More Bunk Science

Are Pretty People More Selfish?
Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman: People with symmetrical faces more likely to be selfish | Daily Mail OnlineThese kind of 'scientific" studies, when examined closely, are always so horribly done, and simply do not reflect the truth. The researchers are trying to find a conclusion and they find exactly what they are proposing to find.For instance, Brad Pitt and George Clooney are not attractive because they are symmetrical. Take Brad Pitt, and give him a recessed chin, patchy balding hair, and a fat nose, but keep him just as symmetrical, and then see if he rates as "attractive." Make George Clooney completely bald and give him and fat neck and see how how he rates as attractive. Give Michelle Pfeiffer patchy freckled skin, kinky reddish black hair, black baggy eyes and bucked teeth and then compare her to someone with radiant golden hair, pure white skin, bright blue eyes, and lopsided ears and see who scores higher? I will take all bets on this.Is Harrison Ford attractive? Why? Check out how lopsided his nose is. This ridiculous notion that you can pick out one thing and say THAT is the key to attractiveness is just plain stupid science, but the people needed to validate their study, which had decided beforehand that its symmetry we are after because that somehow will coincide with their preconceived ideas about how evolution works, and so they just put the pieces together anyway they want.Pop-bunk science.Coffee House

It is not a well established fact that people prefer symmetry of ones ears or nose, over any other thing they like to look at-it is a well accepted bit of pop-bunk, by people like you who never question anything they are told by someone they think has authority.Some people also have a preference for blue eyes. Some also have a preference for people with dimples. Some people also like people with scrunched up features. And in Europe and America many people prefer blondes (its a well established fact!).So why did they choose symmetry as the criteria for judging if the people were beautiful and selfish, instead of choosing if the people were blonde and selfish. or had dimples and were selfish?The answer is obvious to anyone with an active brain (the answer is not obvious to you A, draw your own conclusion as to why..er, a nevermind, catch 22), the reason they didn't choose some other random factor.Studies that attempt to correlate evolution with modern psychology are so fraught with nonsense data like this, and so full of people like you who are quick to jump on it and say its a well established fact, even when you know nothing about it, and have never stopped to consider the methods employed for drawing these bogus conclusions because it would fry your brain to think for the required two minutes.I could do a study tomorrow just like this one, and find people who ALWAYS choose the less symmetrical faces, and show this is people's preference. I would start by showing them Harrison Ford and Dom Delouise and see which one they choose. Or Pierce Brosnan (he is famous for having a good side and a bad side, did you know?) and Ernest Bourgnine. And my results would fit the conclusion I want to find.Unfortunately A, you are just another one of those gullible individuals who just swallow whatever you are told is science. So you are not really able to see the problems that lie therein at all. This is a well established fact.

You don't think the Daily Mail is the source of this study do you? Really?

The point of the study was to compare people they are claiming are attractive with people they are claiming are less attractive, and deciding which co-operate better.So they choose to decide who was attractive based on their symmetry-even though as you have just pointed out this is not the determining factor for what is or isn't attractive. But they could just as easily have chosen blonde versus dark hair. Or fat versus thin. Or greasy thin hair versus full shiny hair. or thick noses versus pointy ones. So actually these subsets of people are meaningless, unless they considered every possible physical trait and compared them. Maybe it was because they were tall as opposed to short? Maybe the group that co-operated less tended t o be born in summer months more often, while those who co-operated more tended to be born in winter months. Did they check that?How about comparing those with flabby necks compared to those with tight ones? if you made this comparison, I guess one of the groups is going to be either less co-operative or more co-operative, unless the split turns out to be EXACTLY 50/50. And in their groupings was there an equal number of symmetrical people as opposed to asymmetrical? Or were there many more asymmetrical ones, and thus there was lees of a chance of them having statistical anomalies. And what was the dividing line for deciding if someone falls into the symmetrical group or the asymmetrical group? If you ears are lopsided but your nose is straight, which group do you go into? If your eyes are very level, but you have a very asymmetrical chin, do these two features balance each other out in their rating and so you are of average symmetry?So many things that you can be sure this study doesn't address, and yet they are willing to have their study labeled as showing that attractive people co-operate less than unattractive ones. And what do you think their hypothesis was before they did they study? Can we guess what they were looking to find out?I think the truth of the study is that people who ate yellow food before taking a test are much less likely to co-operate then those who ate red food-but they simply forgot to test this correlation. I guess one of those groups co-operates better. I wonder which one?

Is that the sound of you waving your hand in the air?Its the only sound I can get from your reply. Its a very trivial sound. Like the sound of flatulence from a rodent.Is there something you wanted to say about the paper? Did you want t comment on my assertion that you could choose 100 different attributes and reference that with who is "co-operative" and who isn't, and ONE of the two groups you choose is going to be more co-operative or they will be EXACTLY the same (which is the most unlikely outcome of all).

Yea I read the paper. It appears they measured how much each person's face deviated from a standard model, and according to their numbers, given the margins of error of, it looks statistically impossible to draw any conclusions at all.But if one were to draw any conclusion from the parameters of the study they carried out, as small as it was, it would make just as much sense or more to conclude that some people were simply more stupid than others, and thus they chose co-operate over defect (as defect is the better strategic choice.)If the people who choose co-operate more did in fact have more lop-sided faces, maybe it just means that people with lob-sided faces are dumber, and not that beautiful people are less co-operative because it is some evolutionary artifact. Isn't that just as reasonable of a conclusion?Another reasonable conclusion to draw would be that when people play a game (say shooting at a bunch of digital policeman and running over pedestrians on a video game for instance), its not a window into their soul, and a useful tool for making up bogus scientific conclusions which you are going to present to the Nobel Prize committee.

But the problem with this is that it doesn't square with how the theory of evolution is claimed to be operating (although admittedly getting anyone to actually verbalize what the theory claims is pretty darn elusive.) The reason it doesn't square is because does the reality of life show that people with lop-sided faces really do suffer more difficulties in reproducing? I think you would have a very tough time showing that this is the case. Do you know people whose faces are not really symmetrical? Do you think they have a harder time reproducing? Do they really die faster? Is face symmetry really an indicator of how long you will live or how many offspring you will have? Show me where this is so?Furthermore, if face symmetry really was advantageous to reproducing, why are there still so many people who aren't symmetrical? Has natural selection weeded them out of the population? How long will this take? Are the people of today more symmetrical than 10,000 years ago, because natural selection has selected against them? Are was evolving away from the crooked noses?

WK, those are really just empty words, and completely meaningless to the discussion. Those kind of silly things shouldn't even be allowed to be posted here, and not even worthy of you, as someone who presumably takes themselves seriously as a scientist.I asked a serious question, can you show in anyway that people who have less symmetrical faces are disadvantaged or less capable of reproducing? Also I asked, are we evolving away from crooked faces, if natural selection selects against them?

If you are going to claim to have any logical precision, you are going to have to be a lot more tidy with your understanding of very simple clauses. My comment was a response to 1.61803, who stated that it made sense logically according to the inferred understanding of evolution, that of course people who are more symmetrical would be more healthy and thus be preferred mate choices. That was a pretty simple part of this whole discussion, so if you are going to get confused already at this, and say that I was saying the paper was making that claim-when I was responding to 1.61803's claim-then you obviously are going to have difficulty following along with some of the more complicated ideas. Ideas which are necessary to be able to follow if you have any hope of understanding life's complex questions. You are not giving me confidence when you confuse me saying the paper said this with me saying that 1.61803 is suggesting this.Secondly! I am glad we have a least gotten somewhere with trying to actually answer a question. So regarding this so called evidence, let me just ask-is this the evidence you wish to go with that is suggesting that that FA really is equal to a man's ability to reproduce? because I am glad if this is the evidence you wish to provide to support that notion, but first i want to make sure you aren't going to change the goalposts or back out of saying this is good evidence to support that idea. After I have your assurance that you won't suddenly change directions-I will be happy to tear that study apart as just as much bunk science as so called "science" of the original study. Because that study you just referenced from Belize is even weaker than the topic study (a study in which the author has conveniently glossed over all evidence which completely contradicts his predicted results, and yet trumps up all the evidence which he claims does support his pre-determined conclusion. An all too common trick in these studies.)Worse still, the second study you referenced is just repeating the same points as the topic study, without showing the all important WHY evolution would cause one to choose symmetrical over non-symmetrical-and what is the result for populations. Its as if you completely missed the entire point. I asked-well then is natural selection weeding out asymmetrical individuals-so that they are becoming less and less of a part of the population. Is natural selection working? Are we as a population becoming more symmetrical? For this you seem to be suddenly at a loss for words to reply.And frankly, I am not at all impressed by your constant ability to just drone like a mechanical parrot, your same tired lines about-why don't you study more so you won't always be wrong. It doesn't make you points any stronger, and just highlights the fact that you like to try to throw divergences from the subject, as if you can not argue the points so you are only capable of throwing out your nonsense hand waving insults which have no meaning at all-and worse still aren't even creative or funny. The only thing worse than saying nothing meaningful is saying nothing meaningful while being stupendously boring at the same time. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

In which worldview is it reasonable? In yours of accidents that get passed on genetically,and indeterminate successes?It is only reasonable if you can somehow coherently demonstrate how evolution would construct such a paradigm. In order for your theory to make sense, there would have to be some individuals of a population who didn't choose mates with more symmetrical features and some individuals who did. The ones who choose the more symmetrical mates were more successful at reproducing because for some reason their mates were not capable enough, and thus it became an acquired characteristic of the population that individuals select those with more symmetry. Then you have to show how does this trait for selecting symmetrical individuals get hardwired into our genes and passed on to the next generation so that they know they should choose the symmetrical individuals.Its all well and good to say that its logical as a survival technique if it truly is-but you also have to show how EVOLUTION made it so. We need two components-first it has to actually BE true that the mates who choose symmetrical ones were more successful, and two, that the preference for choosing symmetrical individual is something that can be inherited through our genes. Do you think we will find a gene for selection of symmetry?I find it amusing that when people are discussing the acquiring of personalities, they forget that it all must make sense from a mutation, and passed on to offspring, genetic phenotype kind of world. Things can make sense in this world if we are only looking at it from a structured world point of view, but it is another thing to try and explain things from a simple accidentally acquired trait that is successfully passed on kind of world. All of these studies attempt to combine what they think would be useful, with what is possible according to evolution, without making the logical connections. Edited by Bolder-dash, : to satisfy huh

BTW, WK, are you ever going to answer whether or not natural selection is working. Are the asymmetricals of the world slowly dying off because they are being selected against?Are there less asymmetrical people now than in the past do you think? Are the symmetricals winning?That's the whole point of natural selection isn't it?

I have already raised a number of objections to the methods of this study, but for some reason you either can't or refuse to see the objections.The first is, does not the margins for error of calculating the FA essentially make the two groups exactly equal?Secondly, what is the game they are playing actually testing? Is it really testing people's level of co-operation? I don't think so, it is a game of strategy, and of risk taking. You take a slighter greater risk of getting low point totals by choosing the defect option, at the possibility of getting the greater pay off of getting a much higher pay-off if your gambit is correct. Choosing the "co-operate" option is simply a safer option of suffering point losses, but rules you out of getting a high point total. No one should be fooled into thinking that just because you have labeled the high risk-high reward option "defect' and the low risk-low reward option "co-operate" that you are in fact testing people's co-operation levels in society. That's ridiculous. More likely you are testing people's greed tolerance.Furthermore, the study is attempting to draw conclusions, based on a preconceived idea-and so all methods are inherently designed to prove their notions. The smarter option may well be the "defect" choice. Doesn't that mean that they are testing who is smarter, and not who co-operates more? They also wanted to find a positive correlation between testosterone and which choice you made, but since it happened to turn out that the ones who chose to defect fell someone in the middle range of testosterone levels, then guess what, this means that people who have middle testosterone are best at co-operating. They are determined to conclude that this is indeed a factor in the subjects choices, so one way or another a conclusion must be drawn. Its every bit as likely that it is no factor at all, but if you take a small enough study, and you are determined to find something that looks like a trend, then you are going to do so.If this study turned out the other way, and it found that their was a slight bias towards FA and NOT co-operating (since their margins of error allow for either result actually) would they not try to draw the conclusion that people with high FA are socially less well adjusted, because of their evolutionary disadvantages or some other some such silly assumption.Because after all, this is what all of these types of studies are all about. Their objective is to find an evolutionary correlation between ones behavior, and how evolution has shaped that behavior. It is virtually impossible that such a study will come up completely empty handed. If it shows a correlation one way, then a story will be made up to show how evolution made it so. If it turns out the other way, again a story will be made up to show how evolution favored that way. "High levels of testosterone are the best for co-operating..., no no, low levels of testosterone are the best for co-operating because... wait...mid levels of testosterone are the best for co-operating because.."When they spend so much time doing these kinds of studies, is anyone actually going to believe that there is an incentive for them to simply say..."Well, it was a waste of time, we couldn't find any pattern", and then just throw the results into a dumpster? When does that happen, where is the great bin of studies that show absolutely no correlations to anything? Where can I found all these mountains of studies that took years to do, and then ended up with "We have have no ******* -->******* clue."Is that what really happens in science academia? Is anyone so naive as to believe that? Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

I have a much better study for them to conduct. Have them secretly measure the symmetry of all the contestants of the next Survivor show. Then let them predict beforehand exactly who is going to get voted off the show each week, based on these measurements.If they can do this with 90 percent accuracy then I will start to believe them.

I would disagree with you that this study is large enough to consider the small differences they noted as being that significant; but actually I was not referring to the p value when I said the two groups were statistically almost identical, I was referring to the calculations for FA. it seems to me the two groups could well overlap with those margins for error.Irregardless, you once again failed to acknowledge my more significant point, that is, what were they actually testing. Is playing a game where you have to choose which is the best way to make points really a test of co-operation? You seem to have completely skipped this fact. Couldn't they just as easily have called it selecting blue or selecting red, instead of selecting 'defect' or "co-operate." This is what truly makes it bunk science. the test in no way whatsoever was a measure of how one would cooperate in a society. They were going to be making money based on how many points they got. It is a casino game. It says nothing in the slightest about how these individuals cooperate in society. That is a fictitious scenario created only in the minds of the authors.If the test tests anything, it tests your card game skills. Maybe what the study proved is that people with medium levels of testosterone are best at playing card games.Since you ignored this point, can you at least now answer, is natural selection working, are the asymmetrical of the world slowly being reduced in the world's populations? Are we seeing less and less of them as the ages go by, because of natural selection? Is the world becoming more symmetrical?

And by the way, I thought scientists had the utmost integrity, so why would there be a bias towards only publishing studies that support their assertions? Naughty naughty.I want to read those 20 other studies they did that showed no correlation whatsoever between FA and parlor games.