So someone on Reddit posted a video showing time-lapse video of a girl from infanthood to 12 years old. Naturally, Redditors responded with creepy pedophilia jokes, and one Redditor (speaking for many, judging by the numerous upvotes) took the opportunity to complain about just how hard it is for dudes to not have sex with underage girls. Apparently these girls deliberately develop earlier than boys as part of an elaborate plot to entrap guys and send them to jail.
Thanks to ShitRedditSays for pointing me to this latest bit of egregious Redditry.
… I didn’t know I was a NOW member…
The webbernets couldn’t find me an ableist Bingo card
which is sad, because I think I would have won! That would have been productive enough, yes?
Also, I’m not a member of NOW, but I am a member of a monthly tea club. Better/worse?
@Viscaria
What is the gender of the tea?
It’s sort of like picking up a small, angry animal, like a baby lizard, and it’s hissing and trying to bite you and it REALLY REALLY wants you to be scared of it but it’s only 2 inches long and can’t even get its mouth around your finger.
Except I’d feel bad about teasing a baby lizard.
If anyone’s curious and doesn’t want to get behind the pay wall, I found this site that shows the data from the study. As you can see, the error bars are larger than the data set, which doesn’t bode well for the significance of the data.
In any case, since the sample wasn’t very diverse, it may say more about the culture than about women in general.
/takingthisshitseriously ^_^
@Viscaria
Sorry, I meant, what is the sex of the tea?
IMO we should expand the gender wars to plants as well… think big.
Dicipres, I know you’re lonely over there on that tundra you call a blog, but your insuts are weak.
@dicipres
Good question, I’m happy to help! <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camellia_sinensis"
Camellia sinensis is a flowering plant, and therefore produces both egg cells and sperm. You can read more about the reproduction of flowering plants here.
The “gender wars” are an imaginary thing in your head!
Well THAT didn’t work :(.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camellia_sinensis
Google let you down, dicipres.
http://www.stealthbadger.net/2012/04/a-wild-moron-appears/
An abstract, with no way to read the paper (I’m not paying 31.50USD to read it), is not much in the way of refutation to four papers one can actually see the data, and the conclusions from.
But Ruby now has someone one on her side. Perhaps not the ally she might want, but one makes do.
I will point out this sentiment from Steven Pinker: The argument, as presented in the summaries, fail two basic tests of scientific credibility: a control group
This idea, from one of the big names in EvPsych, cannot be stressed highly enough. Quite apart from the facile claims in the abstract
the conclusions they seem to be presenting are circular.
1: We must assume an adaptive aspect of female orgasm (which isn’t possible. A far better, being parsimonious, explanation can be found in the principle of homology).
2: We have to assume that the self-reported increase in orgasms is bound only to the “wealth” of the partner.
3: No, apparent, control for social differences in the “wealthier” men seems to be present. Is this consistent for new wealth vs. old? By what manner is wealth being determined? How large was the sample size (they claim to be controlling for region. China is large, both in terms of population, and region).
4: How is wealth defined?
5: It appears this is a study derived from data mining a survey done by the Chinese Gov’t. What methodological controls were conducted to deal with biases which may exist in the questions.
5a: By whom, and to what purpose, was the translation of the survey conducted?
5b: What fluency, and how attained, do the writers of the study have of Mandarin?
5d: How were the various confounding factors eliminated in a study based on a survey the authors of the study had no control over the design of?
6: What did the controlling for the wealth of women consist of?
7: How do the authors of the study manage to make equivalent the modern concept of “wealth” in China, to the the evolutionary pressures of 5,000 years ago, and the transition to agriculture.
7a: How to they make it equivalent to the evolutionary pressures of the ice age semi-nomadic lifestyles of Europe, 10,000 years ago?
7b: How to they equate it to the nomadic lifestyles of nomadic hunter-gatherers of the N. African savannahs of 10,000 years ago?
7c: How to they equate it to the unknown lifestyles of more than 20,000 years ago?
8: What is the supposed adaptive value of orgasm, as related to wealth?
8a: How can they test this hypothesis against the situations present in the questions which are present in 7-7c?
9: What of these questions did the peer-reviewers for EHB ask? How were they answered? What, if any changes did those questions require?
Conclusion: the abstract raises more questions than it answers. As such the abstract is not a good support to the contention Ruby puts forth.
I don’t think you plan to indoctrinate plants with the mrm will work very well seeing as plants can’t talk or think.
And Kirby found an answer to some of my questions, futher calling the study into question.
Science, it’s so simple anyone can do it.
Jumbo, wouldn’t plants fit right in with the MRM since they can’t talk or think?
Now we have to go on a continents-spanning scavenger hunt to assemble the tools and knowledge we need to banish him!
*sigh*
No, it’s all right. I wasn’t doing anything with my weekend, anyway.
I’m glad to know we manboobz commenters/NOW members all share “a Tourette” [sic] syndrome. It’s good to have community.
Omigosh, are we going on a tiny tour together? That sounds fun :-3
One might hope she’d see the terrible company she’s in and flee back over to the side with facts and reason on its side. I am such a Pollyanna.
@Tulgey, Can I have the Tourette syndrome tonight? I have plans…
@Cloudiah, aww, I was gonna borrow it. Fine. You can have it tonight if I can have it tomorrow night.
When did I join NOW?
Then again, how did I get into the Army with Tourette’s?
How does my Tourrette’s manage to manifest since I had the lobotomy?
Why does anyone find conversing with a lobotomised person who has Tourette’s?
FInd the answer to these questions, and more, on tonights episode of, Soap.
On that EHB article dicipres posted, here is the introduction to a later article citing it as a reference:
Citation: Hothorn, T., Leisch, F. (2011). Case studies in reproducibility. Briefings in bioinformatics, 12(3), 288-300.
@Falconer, I’ll leave it under your doormat tomorrow morning.
You all can take it whenever, but I really need it next wednesday. Finals.
putting wolves, hyenas, and lions on the same ten-point scale without justification, mapping their mating habits based on no data, with the only source cited being a talk by a professor that itself cites no sources.
And the house of cards comes tumbling down.
I don’t fault them for the problem the default option caused (though the width of the error bars would seem problematic to me).
I do fault EHB’s review process for letting a paper with so weak a correlation to the data into the journal.
I also wonder if Pollet and Nettle have published anything explaining that the conclusions they came to are more suspect now, in light of this finding.