to legit research; thus, purposely 'publishing' (albeit on the 'Bravo' Network) nonsense like this just to take the piss seems really stupid to me.
Even if I had written something like this as a joke, once I discovered the kind of press it was getting I'd do my damnedest to make it known that it wasn't meant to be serious--I'm supposing that noone has heard Curry retract this anywhere?
Posted by: ChrisB | October 18, 2006 5:07 PM
Posted by: quork | October 18, 2006 5:08 PM
Don't forget, until that pesky Victorian gent turned up the Morlocks were in charge. The Eloi were cattle.
Posted by: Dave Godfrey | October 18, 2006 5:10 PM
Andreas Bombe - the reason that women tend to have slightly lighter skin is simple: folic acid and vitamin D. Folic acid is necessary to prevent severe birth defects nd vitamin D is required to make healthy bones. Too much UV light destroys folic acid, thus raising the severe and likely fatal birth defect rate tremendously. Not enough UV light and your babies come out with rickets and the girls will likely have pelvic deformities that will kill them in childbirth.
This is why all populations, minus heroic modern medicine, would adjust to whatever the local skin tone is, within 4-7 generations. There are a few examples where this doesn't happen, but generally this is because some cultural quirk steps in to alter this balance (a habit of wearing black from head to toe would actually cause the lightening of skin tone, regardless of latitude.)
Posted by: magikmama | October 18, 2006 5:16 PM
I think all the homely people living near me are proof positive that Darwin was wrong.
Posted by: ken melvin | October 18, 2006 5:32 PM
I think I did see an article somewhere that said that blonde hair would be gone in another few thousand years or so, but that's about as close as I've seen. I'm no scientist, but it seemed somewhat credible to this reader.
Liam - it wasn't. I use that exact article in my classes when we do Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The BBC writer made the fatal mistake of equating "recessive" and "rare" with "becoming less frequent". No matter how rare it is, no matter if it's recessive, as long as there's no actual selection pressure against it, it will not go away (assuming no drift, and with a population of 6 billion and growing that's not bloody likely). It's Jenkins' paintpot all over again. There's also some media-savy-ness about it, too - apparently it came out on a day when most actual science writers on staff have the day off (because Tuesday is a more standard big science day, and this was a Friday or something), so it made it around the world and to the Today show before the science writers got back in to work, told everyone off, and the retractions were quiet and embarrassed. Not only that, but the "German science article" the information supposedly came from didn't exist. It's a fascinating study, because it does all sound so logical, but is so soundly wrong.
Posted by: Carlie | October 18, 2006 5:43 PM
Has anybody ever actually studied whether precieved attractiveness translates into increased reproductive success in contemporary society? It doesn't seem like a very hard study to conduct and it would nip a lot of stupid theories about genetic change in humans in the bud.
Posted by: MattXIV | October 18, 2006 6:18 PM
Of course this is straight out of Huxley, the difference being that in Brave New World the genetic strata were created by isolating the desireable traits for each social class and then perpetuating them through something like cloning.
On an related note, I have a colleague whose mother is European and whose father is from India. She was once asked, by an Indian gentlemen, "How dark is your father?", the idea being to find out what caste she belongs to. She evaded the question, but I wonder if the anecdote isn't somewhat relevant here.
Posted by: Peter | October 18, 2006 6:24 PM
Hey, Mr. Myers...
A little evolution egg in the face?!
Are you going to be a goblin for halloween, or a super human sqaure jawed large penis man?
Funny how your side always reverts back to the "mein kampf" deduction of super humans over short periods of time!
Keep up the good work, don't forget to save some cash, or else you'll become a "have not"... which means you could "evolve" into a bald, fat, and dim-witted LOWER CLASS human...
Reason number 1,257,999 of why evolution is such a farce of logical / empirical science that it deserves to be ridiculed for its lame deductions.
On a different note... can I ask if your side still thinks the earth is flat?!
Posted by: Mike Janitch | October 18, 2006 7:02 PM
Hey, Mr. Myers...
A little evolution egg in the face?!
Are you going to be a goblin for halloween, or a super human sqaure jawed large penis man?
Funny how your side always reverts back to the "mein kampf" deduction of super humans over short periods of time!
Keep up the good work, don't forget to save some cash, or else you'll become a "have not"... which means you could "evolve" into a bald, fat, and dim-witted LOWER CLASS human...
Reason number 1,257,999 of why evolution is such a farce of logical / empirical science that it deserves to be ridiculed for its lame deductions.
On a different note... can I ask if your side still thinks the earth is flat?!
Posted by: Mike Janitch | October 18, 2006 7:02 PM
Hey, Mr. Myers...
A little evolution egg in the face?!
Are you going to be a goblin for halloween, or a super human sqaure jawed large penis man?
Funny how your side always reverts back to the "mein kampf" deduction of super humans over short periods of time!
Keep up the good work, don't forget to save some cash, or else you'll become a "have not"... which means you could "evolve" into a bald, fat, and dim-witted LOWER CLASS human...
Reason number 1,257,999 of why evolution is such a farce of logical / empirical science that it deserves to be ridiculed for its lame deductions.
On a different note... can I ask if your side still thinks the earth is flat?!
Posted by: Mike Janitch | October 18, 2006 7:02 PM
Is posting the same moronic gloat three times (as opposed to one) supposed to attract squat goblin girls?
Posted by: Kseniya | October 18, 2006 7:19 PM
I think Mike was trying to prove he knew how to read and press a button that says "Post." He failed miserably.
Posted by: Baratos | October 18, 2006 7:28 PM
Funny how your side always reverts back to the "mein kampf" deduction of super humans over short periods of time!
Funny how your side revert back how beings were created in such a short time.
Posted by: Corey Schlueter | October 18, 2006 7:41 PM
More to the point, the fact that this gloat seems to have completely missed the point of PZ's post, which explicitly expounds on the innaccuracy and poor reasoning of the original article, renders it essentially a self-classification into the clade of intellectual protozoa.
Seriously. I'm actually curious; please explain how anyone capable of operating a keyboard and a web browser could be so unbelievably fucking stupid as to read this article and come away with the impression that PZ believes any of this, or that this has any scientific validity?
Posted by: Azkyroth | October 18, 2006 7:46 PM
Azkyroth: the fact he triple posted suggests that he cant use a keyboard perfectly well. How do you expect a creationist to operate something not mentioned in the Bible?
Posted by: Baratos | October 18, 2006 7:50 PM
Want to know just how dumb this Janitch guy is?
A while back, PZ linked to a blogpost from this dope.
Janitch was stating his firm belief that, because the naming of Eris was "inspired by the