It’s worth noting that the problem was not with evolutionary psychology speculation so much as with bad evolutionary psych speculation.
In this case the speculation was mired in the casually misogynistic view that all the work in forming mating pairs was being done by men (probably because the framers of that perspective were men and were therefore more familiar with the work they were doing while women were just idly turning them down or not according to merit).
The new thinking that promoted the study, if I read it correctly, also came from evolutionary psych speculation, just of a more insightful variety. The wrinkle the female investigator added was that women also compete to attract the attention of the men. I think the takeaway, as perhaps you’re hinting, is that evolutionary psychology speculation (which gets a well-deserved terrible reputation when used uncritically) is a good framework for generating hypotheses, but only if critical research follows.
