I bloody said I hadn’t read it because I couldn’t find it online (his work wasn’t easily googleable on the day the story came out) so I was writing about the press. The Bad Science was so obviously the science reporting.

Which has basically got nothing to do with his work.

Look, for as long as we insist on profit-based economy, and as long as we require media to operate as profitable business, we are going to have media that seeks profit instead of media that seeks objective rationality.

Maybe the capitalism-safe answer is for media to all go non-profit?

Wow. Thank you. What an amazing response. I am in awe of your thoroughness.

I am also very glad to hear that Jokela is a legitimate researcher, as seemed to be the case from what I could find of his publications.

How disgraceful that this sort of nonsense was constructed out of his work.

Jokela points out in his conclusions the weaknesses in this research (being based on a very narrow test population) and he also mentions the false conclusions that Kanazawa based on research of the same test population. It was those unwarranted conclusions that the so-called science editor of the Sunday Times smeared over the front page. Jokela was much disturbed by the fact that papers world-wide copied that flawed Sunday Times article without a critical look at the content.

Ben Goldacre is completely right when he accuses the media of spreading bad science to an unwitting public. Once upon I time I was raised to believe that the media had this calling to uplift the masses to the light of rationality, but I was sadly disappointed.

It was very interesting to read the Simon Singh bit.

Truly you are a miracle worker. Two links, apparently undamaged.

Now, if I get two URLs past your spam filter, does that count as a miracle? 😉

. I think the “averageness” concept could at best be described as an indicator of genetic health. I am a bit more convinced by a link between symmetry and genetic health.

But the basic design flaws in the whole idea remain:

Attractiveness has very little to do with how many offspring one breeds. (Just like intelligence, as Angie points out) There are very few men or women who are so physically unattractive that they can’t find someone to breed with.

I feel this is a deep misunderstanding of evolution for a start, mistaken on so many levels that I’d have to write pages of boring guff about why.

How is that – while women are allegedly becoming ever more beautiful and fertile – fertility is dropping to the point at which huge numbers of women can only conceive through assisted reproduction techniques? We are very far away from “natural” that this is absurd.

Also, there is no reason to believe that scientists now are talking teh absurdities of Galton seriously, nor that having some scientific training allows anyone to escape from the general cultural values about beauty.