"You don’t have to look to hard to find bad science writing. [...] But sometimes an article comes along that’s so egregious, so sloppy, so far from anything resembling actual fact, that even we are astonished." Discoblog - Worst Science Article Ever? Women “Evolved” to Love Shopping

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

I should show this article to my girlfriend. Maybe then I could finally convince her that she should be able to spend more than 120 seconds in a store before she starts complaining and asking when we can leave.

I find this attempt at explaining the different shopping strategies for men and women far more interesting.
It's set up here but the explanation starts here and the hypothesis explained here.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Strike out mine...

Looks like advertising to me.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Neanderthal ancestors?

Well. Devolution, perhaps.

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

Didn't read the article, but I've been told (by a woman, nonscientist though) that her understanding was "cavewomen" would "shop" for berries and fruits, and that survival trait is what is manifest in today's shopping habits. (and also why color perception evolved in such a way that woman were more likely to be tetrachromats and men more likely to be color blind). She was telling me this to explain why she thought "www.peapod.com" was making a mistake to market to women--it's a grocery delivery service, using Giant in the DC area, but other supermarkets elsewhere I believe. The "peapod" bit is to evoke little babies, snug like peas in a pod, and the marketing is aimed at female consumers, but as this person said, women prefer to pick the food out for themselves. They should have marketed to single men instead. (which I guess explains why I use peapod more than my sister does).

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I've read an article that stated pretty much the same description (it was titled the modern neanderthal, but I can't find it now). It's the gathering instincts kicking in. Another point it went on to make is the hording instinct that people exhibit. Women tend to hord many of the same items (ie. lots of shoes) where men tend to hord numerous different objects (ie. tools). Again they pointed to the prehistoric tendancy of women collecting a great deal of a small number of items (berries, nuts, roots), where as the men collected lots of items for tool making, weapons, etc along with the meat, skins, shelter supplies, etc.

The article also went onto discuss other prehistoric tendancies that you can find in modern society that I didn't agree with, but I found the shopping ideas interesting.

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Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Ooooo, I think I thought a thought. Ooo I did, I did, I did think a thought.

And the cavemen would also "shop" for game and tools (as rommel543 just suggested). That rationale only has the appearance of explaining anything.

Not to mention that there's no reason to assume that only women did the gathering in hunter-gatherer societies.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Stories about the evolution of human behaviors can be concocted to explain ANY human behavior, real or not, including asserted behaviors that contradict each other. These days, such tales are usually told without any evidence that needs them for explanation, and the number of these tales being told only keeps increasing; the purpose seems to usually be not explaining evidence but bolstering someone's pet theories (or maybe just "claims" not theories) of modern sociology, politics, or psychology. It's gotten to the point that I not only don't listen to the evolutionary story itself, but tend to think of the person telling it as less credible just for telling it.

Leading up to the Iraq war 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, mainly only because they heard these issues mentioned together so much (really people? Forgot Osama bin Laden so quickly???). I see this in finance as well. Some half-brained idiot writes an article about a topic (s)he doesn't completely understand, another repeats it and before you konw, it becomes a "fact" ("house prices never go down, ever. Ever, ever, ever". "Oh of course stock markets always have double digit returns, dont even think about it". "Stop throwing money away on rent").

It's much worse in science mainly because while people will happily admit lack of knowledge on politics, they dont normal back down on issues they consider "common sense" ("everybody knows we only use 10% of our brains. Therefore, it disproves evolution because we could'nt possibly have evolved such a complex brain").

I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every article I read with a fancy headline and a bold claim that cited a simple and / but barely related study to prove its point ...

My best friend sent me a review of a book called Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World, which apparently falls into a lot of the same traps. "Chimps do X and so do we! That explains it!" "Chimps don't do Y and we do! That explains it!" Excitingly, if you believe the review, they will often use the exact same behaviour to explain contradictory outcomes.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Jeepers creepers that is one long title.

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Yeah, but he was writing in the 19th century, so he was allowed. Plus, much of that is typically regarded as a subtitle.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Yes, well, so is everything after "Sex and War." But you're right in that books tended to have much longer titles in the 19th century.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I may have used that as an example but the point wasn't the accuracy of the statement. Point is that in all fields (politics, science, medicine etc) people tend to see patterns where there are none. Journalists are no exceptions. This leads to inaccurate science articles we so often see. I apologize if I offended anyone.

You mean like why we have Exocet anti-ship missiles and chimps don't?

Seriously, though - I understand where you're coming from. It sounds like a classic case of beginning with the idea then hunting for supporting data.

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"Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief." - James Russell Lowell

I hear that a lot but nobody can every cite a source that wasn't on par with a Mark Morford article. (Columnist for SF Gate. The left wing's answer to Rush Limbaugh, only even less credible. Can't listen to either one of them.)

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

BUT non-pathelogical color blindness tends to give one better low light vision. (I have a bit of blue-green color blindness, but have outstanding night vision.)

Oh Zhamid, welcome to BAUT! Please don't take my earlier reply as hostile towards you.

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In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

My BOLD.

Please read the rules of the forum especially 12 zhamid.

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"Why change passwords when you've got a baseball bat?"

Fleischmann, Martin; Pons, Stanley (1989), "Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium", Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry 261 (2A): 301–308

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Known in the press at the time as "Cold Fusion"

To be fair, he was forced to publish before he was ready, because someone was jumping the gate, and we old timers all know what happened.

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Well, given the claims, the article never would be ready. P&F did publish ahead of Steven Jones, who had a somewhat less spectacular claim. According to Jones, they had agreed to publish at the same time, but P&F didn't hold to the agreement. Whatever the case, that probably was a good thing for Jones.

By the way, who else remembers polywater? That was a fun one too.

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

It was the LHC of its time. Suddenly the scientists were going to turn all the water on earth to icky goo.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.