Did you notice the “scare-quotes” perchance?
Yep, pretty much the same as the size difference between male and female hyenas.
Eh - I don’t scare easy.
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And the stubborn-ass folks who keep trying to “prove” that they do usually have self-serving ulterior motives.
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“Subject. One mature Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) participated in the fMRI study. The salmon was approximately 18 inches long, weighed 3.8 lbs, and was not alive at the time of scanning.”
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I’m a bit more positive about mainstream psych. It’s a field that is currently recognising the problems that it has had in the past, and trying to correct them. The current focus on reproducibility of results, re-testing old results to see if they hang up under scrutiny and improving the statistical methods used- these are all signs of proper scientific response to a problem, and show that mainstream psych does change in response to evidence that does not fit its models.
To be fair, it’s a field that has had to come a long way over the past century- getting away from Freudian theories, which were the sort of irrefutable catch-all woo that we’re talking about here, putting the field on a scientific basis, formalising experimental protocols and getting a proper ethical framework in place were all hard-fought achievements. And it’s an inherently difficult subject- you can’t set up neat little experiments like in the physical sciences, you’re looking at individuals or small groups of people, so there’s just more randomness than in fields that have the luxury of looking at the scale of billions of atomic level interactions, and humans are just inherently complex, with lots of side-variables that you cannot control for.
No, if I was called upon to point a finger at some other field that offends in the same way as evo-psych, it would be Economics, which (in some cases) is very resistant to allowing data to refute theories. There are other offenders as well- any theory or mode of analysis that fits all possible observations is a theory that explains nothing and is therefore not even wrong.
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I just want to add this because it’s the first thing my brain goes to when I hear about any “Evolutionary” discipline and it seems relevant here.
And good on her for the OoC award.
Edit: fix image link
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Took longer than I thought it would for the Jordan Peterson fanbois to turn up.
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Considering many animals have mating displays and ceremonies that determines which mate they will select, could it be possible to apply the concept of consent to this? Of course, there are other factors at play such as the idea of sex for purposes beyond reproduction.
I’m neither biologist, zoologist, or psychologist and could absolutely be projecting human behaviours and ideas onto something that isn’t comparable or even analogous to activities of another species.
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So glad I missed it.
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You really did not miss much. 
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Ugh, enough with these ding dang sea insects!
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Anne Dagg wrote a “personal history” of her zoology career.
It includes many recollections of sexist behavior.
She did write a earlier feminist critique of behavioral Biology in 1983 Harems and other horrors.
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They look more like Kropotkin’s mutual aid crabs
Even among animals standing at a somewhat lower stage of organization we may find like examples. Some land-crabs of the West Indies and North America combine in large swarms in order to travel to the sea and to deposit therein their spawn; and each such migration implies concert, co-operation, and mutual support. As to the big Molucca crab (Limulus), I was struck (in 1882, at the Brighton Aquarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade in case of need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of the tank, and its heavy saucepan-like carapace prevented it from returning to its natural position, the more so as there was in the corner an iron bar which rendered the task still more difficult. Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one hour’s time I watched how they endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner. They came two at once, pushed their friend from beneath, and after strenuous efforts succeeded in lifting it upright; but then the iron bar would prevent them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab would again heavily fall upon its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers would go in the depth of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade. We stayed in the Aquarium for more than two hours, and, when leaving, we again came to cast a glance upon the tank: the work of rescue still continued! Since I saw that, I cannot refuse credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin — namely, that “the common crab during the moulting season stations as sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state.”
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Mutual assistance? That’s socialism!
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And Peter Kropotkin didn’t believe in heirarchy. It’s almost like Bread Santa is the anti-JP.
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Well, that’s just unAmerican, Millie! Everyone knows that good Americans loving nothing more than getting it over on the other guy! /s
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does he actually cite a study (authors, date, journal, page numbers), or does he simply allude to its existence, leaving us to try to find what paper he might have meant?
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