En missään tapauksessa pidä kaikkea evoluutiotutkimusta roskatieteenä. Ihmiset ovat eläimiä ja ihmisen äidit olivat eläimiä. Me olemme ihmeellisiä, leikkiviä ja kauppakeskuksia rakentavia jättiaivoja, ja me olemme eläimiä. Meidän nykyiset käytösmallimme ovat selitettävissä (vaikkeivät tyhjentävästi redusoitavissa) lajihistoriamme kautta. Se on minusta ilmiselvää.
Hömppä-evotutkimusta kuitenkin vastustan. Se hömppäversiohan on sellaista, jossa sen tutkijat eivät kykene tarpeeksi suureen objektiivisuuteen - jossa he eivät kykene muistamaan sitä, että kuuluvat itsekin tutkimaansa ryhmään. Hömppää on jättää tyystin huomiotta ihmisten historia ja kulttuurikehityksen kautta muokkautuneet tavat. Hömppää on antaa omien seksuaalisten preferenssiensä ja pelkojensa sanella tutkimusaiheensa, hömppää on tulkita tuloksensa ennakkoluulojensa valossa. Puhtaasti tyhmää on jättää konteksti huomiotta.
Oman näkemykseni asiasta on pukenut sanoiksi Feministe-blogin kommentoija Alara Rogers:
Whereas I approach from the perspective that no, evopsych is *not* inherently complete bullshit, and I am quite willing to rationally entertain the notion that there are evolutionary differences between men and women, and when I entertain that notion with an open mind and sense of scientific inquiry and I study multiple cultures, I see that the science doesn’t support it. Not to the extent that current evopsychs try to claim that it does, anyway. And I just keep smashing my head against a wall any time someone does a biological study of humans (like an assay of hormones, say) and then tries to say that what it says about human beings, being biological and all, is hardwired into the human species at the evolutionary level. Shit, yo, if I recruited a pool of people to study from a foot fetish interest group and did galvanic skin responses to determine the biological basis of desire in humans, I would conclude that humans are hardwired to be really turned on by feet. Why is it so hard for so-called scientists to understand that they’re not proving what they think they’re proving? We already know that the brain and body are linked, and that humans’ physiological responses are heavily influenced by what they think, and what they think is heavily influenced by their culture, so doing a study that demonstrates, for example, that women show more galvanic skin response for distress if presented with emotional infidelity and men with sexual infidelity only proves what we already know, which is that in our culture women react worse to emotional and men to sexual infidelity. We didn’t *need* a study to tell us that. But it’s tautological, because it doesn’t even speak to the question of *why* that is. It just demonstrates that a thing we thought exists really does exist, but offers no explanation as to where that thing comes from. And then people say "This scientifically proves that this fact is always true about all humans everywhere! Because it’s SCIENCE!" when, scientifically, it doesn’t do any such thing.
To me, it doesn’t help to tell guys with evopsych-based arguments that they are choads, and then banninate them from a blog, or make the argument that they’re wrong because evopsychology is bullshit; this only reinforces their belief that wimmenz just can’t handle the SCIENCE. What I want is to totally stomp all over their "science", in a very scientific way, and shred it to pieces because it is crap masquerading as science and should be considered exactly equivalent to Dianetics and crystal therapy and homeopathic medicine (specifically, the kind where they believe that a microscopic amount of active ingredient turns a whole lot of water into a magic potion that will be as effective as an actually effective dose of active ingredient would have been.) There’s no emotion there, except the emotion of indignance that people are passing off utter shit as good science, in a field that I love.
(tl;dr: En vastusta tiedettä, mutta vastustan paskasti tehtyä tiedettä.)
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