Curvy women are smarter, have smarter babies

Sixofspades

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Well, if the study in the thread is absurd, it's going to get equally ridiculous answers, so no, not everyone's going to take it seriously. That's all I was getting at.
 

B_johnschlong

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Well, if the study in the thread is absurd, it's going to get equally ridiculous answers, so no, not everyone's going to take it seriously. That's all I was getting at.

Do you honestly think that a peer-reviewed study written by some of the leading evolutionary biologists, behaviorists and psychologists, based on a study of 16,000 women and girls and their offspring, and published in one of the leading science journals, and written by professors working at some of the world's leading universities - is "absurd"?

What a strange way of looking at modern science. I thought my generation was more comfortable with science. Apparently it isn't.
 

Ethyl

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Do you honestly think that a peer-reviewed study written by some of the leading evolutionary biologists, behaviorists and psychologists, based on a study of 16,000 women and girls and their offspring, and published in one of the leading science journals, and written by professors working at some of the world's leading universities - is "absurd"?

What a strange way of looking at modern science. I thought my generation was more comfortable with science. Apparently it isn't.

It's only one study and it isn't even available to the public yet. Scientific facts are not drawn from a singular study. A hypothesis can be drawn from one study and subsequent studies have to be conducted in order to find a pattern. A definite conclusion cannot be made from one study.
 

B_spiker067

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When you are tracking some larger animals you can tell if it is a female if its rear paw prints are wider set than its front paw prints.

Its what I go by when tracking a woman in real life. Give me a girl with a perfect pelvic girdle. Nothing gets me more revved up.
 

B_johnschlong

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All I could glean was that it specified women with a smaller waist than hips, which is practically any woman.

If that were the case, then indeed the study would have been completely absurd. But luckily, today's scientists don't waste time on producing absurd scientific results.

As you can read, the study said: women with a low waist-to-hip ratio are smarter and produce smarter offspring than women with a higher waist-to-hip ratio.

Quite a difference.
 

Ethyl

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If that were the case, then indeed the study would have been completely absurd. But luckily, today's scientists don't waste time on producing absurd scientific results.

As you can read, the study said: women with a low waist-to-hip ratio are smarter and produce smarter offspring than women with a higher waist-to-hip ratio.

Quite a difference.

Yes, and we should all believe the results of a single study that hasn't proven anything.
 

B_johnschlong

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Scientific facts are not drawn from a singular study.

Yes they are.

A hypothesis can be drawn from one study and subsequent studies have to be conducted in order to find a pattern.

No. The scientists started from a hypothesis ("curvy women are smarter than flat women"). They then researched the matter to see whether the hypothesis is correct. The answer: yes, the hypothesis is correct.

A definite conclusion cannot be made from one study.

Yes it can.

But what other scientists can do now is, amongst other things, replicate the study and find different results that change the picture - highly unlikely, because the study took a very large sample and found a very strong correlation between low waist-to-hip ratios and higher intelligence both in women and their kids.

Or refute the methodology of the study - which would be difficult in this case, because the methodology complies with the highest scientific standards (and a sample 16,000 subjects is quite big by any standard in the behaviorist sciences).

Or question the initial hypothesis and claim that it's either an irrefutable hypothesis, or a scientifically uninteresting hypothesis - but they won't do this, because the hypothesis is both scientifically sound and researchable.
 

SpoiledPrincess

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As none of us seems to have access to Athens or a similar medical information site we don't really know what it says, however the scientific method of surveying is to gather all the information then make a conclusion from the results, not to make a conclusion then to look for evidence to support it.
 

B_johnschlong

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Well John this has been very enlightning. Due to my short waisted figure I suppose my not having children was probably for the best. God knows there are enough deficient people out here already. :rolleyes:

Evolution needs people like you, and it needs "deficient" people. Because they perform all kinds of crucial social and cultural roles. Which are essential to the survival of mankind - mankind being inherently a highly social species.

Women like you, with lots of time on their hands to do creative things because they don't have to bring up kids, no doubt have interesting lives and contribute greatly to culture.

I'm sure some of the female researchers that conducted this study are child-less as well. To conduct a study of this kind, you need to be a person of academic excellence; for women this often means focusing all energy on an academic career and postponing kids or getting no kids at all. :wink:

What field are you in?
 

Ethyl

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Yes they are.

No, they're not.

No. The scientists started from a hypothesis ("curvy women are smarter than flat women"). They then researched the matter to see whether the hypothesis is correct. The answer: yes, the hypothesis is correct.

Then the hypothesis becomes a theory. A theory. Not fact.

Yes it can.

But what other scientists can do now is, amongst other things, replicate the study and find different results that change the picture - highly unlikely, because the study took a very large sample and found a very strong correlation between low waist-to-hip ratios and higher intelligence both in women and their kids.

Or refute the methodology of the study - which would be difficult in this case, because the methodology complies with the highest scientific standards (and a sample 16,000 subjects is quite big by any standard in the behaviorist sciences).

Or question the initial hypothesis and claim that it's either an irrefutable hypothesis, or a scientifically uninteresting hypothesis - but they won't do this, because the hypothesis is both scientifically sound and researchable.

It's still only a theory unless it's been tested over and over and produces the same results.
 

snoozan

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No. The scientists started from a hypothesis ("curvy women are smarter than flat women"). They then researched the matter to see whether the hypothesis is correct. The answer: yes, the hypothesis is correct.

Wrong again.

According to the scientific method, a hypothesis cannot be proven, it can only be verified to be dependable by, you guessed it, further studies. It is never proven. Nothing in science is written in stone, even things that seem to have been proven to what seems like beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Also, where in this study does it say that there's a gradient-- the lower the waist to hip ratio the more intelligent the kids? If there is no gradient all it says is that somewhat healthy women as predicted by an arbitrary waist-to-hip ratio have smarter children. As SP says, that applies to most women of childbearing age. In that respect, it doesn't say much except that overall health is important for having offspring, which is far from the value judgement you seem to be making.
 

B_johnschlong

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It's still only a theory unless it's been tested over and over and provides the same results.

That's right, but the study was actually the testing of a sub-hypothesis formulated within the context of a much broader theory - namely the theory which says that curvy women have many evolutionary advantages.

The results from this single study are barely the material on which a "theory" can be built.

A theory is a bit larger than what you can build on these single scientific facts.

The study itself tested the hypothesis several times over, in sub-studies conducted over a long time period - in your words, it thus replicated the test (not the theory) many times over, with different samples (making up a grand total of 16,000 subjects tested), and the results were quite clear cut.

The tested hypothesis and these scientific results now confirm the validity of part of the theory which says curvy women have evolutionary advantages.