Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Archive 2

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Research heading

I just added a heading and subheadings for research in ev psych. Would this be a good structure for such a section? EPM 20:05, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Spandrels

Spandrels are at best controversial. It is misleading to include them here as if there were agreement about what spandrels are. Most biologists do not believe there are any spandrels--everything has a purpose. At the very least the "spandrel" but should be attributed to its creator Stephan J. Gould who does not accept anything in evolutionary psychology and has been among its most vociferous critics.

This article is filled twisted bits of info like this. I have have tried to fix but changes keep getting reverted. Please do not rely on this entry for information on this topic!

I believe i have gone some way in addressing the objection raised above concerning the reference to spandrels in the article. If the author of the above comment would like to point out any more parts he considers to be "twisted bits of info" then please feel free to. Orgone 03:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is an interesting essay on the topic of Spandrels: Ne Plus Ultra-Darwinism: Adaptations, Spandrels and Evolutionary Explanations Orgone 23:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Twisted Bits? Here you go... If you read Wilson, Pinker, Mayr, Miller, Maynard Smith, or any evolutionary biologist associated with EP you will not find the idea of spandrels as a "product" of evolution.

More problems? I fixed the def. of heritability earlier (which was totally wrong) but here are a few: " theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain certain mental and psychological traits" Not true. It is both theoretical and experimental. Not some but all, I would say. That is the point, really.

" The purpose of this approach is to bring the functional way of thinking about biological mechanisms such as the immune system into the field of psychology, and to approach psychological mechanisms in a similar way" Also not at all true. This is not the purpose of EP. What you are describing really the premise of EP. Very misleading, as it is.

Most research is NOT on humans, primates, langurs, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, baboons, maybe, but social animals is most accurate. Franz de Waal, Wrangham, Sapolsky, and many bird researchers are often invoked when talking about EP. One of the most critical essays in the field (Trivers) is based on deer research, not human. The use of non-human analogs is in fact one of the most important ways EPs use to provide evidence of evolution--if a behaviour or response is cross-species and common, it is not unique to humans and can be safely argued to be adaptive.

The article misses the flavor of the controversies this topic engenders entirely, and I do think it is important to provide that perspective. It is one of the most popular and interesting controveries in science and it goes to the core of all kinds of important issues from education to health to politics.

The article fails to show how EP as a "discourse" for lack of a better word provides insights into such diverse things as behavioural economics, parenting, literary interpretation, and infantcide.

The Massive modularity idea is really ONE approach. There are others which are quite different. The article does not capture the intrafield differences.

The article VASTLY underplays the role of sexual selection in evolution. Critcial concepts that are left out are the handicap theory and Fisher's runaway concept. Runaway may well explain the rapid evolution of the human mind.

Sexual selection is PART of natural selection, not something separate.

The line "Darwin and Wallace proposed that natural and sexual selection, and not a supernatural designer" is bizarre. What is the point of mentioning a supernatural designer at all?

Inclusive fitness does not resolve the altrusim question at all. This is just wrong. Entirely new ideas about altuism as a way of demonstrating fitness are emerging.

There are 2 products of evo process-adapations and mutations and that is all.

The most interesting non-evo ideas about evolution come from Lynn margulis

Okay, if I get more time, I will go through the rest of the article. What happened to Ian Pritchford's orginial brilliant account that used to be here? Cheers and good luck,.

I would agree with you on almost everything you have said, and hope you continue to edit and improve the article!

On the topic of spandrels, perhaps I am unaware of some more technical usage of the word "product" in biology. In the Gould quote is the phrase: "nonadaptive side consequence", I would have taken this to carry pretty much the same meaning. This topic is also of course connected to the issue of panadaptionism, which is the subject of on going debate, which the article does not adequately present. I would also agree that EP is not necessarily grounded on massive modularity.

I would ask you what you believe the "purpose" of EP is as distinct from its "premise", given that EP is ultimately, to quote Pinker: "not a single theory but a large set of hypotheses" and, to quote Pinker again: "EP has also come to refer to a particular way of applying evolutionary theory to the mind, with an emphasis on adaptation, gene-level selection, and modularity." (Both quotes from his Butterflies and Wheels interview) I would put it that it is this second sense of the term 'EP' that the article should describe the debate in, but that the introduction should describe the first, broader sense, which I think it does. Orgone 05:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Evolutionary Study of Social Behaviour

I've suggested "merging" Evolutionary Study of Social Behaviour into this article. I don't see how the topic of that article is distinct from this. I also don't really see any novel material in that article, a straight redirect seems appropriate. Pete.Hurd 16:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Arguably, the psychology of social behaviour is only one part of looking at psychology through the evolutionary lens, as it is only one part of psychology as a whole (admittedly a rather large part!). Therefore I would suggest having it as a section within the EP article, not merged with or neccesarily seperate from it. Orgone 03:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree but would say that this page should redirect to sociobiology, rather than Evolutionary Psychology because, to quote this argument of Buller which distinguishes EP from SB: "examples -- such as singing Wagner, consciousness of mortality, and religious belief -- are of specific behaviors, mental acts, beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. Such phenomena are the outputs of psychological mechanisms, generated in response to the inputs of current experience and experiences during development. But Evolutionary Psychologists claim that our psychological adaptations are the mechanisms, or "major faculties of the mind," that generate such outputs, not the outputs generated by those mechanisms." David J. Buller http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/ep.htm What do you think? Orgone 01:41, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

falsifiability

If EP is falsifiable, can someone describe an EP experiment or something that tested it? Jonathan Tweet 03:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a discussion forum. If you want to find out about EP, I suggest you read the formal literature. Mikker ^(...) 21:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I mean that if it's falsifiable the article should give an example of an experience or test that could have demonstrated it wrong but didn't. The current wording is general and would be improved by an example. The example could even be a link to another page, if that's possible. Jonathan Tweet 02:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

In principle, wouldn't psychometric tests which shows that groups of people with more similar DNA would score more similar results than when compared to the general population (taking care to eliminate environmental factors) demonstrate that EP has merit to it?

Like twin studies, for instance. (I believe Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate has a decent round-up of the results of such studies over the last decades.)

Going from there to falsifiability looks like a short step. E.g. if psychometric studies consistently found no factor of heritability, I guess honest scientists would consider EP false..?

(This may boil down to asking: does demonstrating heritability validate EP?)

Sorry for the rambling. Mortene 08:13, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for attempting an answer, rambling or not. Twin studies could have disproved EP by disproving heritability of psychological traits. But they're a long way from proving that human psychology evolved as an adaptation to life in a hunter-gatherer tribe. Blank Slate is a marvelous book, by the way. I'm totally down with EP, but if it's not falsifiable, then we need to own up to that. Maybe the best we can say is that every related theory is falsifiable (human origins, heritability of behavioral traits, suitability of human social capacities to hunter-gatherer life, etc.). Jonathan Tweet 17:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this is quite a complicated issue - and something that is actually discussed in some detail in the literature. (I've seen refs to articles on this question in Buss's handbook). Personally, I think EP is tied up with evolution in general and (of course) with the computational theory of mind. If the mind is indeed a hyper-complex entity best understood as an information processing device, and "the mind is what the brain does" (as Pinker puts it), then evolution by natural selection is the only no-sky hooks explanation of its existence we have. So some form of EP has to be true; even if the Daly-Wilson-Buss-Pinker-Tooby-Cosmides approach is not acceptable. Mikker ^(...) 17:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this an accepted developed branch or proto or pseudo science?

I noticed that some "scientists" tried to explain everything with the evolution, but this is already in article, as a criticism i.e. of non-falsifiability. To be serious, what is the status of this branch within the scientific community? Is it fully accepted as a science? Andries 17:10, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Usually categorised as science or proto-science since many of its hypotheses can be falsified. It publishes academic, respected journals and evolutionary psychologists have published material on these topics in notable multi-purpose science journals. Basically a lot of evolutionary psychology exists on the back of cognitive psychology - if the brain is massively modular then in a sense a form of evolutionary psychology is inevitable. However, that is not to say that all hypotheses proposed by evolutionary psychologists are falsifiable. --Davril2020 17:39, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

(To repeat what I've said above) I think it is important to make a distinction (as Buller does) between EP in the robust sense advocated by Wilson, Daly, Pinker, Tooby, Cosmides & Buss; and EP in the sense that the mind is a product of the brain, the brain is complex, and evolution by natural selection is the only possible (non-sky hooks) explanation of that complexity. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that the brain evolved by natural selection like any other physical organ and, unless one is some sort of outdated Cartesian, "the mind is what the brain does" (as Pinker put it). You can agree with the latter sense - i.e. that some sort of EP has to be right - without agreeing with the details about Wilson et. al.'s approach. So, yes, EP is a science and is regarded as such - but not everything done in its name necessarily is. (Just like physics or any other science - physics as a whole is clearly a science, but that doesn't mean every physicist is a good scientist or everything every physicist says is necessarily scientific.) Mikker ^(...) 17:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

The emerging consensus is to use evolutionary psychology (lower caps) when referring to the general and entirely uncontroversial idea that the brain evolved under natural selection, and Evolutionary Psychology (upper caps) to refer to the more 'extreme' ideas of Tooby and Cosmidies etc, this convention should be explained and made use of in the article, and unhelpful abbreviations such as EP and Ev-Psych (which were always messy in terms of usage anyway) should be replaced. Orgone 18:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Heres a paper you will find revealing on this subject, which also sets up this uppercase/lowercase distinction in definition: http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/ep.htm Orgone 19:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Reductionism

As regards how reductionism is defined, im not sure that "a research philosophy which assumes that" is better than "a theory which asserts that", research philosophy is an odd term but ill put up with it, however, im not sure about the pejorative-sounding use of the word assumes, and i would seek to avoid it if possible. A pretty pedantic point i admit, but i wondered if anyone else had any opinion on it? If no one does, i'll simply change it, as no unbiased definition of reductionism (Google "define:reductionism") mentions anything about "assumptions made", but "theories held" and "doctrines according to which" etc. Orgone 03:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the point above and that it should be changed. --Ubiq 05:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Im hoping my last edit should really put pay to the idea that reductionism is any kind of problem for EP once and for all, but even so, explain why the issue arose in the first place. Its just a bit annoying that other fields of study concerning the mind or brain dont have to make simmilar moves in their own defence, but mention the word 'evolution' and every nut crawls out of the woodwork.Orgone 18:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

External links

I removed the link to the essay by Dr.Beetle (http://drbeetle.homestead.com/topten.html) because it was not up to academic standards, whatever else he may have written:

New Scientist web links of 2002 "Controversial site with alternative views on many of the building blocks of modern biology. Often thought-provoking, offering lots of material for debate. Good design and links, worth a visit" (Review of his website, found on the front page)

This particular essay is pretty poor in places, containing such unsubstantiated speculation as:

"If it takes some 2300 genes to work an eye, which is a complicated piece of machinery, then a guess is that it takes perhaps 1000 genes to work each other sense (say 4 x 1000 = 4000). A similar number must be needed for each emotion, which are often complicated and coordinate a range of physiological reactions such as a narrowed eye, frown, release of adrenalin, flush etc. I can think of about 50 emotions = 50,000 genes."

not to mention repeatedly drawing moral conclusions from EP (particularly the metaphor of the "selfish" gene), and using those as criticisms, when of course EP is not a theory of ethics, but an approach to psychology, and cannot be discredited as such.

Orgone 05:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Reply - there was a link to a scientific paper showing that it does take 2300 genes to control an eye. In the absence of similar research for the other senses such as hearing, touch, smell, what is wrong with the conservative estimates for these senses, to give ball park total numbers? How many genes would you suggest are required to produce an emotion? The article raises a number of issues in an entertaining and provocative style, and is not meant to be a dreay journal article. Wikipedia should be able to link to other articles fully available on the web, and not just to scientific journal references and abstracts that are out of the reach of most people using it.

Firstly, the "scientific paper" linked to in Dr.Beetle's paper (http://w3.igb.cnr.it/workshop/Workshop95/SpeakAbs/Gehring.html) is actually just an abstract, nevertheless, it reports the finding that there are some 2500 genes involved in eye morphogenesis (the formation of the eye on a cellular level), not the control of the eye, which is a different matter. This in itself would actually strengthen the argument in the paper (which argues a "gene shortage" for EP), because it means that it would take more than 2500 genes to both form and control the eye (you have the area of the brain which processes visual information and coordinates eye movement to account for as well). However, it also means that to move from eye morphogenesis to emotions is to make an even greater false analogy:

The paper arbitrarily posits "about 50 emotions", and then, given a faulty analogy ('formation of the eye' and 'elation' are phenomenon on quite different explanatory levels) and guesswork about our other senses, posits 1000 genes per emotion. This, quite frankly, is childishly simplistic. Why presume, as the paper does, that a "frown" produced by anger should be "controlled" by a different gene from a frown produced by say, frustration? Are these sufficiently distinguishable emotions to have an entirely different set of 1000 genes to account for them? The "x number of genes per property" way of describing things is too simple, allot if not most properties arise from the complex interaction of genes. That’s my problem with that particular section of Dr.Beetles paper alone(whatever he has a doctorate in, its NOT biology).

Heres a piece that discusses and dispells the "gene shortage" objection to EP: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/genecount.html Orgone 19:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Secondly, that Wikipedia shouldn’t just link to "dreary journal articles", that may be so in general, but not when the entry is scientific in nature, if people want unqualified opinion on a subject then can Google away to their hearts content, but lets try and keep to some standards. There are plenty of qualified critiques of evolutionary psychology to point people to, this kind of link isn’t necessary. Orgone 02:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

somewhat biased, and using a sort of ad hominen fallacy

I think that the part:

Why then, is the accusation of reductionism commonly used as a criticism of Evolutionary Psychology, and not say, as a criticism of Neuropsychopharmacology? (A discipline in which an implicit premise as regards psychology is that all states of mind, including both normal and drug-induced altered states, and diseases involving mental or cognitive dysfunction, have a neuro-chemical basis at the fundamental level.) The reason is that Evolutionary Psychology is a controversial field in itself, and to quote Richard Dawkins: "'reductionism', like sin, is one of those things only mentioned by people who are against it." The Blind Watchmaker, 1986 p.13. Here Dawkins makes a distinction between "direct" and "hierarchical" reductionism: organisms can be described in terms of DNA, DNA in terms of atoms, atoms in terms of sub-atomic particles etc; but knowledge of sub-atomic particles will not directly explain animal or human behavior, nevertheless, one can make adequate explanations and predictions at a higher levels.

Not only has a partial tone, but also the Dawkins quote seems to try to dismiss generalizedly all the possible criticism that mentions reductionism. I also doubt that there would be no criticism of neuropsychopharmacology in regarding reductionism, and it is arguably that if evolutionary psychology apparently has more, it is probably because it has gained more space in pop culture, with a few criticism along with. --Extremophile 07:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Geary article tagged for deletion

I thought that I would bring to peoples' attention here that that David C. Geary, (who has made a lot of contributions to evolutionary psychology), has been tagged for deletion. If there is anyone here who would be interested in working on the article, please feel free. EPM 20:09, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

removed original research from controversies

Editors of this paged need to only add Wikipedia:Attributionable stuff. please avoid adding original research, such as the unsourced subsections of "Controversies". I've renamed the section "Evolutionary psychology and philosophy", because the only sourced sentences were those that dealt with philosophical criticisms.--Urthogie 04:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I've also removed original research and sticky sweet prose such as this:

As we can see, the matter is subject to debate, some believing that evolutionary considerations are correct and necessary, others that they are incorrect and a form of the naturalistic fallacy, and others indeed that they are morally harmful whether correct or not. This idea of the supposed moral harm done by bringing together the social sciences and ethics is arguably where the greatest controversy lies.

1. Don't say "We" to the readers.
2. Don't do original research, in attempting to synthesize the information you're supply the reader. You need to use secondary sources which can attribute your syntheses.
3. Try to avoid these practices on other parts of the article. Invite other people to collaborate, as this article needs a major scientific review.--Urthogie 04:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

The large amount material you have removed from the 'controversies' section is not original research, it can be found in the literature, a better approach would have been to add "citation needed" tags and discuss removing the material here first. Also, the paragraph quoted above should have been rewritten, not simply removed, as it is needed to explain the quote it is referring to. The section as it stands now is also not really about "Evolutionary psychology and philosophy", but the consequences of evolution for metaethics. There are issues in the philosophy of psychology, biology and mind concerning EP (massive modularity, teleological notions of function e.t.c) but the article does not (yet, perhaps) discuss them. As things stand i think your edits should be reverted. Anyone else agree? Orgone 05:40, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It's important to me that we don't criticize something without using sources. Citation needed tags are generally reserved for sentences that people regard as a fact but just haven't found a source for. I think many of these criticisms were poorly stated, and did not reflect actual available sources. Also, metaethics are part of philosophy, so there's no problem in this name. Lastly, a criticism does not amount to a "controversy." So I think all the issues you raise are not problems.--Urthogie 15:51, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I find it odd that there is a section in this article "References for rebuttals to criticisms" WITHOUT a section on the criticisms being rebutted!

This is a sure sign this article has a pro-EP slant.Nancymc 02:42, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

POV tag: Psuedo-religion or peer reviewed science?

I am an editor with only a cursory understanding of EP. However, after reading the discussions about controversies and criticisms, noting an almost complete lack of references to peer critics (people like Buller, Gould, or Ehrlich who I found in 10 minutes on the web), who challenge the reigning EP authorities (people like Tooby, Cosmides or Buss) and most importantly, after noticing no coverage of the criticisms in the article, I am seeing a pattern here that resembles that which "fascist" (please see Spreading Misandry by Nathanson and Young or Professing Feminism by Patia and Koerge) gender feminists use on the Feminism page to pander to their POV and to silence credible criticisms of their POVs. Therefore, I am going to place a POV tag on this article until such time as I see all (peer to peer) points of view about EP reflected in this article in some sort of balanced NPOV fashion. At a minimum, I would expect to see a list of criticisms as I do indeed see on the Religion page. However, as I said before I am far too unversed in EP to contribute such content...so I ask those editors who know far more about these 'controversies' (which are obviously raging right now) than I do to show what they are, who they are between and what they are about. Thanks 12.107.17.150 03:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

There was a large controversies section until very recently, (check the edit history) but it was removed. It needed improvement, but that shouldn't have happened. I protested, and if i wasn't so busy at the moment i would have done more about it. The old full and complete version of the article (which was taken from here) can be found at the WikiPsych [1] along with a forum for debating issue concerning EP [2] Orgone 03:39, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Why did the criticism section suddenly "disappear"? As far as I remember, there was nothing wrong with it. Oh, look, the "Rebuttals to criticism" section is still up. That is quite unusual, isn't it? --Onias 17:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

"Controversies" section restored

I have restored the "Controversies" section from a version before Urthogie's wholesale removal of material, it needs to be improved rather than just removed. Orgone 03:07, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

"Criticisms from Human Behavioral Ecology" section?

Should there be a section that discusses criticisms from human behavioral ecology? This might be interesting considering that human behavioral ecology is the field that grew out of sociobiology within anthropology, as opposed to evolutionary psychology, which grew out of sociobiology within psychology. See:

Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. and K. Hill (2001). Controversies in the evolutionary social sciences: A guide to the perplexed. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16(3):128-135. Full text

And here's a critical look at evolutionary psychology that isn't from human behavioral ecology, but it is certainly comensurate with HBE, (or behavioral ecology, in general). The claim, from page 442 (p. 3 out of 8), is that "Entropy is the Primary Adaptive Problem - Energetic Management is the Primary Adaptive Solution":

La Cerra, P. (2003). The First Law of Psychology is the Second Law of Thermodynamics: The Energetic Evolutionary Model of the Mind and the Generation of Human Psychological Phenomena. Human Nature Review, Volume 3: 440-447. Full text

EPM 13:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Memills and Dissembly on accusation of "Negatively biased editing and additions lately"

This is primarily a page to describe Evolutionary Psychology, not the controversy about EP. There has been negatively biased editing and additions lately, primarily by Dissembly focusing on criticisms and, frankly, misunderstandings or mischaracterisizations of EP.

Suggestion -- move the controversy material to its own page, titled something like "Evolutionary Psychology Controversies." --Memills 18:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Adding a separate page - A page that describes evolutionary psychology without mentioning the controvery about EP would be extraordinarily biased. The fact is that there is a great deal of published criticism of evolutionary psychology by experts within the relevant fields. Your claim that my editing was "negative bias" looks to me like a violation of "assume good faith"; i have provided appropriate references to each topic covered and have added aspects of the debate that the original article simply did not mention. Dissembly 13:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I did not suggest that the controversy section be deleted from article. Rather, the controversy section is expanding to a very large section of the article -- to the point that the level and amount of detail is exceeding what is appropriate for an encyclopedia page. I have no problem with further discussion of controversies, but, if this length and level of detail is included it would be more appropriate for a brief overview on the main page, with link to a page with more detailed discussion.

Fair enough, though I am wary of "breif overviews" obscuring aspects of the debate. If you have an article that claims to be of a scientific field and fails to include much detail in its opposition (beyond politically biased statements like "Marxists hate EP"), and its an area of science that is hotly disputed, well that just screams POV.--Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Further, EP fully integrates a nature-nurture interactionist position. Many of the arguments of the critics have been based on the incorrect assumption that EP supports genetic determinism. This is a very unsophisticated critique of EP.

First of all, EP/SB critics are not (all) interactionists (and people like Lewontin and Kohn have said so explicitly), and secondly, whether or not EP truly "integrates" nature-nurture interactionism is actually a point of contention. Thirdly, and probably most relevantly to this article, EP requires genetic determinism (just not solely), and the criticisms relating to that are wholly relevant and have been brought up many times currently and in the history of the topic, ever since Wilson. --Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Dissembly, can you name one EP scholar who is not a nature-nurture interactionist?

Please re-read me; i have never claimed that EP scholars are not "nature-nurture interactionists" - i claimed that some of the critics of EP had also critisized "interactionism". Dissembly 09:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

And, you've entirely lost me on how EP "requires genetic determinism"... For example, humans clearly have an evolved adaptation to learn a language (a species specific adapatation -- a human universal),

Only if you assume it is an "adaptation" - remember, that is in dispute. Dissembly 09:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

but what language one speaks (English, Spanish, etc.) is clearly culturally learned. Some folks are interested more in studying the human universals (most EP folks), others are interested in the cultural variations (cultural anthropologists, etc). However, that doesn't necessarily make them, respectively, "genetic determinists" and "cultural determinists." With a bit of reflection, both groups understand that you have to have both nature and nurture to have anything. Can you offer an example of an exception to this? --Memills 04:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I never claimed otherwise. I think you have your own preconceived notions about what critics of EP really think. Evolutionary psychology requires some genetic determination of behavioural traits, because traits need to be open to selection (thus they need a genetic component that determines, to a fairly reasonable degree, what is expressed). I never said that it requires ONLY genetic determinism, just that it requires genetic determinism. The interactionism of EP advocates includes a beleif in genetic determination of behavioural traits - not solely genes, but genes are necessary. Thus - and this is my original point - a critique of the genetic determination (or "component", or "factor") in behavioural traits is a wholly appropriate critique of EP, and not at all "unsophisticated" as you wrote earlier. Dissembly 09:35, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The great majority of the additions/edits by Assembly have been critical of EP (see the history page), and, IMO some of these edits reflect a negative bias in presentation and wording. For example, the sentence: "Animal behavior studies have long recognized the role of evolution; the application of evolutionary theory to human psychology, however, has been controversial" is not POV as Assemlby asserts (and thus has deleted the sentence twice). I've taught Animal Behavior (and Evolutionary Psychology) at the university level for a couple of decades -- the sentence is simply a fact. --Memills 23:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Memills, i've learned and studied animal behaviour and evolutionary pschology at the university level, and the sentence is not fact at all. It states that early evolutionists applied evolution to animal behaviour but not human behaviour - that is demonstrably false. (It seems to have been lifted in some general way from Pinker, whose historical analysis has been shredded by Louis Menand in the New York Review, but it does resemble things ive only ever heard proponents of EP say.) And i have not "deleted the sentence twice", i simply modified it the second time to remove the POV since you seemed so insistent on keeping the sentence. The sentence is POV because it falsely claims that nobody beleived in evolution of human behaviour until SB/EP came along, and the sentence also implies that the criticism to SB/EP is based simply upon its application to humans, something which the actual scientific criticism belies (as well as the beliefs of EP/SB critics themselves, like Lewontin and Gould, but im not here to play "Quote Wars"). It is an erroneous historical beleif which conveniently serves the purposes of one side of the argument. --Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Couldn't disagree with you more. IMO you are reading way far more into a simple sentence than it states. --Memills 04:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I beleive i am reading only what it says: a sentence can be decomposed into particular clauses and premises. Some of these are historically incorrect. The only point where i go beyond the sentence is in pointing out that the particular factual error benefits one particular POV.

I don't think it is necessary to create a separate "evolutionary psychology controversies" page - Length does not appear to be a problem. If it were, the first place to look to shorten things would be the coverage of evolutionary biology - a topic already discussed at length in it's own page. Relevance certainly is not a problem; the controversy over EP has been relevant to every aspect of it, from the public eye to the debates within the scientific literature, from the basic premises of the field to the niggly details of specific cases. Wikipedia is not a forum for re-writing history by exclusion. Dissembly 13:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Again, this is not a page about the history of the controversy about EP, it is about EP. A lengthly page about the history of the controversy would be of interest in itself, and thus deserves its own page. --Memills 23:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Accusations of "misunderstandings and mischaracterisations" - there are no mischaracterisations in the material i added. It is all entirely drawn from the words of those actually carrying out the debates. You cannot pick and choose which words of relevant scientists you like and which words you do not like, you can only present those words with regard to their proper meaning and context, try to deliver them in a way free of POV, and assume good faith on the parts of other editors, thank-you very much. Dissembly 13:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I was suggesting that the mischaracterisations are from the original authors, not Dissembly (with the exception of my comment above re editing and deletion of text). --Memills 23:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

As you said in one of your edits, "this is not a debate page". If the original authors mischaracterised things (and that is still a subject of debate) then the EP position on that should simply be folded into the criticisms themselves. If you wanted to challenge their characterisation, the appropriate forum is an essay/paper of your own making, not Wikipedia.-- Dissembly 02:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Lots of authors, and apparently yourself, have labeled EPers as "genetic determinists" -- a label they reject, and which is substantively false. How much space should be given to this issue -- 1/5th, 1/4th, ?, of the article?

See above for the "genetic determinist" stuff. Space must be given - enough space to capture the two sides of the issue in an way that accurately represents both their views without waffling on for too long. I beleive it's pretty good right now. Dissembly 09:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Why does this article have two separate Reference sections?

Unlike every other moderately refined article on Wikipedia, this article has two separate reference sections. One section is under "Controversies", and is entitled "References to rebuttals of controversies". The other is a standard Wikipedia-format Reference section, and contains a list of pro-EP and a list of anti-EP references. I have several questions regarding this:

• Does this mean we must add in a new "References to criticism of EP" list, aside from the one already present in the standard format References section?
• Do we then need a "References to rebuttals for rebuttals of controversies" list?
• Having actually read some of the references on the "rebuttals" list, i note that these references are not actually meant to be lists of rebuttals, and sometimes do not even try to rebut certain criticisms - so why is this being called a "references to rebuttals" list when a title like "References to pro-EP sources" could be much less POV and completely uncontroversial?
• Why are so many books repeated on two lists (Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate", for example)? Dissembly 13:42, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I have previously collapsed the two separate references list into a standard Wikipedia format Reference section, with two lists with completely POV-free titles along the lines of "References to pro-EP" & "references to con-EP". This has been reverted twice so far, with absolutely no discussion and explanation beyond the blanket (and anti-AGF) accusation that my edits are "biased". On the grounds that:

• Wikipedia articles are easier to read when they have a more standard, accepted format involving a single Reference section - not two,
• Eliminating POV,
• Eliminating unnecessary length and the "doubling-up" of references,

I suggest that we:

• Collapses references into a single section with no doubling-up,
• include a list of pro-EP and a list of con-EP references.

Dissembly 13:43, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the title of the section from "Some references for rebuttals to criticisms of evolutionary psychology" to "Reading list for rebuttals to criticisms of evolutionary psychology." These references deal specifically with addressing, and rebutting, many of the EP criticisms, and IMO it is appropriate that they be included. --Memills 23:28, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Re "include a list of pro-EP and a list of con-EP references." Again, this page is primarily about EP; it is not an EP controversies page about the pro and con arguments, or the history of the controversy (which, IMO, has significantly mellowed in recent years as most everyone now concedes that humans have evolved psychological adaptations and that "nature vs. nurture" debate is a straw man -- it is always "nature/nurture interactionism.") Go ahead and create an "EP Controversies" page to review the history and current status of the debate -- I encourage it. (On a tangential note: Gould apparently mellowed to EP in his last book, with a quote (that unfortunately I don't have in front of me) that sounded very supportive of EP.) --Memills 23:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, you have not addressed the unnecessary length and the POV problems with having two special reference sections. It is not appropriate at all, i cannot see any good faith reason for even having a separate reference section in the "controversies" bit. And you certainly cannot simply leave out books which criticise EP from the EP page, reserving them for a separate page. Secondly, the debate has not mellowed, you have simply outlived one of the most public opponents of EP. That is not a mellowing. The scientific criticisms have been unresolved, and the criticism within science continues today. --Dissembly 02:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: "Nature/nurture" - critics of EP have criticised the "nature/nurture" characterisation as a straw-man ever since the earliest stages of the debate. ("Nature/nurture interactionism" has also been heavily critisized.) This is not some recent change in the views presented, it may reflect a change in the way the media protrays the debate, but people like Richard Lewontin criticized what they called "cultural determinists" just as much as SB/EP edvocates. The idea that there ever was a "nature/nurture" debate is a straw man largely pushed by proponents of EP/SB (whether out of ignorance, because theyve relied on people like Pinker for their history, or out of agenda, like Pinker himself, its hard to say).

(Tangentially, Gould's last book is a 1400-page reiteration of his opposition to the hyper-adaptationism he perceives in fields like EP. The only positive statement he makes on EP is in saying that (paraphrasing) "at least some of them have started to embrace non-adaptive explanations for things"; and by this he is only referring to the characterisation of mental traits as "maladaptations." He criticises research into the "EEA", and treats the terms "EEA", "Sociobiologist" and "evolutionary pschologist" with a bit of disdain. He really just repeats the idea that human cognition is not adaptive at all. It's fairly consistent with his earlier writing.) --Dissembly 02:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Again, I disagree with you substantively on virutally all of the above. (What, by the way, is Pinker's "agenda," other than a scientific quest for the truth? Does he have a hidden political agenda? Did Gould, too?)

His agenda was to show that there was a "Blank Slate" view which has since been overturned by science. it has been thoroughly debunked elsewhere.

You complain about POV, but some of the above are clearly POV statements, and, as I suggested earlier, you apparently have allowed your strongly negative POV about EP to include edits/additions/deletions that would tend to turn an introductory encyclopedic page into a debate page.

I could say the same about your strong pro-EP POV. Your bias has clearly coloured your own contributions *enormously*, but such an assertion is obvious. This is a useless line of argument.

By analogy, while a creationist might like to turn the topic of evolution into a rousing debate page, but a good intro encyclopdia page on that topic would be primarily about evolutionary theory. And, while duly noting creationist objections, the article would refer the reader out to another page that deals specifically with that controversy. A similar approach is appropriate here. --Memills 04:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed by the fact that scientists do not agree on evolutionary psychology. A better analogy would be wether or not we include rebuttals to the transactional interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in the page on the transactional interpretation. Someone heavily biased towards the transactional interpretation might be well sevred by saying "We should have a separate page on "quantum mechanics controversies", but that wouldnt make it a valid thing to do. 130.194.13.102 05:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Creation of Evolutionary psychology controversy page

Given the strong editing disagreements above, and the length and detail of the controversies section, I have created an Evolutionary psychology controversy page, and added a link to that page. --Memills 18:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Interesting discussion above. I would agree that a mention of the EP controversy is appropriate for this article, and perhaps one that is a little more detailed than what currently exists within the new revision of the controversy section of this article. However, I also agree that a detailed article on the evolutionary psychology controversy is both appropriate and necessary. My main argument would be that both the above discussion and the previous controversies section of the EP article only scratched the surface of the evolutionary psychology debate. Criticisms come from all directions. They come from:

1. within evolutionary psychology,
2. from other fields of evolution and human behavior, (e.g., evolutionary developmental psychology, human behavioral ecology, and dual inheritance theory),
3. from biology,
4. from non-evolutionary based perspectives within main stream psychology
5. from the social sciences, and
6. from the humanities, (e.g., philosophy)

Thus, I personally think that the reader may be best served (for simplicity's sake) if the focus of this article described evolutionary psychology as presented by evolutionary psychologists (including controversies within the field). A brief mention of controversies from outside the field plus a link to a more detailed article of those controversies would, I think, further best serve the reader. I don't say this to violate NPOV. I just think it would be more pragmatic when considering the shear scope of the controversies in all their complexity. EPM 23:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Whatever "controversy" surfaced by Harvard Marxist Biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin in their assault on Sociobiology, Evolutionary Psychology, etc., has been "settled" after their repudiation of Darwinian adaptionism was exposed by sociologist Ullica Segerstrale in Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), wherein, if Darwin's adaptionism is true, then Marx's critique is false. Marx's critique IS false, and Darwin's adaptionism IS true. End of what can only be charitably-described ideology efforts to subvert science. Dshsfca 17:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)dshsfcaDshsfca 17:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC) What a load of tosh. There is still a great deal of criticism of Evolutionary Psychology. Perhaps it is all incorrect, but it does exist. And the idea (and you get it a lot) that criticisms are just an ideological effort to subvert science is just rubbish, as are criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology on the basis that it is a right wing pseudoscientific ideological effort. I don't understand why some EP supporters talk about their critics as if they're the "new creationists" who are just unwilling to accept science and can only use strawman arguments. That kind of talk is just distracting from the real, and genuinely scientific debate. JohnyGoodman (talk) 01:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

History

I feel that this page would benefit from a history of evolutionary psychology section. If anyone feels up to it I think that would be a great addition.--206.188.67.28 (talk) 16:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The environment of evolutionary adaptedness

This section contains a fallacy of extension. It argues that more Americans each year are killed by hand guns then snakes, but that PEOPLE are just as likely to be afraid of snakes as they are a pointed gun. --Redroven (talk) 03:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Issue with Tone

There is a part of the first paragraph here that seems a bit sketchy to me:

Thus, in the broadest sense, EP is the rather dramatic announcement to the world that psychology has finally "graduated" to the status of natural science (somewhat analogous to the "graduation" of alchemy to chemistry) and that the fundamental dichotomy at the heart of science between human science and natural science is now (or will soon be) at an end. With the birth of EP, there will, eventually, be needed only the umbrella term "science" to represent one fully consistent "monolith" of falsifiable knowledge. Likewise, the phrase "evolutionary psychology" is seen as merely a stopgap terminology that will end upon the full recognition that psychology is, necessarily, a biological science.

I cannot speak to how far evolutionary psychology is thought within the scientific community to be a truly "graduated" form of science, but this bit of prose here seems to indicate that the question has already been decided. Sentences like, "With the birth of EP, there will, eventually, be needed only the umbrella term "science" to represent one fully consistent "monolith" of falsifiable knowledge" seem to be taking on a tone that is not quite befitting of an article in an encyclopedia. I think it would at least be just to say that there should be some distinction between what practitioners of EP think will probably happen, not just that they will happen. Again, I am no expert, so I cannot argue the claims here, only that they are being presented in a way that makes them seem very much like polemic. Corbmobile (talk) 07:55, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Too many external links, changes being reverted

There is a ridiculous amount of external links. Please read WP:EL and WP:LINKFARM. Also, the reverts taking place are against what not to revert. Yes, they may be interesting, but this isn't the place for them. If you like a collection of links, try a DMOZ site. That would be great for you! If you want them all to stay here, this is not the place. This is an encyclopedia; not a collection of links to websites. Also, you may want to read WP:OWN. нмŵוτнτ 15:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Well that collection of resources was carefully compiled and edited by experts in the field of Evolutionary Psychology - including many professors in the area. But I guess this is what wikipedia is all about - the voices of people who know very little about a subject but a lot about Wikipedia drowning out the experts in a field. I notice that in the process of deleting all the valuable links to external resources you added a completely innappropriate link to a non-peer reviewed opinion piece on the personal website of Dale Glaebach.Factster (talk) 18:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

(a) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia; not a collection of links. I don't doubt that they were carefully compiled, and that they have meaningful content. I know that some people have different motives and ideas. However, your motives are against official Wikipedia policy. Let me summarize relevant points:

• "Links should be restricted to the most relevant and helpful." (WP:EL)
• "Wikipedia is [not] a repository of links." (WP:LINKFARM)
• "Wikipedia articles are not mere collections of external links... Excessive lists... detract from the purpose of Wikipedia." (WP:LINKFARM)

(b) I did not add any links to this article. Please see the diff, and make sure to refrain from making fully inaccurate comments about other editors. нмŵוτнτ 19:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmwith, I am with you on the removal of the linkfarm. However, the diff that you give above, as far as I can see, does show that you added the Glaebach link. Or am I missing something? --Crusio (talk) 20:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope. Sometimes, it shows that one added something in a diff when he or she did not in fact do so. That link is on the left side too. Search (usually Ctrl+F) for part of the link, & view the next occurrence after the one in the right column. It will show the link was actually in the left one. It's a problem that I notice a lot w/ diffs. Look carefully, it's toward the bottom of the left (previous) column (the last link in the "A small sampling of papers and research concerning Evolutionary Psychology" section right before "Online Videos"). Trust me. =) Thanks, нмŵוτнτ 23:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

You're right. Weird! Thanks for the explanation. --Crusio (talk) 23:35, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

No worries. Glad that you brought that to my attention. I'm sure others would have liked clarification, as well. нмŵוτнτ 23:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

overview

The very long first paragraph in the overview makes an important point but spends about twice as much space as needed to make it. Rtdrury (talk) 05:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I also suggest rewriting it. It really does not read well. I sensed an air of "we're going to reclaim psychology's dignity among the real sciences, just you wait and see!" --Adoniscik (talk) 02:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Merger

The two articles are each rather long. If they are merged the new article will be too long for some computers to handle. Then there will be pressure to split the article or to delete large sections of the content. Am I being paranoid? Could there be a conspiracy by opponents of evolution/evolutionary psychology to sabotage part of the articles?Barbara Shack (talk) 17:08, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

• Let's talk over at Talk:Evolutionary psychology controversy. Chet Ubetcha (talk) 18:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Background

All fields have minor controversies. Such a statement is designed to deflect attention from the outside criticism. For all you know, I could be a published evolutionary biologist. Chet Ubetcha (talk) 18:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Controversies page should remain a separate page

The main EP page should be about EP -- what it is. Historically, anti-EP folks have previously attempted to turn the main page into a political critique of the field. And, many of them have had a very meager understanding of the field.

It is significant that those here who promote a merger complain about bias, however, none of them contribute to the content of the article itself. If they have something useful to contribute re criticisms of the field, then do so. And, then let the other side state their counterarguments. This is an excellent way for readers to assess both sides of the controversy and to arrive at their own judgments.

There is a great deal of misinformation / disinformation about EP. This page helps to list the arguments pro and con. In addition, there are those who fall into the trap of the naturalistic fallacy and/or moralistic fallacy who simply misunderstand the field, and who may have essentially political, rather than scientific motivations. Memills (talk) 06:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't know where I should put this comment, but I had to balk at this line: "The application of evolutionary theory to animal behavior is uncontroversial."

This is an absurd claim! People who dispute the validity of evolutionary psychology will dispute it in all cases; making the statement in this form speaks of an enormous EP bias. That most of the arguments against EP are discussed in terms of human behaviour is a product of the usual focus of EP, not proof that EP claims in wider animal studies are undisputed!

This page absolutely needs some coverage of the controversies involved - EP is still a subject of significant scientific and philosophical dispute, and to present it otherwise is dishonest. #### —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.187.96.11 (talk) 15:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Making this NPOV and verifiable

The lead-in on this article read like an extraordinarily naive assertion of Word Domination. I'm prepared to concede that this is what some proponents may suggest but we have to be NPOV and verifiable in WikiPedia. FWIW one of the reasons it is hopelessly naive is that it suggested that biology was the science of living things in the sense of "everything scientific that can be said about living things". But on that 'defintion' biology would include all the other sciences as well, since they all apply to living things. The whole point of having different branches of science is that different problems call for different techniques and levels of discourse. The same "arguments" that "reduce" psychology to biology also reduce biology to chemistry and chemistry to physics. But no-one in their right mind would use the Dirac equation to study (say) ecology or the beating of the heart. NBeale (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

• Good luck with overcoming the tendentious editors who guard this page and the Evolutionary psychology controversy page. Chet Ubetcha (talk) 00:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Someone seems to have restored the highly POV/OR stuff about the World Domination of EP. If you are tempted to so again, please try to justify it on talk and get a consensus first. NBeale (talk) 14:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean by "World Domination of EP"? Chet Ubetcha (talk) 11:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

External links section

The massive dump of links in the EL section is not in keeping with WP:EL, so I have trimmed it back again. Please discuss links to be added on a case by case basis, and please do not blanket revert to the former version. Links should be kept to a minimum, and that section was almost as long as the rest of the page. WLU (talk) 16:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I have revised the External Links, and trimmed it back. What remains is, I believe, appropriate in length and relevance. Memills (talk) 19:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I had thought you accidentally removed the cats and navbox, sorry for the revert, I've reverted myself.

I've removed more of the link, here's why:

• • • Wikis are usually not good choices for external links for a couple reasons. Generally their content duplicates wikipedia, so it's questionable why you would link to basically the same sort of information at the same level of detail. Also, most wikis are not considered reliable sources. Overriding all of this is the first item in Wikipedia:External_links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided - if the page doesn't offer anything beyond a featured article, it's not a good choice. Accordingly, encyclopedic wikis aren't good choices (as above, they do the same thing as wikipedia).
    • The 'basic textbooks' I've moved into a section I created, 'further reading' - since they're really on-line versions of books, that's more appropriate.
    • Evovoyage I removed - there's a lot of advertising and it doesn't seem near as professional the remaining links in an already fairly linked section. Per WP:EL, links should be kept to a minimum
    • SEAL was there twice, so I removed the second
    • BBS on-line, based on its description, is only partially relevant to evo; given there's already four journals, I think this one can be removed unless it's the Science of EP
    • Transactionpub.com links to the transaction main page, and not to a specific EP journal. I've commented it out, this should be a permanent link to the stable front page of the journal
    • I also reordered the journals so the fundamental-sounding ones (i.e. EP is in the title) are first. I've also adjusted the titles, wording and punctuation in all the sections to be more in line with wikipedia's manual of style and threw in a couple wikilinks. That's about it. WLU (talk) 20:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you removed Citizendium, yet retained Scholarpedia. Both are encyclopedic wikis, however, both are edited only by pre-qualified academics / professionals. The Citizendium entry, as of now, is close to a copy of the current page, however, I anticipate it will evolve to offer unique contributions over time (no pun intended). I'll add it back in. 68.99.124.205 (talk) 23:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikis duplicate the existing content and purpose of wikipedia, so there is no advantage to having them. WP:EL specifically says why include a link that adds nothing beyond the page were it a featured article. Other wikis, like other encyclopedias, will not add more because of the same level of coverage and sourcing. Therefore removed.

Regarding the further reading list, two extra links to a site already in the EL section seems excessive. Why not simply add the relevant books to the further reading section? WLU (talk) 23:58, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Because the reading list at the HBES website is far more extensive (and far more material than would appropriate here). Memills (talk) 06:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Links to peer reviewed wikis

As I mentioned above, I believe external links to peer-reviewed wikis, such as Scholarpedia and Citizenium, are appropriate. They give the reader access to wikis developed by academic researchers and professionals in the field, and thus may offer more authoritative introductions to the discipline. Many academics will not spend time on editing Wikipedia, while they will on more authoritatively reviewed and non-anonymous wikis. WLU -- please discuss proposed deletions of these links, and other materials, before you make wholesale deletions. Memills (talk) 06:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that such peer-reviewed wikis provide supplementary and credible information that should be linked from here. -- Mietchen (talk) 14:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

lead needs real work

A mediocre lead defines the topic. A good lead describes the topic so well that it could stand alone as a concise summary, independent of the body (see wp:lead). I've been getting the lead to look more like an accessible summary and less like a definition. Leadwind (talk) 15:14, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The body of this article is really hard going. I'm a highly informed lay reader, and I get lost. The average lay reader is going to have a really hard time. I'm going to work on the lead as the most accessible part of the article. Ideally, the lead will be good enough that a reader who reads nothing but the lead will walk away with a general understanding of the topic. Leadwind (talk) 20:02, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

recent edits

A large amount of edits have been made in the last couple of hours without any discussion on the talk page, beyond the mention of the lead bit (see above). I suggest such large edits be discussed here first.Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Shut up! Let them edit. The talk page is for working out issues of disagreement, mostly. If someone wants to do good work without discussing it, I say let 'em do it. Do you have a specific problem with the recent edits? Graft | talk 04:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Now Graft, be nice. But thanks for watching my back. Dbrodbeck, if you have issues with any edits, please bring those issues up here or tag the content on the page. For my part, I'll say that this page has a lot of totally solid material but that it's a hard hard slog. The lay reader is not going to fare well on this page. I'm trying to make the whole thing more fleshed out and less technical. Leadwind (talk) 05:42, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Shut up? Anyway... I guess to me the part about white male privilege and all of that is a bit much. Those are pretty old criticisms. If you read a popular account of EP such as the Blank Slate, such ideas are confronted head on, and they rarely come up (in my experience mind you) in actual journal articles. And Graft, I am just trying to be careful, I was entirely civil (correct me if I am wrong) in my post. I have seen decent pages get really wrecked (and I should say I do not think that is what is going on here).Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Just being colorful, no offense intended; you were entirely in the right to be cautious. I think those ideas are still very much discussed, and certainly that sentiment exists amongst many mainstream biologists today regarding EP (that it's just a pseudoscientific defense of privilege). They rarely come up in journal articles because (a) EP mostly has its own venues for publishing and (b) journal articles aren't always appropriate for that sort of thing. But that criticism still happens. See, for example Adapting Minds by David Buller. Graft | talk 18:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of how one regards the controversy, it is relevant and interesting. Let's describe EP and the controversy about it really clearly for the lay reader. Leadwind (talk) 19:42, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

No worries, I see the point of putting the stuff there of course. I still say it is falling for the naturalistic fallacy, however, I always go with the consensus. Oh and sorry to have taken offense, sometimes text can be a lousy conduit for nuance, (he said from experience....) Dbrodbeck (talk) 23:11, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone keeps deleting this from the lead: "Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, and others have criticized the idea that humans have significant inborn predispositions toward various behaviors, citing culture as creating psychological differences among individuals.[1] Critics depict EP as a prejudiced attempt to misuse science in defense of race, class and gender privilege.[1]" The lead should summarize the topic. EP has been controversial. We should describe this controversy in the lead. Leadwind (talk) 18:59, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

sex selection

Is sex selection different from natural selection or a subset of natural selection? The lead treats is as different. Leadwind (talk) 19:44, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Debatable, but it's fair to treat it as different. Graft | talk 04:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Separate. Darwin's concept of "natural selection" is better labeled "survival section" which creates adaptations for survival. Sexual selection creates adaptations for reproduction. Sometimes, they are at odds. Memills (talk) 22:08, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

really old EPMs

EP deals with EPMs evolved in the EEA. What about EPMs evolved long ago, such as reacting to baby faces as cute. That's a mammalian feature, not a hominid one. Is it part of EP? What can we say about this category of EPMs on this page? Leadwind (talk) 19:47, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

• The following citation about the concept of the EEA is from Buss, D.M. (2004). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Pearson Education, Inc.: Boston.

"The environment of evolutionary adaptedness, or EEA, refers to the statistical composite of selection pressures that occurred during an adaptation's period of evolution responsible for producing the adaptation. Stated differently, the EEA for each adaptation refers to the selection forces, or adaptive problems, that were responsible for shaping it over deep evolutionary time. The EEA for for the eye, for example, refers to the specific selection pressures that fashioned each of the components of the visual system over hundreds of millions of years. The EEA for bipedal locomotion involves selection pressures on a shorter time scale, going back roughly 4.4 million years. The key point is that the EEA does not refer to a specific time or place, but rather to the selection forces that are responsible for shaping adaptations. Therefore each adaptation has its own unique EEA. The adaptation's period of evolution refers to the time span during which it was constructed, piece by piece, until it came to characterize a universal design of the species."

If we assume that many species-typical human psychological traits can also be shared with other species as well, than what this citation seems to imply is that the Pleistocene was not the EEA of the species-typical evolution of human psychological traits, per se. What it seems to imply is that the Pleistocene was the EEA of those species-typical human psychological traits that are uniquely human. Does that make any sense? EPM (talk) 18:09, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Middle-level evolutionary theories

This section should be broken up into subsections, one for each bullet point. Bullet points are good for shorter lists, but each of these items is worth its own page, so they should be subsections. Leadwind (talk) 19:54, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Overview of some foundational ideas related to evolutionary psychology

I love this chart, I've added to this chart, and I hate this chart. It's good information that deserves to be preserved. It's just too big and too specific for this page. Consider the fate of the poor lay reader who tries to follow it. Is there a "history of EP" page for details like this? Leadwind (talk) 19:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

bio or psych textbook anyone?

Does anyone have a university-level textbook on biology or psychology? I'd love to get an overview that's from an RS that isn't an EP source. Or a dictionary of science? There's lots of meaty material in EP sources, but I'd like to see how EP is viewed by the sciences that it claims to bridge: bio and psych. Leadwind (talk) 05:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I have an office full of them, what do you want to know specifically? Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:38, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I can say that in general, books like Myers 'Psychology' which is a pretty standard intro book, and widely used, now has a whole chapter on genetics, evolution and behaviour, which it did not up until the 6th edition (it is in the 8th now if memory serves). Kalat's Biological Psychology does the same thing, Kolb and Wishaw in umm, damn I ought to know the title as I am using it this term.. oh yeah, 'An Introduction to Brain and Behaviour' take an evolutionary bent throughout the book. Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Specifically I'd like some overview of the controversy (or of ev psych) from a non-ev-psych and non-anti-ev-psych source. If you could summarize what any of these books says about the controversy, or about EP's controversial claims, that would help give this page something more than just presenting EP and anti-EP as two competing outlooks. For example, do these books say, "EP was controversial in the 70s and 80s, but its findings are now generally accepted in psychology"? Or do they say, "EP has always been controversial and has never generated the hard data to make it more than (possibly sexist, racist, classist) speculation"? I'm sure that the EP folks can find EP books about how great EP is, and the anti-EP folks can find books about how rotten it is. What do the neutral textbooks say? But what's the general view in the psychology? Leadwind (talk) 01:16, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I can look when I get a chance (once the term ends perhaps, pretty busy right now...) I can say that Myers does not have any problem with EP at all.. Indeed, most of the intro books on my shelf bring it up as pretty much just another topic in psychology. (It should be noted these are standard intro books that publishers send me, not ones I ask for). Many publishers now are touting their evolutionary perspective throughout given books. As I said, I will get a better chance to get at it once the term ends in a few weeks, and when I get this damned paper done that I am writing... Dbrodbeck (talk) 03:42, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

As a start, I pulled out my old intro book from when I took intro psych, 1984. We used Glietman at the University of Western Ontario and there is no section on EP, I'll try to look into more recent books soon. Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:37, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Until we get some authoritative reference about EP's acceptance outside its own little sphere, then I think editors would agree that we need to present both sides of the controversy evenly. We might each have our own ideas about what's right, but the WP policy is to present all notable opinions. Leadwind (talk) 15:45, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I just checked out Myers 1995 (4th edition) which had no chapter on EP. By the 6th it was mentioned, by the 8th it has a whole chapter. This is a pretty widely used book. Dbrodbeck (talk) 01:06, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

computational theory of mind

I like that new bit, though I think it needs something about modularity. What do you guys think? Dbrodbeck (talk) 04:31, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

If I understand what "modularity" means, then I think both this section and the meager computational theory of mind page need it. Leadwind (talk) 15:39, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Modularity is the notion that basically the mind is made up of a number of specialized 'organs' that solve different types of tasks. A good introduction to this idea is either looking at Sherry and Schacter (1987) "The Evolution of Multiple Memory Systems" in Psych Review or Randy Gallistel's book "the Organization of Learning" Dbrodbeck (talk) 00:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I get modularity, and I could try to add something to that effect. But I have a question on this topic. While humans are said to have narrow EPMs (say, reacting to a a baby's distress cry, or the baby making a distress cry in the first place), what does EP say about the general ability to learn complicated stuff, like trigonometry? In addition to EPMs, does EP recognize a harder-to-train, more general mental mechanism for learning trig, memorizing historical dates, etc? Something domain-general? Is it that there's a domain-general learning capacity, one that takes real work to train because it's not built to preform any specific function, plus EPMs? Or is it all EPMs? Leadwind (talk) 14:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that we can talk about some domain general modules sure, like the geometric module for dealing with spatial relations umm, there is probably a number module, and surely a time module. With number and time you could for example do correlations of events, that sort of thing. This would allow you to learn relationships between events. (In other words, classical conditioning say, which is pretty general). Does that make sense, or am I being confusing? I just finished a 7.5 hour drive, so I may be a tad confusing... Dbrodbeck (talk) 01:46, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

NPOV dispute

Per Wikipedia:NPOV dispute, I've added the {{NPOV}} tag to this article. Based upon the POV of particular content, User:Memills and several anon accounts have been removing criticism from this article, segregating it into a very small subsection, and forking it out into Evolutionary psychology controversy, a violation of NPOV.[3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] A criticism and merge tag have also been added,[12], [13] suggesting that the information be merged into related sections per the NPOV policy. (See also: Wikipedia:Words_to_avoid#Article_structure) These tags have also been removed by Memills.[14], [15] Please do not remove the NPOV tag until this dispute has been solved. Reliable sources documenting criticism and controversy (for example, [16], [17]) are abundant and should be accurately represented in not only the lead section, but the entire article as necessary. Viriditas (talk) 08:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas -- The EP page should be about EP -- what it is in theory and practice, not a debate about it. The main EP page, as I have stated before, has a long history of being turned into a debate page by critics, many of whom have either a meager understanding of EP or who have a political ax to grind. The EP Controversy deserves its own page, and, I do not see this as a violation of NPOV. See the pages Biopsychiatry controversy and Evolutionary theory and the political left -- they are appropriate examples of similar controversies that have their own page, apart from the main page. If Wikipedia wishes content experts to contribute relevant information, it needs to actually encourage such contributions and the main page needs to accurately describe the field. Otherwise, controversial fields, such as EP and evolution in general, will degenerate into debates among non-experts in the field and result in a page that is a caricature of the discipline, and the experts will eschew participation. Memills (talk) 04:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Memills makes an excellent point. I concur completely. Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

The point of this NPOV dispute has not been addressed. There is a large and significant body of criticism that needs to be represented within the article in relation to the primary points of contention, and the NPOV policy is clear on this point. See also: Wikipedia:Criticism and Wikipedia:Content forking. Viriditas (talk) 13:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, just to clarify the issue Viriditas brings up, shuffling off criticism to a separate article is not within the framework of Wikipedia NPOV policy which states, The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one. The policy also requires avoidance of "POV forks", wherein there is "segregation" of text or other content into different regions or subsections, based solely on the apparent POV of the content itself. Please also see Content forking. --MPerel 19:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

This dispute has been ongoing since 2006 with no resolution:

1. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology/Archive1
2. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#POV_tag:_Psuedo-religion_or_peer_reviewed_science.3F
3. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Making_this_NPOV_and_verifiable
4. Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Memills_and_Dissembly_on_accusation_of_.22Negatively_biased_editing_and_additions_lately.22
5. Talk:Evolutionary psychology controversy

Both the archived and current discussions show that the opinion Memills and Dbrodbeck continue to maintain is a minority position, and this position has been repeatedly criticized. Both editors have had ample time to fix the problem. Viriditas (talk) 22:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Memills (myself) and Dbrodbeck (both psychology professors, by the way) are not in "minority position" any more than evolutionary theory is a minority position in the evolution vs. "intelligent design" controversy. EP is a theoretical approach to psychology, rather like evolutionary theory is a theoretical approach to biology. Psychology without evolution might be described as "psychological creationism" (see "The Blank Slate" by Pinker for more re this).

The controversy against EP was mainly initiated over 30 years ago by Marxist professors at Harvard in reaction to E.O. Wilson's book "Sociobiology." However, the current consensus of opinion in psychological science, IMO, is that the evolution of psychological traits is quite relevant to the discipline, and, it has become less controversial over time, with evolutionary psychological research appearing frequently in mainstream psychological science journals. There are certainly disagreements within the field (in particular, domain specificity vs. somewhat domain generality), but most of the criticism that have appeared here are rather outdated or sophomoric (e.g., the suggestion that EP doesn't differentiate between adaptations,byproducts and random noise, the "just so story" straw man, etc.).

I suggest that Veriditas take a look at the evolution page, and see the separate page about controversies that spawns from it: Social effect of evolutionary theory. Also, as I mentioned above, see the pages Biopsychiatry controversy and Evolutionary theory and the political left. These are, IMO, appropriate pages because they focus on a controversy worthy of coverage in and of itself, and are not "POV forks" as MPerel suggests below.

Again, let me reiterate: If EP scientists don't see the Wikipedia page on EP as an accurate description of their field, and/or the page emphasizes too much non-scientific and politicized criticism, they will abandon contributing to the page, and perhaps abandon Wikipedia in general. Instead, they will redirect their attention to peer-reviewed wikis, such as Scholarpedia or Citizendium. Citizendium was created by a founder of Wikipedia who saw the need for a wiki with qualified peer review to avoid the types of edit wars found here.Memills (talk)

Memills, stop threatening me. Dbrodbeck and yourself are indeed, in the minority position when it comes to not adhering to the NPOV policy, as the links to the past discussion for the last few years demonstrate above. There is a clear consensus on Wikipedia and on the discussion page for representing significant criticism in this article. Associating those who disagree with your failure to adhere to NPOV as "creationists" and "Marxists" is way over the top and dishonest. You keep claiming that POV forks prevent edit wars, but the page history shows that the only one engaging in edit warring is you and your army of anonymous IP's. Viriditas (talk) 09:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas, I think you have gone a tad over the top with that comment. Suggestion: why don't we both step back and allow others to step in. Memills (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

A guideline on how to balance and incorporate criticism into an article can be found at Wikipedia:Criticism (as mentioned above). Specifically note this section: Creating separate articles with the sole purpose of grouping the criticisms or to elaborate individual points of criticism on a certain topic would usually be considered a POV fork. This can't be ignored and needs to be addressed in this article, this isn't really an option. --MPerel 23:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

The keyword here is "usually." As I suggested above, I don't believe that is the case here. The criticisms on the Evolutionary psychology controversy page are primarily political or philosophical -- most are not strong scientific criticisms or are criticisms that have been already adequately addressed by the discipline (for example, see these articles). Scientific controversies with strong empirical basis, I agree, should be included in the main page. For example, one area of legitimate scientific controversy is the issue of domain specificity vs. domain generality. The fact that the brain evolved, and that many psychological traits reflect this evolution, is not particularly controversial in science. Memills (talk) 05:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Cherry picking criticism of EP is not acceptable. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a work "written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide", states:

To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.[18]

Many philosophers have criticized evolutionary psychology. Most of these critics are philosophers of biology who argue that the research tradition suffers from an overly zealous form of adaptationism (Griffiths 1996; Richardson 1996; Grantham and Nichols 1999; Lloyd 1999; Richardson 2007), an untenable reductionism (Dupre 1999; Dupre 2001), a “bad empirical bet” about modules (Sterelny 1995; Sterelny and Griffiths 1999; Sterelny 2003), a fast and loose conception of fitness (Lloyd 1999; Lloyd and Feldman 2002); and most of the above and much more (Buller 2005) (Cf. Downes 2005).[6] All of these philosophers share one version or other of Buller's view: “I am unabashedly enthusiastic about efforts to apply evolutionary theory to human psychology” (2005, x).[7] But if philosophers of biology are not skeptical of the fundamental idea behind the project, as Buller's quote indicates, what are they so critical of? What is at stake are differing views about how to best characterize evolution and hence how to generate evolutionary hypotheses and how to test evolutionary hypotheses. For evolutionary psychologists, the most interesting contribution that evolutionary theory makes is the explanation of apparent design in nature or the explanation of the production of complex organs by appeal to natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists generate evolutionary hypotheses by first finding apparent design in the world, say in our psychological make up, and then presenting a selective scenario that would have led to the production of the trait that exhibits apparent design. The hypotheses evolutionary psychologists generate, given that they are usually hypotheses about our psychological capacities, are tested by standard psychological methods. Philosophers of biology challenge evolutionary psychologists on both of these points.[19]

Another worry that critics have about evolutionary psychologists' approach to hypothesis testing is that they give insufficient weight to serious alternate hypotheses that fit the relevant data. Buller dedicates several chapters of his book on evolutionary psychology to an examination of hypothesis testing and many of his criticisms center around the introduction of alternate hypotheses that do as good a job, or a better job, of accounting for the data. For example, he argues that the hypothesis of assortative mating by status does a better job of accounting for some of evolutionary psychologists' mate selection data than their preferred high status preference hypothesis. This debate hangs on how the empirical tests come out. The previous debate is more closely connected to theoretical issues in philosophy of biology.[20]

These are simple examples of the type of criticism that needs to appear in this article. Please note the dates of the critics; they are current and are not from 30 years ago as you claim above. Viriditas (talk) 09:19, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas, again, note that the criticisms are coming from philosophers. The above is mostly a reiteration of the "just so story" straw man. In physics the "big bang theory" or "string theory" might also be so labeled. Instead, EP engages in the same theory and hypothesis testing which is a part of normal science. Perhaps it is a bit too easy to label a theory a "just so story" if it doesn't fit well with one's philosophical, religious, or political perspective (I'm sure creationists consider both the big bag and string theories as non-scientific "just so stories").

On the Evolutionary psychology controversy page there is another quote from a philosophy reference that comes to the opposite conclusion:

The the article Discovery and Confirmation in Evolutionary Psychology (in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Psychology) Edouard Machery concludes: "Although clearly fallible, the discovery heuristics and the strategies of confirmation used by evolutionary psychologists are on a firm grounding."

Also, to see what EP researchers are actually up to, see the recent Human Behavior and Evolution Society 2008 Conference Proceedings. For free online access to some current EP research, see the online journal Evolutionary Psychology. And, for more info and links, see the website of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.

Again, however, I think it would be a good idea for both Viriditas and myself to disengage and listen to some other voices. Cheers. Memills (talk) 18:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

"Criticisms are coming from philosophers" - most of the criticism on the controversy page is from evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and biologists. The philosophers who question the methodology of EP have been widely published and covered in reliable sources. Viriditas (talk) 12:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I am curious, when did I not adhere to the NPOV policy? I have discussed things on the talk page as is policy, I asked a question a couple of times, and got told to shut up (which it turned out, was not meant to be negative) and then agreed with a point. Please, once, point out where I did not adhere to NPOV policy. Indeed, please find an edit in my wikipedia history where I did not adhere to the policy. My position in this is that the criticisms are coming from, typically, non psychologists, and are way out of date. Indeed, they typically fall for the naturalistic fallacy, I truly take offense to the notion that I have violated any policy. Science is not philosophy, at least when they taught me how to do it Sorry, I may be rambling some, I just had (another) rather long trip. Dbrodbeck (talk) 01:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I refuse to be baited into further tangents and I will not deviate from the topic of this discussion agian. The topic is "NPOV dispute" and this concerns the repeated failure by some editors to adhere to that policy. These editors persist in forking notable, relevant criticism out of this article into a separate article against best practices. The criticism of EP is widely published and available in books, peer-reviewed journals, reliable secondary sources, and the popular media. When asked why these critics aren't in the article, Memills responds with, "because they are philosophers" or "because they are Marxists" or "because I said so". Every single relevant published work on the history of EP refers to these critics and discusses their objections in the context of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology, while the philosophers stick to criticizing methodology. I see absolutely nothing controversial about representing this criticism in the article, and that is exactly what we do on Wikipedia: as editors we portray significant POV as best we can without undue weight and in relation to the topic. I could care less what Memills thinks of their politics or whether they worship Satan or don't floss or sleep in the nude with penguin plushies. Science doesn't shirk from criticism; it actively encourages it whenever possible, and responds to it directly. The POV forking is against NPOV and needs to stop. Viriditas (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas, so you accuse Dbrodbeck of POV edits, and then you refuse to substantiate your claim when he disputes it? Yikes.

However, one thing can we agree on -- science doesn't shirk criticism. My primary concern is the non-scientific criticism that has repeatedly appeared on the main page. At times here it has been rather like astrologers invading the astronomy page, and then the astrologers scream "POV!" because the astronomers delete astrological criticisms of their field. Based on his profile and talk page, Viriditas probably knows a lot more about Hawaii than EP.

My sense of the history of the EP page is that it stabilizes for awhile, then, someone with just enough knowledge of EP to be "dangerous" comes along and pipes in: "Hey, I heard this criticism of EP..." yet they lack a foundational understanding of the science, or the fact that EP researchers have already seriously considered the criticism and found it lacking. EP would have whithered back in the 70s if the criticisms leveled against it had substantial scientific merit. Instead, the field is growing, and is becoming a foundational part of mainstream psychological science. The "bio-psycho-social" (nature-nurture interactionism) perspective has become the predominate paradigm in the field of psychological science (about that there is no controversy).

Some EP researchers have patiently, repeatedly and directly responded to criticisms, even those that are out from left field. See online articles (and, also more references on the Evolutionary psychology controversy) page:

Controversies surrounding evolutionary psychology by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5-67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Why do some people hate evolutionary psychology? by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. (Also see his Evolutionary Psychology FAQ which responds to criticisms of EP.)

Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! … and here’s why … Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181-202 [21]

Some folks apparently wish EP research to stop (no kidding). But that is not how science works. If some folks don't like a theoretical paradigm, they can perform empirical research to test competing theories, and, time will tell whether scientific consensus grows to support which paradigm in the long run. Memills (talk) 17:35, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

"Sone researchers have patiently, repeatedly and directly responded to criticisms" - You are finally starting to "get" it. Now add that information to this article in the context of each issue and we will delete the controversy page. Viriditas (talk) 00:28, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the point that Memills was trying to make, (can please correct me if I am wrong Memills) is that the criticisms have been met, many times, head on, and been found wanting. I have been doing a little bit of work looking at intro psych books recently and I find now that most of the ones on my shelf have a section on EP, indeed books such as Myers and Weiten seem to be quite proud to have these expanded sections. Many intro books now make it pretty clear that this is a life science (psychology) and studying it from an evolutionary perspective makes sense. The, shall we call them, classic criticisms are not really controversies any more. The people making the criticisms really do not know the field, and are often say philosophers or other non scientists (as has been mentioned). I have, of course, no problem with scientific criticisms, and Memills has brought up a nice one, well controversy is likely a better word than criticism. Dbrodbeck (talk) 01:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The topic of this discussion is WP:NPOV. What we personally think about the criticisms is irrelevant; They are notable and are part of the history of evolutionary psychology. Like any encyclopedic treatment of a subject, such criticisms are covered in the main article. Inclusion is really not debatable, as the sources that cover these criticisms are reliable, peer-reviewed, and found in most books on the subject. There is really nothing left to discuss on this topic. What needs to happen next is that the most significant criticisms should be merged into the main article and the controversy fork should be deleted. Viriditas (talk) 11:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Memills asked me to jump in, so here's my perspective about this issue (I'm an evolutionary psychologist who spent quite a bit of time contributing to this page in the early days). I guess I take a middle ground. On the one hand, it's true that EP has generated a lot of controversy, and that numerous criticisms from multiple perspectives have appeared in peer-reviewed venues. If it is wikipedia's policy that a summary of such criticisms appear on the main page, then I think there is no debate that there needs to be a "Controversies" section on the main EP page. In fact, when I worked on this page we did have such a section. On the other hand, what Memills and others say is true: it seemed that everyone and their dog would add their pet peeve to the page (many criticisms appeared to be motivated by some of the politically incorrect predictions made by EP, especially predictions of some innate sex differences in mating psychology). EPs would respond to these criticisms and, as a consequence, the controversies section grew long and unwieldily. As I recollect, that's why it was eventually moved to its own page. A second, and perhaps more important, problem was that tone of the criticisms, and hence the entire EP page (at least to me, an EP), was: Yes, it's true there is a field called EP, but everyone agrees they are a bunch of kooks. For example, someone above posted the following quote: "There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise." Wow, if that's true, how is it that EPs regularly publish empirical studies in all the mainstream psychology, behavioral biology, and general science journals, including fairly regular appearances in Science and Nature? How is it that EP is "deeply flawed," yet cognitive and social psychology are not? (EP uses a specific evolutionary framework to generate hypotheses, but then tests those hypotheses using *exactly* the same methods and computational approach to the brain as most cognitive and social psychologists.) How is it that EP is "deeply flawed" yet animal behavioral biology is not? (EP uses more or less the same evolutionary framework as most animal behavioral biologists.) How is it that EP is "deeply flawed" when its novel predictions of sex differences have been upheld in what is now approaching about 60 different cultures? Is it really possible to sit in one's armchair and declare a field with numerous empirical successes "deeply flawed"? In my admittedly biased opinion, EP has had enough empirical successes to encourage those in the field to continue, yet these successes are not so overwhelming as to convince everyone else to get off the fence. So I hope that the controversies section would be written in style that correctly conveys the substance of the criticisms, yet avoids language like "deeply flawed" which leaves the general reader with the incorrect impression that EP is a fringe enterprise. --Ed Hagen (talk) 16:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There seems to be an across the board inability to understand the NPOV policy, and I suppose that's because it is unique to Wikipedia. We aren't concerned with whether the claims the critics are making are true. We are concerned with what kind of weight we give them in proportion to the topic. See WP:UNDUE. There are a number of ways to defuse this issue; the easiest way is to present a small "history section" that touches very briefly upon the major players and then spirals out to history of evolutionary psychology. This is acceptable as an objective description of the field from nascent protoscience to contemporary research. Please note: whatever criticism appears in the history of the field will also appear in relation to key concepts that are criticized in the main article, but only if it is considered important or relevant. I really do not understand the continued objections, but I'm going to chalk it up to a misunderstanding of NPOV which is unique to this website. And to clarify, I never said that we must use the exact criticism you quote above. I said that they were simple examples of the type of criticism that needs to appear in this article. There's a difference. I think we can all agree upon the types of criticism that should appear here, and we can use pro-EP sources in many (but not all) cases to support inclusion. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was used as an example; It's considered a tertiary source, and as such, is not the best fit for Wikipedia. Viriditas (talk) 16:35, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The NPOV policy does not mean that all criticisms, regardless of their innanity, should be included. On the astonomy page, should astrological criticims be included due to NPOV policy? I am sure astrologers would think so. There is actually a "Flat Earth Society" -- would it violate NPOV to exclude them on the geology page? Of course, such criticisms are appropriately deleted immediately when they appear on these topic pages.

On a scientific topic, criticisms that are essentially non-scientific should be given little weight, or, link to a page that specifically deals with a controversy. Creationism and intelligent design have their own pages -- they are not even mentioned on the evolution page. POV violation?

I am all for deleting the Evolutionary psychology controversy page if only legitimate scientific conflicts (rather than religious, philosophical or political ones) are included on the main page. I think it is rather generous to include all sorts of criticisms on the Evolutionary psychology controversy page. Memills (talk) 19:24, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Memills: There are several debates about specific EP hypotheses that are driven by empirical results, e.g., about the best interpretation of content effects on the Wason task, sex differences in jealousy, and sex differences in mating psychology. All these are ongoing scientific debates and would certainly be appropriate for mention on the main page (assuming debate about specific EP hypotheses is deemed appropriate for the main EP page).--Ed Hagen (talk) 19:54, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I just skimmed the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy page on EP, and I thought that, in general, it's a pretty balanced overview of the criticisms of EP within philosophy. Yet it, too, makes some blatant errors. For example, it claimed that EP believes that humans are "no longer under selection". I just read the pages it cited in support of that assertion (Tooby and Cosmides 2005, 39-40), and the authors make no such claim. That fact that critics try to pin such absurd opinions on EP makes many of us believe that something other than logic or science is driving the criticism. In the past, when we tried to correct such criticism when it appeared on the WP page, we were admonished not to engage in debate on the page. In other words, EPs couldn't decide what EP actually claims! Instead, we were forced to allow incorrect interpretations of EP to remain. Frustrating. What is WP's policy about posting claims that, yes, do appear in peer-reviewed articles and books, yet blatantly mis-represent EP?--Ed Hagen (talk) 19:30, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Some of the criticisms have been on the order of "As an evolutionary psychologist, when did you say you stopped beating your wife?" E.g., libelous claims that EP endorses racism, sexism, "white male privilege," etc. These should stay on the main page simply because someone made the claim, without supporting empirical evidence? Frequently re-appearing criticisms are often just egregious examples of the naturalistic fallacy, the moralistic fallacy, or straw man "wife beating" claims. Memills (talk) 22:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Ed Hagen, your question is a good one, and it is one that not only comes up again and again, but it is a question that I have tried to directly address by modifying policies and guidelines. I last attempted to confront this problem at 13:40, 19 December 2007 on WP:EVALUATE. However, as you can see in the difference between my last revision and the current version as of 02:53, 18 April 2008, significant attempts have been made to weaken, dilute and ignore solutions to the problem you describe. And if you look at the differences in the page history you will see that not only was the material removed, the proposed guideline was intentionally demoted to an "essay". So you can see that attempts to check for source bias and assessment of arguments used by sources have been actively opposed by several long-term contributors. These same editors have also managed to weaken the core policies that are supposed to prevent this problem from occurring in the first place. In short, you have hit upon a significant issue with accuracy on Wikipedia that needs to be addressed. Current policy dictates that these concerns should be covered by WP:V, but when one reads that policy, it becomes clear that the problem is ignored. So what we have is a documented effort to sweep the issue under the rug. The solution is to develop a policy/guideline at the project level of WikiProject Psychology, and move your way up, working with sister projects like WikiProject Evolutionary biology. I am willing to help you on this issue, as it is something that concerns me. Viriditas (talk) 22:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite

This article is poorly written and barely covers the subject in any depth. I am recommending a complete rewrite. Viriditas (talk) 11:49, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The lead section is exceptionally poor. See WP:LEAD for suggestions on how to improve it. Viriditas (talk) 13:35, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Sources

• EP proposes that the human brain comprises many functional mechanisms,[2]

This reference is a personal website called "Psyche Games". While the information appears accurate, it would be nice to tighten up the sourcing. Viriditas (talk) 13:13, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

• The term evolutionary psychology was probably coined by American biologist Michael Ghiselin in a 1973 article published in the journal Science.[3]

The reference goes to the primary source, not a secondary source making the claim. While this is ok for now, it's best to attribute claims to sources that make them and point to the primary source in the same note. Viriditas (talk) 13:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I am the one that claimed that this is probably where the term was coined. I don't know of any primary source for this assertion, and I don't know wikipedia's policy about making such claims without a published source. Ed Hagen (talk) 14:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

It's ok. I've already seen this claim in secondary sources, so it's no big deal. It's just a matter of time until I or someone else adds them. Viriditas (talk) 14:41, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm still looking for a source for this. Viriditas (talk) 01:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Ghislin is cited in "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" in The Adapted Mind, but not specifically as the first use of the term "Evolutionary Psychology." In fact, so far as I can tell, Ghislin is only cited in a footnote on p. 114, along with many other evolutionarily oriented scholars. Here is Google Scholar's list of articles that cite Ghislin: [22], some of which predate The Adapted Mind.--Ed Hagen (talk) 07:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

So this is still unsourced? Viriditas (talk) 04:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Ed Hagen (talk) 10:09, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It's strange, because I could swear that I saw this just the other day. I'm going to try and find it once more time. Viriditas (talk) 12:13, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I found this, which brings us back to adding the broad vs. narrow definition into the article as requested in an earlier discussion. Viriditas (talk) 13:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• Its advocates suggest that “In the future, the study of human psychology will be completely transformed by the Darwinian approach…it won’t be called ‘Evolutionary Psychology’. It will just be called ‘psychology’".[1]

It's ironic, but this claim is attributed to a pro-EP tertiary source by philosopher Dylan Evans. The book itself is more of a tertiary source, and should probably be replaced (eventually) with secondary and primary sources. Viriditas (talk) 01:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe the original source is a book chapter by Tooby and Cosmides -- I don't have access to it at moment. Memills (talk) 03:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

If you think it is The Adapted Mind (1992), then we can just note that here and find it later. Viriditas (talk) 03:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. Memills (talk) 20:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

• One example is the fact that although about 10,000 people are killed with guns in the US annually,[11] whereas spiders and snakes kill only a handful, people nonetheless learn to fear spiders and snakes about as easily as they do a pointed gun, and more easily than an unpointed gun, rabbits or flowers.[12]

Ref 11 is a primary source not exactly supported by the main ref 12 which does not discuss the number of people killed with guns in the US. I'm not sure why this is in the article, but based on Ohman 2001, it should be changed to reflect the discussion of fear-relevant stimuli. Perhaps the editor who added this is referring to another study not cited in the article? I raise this point because this particular argument does not appear in Ohman 2001 nor in the CDC report. Viriditas (talk) 04:16, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I wrote this and selected the refs -- the purpose is to provide a simple example of a mismatch that is supported by considerable research. Ohman and Mineka 2001 is a review of the evidence that certain evolutionarily relevant stimuli, such as spiders and snakes, more reliably elicit certain types of learning when compared to non-evolutionarily relevant stimuli. This work is not about mismatches per se. But it becomes a compelling example of a mismatch when it is compared to the actual threat, in today's urban world, posed by spiders and snakes (small) vs. novel threats such as guns or cars (large). I'm sure this example has been discussed by many -- probably even Ohman and Mineka in other articles, or maybe the Buss textbook? -- but I couldn't point to a specific pub off the top of my head. Ed Hagen (talk) 10:09, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

And yet the research makes note of the cultural influences as either additional or alternate explanations, but the encylcopedia articles makes no mention of it. Have fear responses been seriously studied in urban areas with high crime rates? When I was a child, we had rattlesnakes in our elementary school yard. I don't recall feeling fearful until I learned that I was supposed to be afraid of snakes. The same holds true for spiders, which I learned to be afraid of after watching the reaction of my mother to finding one in the bathtub. Granted, there are probably evolutionary pressures, but it seems as if the cultural influences in the study are being downplayed, and the studies themselves state they are far from conclusive. Are we really dealing with "facts" here? Do you believe a teenager in Compton, California is more afraid of a snake than a gun? There's a considerable amount of criticism of the findings in that paper. Viriditas (talk) 11:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems the big criticism you have is that it does not fit with your life experience. This is not how science works. Your personal experiences (and mine) are irrelevant. Ed Hagen has explained why he chose that article. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

The criticism is that the sources do not support the statement, and Ed agrees, which means additional sources need to be found to support its inclusion. My subsequent comment is an observation about the crticism found within the Ohman 2001 paper that states that the evidence is not conclusive and cites further criticism of the study in the paper. I've also questioned the study protocols, and whether the study participants had any reason to be afraid of a gun in the first place. Do you think there would be any difference in results from urban city kids who face gun violence every day, versus white grad. students who fear being late to their dentist appointment? Your assumption of bad faith and petty sniping is noted. I suggest you spend your time wisely by finding EP sources that support the inclusion of the CDC paper. And, we don't "do science" on a talk page; we discuss how to improve the article. Viriditas (talk) 12:20, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

The hypothesis is about fear learning. It has been shown that lab-raised macaques with no experience of snakes will not exhibit any fear of snakes. If such macaques observe a video of a wild-borne macaque reacting with fear to a snake (or snake-like object), then the lab monkeys will now react with fear to snakes. However, if the lab monkeys see the exact same video of the wild macaque reacting with fear, but this time seemingly to a flower or rabbit (via video editing), they will not then react with fear towards flowers or rabbits. In other words, the snake stimulus elicits robust fear learning whereas the flower and rabbit stimuli do not. The same experiment cannot be run with humans, obviously, but snake and spider stimuli also seem to elicit superior learning in some conditioned learning paradigms with humans, compared to other stimuli, such as flowers, rabbits, guns, cars, etc. Hence, your experience on the playground and in the bathtub is consistent with the hypothesis: that certain types of learning are improved for evolutionarily-relevant fear stimuli compared to other stimuli. Learning is important because not all spiders or snakes are dangerous. The point of this section was to provide a simple, easy-to-explain example of a mismatch in humans that is actually supported by considerable evidence. It was not to discuss fear-learning per se. Like virtually every hypothesis in psychology or the social sciences, the fear-learning hypothesis is not definitive, which is why I used the phrase "A potential explanation...." (By the way, Pinker discusses this example in How the Mind Works, pp. 386-389.) Ed Hagen (talk) 17:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware of that, but the sources in question do not concern "10,000 people killed with guns in the US annually" nor the number of people killed annually by guns and their relationship to a fear of guns and snakes. This relationship is drawn through the use of two disparate sources, a technique referred to as WP:SYN. Can you please change the content to reflect the actual study? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 20:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I think what you actually want is that the cited source(s) be changed to reflect the content of this section (which is mismatches, not fear-learning or mortality rates). How about Pinker, a secondary source, as I suggested above? As an aside, I disagree with this Wikipedia policy of No Original Research (as least as it seems to be defined here). In mathematics, there are a number of folk theorems that everyone knows but have never been published. The same is true of most fields -- many background facts and arguments that are assumed by everyone, even if they have never been published. If these can't appear in Wikipedia, it would be impossible to adequately summarize most fields, in my opinion. Ed Hagen (talk) 20:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses a different definition of original research than the scientific community. OR as you define it, is primary research, which is entirely acceptable on Wikipedia as long as the sources are accurately represented. But as it stands, the argument in the mismatches section is not supported, however, I have seen EP arguments that make similar claims but do not extrapolate or refer to the number of gun deaths, which appears to be your embellishment; if it is, please remove it. To summarize: if the CDC data is quoted in an EP source, it is acceptable. If, on the other hand, it is a random example you chose to include in order to illustrate a point about the study (a point that does not appear in the study cited) then it should be removed. Viriditas (talk) 22:11, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Ed, thanks for adding a ref to your work. Per WP:BURDEN, could you quote the specific passage (on the talk page) from Hagen & Hammerstein 2006 that supports this idea? Viriditas (talk) 22:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

"Mismatch phenomena are well documented. The neurotoxins of many spiders and snakes, for example, were a real danger to ancestral humans, as well as our distant primate ancestors. Now, however, they kill less than 20 people a year in the US (virtually all of whom were owners of dangerous spiders and snakes), whereas automobile accidents kill about 40–50,000 people a year (National Safety Council, 2000). Yet decades of research have shown that fear of spiders and snakes is more readily learned than fear of contemporary dangers like automobiles, guns, and electric outlets (Öhman and Mineka, 2001), a clear example of a mismatch. More generally, mismatches are successfully exploited by many large industries, including advertising and entertainment." As an aside, I sense the perfect becoming the enemy of the good. Ed Hagen (talk) 23:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

No, just WP:V. Keep in mind, that someone will go through each and every source and verify every claim in order to raise the assessment level on this article; Better to do it now, rather than later. Again, I will restate my preference that the claims in the article merely match the claims in the sources. Please make the changes. Viriditas (talk) 23:33, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Err, I realize that this isn't necessarily relevant and is mostly argumentative, but there's also a well-demonstrated mismatch between the death rate in airplanes and cars and fear of flying and driving. I suppose you could pin this on an evolved fear of heights, but my point is that it requires a mighty salmon-leap to go from "mismatch" to "evolved fear of snakes", and I fail to see how the latter is justified by the science. Graft | talk 17:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I hate to be the bad guy, but as of 00:28, 17 June 2008 (UTC) there are only 18 footnotes in this article. That's really not acceptable for an article of this length and scope. Viriditas (talk) 00:28, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Rewrite revisited

Yes, a complete rewrite. Why exclude the metapsychology and the philosophy of science a priori? ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by DRGunkle (talk • contribs) 14:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Epistemological criticisms

I've noticed that some have have argued that religious, political, and philosophical criticisms should not be included, only scientific ones. Though I agree that religious and political criticisms don't carry much weight, (though perhaps should be mentioned briefly, since they do exist), I think we have to be careful about dismissing philosophical disputes...specifically epistemological disputes. If there's one major problem in psychology that evolutionary psychology brings to the surface, it is not scientific tension within the field of psychology nearly as much as it is the deeper epistemological tension that has always plagued the field.

Is it any wonder? Psychology has, throughout its history, drawn influence from all the great branches of learning: the physical sciences, the biological sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities.

I think that criticisms from the philosophy of science are perfectly appropriate since science itself is a specific epistemological commitment in a broad sense, though there will always be particular epistemological qualms even within that discipline, (e.g., what makes something "science"?) I don't believe it's unreasonable to assume that EP can illuminate these particular tensions, as well.

But it should be noted that criticisms from other fields may be predicated on very different epistemological commitments that are not so easily dismissed. I think that both pro- and anti- evolutionary psychology camps fail to fully appreciate this deeper problem within psychology. Hence, the neverending dispute which is based on problems that are not fundamentally theoretical, but instead epistemelogical. EPM (talk) 13:07, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a very good argument for keeping the Evolutionary psychology controversy page. It is, in my view, a very "generous" forum to review all comers (including non-scientific critiques). But, again, the main EP page should be primarily about the science of EP, and any relevant scientific controversies. Note that the main Evolution page also does not cover larger epistemological questions, religious objections, or political concerns about potential misunderstandings and/or unethical misapplications of the theory such as social darwinism. These issues are all appropriately addressed on separate pages. Memills (talk) 17:42, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

And just to reiterate what I said below, the evolution page does cover these issues, in the appropriate section. Social darwinism is touched upon in Evolution#Social_and_cultural_responses. Again, you are confusing summary style with a POV fork. Significant criticisms are mentioned in the main article but due to a size of 117 kilobytes, detailed criticism is handled in the appropriate subarticles. EP is 41 kilobytes, and needs to have the most basic criticism in the main article. This has nothing to do with addressing criticism in separate articles, but everything to do with size. EP doesn't currently qualify for article splitting of any kind. Typically, that is something you begin to consider at around 60kB. Experienced Wikipedians see the 41 kilobytes in the main article and the 30kB you forked out into evolutionary psychology controversy as a clear violation of NPOV. Evolution is a 117kB article, therefore extraneous detail of any kind is automatically included in subarticles. I've told you this already but you keep ignoring it, so I've repeated it again for your reading pleasure. Viriditas (talk) 08:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

POV forks are not acceptable, Memills. Because of the vast scope of the topic, criticisms of evolution within the field are covered in two larger articles, history of evolutionary thought and sociocultural evolution. You are confusing a POV fork with a summary style article-they are not the same. The assumptions and methods of EP have been notably criticized and can be summarized in the context of this article, or if the current 41 kilobytes grows too large per article size conventions, more specific coverage can be split out into a larger article about the history of the field. The small size of this article is indicative of POV forking and needs to be fixed immediately. Viriditas (talk) 21:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

According to the Content_forking page:

"A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts."

In this case, the creation of the Evolutionary psychology controversy page was to keep the main EP page a summary page, not a debate page. The same is true of the evolution page, which links to pages with alternative views or critiques. Again, from the Content_forking page:

"...Sometimes, when an article gets long (see Wikipedia:Article size), a section of the article is made into its own article, and the handling of the subject in the main article is condensed to a brief summary. This is completely normal Wikipedia procedure; the new article is sometimes called a "spinout" or "spinoff" of the main article...

Even if the subject of the new article is controversial, this does not automatically make the new article a POV fork. However, the moved material must be replaced with an NPOV summary of that material."

Suggestion: To conform to these guidelines, a paragraph or two in the main EP article in the "Controversies" section briefly summarizing the controveries would be appropriate, with a link to the Evolutionary psychology controversy, and/or or to other relevant pages. Memills (talk) 00:13, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

See Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#NPOV_dispute. We have already been down the road of your "suggestion" and it led us here. Walking around in circles isn't a solution. We ned to move forward and improve this article. That means incorporating the most important criticisms into the body of the article. Viriditas (talk) 01:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas, my "suggestion" is Wikipedia policy, as noted above. Since your stated concerns apply equally to the evolution page why don't you pepper that main page with philosophical, political, religious, and other non-scientific critiques. See how they react over there. If that works out fine, come back here and do the same. Memills (talk) 02:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You are ignoring the NPOV issues raised, and suggesting a solution that has already been tried and failed, as you were the one edit warring the material out of this article and forking the POV into a new one. Now you are telling us that you want to go back to doing the same thing that raised this issue in the first place? No, I'm sorry, that is not acceptable. The issues have been raised and your solution has been challenged by many editors. I'm afraid you are in the minority here and this issue requires a solution in line with NPOV. Ignoring the problem is not a solution. This discussion concerns this article. If you cannot incorporate criticism into this article, then please step aside and let others do it. Your objection to NPOV is noted. Viriditas (talk) 02:38, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy: "Even if the subject of the new article is controversial, this does not automatically make the new article a POV fork. However, the moved material must be replaced with an NPOV summary of that material." Again, your objection to this Wikipedia policy is so noted. Memills (talk) 02:45, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You are contradicting yourself. As the links above and the edit history demonstrates, you were the one removing critical summaries from this article. While I appreciate that you have now backpedaled, and are whistling a new tune, the overall NPOV issue remains unchanged. There is no consensus for a "controversies" article, nor the unsourced, POV-laden "pro and con" section. Please try to address the issue of criticism in this article. I can find criticism of EP in most peer-reviewed journals and current books published by reliable, academic publishers. Then, why can I not find it here accurately represented in context? Perhaps if you were not a WP:SPA I could take you more seriously, but the fact is, you are less concerned with Wikipedia and more interested in your own POV. Viriditas (talk) 03:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas, looks like you are backpedaling on your insistence on adhering to the definition of "POV forking." Also, looks like you are a WP:SPA on Hawaii. I wouldn't presume to be an expert on Hawaii, so I would not edit those pages. But, please do share with us your own educational background on evolution and EP. As noted by Ed Hagan, above, if EP researchers can't accurately define our own discipline here, without others (mis-)defining it for us, this page will be of little educational value. Memills (talk) 03:34, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You are engaging in mimicry and using terms you don't understand. Your above response shows that you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of Wikipedia. It is not used by SPA's to "define" and frame an article in terms of your chosen POV. I want to thank you for being honest about having an agenda. Perhaps we can build a bridge from there. Until that time, please take a break, take a step back and let others participate in this discussion. Viriditas (talk) 03:55, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas, right back at you, friend. I suggested some time ago that we both take a break, but you ignored that request. So let's both give others a chance to step in here.

One additional relevant paragraph from Wikipedia policy relevant to this discussion to consider:

Articles whose subject is a POV

"Different articles can be legitimately created on subjects which themselves represent points of view, as long as the title clearly indicates what its subject is, the point-of-view subject is presented neutrally, and each article cross-references articles on other appropriate points of view. Thus Evolution and Creationism, Capitalism and Communism, Biblical literalism and Biblical criticism, etc., all represent legitimate article subjects. As noted above, "Criticism of" type articles should generally start as sections of the main article and be spun off by agreement among the editors."

Good rationale for the Evolutionary psychology controversy page. Memills (talk) 05:47, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The example you provide doesn't represent this issue accurately in any way. We are not discussing different subjects but relevant criticism of evolutionary psychology - criticism you have forked out of the article. This criticism has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and other reliable publications. That is the crux of the issue, and multiple editors have made it clear that the article violates NPOV. I'm sorry, but you are in the minority on this issue. My only interest here is to improve Wikipedia articles, an interest my contribution history demonstrates. On the other hand, you are a single-issue editor who has shown zero interest in improving Wikipedia articles. Your only interest here is to uphold your POV, an interest that is at odds with the goals of this encyclopedia. Viriditas (talk) 08:01, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I am not so sure. It strikes me that criticisms that are, say religious or umm, sociological or philosophical are not really germane to the subject, short of a mention. Now, scientific criticisms are a different matter. Memills' editing history is hardly relevant, he knows this stuff and is attempting to contribute. However, if anyone is obsessed with editing history, check mine.... Dbrodbeck (talk) 11:31, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You can't cherry pick your criticism. If it is found in WP:RS and if it is relevant, then the criticisms are candidates for inclusion. I have read through the archives and the discussion over at the controversy page, and there are many editors saying the same thing about NPOV over and over again. Memills has failed to address the problem, instead telling every editor that "there is a great deal of misinformation/disinformation about EP" and that anyone who questions the NPOV violations is a "critic of EP". I suggest you read through the talk pages. It's bordering on the absurd. Viriditas (talk) 11:42, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Criticisms of a science from philosophy or religion are absurd. It is like saying you don't like the book The Great Gatsby because there were not enough mentions of bacon. It is irrelevant. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:21, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't recall anyone in this discussion proposing religious arguments, however an argument has been made by EPM above for the inclusion of philosophical arguments. And considering that these philo. criticisms are found in peer-reviewed journal articles about EP as well as other WP:RS, I don't see any reason to exclude them. Viriditas (talk) 12:26, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I do. They are excluded for the same reason that they are excluded on the evolution main page. Memills (talk) 15:42, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Contrary to what you claim, criticisms do appear in evolution, and this has been explained to you twice: [23], [24]. It might be time for you to take a break, Memills. Come back when you are feeling refreshed. Viriditas (talk) 21:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, as was pointed out to you earlier, the evolution page has a brief section on non-scientific criticisms, each of which then spawns off to their own separate pages (oh my, I can hear your objection now: "POV FORK! POV FORK!"). The evolution page is a good model for here, too. What's there to disagree about? Go for it. Memills (talk) 22:42, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:SS != WP:POVFORK. This has been explained several times. Viriditas (talk) 23:30, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

A proposed categorization for summarizing criticisms

How about we come up with a basic set of categories of criticism based on a branch of academia? If we do that, perhaps we can more easily summarize the basic sets of criticisms. How about something like this:

• Criticism from biology
• Criticism from other perspectives on evolution and human behavior (e.g., human behavioral ecology & dual inheritance theory)
• Criticism from psychology
• Criticism from philosophy, (e.g., philosophy of science) & social constructionism, (e.g., feminism)

Just 2 - 4 sentences from each should suffice, wouldn't it? If people want more depth, go to the evolutionary psychology controversy page. Thoughts? EPM (talk) 11:37, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You can do it however you want, but the point of NPOV is that the criticism is supposed to be integrated into the article itself. As I suggested earlier, the best way to start is with a "History of evolutionary psychology" section, that objectively describes the formation of the field and notes the most significant criticisms. That's the first step. Categorizing the criticism may work for brainstorming, but without reference to the original research, it lacks context. That's why the "history" solution is such a great fit. The controversy page is a POV fork from this article and serves no useful purpose. As I wrote above, take a moment to read through all the talk archives (including the controversy page) and read what editors are saying about the POV. This isn't a problem raised by one or two editors in the last week. This is a long term, unresolved issue that has been discussed for years by many editors And, it's time to fix it. Viriditas (talk) 11:49, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Section one

Section one (currently "overview") should begin with "History" like section one in most of all the fields listed in the psych. template. Per WP:LEAD, overview sections are discouraged. Viriditas (talk) 12:21, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Viriditas. Didn't you and I agree above that that the two of us would step aside from this controversy for awhile? We both made this same suggestion above independently, and a cooling off time seems appropriate here. Let's hear from some other voices; then, step back in.Memills (talk) 15:20, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Memills, do you see your name used in my comment above? Please stop personalizing this talk page and comment on the content, not the contributor. In case you need to be reminded, you do not WP:OWN this page. if you can't discuss how to improve this article, don't comment. Please actually look at the links in {{Psychology sidebar}} You will notice that most psychology articles use section one for "history", but some do not. In a perfect wiki, where people actually pay attention to information, there would be a navigational relationship between the article structure at the level of the discipline (sub-article) and the structure of every super-topic (in this specific case History of psychology) such that every sub-section is part of a larger article or links to a more in-depth treatment of the topic. Currently, series templates, either at the top, in the sidebar or in the footer make this possible, but it is unorganized (for the most part) and unwieldy. Eventually, it should be possible to search for information and to return a result that creates an article based on related sections, in effect, creating new articles on the fly. This is one reason why we should strive for homogeneous article structures; when each section is linked to one above and one below its sub and super-topics, the information becomes easier to find. Viriditas (talk) 21:36, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Table of contents from Buss' Text, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of Mind

Taking a cue from Viriditas' suggestion above about creating a "History of Evolutionary Psychology" section, I thought I would provide the brief table of contents from David Buss' text, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Perhaps this could be used as a template to organize this article, though presumably it would have to be at least slightly modified for POV reasons:

1. Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology
   1. The Scientific Movements Leading to Evolutionary Psychology
   2. The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
2. Problems of Survival
   1. Combating the Hostile Forces of Nature: Human Survival Problems
3. Challenges of Sex and Mating
   1. Women's Long-Term Mating Strategies
   2. Men's Long-Term Mating Strategies
   3. Short-Term Sexual Strategies
4. Challenges of Parenting and Kinship
   1. Problems of Parenting
   2. Problems of Kinship
5. Problems of Group Living
   1. Cooperative Alliances
   2. Aggression and Warfare
   3. Conflict between the Sexes
   4. Status, Prestige, and Social Dominance
6. An Integrated Psychological Science
   1. Toward a Unified Evolutionary Psychology

Each of the subsections listed are broken down even further, but this seems like enough for now. Would an outline along these lines, (though presumably with at least some modifications), be something we could work with?

(Note: Buss briefly addresses controversies in Section 1, subsection 1. Perhaps a better way, for purposes of this article, would be to put specific criticisms in each subsection for the sake of greater specificity...again, assuming we decide to use an outline like this) EPM (talk) 12:24, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Fantastic idea. Viriditas (talk) 12:36, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Temp page

See also: WP:SP

I've created a new talk page for exploring this organizational strategy:

• Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Article outline

There are six parts that are bold. The first section of part 1 is broken down into sub-sub-sub sections, (but not the second section of Part 1). Part 1 section 2 and parts 2 - 6 can be expanded even further in terms of sub-sub-sub sections, if necessary. Perhaps this new page can have some utility. EPM (talk) 15:11, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I've been down this road several times, having created subpages for many articles. Discussion should take place on this page; forking discussion out to another page tends to fragment the talk page and most editors won't know what is going on. The temp page is used only for displaying content or works-in-progress. All discussion should occur here. Viriditas (talk) 21:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I should point out that using the proposed structure, you are looking at something on the order of seven sub-articles. Viriditas (talk) 21:45, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Support for "Controversies Page" as separate

Hi all - I'm very new to the world of wiki, so hopefully I'm doing this right. I'm an evolutionary psychologist at SUNY New Paltz. I care a good bit about how EP is understood and presented - and given the major role that wikipedia is starting to play in how information in this world is disseminated, I'm hoping to provide some insights that may be useful.

As I read over the discussion here, it seems to me that there are two broad schools of thought. On one hand, some folks want the EP page to include not only a description of the nature of the area (which, BTW, has several variants with less than full consensus among evolutionary psychologists regarding issues) but to, concurrently, include criticisms of the basic elements of EP. Thus, while the page would, on one hand start describing adaptationism, it would, in the same breath, cite work by Gould and others that tears down the ideas of adaptationism in the behavioral sciences. Similarly, while a section of the page might address the evolution of behavioral sex differences in humans, that same section would talk about methodological and political criticisms of work by evolutionary psychologists that address human behavioral sex differences from an evolutionary perspective.

The other tack would be the one endorsed by Mike Mills - to have a page that describes the details of EP - and then to point readers to a separate page that delves into criticisms of EP. Such criticisms are, of course, important for people to know. They come in the form of methodological, political, and ideological critiques - several of which are quite well-thought-out. It is, as I see it, very much in the interest of evolutionary psychologists and others to have a clear and well-organized summary of these criticisms spelled out for the world. In fact, I would strongly consider having students in my evolutionary psychology class be required to read and discuss such a page.

From a pedagogical perspective, I strongly side with the latter option here. To have the main page be peppered with criticisms of the basic ideas of EP (vis a vis the former option) would not allow the basic ideas of EP to really come across clearly. It almost seems to me that forcing this former option - making it so that the ideas of evolutionary psychology don't have a chance to be articulated in a succinct, clear, and stand-alone manner - would impede academic and intellectual freedom by essentially blocking the presentation of these ideas. As I see it, the world has a right to see all sides. Having the presentation of evolutionary psychology be fraught with critiques seems unfair to anyone who is interested in encouraging free expression of important intellectual ideas.

Concurrent with this perspective of mine (to reiterate what I've stated prior) I believe that it is ESSENTIAL that criticisms of EP be presented on wikipedia - and it seems to me that a link to a "controversies" page from the main page - as suggested by Mike Mills - is a fair and academically responsible way to address the issues addressed in this broader discussion.Geherg (talk) 00:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia and thanks for your comments. Mills apparently forgot to tell you about the WP:NPOV policy and WP:CANVASS when he solicited your opinion off-wiki. We don't fork out POV material on Wikipedia, and many editors in multiple discussions have addressed this topic. You are welcome to read through the links provided above to the talk pages and archives. The concerns you raise above are addressed by the "undue weight" clause of NPOV. Happy editing. Viriditas (talk) 01:48, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the EP page should be structured by the Hawaii experts, instead. Have a go at it Viriditas and MPerel. If you wish to learn about EP from those actually working in the field, head on over to peer-reviewed wikis, such as Scholarpedia and Citizendium. Memills (talk) 03:06, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Mills, when I asked you to take a break, I did not mean that you should spend your free time engaging in WP:STEALTH. FYI...I am a member of at least 11 WikiProjects (12 until a month ago), of which Hawaii is only one. Since you seem to have forgotten WP:PA, I've provided a link for you. Please read it. If you wish to learn about NPOV, please read the policy. There is nothing and nobody preventing you from improving this article, Mills. Viriditas (talk) 03:13, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems like you are are, Viriditas. The EPs here are using our real names, not anonymous ones. We who work in the field are volunteering our time in an effort to get an accurate presentation of the discipline here. My and others' interpretations of some Wikipedia policies that you repeatedly highlight, with prose that conveys a confrontive attitude of officious over-confidence as an ultimate arbiter and interpreter of those policies, can be quite different from the well-intentioned and reasoned interpretations of others. Memills (talk) 03:36, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I think I already directed you to WP:PA, so I see no need to bring it up again. The NPOV issues raised above by many editors on the talk pages have been ongoing since 2006 with no resolution; POV forks are not an acceptable solution to the problem. No amount of edit warring, off-wiki canvassing, or personal attacks will change the current situation. As it stands, the controversy fork does not adhere to the most basic of Wikipedia policies, so your argument for keeping it doesn't hold water. I understand that you have a conflict of interest here, as you do not like to see your field criticized, but on Wikipedia we strive to write encyclopaedia articles, and that comes before your own personal POV. If you find that you are too close to the subject, then you might want to try working on other articles for a while, to show that you are committed to improving Wikipedia as a whole, and not merely a WP:SPA devoted to pushing a particular POV at the expense of neutrality, which is how most SPA's operate. Viriditas (talk) 03:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks again for your interpretations. Now let's hear from some others. Or, submit the issue to Wikipedia arbitration. Memills (talk) 04:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

We've heard from many users since 2006, Memills. The links to the talk pages and archives show that the NPOV issue has never been solved. Would you like me to list their names for you? However, since you have volunteered your valuable time here, which has graciously allowed you to make a total of 140 mainspace contributions since 2006,[25] it seems that you may not have enough time to address the problem. This appears to be a likely explanation for why the vast majority of your edits consist of reverts rather than working with the community. So, when you claim that you are "volunteering our time in an effort to get an accurate presentation of the discipline", you can see why I take exception to that extraordinary claim. Please forgive me for not including the numerous anonymous IP addresses you have used in that total edit count. If you would like to list them here, along with the other accounts you use/have used, I would be happy to fix your edit count. Viriditas (talk) 04:08, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

And, thanks for that. Constructive. Looks like it is time for arbitration. Memills (talk) 04:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

No, it's time to help improve the article. There are lots of ways to help out. I've just found a problem with ref 11 and 12, and I've noted it here. Surely you can put aside your strong POV for a minute and help improve the sourcing? Viriditas (talk) 04:23, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Current issues

I hesitate to place this on the main page, but if obstruction to improvement continues, I will. A list of problems with the current article follow: Viriditas (talk) 04:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

• Moved to article page, do not belong on talk. Washburnmav (talk) 14:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Robert C. Richardson

Richardson's criticism of EP evidence is included in Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science: A Volume of the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science Series (2006) and Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology (2007)[26], where he refers to EP as "speculation" rather than "sound science". Viriditas (talk) 12:39, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Wow, no kidding? Richardson should contact these research centers to let them know they are wasting their time, and that their belief that they are doing science is mistaken.

A list of some Evolutionary Psychology Research Groups and Centers

• The UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology UCSB researchers in evolutionary psychology and allied disciplines.
• Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology Program at the Psychology Department of the University of Texas at Austin
• Evolution and Human Adaptation Program at the University of Michigan
• Human Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
• UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture
• IGERT Program in Evolutionary Modeling, University of Washington & Washington State University
• Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University
• Evolutionary Anthropology Research Group, Durham University
• Human Evolutionary Ecology Group at the University College London
• Ethology and Evolutionary Psychology Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson
• The Evolutionary Psychology Research Group at Simon Fraser University
• Evolution and Behaviour Group and MSc Programme at Brunel University
• Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute
• Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science
• Biological Anthropology Program, UCLA
• Evolutionary Psychology Lab, Florida Atlantic University
• The Pennsylvania Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania
• Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition, Rutgers Unversity
• Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution, at University College London
• Evolution and the Social Mind at UCSB.
• Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology, Germany
• Behavioural Ecology at Simon Fraser University
• Behavioral Biology Laboratory University of Chicago
• Nebraska Behavioral Biology Group
• Evolutionary Psychology Research Group, Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Evolutionary Psychology and Behavior Ecology Group at the University of Liverpool
• Evolutionary World Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Washington
• International Paleopsychology Project
• New England Complex Systems Institute
• Group on Evolutionary Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Evolusjonspsykologi og individuelle forskjeller/ Evolutionary Psychology and Individual Differences, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

Memills (talk) 18:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I just skimmed Ch. 2 of this book, which is available via Google Books. In contrast to the overblown rhetoric of the dust jacket, some of which also appears in this chapter, Richardson's main argument seems to be, not that EP is wrong, but that it needs more evidence, and more different types of evidence (e.g., independent evidence for the postulated causes). For example:

"In Buss's exposition of the case for jealousy, there is no significant appeal to the historical conditions of human evolution, aside from general appeals to the conditions of the Pleistocene. He is content to offer evidence from social psychology. Even if this is good psychological evidence concerning differences between the sexes, it does not give us more than that. We can, of course, find some phenomena--perhaps the patterns of jealousy are one of them--which can be brought into conformity with some evolutionary models. Without knowing, however, the conditions in which jealousy evolved, it is impossible to know whether we have the right set of causes or the right explanation." (p. 88).

However, Richardson is wrong that Buss does not provide independent evidence of the historical conditions of human evolution. For example, Buss assumes that one of the key conditions of human evolution is that women got pregnant and men did not. I doubt Buss explicitly mentioned this because it is obvious. Another necessary condition of the jealousy hypothesis is that long-term mateships were a feature of ancestral human populations. The evidence for this is more circumstantial, namely, that all extant human populations have long-term mateships. Additionally, shifts in life history characteristics of human ancestors--specifically longer periods of juvenile development in H. erectus compared to Australopithecines and chimpanzees--are consistent with selection for bi-parental care (which, in turn, could have led to long-term mateships). Yes, it would be great to have more independent evidence for the ecological conditions postulated to select for various psychological mechanisms, but does this really warrant the charge that EP "is speculation rather than sound science"? I don't think so, especially when the EP framework led to a novel hypothesis of sex differences in jealousy that have now been replicated in a number of different cultures, and especially since any hypothesis for an evolved function of any trait in any organism is in the same boat as the hypotheses generated by EP. Ed Hagen (talk) 19:31, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

New "research methods" section

I just added a new research methods section. It's a very brief sketch and certainly needs to be developed much better than it currently is. May I make 2 suggestions:

1. Let's have our resident evolutionary psychologists (e.g., MMils, Ed Hagen, etc.), develop this a little better since this is their field of expertise.
2. Then add criticisms (documented of course) to the research methodology of evolutionary psychologists afterwards from various fields, (biology, feminism, whatever we can find). This way we can more precisely know what specifically is being criticized

Will that work? EPM (talk) 15:19, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

From biology, seems fine, from psych, good, feminism is not science though, at least as far as I can tell. Then again, I claim no expertise there. Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:07, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Fine with me too, as long as primary consideration is given to scientific critiques, and only brief mention and/or links are made to the non-scientific ones. Memills (talk) 20:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I will have to do some thinking about the whole idea of the section. Nobody please take this as me opposing the idea. In my reading of the literature the methods are the same as those used in experimental psychology in general. It is more that really the generation of hypotheses etc and the interpretation of data with those hypotheses in mind.Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:38, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I just want to note that I took that basic list of research methods from Buss's textbook...just something to try and get the ball rolling! Some of those methods, (like using hunter-gather data) are probably more related to anthropological research. It's probably safe to say that EP uses research methods from various disciplines, including some that are typically outside of psychology. Elaborating on the process of hypothesis-generation might be good, too. It could lead into more sections on specific research and theories in various domains, (e.g., survival, mating, kinship, group-living, etc.) EPM (talk) 21:22, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for arbitration has been filed

I have requested arbitration to help to resolve some of the on-going disputes in sections above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#NPOV_dispute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Epistemological_criticisms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Support_for_.22Controversies_Page.22_as_separate —Preceding unsigned comment added by Memills (talk • contribs) 18:20, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Below are the arbitration statements by memills and Viriditas (as of 6/17/08, 9:30pst):

Statement by Memills:

As documented in the Talk Page links above, there is currently an unresolved controversy regarding the structure of the Evolutionary psychology (EP) page, as well as the Evolutionary psychology controversy page. There are conflicts regarding what are appropriate interpretations of WP policies. The specific issues involved include whether these pages violate these policies:

NPOV

Content Forking

Controversy Pages

The core conflict seems to be this: On a scientific topic, what degree of weight and space should be given to non-scientific critiques? Several evolutionary psychology professors who have worked on the EP page, including myself, have argued that essentially non-scientific (philosophical, religious, political, etc.) criticisms should, on the main EP page, be given brief mention only and/or link to a page(s)that specifically reviews such fundamentally non-scientific perspectives. I have suggested that this is an appropriate policy, and that it is also reflected in the content and structure of the evolution page.

I am requesting a review of the issues discussed in the Talk Page links above to help to resolve these issues.

Further, I am requesting a review of Viriditas' tone regarding these disputes on the talk page links above, which I perceive as, at times, overly confrontational and troll-like. It also appears to me that Viriditas often engages in "wikilawyering" as a strategy to promote non-scientific content on the main EP page. Memills (talk) 15:57, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Statement by Viriditas:

Memills is a WP:SPA engaged in a long-term content dispute on evolutionary psychology since 2006, and creator of a WP:POVFORK called evolutionary psychology controversy. The page exists to segregate and confine all criticism of EP, almost none of which appears in the main article. Multiple editors on the two talk pages have objected to the lack of neutrality as a result of this content fork. During the first week of June, I became actively involved in this page when I noticed multiple accounts removing criticism from EP and reverting to a preferred version, and subsequently filed the appropriate reports on WP:AN/I,[27] WP:RFPP,[28] WP:NPOV/N,[29] and a WP:RFCU. Since that time, Memills has stopped edit warring, but has resorted to personal attacks, using them to distract from the NPOV issue under active discussion. Aside from the egregious behavior, which I have mostly ignored, this is a content dispute that is largely confined on the talk page at this time. Several editors have come forward to help work out a solution, however Memills has been intransigent in his position, going so far as to WP:CANVASS off-wiki support; see Geherg (talk · contribs). Progress has occurred with reasonable editors like EPM and Ed Hagen engaging in helpful suggestions and discussion, and changes are being worked out on the talk page to resolve this content dispute. Major diffs documenting edit warring and removal of criticism can be found here, although I have not yet collected the more recent and numerous PA diffs. Viriditas (talk) 21:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

If you would like to comment on these issues as part of the arbitration process, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Request_for_review_of_controversies_of_WP_policies_on_the_Evolutionary_psychology_talk_page

Memills (talk) 18:04, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Notable proponents and ideas

Why is there no mention of Martin Daly, Margo Wilson, or the Cinderella effect? And what about Donald Symons? If this article is supposed to represent an overview of the history of the field, it's doing a poor job. Viriditas (talk) 00:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Here's a list of evolutionary psychologists for further reference in this area. And don't forget that we have a page with links to publications from various evolutionary psychologists that we can use as references, as well. EPM (talk) 00:45, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware of those articles, but the major proponents and their ideas should appear in this article. I should also point out that the see also section is generally considered a temporary section where links that should be merged into the main article are contained. Viriditas (talk) 00:54, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, there must really be mention of some of Daly and Wilson's work. Once the term ends here at the U I can get more into the editing of the page. D & W's Sex, Evolution and Behaviour is one of the first books in the area, as well as Barash's Sociobiology and Behavior. That said, both books deal mostly with non human behavior, but still, they are relevant. (I remember back in the mid 80s taking courses that used these books) Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Quote removed

Advocates of EP suggest that "In the future, the study of human psychology will be completely transformed by the Darwinian approach…it won’t be called 'Evolutionary Psychology'. It will just be called 'psychology'".

Last week I asked for a supporting source for this statement. Evans appears (it's not entirely clear) to attribute the quote to George C. Williams. Let's get confirmation on that please. I have no objection to attributing it correctly and adding it back into the article, but it was originally placed as a quote next to another quote, which is not only poor prose, but is not useful to the reader. We don't hit the reader over the head with a barrage of quotes. We use quotes to illustrate concepts and ideas. Find out whether Williams actually said this and then add it to the appropriate part of the article. Viriditas (talk) 00:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Torturous prose

Proponents of EP suggest that it seeks to heal a fundamental division at the very heart of science --- that between the soft human social sciences and the hard natural sciences, and that the fact that human beings are living organisms demands that psychology be understood as a branch of biology.

Please, could someone rewrite this? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 02:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Controversy

Hi, I noticed these discussions from the RfAr. I'm not familiar with EP, but I am familiar with some of the NPOV issues from my attention to evolution/creation articles. Based on a cursory reading of the talk page and a skimming of the article, I think both "sides" here make fair points. It's true that criticisms shouldn't occupy an undue amount of space in this article, particularly since they seem to come largely from philosophy and politics, not from within psychology; also, I see no problem with covering EP criticisms in depth within their own article(s) (particularly non-scientific criticisms). However, given the clearly notable criticism apparent from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy quoted above, and the acknowledgment from all sides of significant political criticism, what's currently in the article (two short sentences) really isn't enough (IMO). I think Evolution#Social_and_cultural_responses would be a pretty good model for how to summarize the relevant criticisms and link to more in-depth articles. Gnixon (talk) 18:38, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. As I noted earlier above, and in the RfAr, I think that the evolution page is a good model for the EP page in that evolution is a similarly controversial, but fundamentally scientific, topic. Memills (talk) 02:17, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

If you agreed with Gnixon, we would not be having this discussion based on your edits here: [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38] And if you are now in agreement with this position, I will go ahead and revert your changes and add the content you deleted back into the article, including criticism from Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and other scientists. The evolutionary psychology controversy article is not, I repeat, not a summary style of a subsection from this article, but rather a WP:POVFORK that is ridden with WP:OR and many other problems. Viriditas (talk) 02:29, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

If all is made clear that these are non scientific criticisms that are, while (IMHO) dubious, but notable I have not so much problem. What say everyone? Dbrodbeck (talk) 02:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

We need a roadmap that editors will agree to follow. As I suggested several times above, there is no need for a "controversy" fork. What we need is a detailed history of the field, complete with significant and notable critcisms in context of specific concepts. The best way to do this is to expand the history section, make note of only the most significant criticisms that are covered by pro-EP sources (i.e. falsifiability, pan-adaptationism, genetic determinism, etc.) and then spin the history section out as it grows to cover the topic in greater depth. Segregating criticism and controversy is not acceptable. We are not dealing with creationists or political commentators. What we are dealing with are published academics across the board from a variety of fields due to the interdisciplinary scope of EP. Viriditas (talk) 02:45, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

An historical perspective is good, sure. My concern is equating scientific criticisms with those from politics or philosophy or other non scientific disciplines. Dbrodbeck (talk) 02:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

User:EPM addressed this concern in Talk:Evolutionary_psychology#Epistemological_criticisms. This article, among other things, states that "Evolutionary psychology is founded on the computational theory of mind", a philosophy of mind proposed by philosophers Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor. So there are philosophical underpinnings to EP, as with any other field. The same is true for all the rest of the criticisms. There is also the difference between "evolutionary psychology" and "Evolutionary Psychology" which has not yet been addressed. Viriditas (talk) 03:05, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

All of psychology comes from philosophy. Indeed, I would argue that all sciences grew out of it, but, that does not mean that philosophical criticisms should have the same weight as the scientific. Dbrodbeck (talk) 03:10, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes Dbrodbeck, but we should remember that scientific criticism is in and of itself a type of criticism that embraces a specific epistemological commitment. What some critics of EP are trying to present are whether or not human beings are in a unique position where critiques with other epistemological commitments are relevant. EPM (talk) 22:21, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, and when I use the phrase "significant criticism", I should remember to qualify that with WP:UNDUE. But let us look at actual examples. Do you find it the least bit strange that in the evolutionary psychology controversy article, David Buller's Adapting Minds:Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (2005)[39] which was widely discussed in many peer-reviewed journal articles about and by EP propponents, is not included as a reference? That's one example. However, the omissions aren't just in the realm of criticism; as I point out above, notable EP proponents such as Daly and Wilson aren't even mentioned, or barely covered. We need an article rewrite. Viriditas (talk) 03:23, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

About this perhaps we can all agree: Most of the criticism of EP has political and philosophical roots. However, there is sufficient empirical evidence to support further research into the adaptationist perspective in psychology, even if it conflicts with one's philosophical or political preferences.

EP is, I think, in a similar position as was evolutionary theory itself when it first emerged, i.e., "let's hope it is not true, but if it is, let's hope it does not become widely known." Hypothetically, can you imagine what the Wikipedia page on evolution would have looked like in, say, 1870?! It would have been full of philosophical, religious and political objections. But the empirical evidence supporting evolutionary theory grew to be so substantial that it produced a revolutionary paradigm shift and came to serve as a foundational meta-theory for the entire discipline of biology. And, yet, despite this, we still see a couple of the objections on today's evolution page as you would have seen back in 1870... And, even today, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, what percentage of Americans don't believe in evolution based on religious or philosophical perspectives -- is it 60% - 70%?

Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, & Steven Rose never produced any devastating empirical evidence to scientifically refute EP. The field would have shrived and died back in the 1970s if they had. Many of their objections were founded on philosophy (particularly Marxism, which presumes a "blank slate" human nature), rather than empirical evidence.

Now the question is this: What empirical (rather than philosophical or political) evidence do critics today wish to marshal? Again, I am all for reviewing such empirical evidence on the main page.

EP theory and hypotheses can be, and are being, empirically tested. In the long run, EP will succeed or fail based on empiricism, not on non-scientific arm-chair criticisms.

And the latter can be dealt with here as they are on the evolution page -- briefly reviewed in a section on the main page, with more detailed summaries of non-scientific critiques on one or more other pages.

Heck, just to get the ball rolling, go ahead and mention Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin & Steven Rose(the patron saints of EP critics) on the main page. However, let's follow a similar structure as is used by the evolution page regarding non-empirical arguments, which are briefly reviewed and then linked to other pages Memills (talk) 05:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

(Please bear with me as I try to come up to speed on this disagreement.) It does seem to me that some of this article, and most of the "controversy" article, comes off as rather defensive of EP. The Buller book, along with quotes from its reviewers, seems to indicate there is notable criticism of the field on scientific grounds. Does everyone agree that such criticism exists? If so, I would favor an expanded "controversy" section, and a re-write of the "controversy" article. Per WP:LEAD, such a section should be mentioned in the lead. On the other hand, I'd hate to see this article interrupted near its beginning by a lengthy discussion of criticisms. Gnixon (talk) 04:29, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Check out the rebuttals to Buller's book, especially Daly & Wilson's response. IMO, these rebuttals seem pretty empirically devastating to Buller's critiques. Informally, I've heard from some folks who believe that Buller was either very poorly informed, or deliberately dishonest, in his presentation of Daly and Wilson's empirical research. Memills (talk) 05:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting, and the rebuttals may (or may not) be devastating, but they don't seem to diminish the notability of Buller's criticism. A dismissive review from, say, Nature might convince me he's not worth mentioning here, but on the contrary, Nature seems to have been receptive towards the book. Gnixon (talk) 16:49, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

If Buller's descriptions of Daly & Wilson's empirical work is simply factually incorrect, that would seem to diminish Buller's criticisms to me, regardless of the reception of reviewers (especially if reviewers were unaware of the factual errors). Memills (talk) 17:13, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

That's fine, but the writers of this article can't possibly be expected to judge Buller's criticisms as dismissably wrong based on a unpublished defense by those he criticizes, particularly when notable bodies were receptive of Buller's criticisms. The criticisms and rebuttals are part of the scientific process, and should be described here until scientific consensus has moved well beyond them. If I'm wrong about the notability of the criticism, please correct me. Gnixon (talk) 19:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Trends in Cognitive Science published both in 2005. You can read one of Buller's articles here, and Daly and Wilson's response here, although the latter issue features other responses as well. More recently, criticism from Robert C. Richardson[40] has appeared in the book, Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology (2007) [41] which has been reviewed in several journals, including Science,[42] and Evolution: Education and Outreach,[43]. Viriditas (talk) 19:55, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

In Daly and Wilson's response their last paragraph is relevant to this discussion: "Scrambling to portray evolution-minded research using diverse theoretical constructs and methods as a monolithic, wrong-headed ‘paradigm’, Buller obscures the distinction between empirical discoveries and the theoretical frameworks that motivate and guide them. Theories about the functional design of evolved social motives have inspired and directed our research on violence, helping us discover many hitherto unsuspected epidemiological facts [6-8], some of which concern violence against stepchildren. Buller’s attack won’t stop evolutionary psychologists from using contemporary thinking about adaptation and natural selection to help them generate fruitful hypotheses. But distorting what is known about family violence for rhetorical purposes could do real harm in the practical realm of child protection." What they are saying is that evolutionary thinking is a heuristic that helps to guide research -- it helps to identify what are likely to be significant phenomena, to help to "carve nature at the joints." Memills (talk) 21:10, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Daly and Wilson's response may or may not be convincing, but the question at hand is whether Buller's and others' criticisms are notable enough to be mentioned in this article. Since journals were not dismissive of these authors' submissions, I think the answer is that they are sufficiently notable for inclusion. Gnixon (talk) 00:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Although I'm broadly pro-EP as it were, I agree that notable scientific criticism exists of course, both from psychology and other fields dealing with evolution/genetics/anthropology etc. I'd say it's not just about evidence purported to falsify EP hypotheses (whether specifically, like performance on a particular cognitive task, or more generally, like findings on developmental plasticity) but scientific skepticism about the amount of reliable evidence available to test these hypotheses. I agree the article needs more of the criticism (and rebuttals), more flavor of the scientific debate and uncertainties. Though I also agree with not interrupting the development of the article - I think there's a lot of important stuff still to address about how EP is being applied (broadly speaking) across the major areas of psychology. EverSince (talk) 10:43, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Buller is a philosopher, not a scientist, and his empirical work was not peer-reviewed. In contrast, there is a substantial scientific debate, both within EP, as well as between EP and other cognitive scientists, about the correct interpretation of content effects on the Wason task that is based on a large number of empirical results (all peer-reviewed). There is also scientific debate about EP interpretations of sex differences in jealousy, mate preferences, and mating strategies, as well as EP interpretations of patterns of child-abuse and infanticide (again, all based on peer-reviewed research). These debates, based as they are on peer-reviewed empirical research, show, contrary to the claims of many, that EP is testable and is being tested. Ed Hagen (talk) 18:06, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Here is a Google Scholar search that should dredge up a lot of the empirical debate about EP intereprations of deontic reasoning and the Wason task: [44] Ed Hagen (talk) 20:50, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone for helping me catch up. I'm still obviously not completely familiar. So far I've seen a good bit of criticism of EP from philosophers of science, which has been deemed worthy of publication by mainstream journal editors. That alone seems to be notable enough to warrant a small (but longer than 2-short-sentence) section in the article. What about EP within the larger Psych community? Is it fair to describe it as an established subfield, or is there still controversy over all EP explanations? Is the existence of an EP center at UCB controversial? My apologies for missing that Buller is a philosopher, not a psychologist. From where besides philosophy has there been criticism of the EP concept? (Apologies for not yet digesting arguments from Buller and the like.) Gnixon (talk) 21:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

There's a very brief, pro-EP overview of some of the historical criticism here, in a review of Hilary and Steven Rose's Alas, Poor Darwin (2000) This includes critics like Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Rose, Patrick Bateson, Tim Ingold, Tom Shakespeare, and Anne Fausto-Sterling. There are others, such as Richard Lewontin, Brian_Goodwin, Leon Kamin, Paul Ehrlich, Linda Gannon[45], and Wolfgang Maiers[46]. Viriditas (talk) 23:03, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

The extent of controversy or acceptance surely varies by area of psychology. Regarding abnormal psychology there has been ongoing critical debate about attempts to define/classify disorder based partly on EP - PMID 11227812 by a clinical psychologist who served on the DSM-IV panel might be as good a jumping in point as any. More generally, this 2003 review by a pro-EP clinical psychologist suggests EP approaches to psychopathology have a long way to go. This 2007 LA Times article gives a user-friendly sketch of some of the attempts at clinical application and some of the skepticism. EverSince (talk) 00:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

More generally this 2002 article gives a scientific critique from one neuropsych/neuroscience point of view. EverSince (talk) 01:00, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm feeling fairly convinced that the article should have a section on what is clearly notable controversy, but that it could live toward the end of the article and remain reasonably brief. Gnixon (talk) 01:13, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a need for a separate controversy page. It's a magnet for POV and exists mostly as OR. I recommend deleting the controversy page as a POV fork. I do, however, see a history section growing to contain significant concepts and criticisms, which can be split out if it grows too large. The most controversial concepts within EP should contain a line or two regarding notable critics, but the article is too small to justify splitting anything out at this time. Per MOS and other related guidelines, stand-alone criticism and controversy sections should be discouraged, as they only serve to fragment ideas and encourage POV. The most neutral route is to expand the history of the field and as it grows, split it out to contain detailed explorations of EP concepts attributed to researchers in the field. Criticism of these concepts from other academics are acceptable, but should not be given undue weight. Viriditas (talk) 01:34, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this discussion could best be advanced by seeing a proposal for such a history section. Gnixon (talk) 03:34, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem, but several examples have already been provided, and you started this section off by recommending Evolution#Social and cultural responses, however that article is mostly concerned with the friction between religion and science, which is not at work here. A better example might be History_of_evolutionary_thought. For example, in the "Since the 1960s" section, criticism by George C. Williams appears under "Gene centered view of evolution", and debate by Stephen Jay Gould under "Evolutionary paths and processes". EPM suggests beginning by summarizing the criticism by field[47], and he has created an intriguing historical outline of the discipline over at Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Article outline which directly addresses the criticism in a "Common Misunderstandings about Evolutionary Theory" section; This is one way to eliminate the controversy section altogether, although I can see further criticisms added to the sections "The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology" and "An Integrated Psychological Science". He also covers the sociobiology controversy under "Landmarks in the History of Evolutionary Thinking". Take a look at his outline. Viriditas (talk) 09:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Could you point me to examples of how the history section would look? I recommended Evolution#Social and cultural responses as a reasonable example of how to present notable criticism of a field that is not debate within the field itself---particularly, I thought the length and location of that section provided a good model. I know the analogy isn't perfect. I'm open to the idea of including criticisms in a history section, but I'd hate to see the article end up looking like Intelligent design (which I think reads like a rebuttal, not an article). Gnixon (talk) 12:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

I would be happy to point to examples, but I'm not sure what ID has to do with this discussion. We're not dealing with creationists here. Do you want to explain a little more about what you mean so I can join you on the same page? Viriditas (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to introduce a distraction. I'm just a little worried that such a history section could end up ballooning into undue weight devoted to explaining the criticisms, which could distract from explaining EP itself. I'm sure a history section could handle criticisms with appropriate brevity, but that seems trickier to control than a specific section on controversy. Gnixon (talk) 21:07, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Criticism and controversy sections are no longer favored on Wikipedia as they tend to violate NPOV. A history section, by it's very nature, would not go into lengthy pro and con sections like the original research that has been added to the controversy fork without sources. Wikipedia provides encyclopedia articles for a general audience. These articles describe the most significant aspects of a topic, including any significant criticism. It is easy to summarize all of the significant criticism of EP in four paragraphs, and a child could do it. It is good practice to merge this criticism into the appropriate sections throughout the article, to show how evolutionary psychologists respond to and meet frequent objections. Please stop alluding to creationism and anti-evolutionists when not a single one of the critics of EP discussed so far can be classified into those categories. Others have also made frequent mention of "religious criticism", and yet, I have not seen a single example of that kind of criticism in the controversy fork. Viriditas (talk) 10:32, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

To be clear, I never intended to imply criticism of EP was like creationism. Gnixon (talk) 14:41, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I can see why Viriditas thinks the controversy page is mostly original research (few sources), but I bet most, if not, of the points made there could be sourced. Whether it remains as a stand-alone page, or gets integrated here, I think it is a pretty good discussion that is genuinely helpful to a general audience interested in EP. It would be a same to lose it. Ed Hagen (talk) 13:20, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

As a Wikipedian it's helpful to read articles not just with a critical perspective, but with beginner's mind. You are obviously familiar with the topic, but for the average Wikipedian, the controversy article lacks readability. Putting aside the neutrality and sourcing issues for a moment, we need to KISS; this is the most important factor to consider in the writing process. Take a look at the Scholarpedia article for an extreme example. Kurzban takes a hint from Buss and uses a "Misunderstandings" section to touch briefly upon criticisms related to genetic determinism, panadaptationism, and universality and culture. Also, look at the structure of the article. It's easy to read, touches upon the most important points, and is written in simple language. The same cannot be said of the current article on Wikipedia, which strangely enough does the opposite: Clothing itself in complexity, the Wikipedia article fails to communicate the very essence of the topic. This is because the current article stubbornly refuses to follow the basic guidelines for article development. What we are left with are a few experts writing for themselves, and what the reader gets is a slap in the face. Viriditas (talk) 13:43, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

If we are now talking about the main page, I agree that it is too complex for the general reader. My main criticism is that there is a lot of material about general evolutionary theory that is not specific to EP. This is good stuff, but, in my opinion, too detailed to appear on the mainpage. In contrast, key elements of EP are missing. Hence, I see re-organization as the primary challenge for main page editors. The dynamics of WP, however, make this difficult. I and many others attempted to put together a basic summary a few years ago, but our work was constantly edited by non-experts, including those hostile to EP, so I finally gave up. With all due respect, even your own recent edits to the EEA section, however well-intentioned, introduced significant problems. For example, although it is true the EEA concept originated in attachment theory 40 years ago, there is currently little, if any, connection with modern attachment theory. Thus, introducing a subheading along the lines of "The EEA and attachment theory", which would seem to an outsider like a clarification of that paragraph, was actually misleading. These challenges are not unique to the EP page, of course, but because EP is an interesting yet controversial topic, the page does tend to attract a lot of edits by non-experts. Memills and others have been fighting the good fight to keep the material here accurate, even if it is not organized exactly as some of us would like. Ed Hagen (talk) 14:21, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Ed your criticism of my attempt to implement Wikipedia:MSH#Article_titles and WP:HEAD by changing the section heading "The origins and meaning of the EEA concept" to "Origins" within a super heading of "Environment of evolutionary adaptedness" is a misunderstanding on your part. Viriditas (talk) 21:08, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, here's a radical and crazy idea: since both Viriditas and Ed Hagen both agree that the Scholarpedia article on evolutionary psychology is better than the Wikipedia article, and since they both agree that this article needs an entirely new rewrite, how about we just replace the Wikipedia article with the Scholarpedia article, and then modify it to appropriately fit within Wikipedia standards. EPM (talk) 17:10, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I was going to suggest that too, but I can't figure out the license for that article. Ed Hagen (talk) 17:54, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

According to the copyright page for the EP article, you have to contact Scholarpedia for copyright details. I assume this means contacting the Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich. His contact info is on his webpage. EPM (talk) 19:50, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I can't believe I'm actually reading these proposals. This is Wikipedia, not Scholarpedia, and regardless of that article, articles here are written by anyone. If you wish to change the fundamental rules of who can and cannot write for Wikipedia, then please take your issue with the open nature of our editing policy to the highest levels. We do not copy articles from other websites (or wiki forks) and replace them. Please think about what you are saying. Wikipedia has a completely different set of policies and guidelines, including a policy of NPOV that these websites do not have. It is a foregone conclusion that this article will be radically different than any other wiki fork. Please work within the framework of this community. That means taking time to understand how articles are written. I see a lot of blame being placed on contributions by non-experts, but the fact is most, if not all of the problems in the two articles are due to the so-called experts, not the amateurs. I am surprised to find by reading the talk page that the NPOV issue does not go back to 2007, but to 2005, so there has been ample time to solve this problem. It is not difficult to understand and recognize your audience and write accordingly. Ed Hagen notes that Memills has been "fighting the good fight", but his constant reverts and forking of content have not been helpful. Wikipedia is not a battleground and it is important to remember that we are working with editors from disparate backgrounds. WP:OWNership behavior is not acceptable either. I don't see any of the problems raised on the talk pages as insurmountable; what I see is an unwillingness by some editors to write an article according to Wikipedia conventions; that is the problem, not the article. Viriditas (talk) 20:22, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting that articles can't be written by anyone, nor am I suggesting that we "change the fundamental rules of who can and cannot write for Wikipedia". What I am suggesting is that people seem to agree that one of the problems with the current Wikipedia article is that it's difficult to edit due to its structure, and thus an entire rewrite is probably desirable. Furthermore, people seem to agree that the Scholarpedia article is structured very nicely. If the Scholarpedia article was copied over, (which would be a heck of a lot easier than rewriting the whole thing, which it seems will probably never happen), people (whoever that might be) can edit and gradually modify that article (including the addition of criticisms) much better than they can edit and modify the one here. Basically, I'm just suggesting it might be a better starting point for further editing (of course, within the guidelines of Wikipedia policy). EPM (talk) 20:35, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

This is not the first time someone on the talk page has raised the idea. This comes up all the time, and Wikipedia culture and guidelines are against copying material from any website verbatim and replacing the work of other editors. The Scholarpedia example was raised to illustrate how easy it is to summarize a topic and present it, with readability as the highest priority. You can even run Wikipedia tools that automatically rate an article for readability. The point is, our job as editors is to write good articles, not copy and maintain the work of others. The proposal defeats the entire purpose of this website. The implicit suggestion that nobody can write accurately about EP except for experts in the field goes against the very idea of Wikipedia. As I've said before, there is nothing and nobody preventing anyone from fixing the article right now. That there is still a neutrality tag in the article and POV fork after the problem has been talked to death for years, shows that some editors just don't get it and quite simply, refuse to get it. Viriditas (talk) 21:12, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

How about creating a temporary subpage?

Allright. How about creating a temporary subpage? Perhaps something at "Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Temporary subpage" (or whatever title might be most appropriate)? We could copy the current article over to that. We could then, for example, experiment with adding some new sections and subsections, (even if they're empty at first), to at least get an idea of how to structure the article. EPM (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

You are of course, quite welcome to use the temporary subpage you already created, over at Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Article outline. You may even want to rename it to Talk:Evolutionary psychology/Temp. Viriditas (talk) 21:06, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I copied the article over to the temp page and "shut off" the categories with colons, as requested by Wikipedia policy. I also added some subsections to the "Research areas" section, (which are empty at the moment), and added an "Integration of psychology" section with various subsections. So if everybody thinks this is an acceptable way of structuring the article, how about people start filling it in? If it helps, I can gather some links to academic papers and put them in the appropriate subsections to get things started...a little "information gathering" so to speak. EPM (talk) 22:06, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Psychology: A Whirlwind of Confusion

I thought that I would post a quote, (somewhat lengthy, I admit), that I think captures much of the broader theoretical and epistemological tensions within psychology that emerge in Evolutionary Psychology, and by extension, within this ongoing discussion regarding the Wikipedia article on this topic. I believe the paper (linked just below) will appear in an upcoming special issue of American Psychologist, (but I'm not positive).

From Henriques, G. (in press). The problem of psychology and the integration of human knowledge: Contrasting Wilson’s Consilience with the Tree of Knowledge System. American Psychologist???

From pages 10-12 in the above-linked draft:

---

"As scholars of the discipline know, to dive into psychology is to dive into a whirlwind of confusion that pulls one toward the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Gordon Allport characterized psychology as existing at the center of the major intellectual fault lines in knowledge. A rather extensive quote from Allport gives a clear articulation of his view of the problem:

'According to a division commonly adopted, there are exactly four winds in the intellectual heavens, springing from the four basic provinces of research and learning --- the physical sciences, the biological sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Have you ever thought before that it is in the territory of psychology, and only there, that all these four winds collide and run a tempestuous course?'

"Allport continued to describe the relationship of psychology to the four intellectual winds in very human terms:

'From the physical sciences comes the collosal impact of scientific methodology. I suppose in the entire history of human thought there never was a case where one science has been bullied by another science as psychology is bullied by her elder sister, physics.

'From the biological sciences come the evolutionary and organismal points of view without which psychology would still be scholastic in character...In many quarters...[biology has] threatened to push every vestige of humanism out, leaving psychology with a plague of rats.

Social science is causing a tornado of its own. It refuses to blend amicably with natural and biological science, but claims mind pretty much as its own province for study. Mind, they insist, takes its form almost wholly in response to cultural demands.

'The last wind that blows into our storm center is gentler and less voracious...It is the wind of humanism. After all is said and done, it is philosophy and literature and not the natural, biological, and social sciences that have fostered psychology throughout the ages.

...the quotes from...Allport provide a clear articulation of the problem of psychology and its relevance to the integration of human knowledge. The field resists a coherent definition and yet at the same time it connects more deeply to each of the great branches of thought than any other discipline." [48] pp. 10-12

---

Like I said, a rather legthy quote, but I hope it was worth it. As I engage in the continuing discussion on this talk page, I can't help but think that the phrase, "whirlwind of confusion" applies quite aptly! Perhaps this citation can stimulate some further discussion that will help "calm the winds" a little. EPM (talk) 15:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Evolution, and EP, in particular produce a whirlwind of confusion -- actually, a better word is "controversy" I think -- because they both mess with other major worldviews, many of them non-scientific. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Crick & Watson, and now EP (E.O. Wilson, Hamilton, Trivers, Dawkins, Symons, Daly and Wilson, Tooby and Cosmides, Buss, etc.) all presented scientific alternatives that sometimes conflicted with dearly held religious, philosophical, political and even personal belief systems. If the accumulated empirical evidence becomes overwhelming over time, the whirl-winds calm in the scientific world. Now scientists ignore non-scientific challenges to these well supported theories (yet are always keen to learn of any anomalous empirical findings). But, in the non-scientific world, the cyclones of controversy take far longer to dissipate. Memills (talk) 16:43, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's evolution, per se, that creates the controversy. I don't believe there's much dispute anywhere in academia over evolutionary theory. However, I think the issue is whether or not evolutionary theory should be applied to human behavior, and if so...how? I agree that evolutionary theory provides an appropriate theoretical framework for a scientific psychology and that evolutionary psychology is often mischaracterized by individuals who often implicitly assume some sort of genetic determinism. However, I would also agree with those (including some biologists, animal behaviorists, and other scholars of evolution and human behavior) who think that some of EP's basic assumptions, (vis-à-vis people like Cosmides, Tooby, & Buss), are at best too narrow and at worst plain wrong. And though I agree that claims stemming from "religious, philosophical, political and personal belief systems" don't carry the same epistemological weight in regards to the facts that empirical findings do, I think that EP has, thus far, failed to incorporate into the evolutionary psychological paradigm the uniquely human fact that "religious, philosophical, political and personal belief systems," (i.e., systems reflecting human values) all play a role in influencing human behavior in addition to the influence of our evolutionary heritage. It is on this latter point where I think that the crux of the controversy lies in the eyes of scholars like social constructionists and continental philosophers, and it is, in my humble opinion, a very nuanced, complicated, and underappreciated issue on all sides of the debate. EPM (talk) 18:52, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, the field of memetics is relevant to the evolution of belief systems (including memetics itself, and EP, too!). I think the issues sometimes converge on those focusing on genetic (biological evolution and "human psychological nature") vs. memetic explanations of human behavior, and, to further complicate the situation, how these two different replicators, genes and memes, manage to influence each other. The social constructionists focus entirely on memetics (although they probably wouldn't so characterize it). E.O. Wilson, of course, tried to tackle gene-meme coevolution, as have some others. Susan Blackmore is one of the most prominent authors today on memetics. Memills (talk) 19:17, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

---------------------

Good point, though I must admit I'm a little more partial to something like dual inheritance theory when it comes to cultural evolution. (Not by Genes Alone by Rob Boyd and Pete Richerson is a great book if you haven't read it yet!) In all honesty, I really don't see memetics going anywhere, but only time will tell! Nevertheless, I think that a lot of criticism stems from those schools of thought in psychology and social science that are more inclined to focus on that which ought to be, a purely cultural problem. When those scholars look at EP, I suspect many question what EP has to offer in terms of offering the conditions of possibility in which change can be made. Since EP hasn't really tackled this problem (at least as far as I can tell) there will be many who will continue to at least be critical of EP's utility...and I think those are fair criticisms. Perhaps part of the problem lies with EP's basic assumption of putting considerable focus on the conditions of the Pleistocene, (which ironically would have presumably been the conditions within which our cultural learning abilities would have evolved), instead of putting more focus on applying concepts like phenotypic plasticity to behavior, as human behavioral ecology and evolutionary developmental psychology do. Just some thoughts... EPM (talk) 23:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

With respect to phenotypic plasticity, EPs are all for it. Humans may have an evolved language acquisition device (LAD), but, an abused child raised in a closet will never learn how to speak any language (and, unfortunately, there are real examples of this). All behavior is a phenotype.

IMO, if one wants to deal effectively with a problem, you need to first have an accurate understanding of the underlying causative factors related to it. If a physician has an erroneous understanding of "human physiological nature," he may come to the conclusion that blood letting is an appropriate treatment for an illness. If a psychologist has an erroneous understanding of "human psychological nature," or how the brain works, he is more likely to engage in "psychological blood letting." This despite the best of noble intentions of the physicians and psychologists involved.

If we wish to reduce social and personal problems, such as racism, sexism, child abuse, rape, violence, warfare, etc., we must have an accurate understanding of human psychological nature. That was what Daly and Wilson were referring above with respect to child abuse -- an inaccurate view of the problem (per Buller) will lead to interventions more likely to fail, and there will be more real victims. The moralistic fallacy, which, I believe many critics of EP inadvertently fall victim to, is the assertion that if something like violence is immoral, then it cannot be "natural" -- it cannot be a manifestation of a facultative psychological adaptation. If the "blank slate" (an assumption of cultural determinists, Marxists, social constructionists, radical behaviorists etc.) is false, interventions and policies based on that theoretical platform will have negative real world consequences. More re this in Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate. Memills (talk) 02:46, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

In regards to the question of whether evolutionary psychology is accepted in the general field of psychology, I would like to note that the new social psychology textbook, "Social Psychology: Goals in Interaction" (Eds. Douglas Kenrick, Steven Neuberg, and Robert Cialdini) emphasizes the evolutionary perspective. These authors mailed copies of the book to attendees of last year's Society for Personality and Social Psychology evolutionary psychology pre-conference. I would like to include an excerpt from the enclosed letter that was mailed with the text:

"The editor or our social psychology text attended the most recent SPSP meetings, and she saw the evolutionary perspective as the new wave in social psychology... Faculty who use the book tell us that they love the organization, and students love the way it's written. We think this edition, which includes the most coverage of cutting edge findings from evolutionary social psychology, is the best yet."

In addition, a rather brief search on the American Psychological Association web page for "evolutionary psychology" resulted in finding the following quote:

"Whereas: The bases of continuity and variation that follow from evolutionary theory inform, explicitly or implicitly, the work of many psychologists with humans and other animals; (Caporael, 2001; Crawford, 1989; Gray, 1996)"[49]

Furthermore, the APA publishes books and journals that incorporate evolutionary psychology, and the application of evolutionary theory to psychology in general. See the following three examples here: [50] and here: [51] and here: [52]

--Cjb wiki (talk) 23:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

-------------

In regards to phenotypic plasticity, (mentioned by Memills just above the preceding paragraph). I have no doubt that EP's accept the concept, but I've seen very little on detailing the underlying mechanics of behavioral phentopic plasticity by EP's (with the work on incorporating attachment into an evolutionary ecological framework by Belsky and others being a notable exception). A more sensible approach, IMO, would be to incorporate some of the basic types of individual learning into the very foundations of evolutionary psychological theory. By individual learning, I mean things like sensitization, habituation, dishabituation, alpha conditioning, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning. These are the most ancient learning mechanisms for animals in general, but I think that EP's sweeping villification of behaviorism gets in the way here. Yes, the behaviorists' anti-cognitive and extreme blank slate stances are completely untennable these days, (though, in regards to anti-cognitivism, I think they had a fair point before the invention of the computer and thus the empirical measurement of reaction times), but even Skinner assumed that unconditioned responses were a result of natural selection. And of course the mechanisms themselves that afford animals the ability for learning are shaped by evolution. Nevertheless, EP should consider separating "the wheat from the chaff" here, and instead consider the possibility of integrating the principles of overt behavior in behaviorism with the principles of implicit cognition in cognitive psychology. If EP could provide an integrated theory of individual learning, then that would be an impressive and monumental achievement. There would be a solid foundation for (1) the basic mechanisms of behavioral phenotypic plasticity, (2) integrating behaviorism and cognitive psychology, (3) integrating evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology, and (4) investigating an integrated theory of the various types of social learning. With an integrated theory of both individual and social learning, EP can then be in a better position to be integrated with theories of cultural evolution, which incorporate (in a very general way) individual and social learning (along with evolutionary game theory), into their models. The basic point that I'm trying to make is that EP's lack of getting into the fundamental "nuts and bolts" of behavioral phenotypic plasticity has (at least in some ways) opened itself up to the criticisms levied against it from so many different directions over the years. EPM (talk) 12:54, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

The recent work by Lieberman et al on incest[53] shows how different childhood circumstances lead to differing levels of disgust towards incest. Another member of the CEP is investigating how physical formidability (e.g., strength) modulates anger (stronger -> more likely to become angry). Yet another is working on how social exclusion modulates a number of different aspects of psychology. EP, like most subdisciplines, comprises a relatively small number of researchers who can only do so much. The incest work took YEARS to complete study design, IRB approval, data collection, data entry, data analysis, writeup, submission, revision, and publication. Patience, grasshopper. Ed Hagen (talk) 14:05, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

That all sounds like fascinating research, but what I'm trying to point out is something far more general than specific research and hypotheses. I'm talking about integrating general, established principles of learning (i.e, the mechanisms of behavioral phenotypic plasticity), into the theoretical foundations of an evolutionary psychological framework. For example, compare the basic principles of EP laid out by Cosmides, Tooby, and Buss to the basic principles laid out by Henriques' Behavioral Investment Theory. The latter set of principles, IMHO, seems to me to be a more conducive set of assumptions that can be useful for integrating many existing psychological theories, hypotheses, and research into an evolutionary framework. Either way, I'm suggesting the possibility that Cosmides, Tooby, and Buss' basic assumptions that form the foundation of EP need to be modified. Another, somewhat more specific example, might be the Behavioral Homeostasis Model which attempts to integrate the concepts of sensitization and habituation into an evolutionary framework. Perhaps not very glamorous, but it seems that starting out with integrating the simplest types of learning into an evolutionary psychological framework, and then building on that with increasingly complex types of learning, (e.g., classical conditioning, operant conditioning, simple types of social learning, etc.), while simultaneously hypothesizing about their underlying neuro-cognitive correlates, would be far more productive in the long run. But that's just this grasshopper's humble opinion! ;) EPM (talk) 17:40, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

"Areas of research" section

I just added an "Areas of research" section. It's only one sentence at the time of this posting. How about we just forget about "controversies" in the broad, abstract way we've been discussing them for now, (it seems to be getting us nowhere), and just develop that section with specific hypotheses and research in evolutionary psychology. We can add specific criticisms as we go to specific research May I suggest five subsections which should be able to cover a lot of research:

===Survival===

examples: food selection, predator avoidance

===Mating===

examples: Sexual Strategies Theory, women's & men's long-term mating strategies, short-term mating strategies

===Parenting===

examples: paternity uncertainty, child abuse (Daly & Wilson's work could go here)

===Kinship===

examples: Ed Hagen mention some research above in the previous section regarding incest avoidance that could go here; grandparental investment; Daly, Salmon, and Wilson published an outline predicting universal aspects of human kinship that could be put here (from the text Evolutionary Social Psychology)

===Group living===

examples: cooperation, aggression, warfare, conflict between the sexes (e.g., Strategic Interference Theory, status, prestige, dominance

This should be able to get us going, shouldn't it? I think if we just do something like this, and just temporarily suspend the neverending "criticisms" argument, I think we can start making some progress. We can deal with criticisms on a case-by-case basis. EPM (talk) 23:26, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, EPM. I also like the idea of a "Common Misunderstandings of EP" section that, I believe, you suggested earlier. Such a section would help to address some of the more bizarre criticisms of EP (e.g., that EPs believe or promote things that in fact they do not). A good starting place for some source material (noted: quite fairly listed above by Viritias, thanks for that) is Robert Kurban's Alas Poor Evolutionary Psychology: Unfairly Accused, Unjustly Condemned, a review of the book Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology. (And, whoa, that book should even make today's critics cringe with some chagrin.)

My suggestion, FWIW, is that controversies about what EPs actually do believe could then be included throughout the article if they are empirically based (and, indeed there are empirical studies that do not corroborate some EP hypotheses). The non-scientific political, philosophical, and the "let's us hope it is not true" concerns could go in the Controversies section, with a link to the main Evolutionary psychology controversy page (and any other relevant pages), for a more thorough discussion of both sides of the non-scientific issues. IMO, since both sides are included on that page, I don't see it as a POV violation, although I understand that some may disagree.

Actually, one advantage of this structure (again, the same structure as the evolution page) for EP critics is that they will actually get more Wikipedia space that they would otherwise! And, the mere existence of such a "controversies" page tends to suggest that the controversy is notable and ongoing. (Note there is no evolution controversies page, rather just forks to creationism (with references to intelligent design)), and specific controversies pages such as creation-evolution controversy, social effect of evolutionary theory, social darwinism etc.) Memills (talk) 01:36, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Note Objections to evolution. Gnixon (talk) 03:56, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Wow, good sleuthing. Well then, I guess there is a precedent for the Evolutionary psychology controversy page. Or perhaps it should be renamed to the Objections to evolutionary psychology page. Memills (talk) 04:35, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

No, there's no "precedent" for a POV fork; it's against NPOV policy. And, objections to evolution are objections made by creationists. There are no creationist objections in the "controversy" article, nor are any of the critics "anti-evolutionist". WP:SPOV is a great idea, but Wikipedia currently uses NPOV, which means your "empirical" restriction violates current policy. I also want to make it very clear that your continued allegations about my edits are completely baseless and without merit, and your recent comment expressing surprise at the fairness of the links I've offered is a misperception on your part. In contrast to your 200 or so edits you've made to a single topic in the last two years, since 2004 I've made somewhere on the order of 54,957 edits to tens of thousands of articles; none of my edits have ever been reverted or described as "unscientific" and I challenge you to substantiate your allegations with actual evidence. To the contrary, I've actively worked to add scientific data and remove pseudoscience from Wikipedia. You seem to think that NPOV is negotiable; it isn't. Editors actively engage in writing for the enemy and you need to understand that it does not make them or their edits "unscientific" or subscribers to that particular POV. This has been very difficult for you to understand because you are a single-topic editor, but NPOV requires representing views other than your own. That means representing all significant POV fairly and in relation to the topic. The evolutionary psychology controversy article was created in direct contravention to the NPOV policy[54],[55] and this problem has still not been corrected after more than a year. Whenever editors (and there have been a lot of them) have tried to address this fundamental problem, you have attacked them on the talk page and reverted their edits. For example, on the controversy talk page, you wrote:

There are a few of the same folks who keep re-appearing on this page who clearly have an ax to grind with EP. Their approach seems to be to repeatedly tag the page as in dispute, or complain about the structure of the article or the rebuttals to criticisms, yet they do not make substantive contributions to the page. Please, if you wish to contribute, take the time to do the background reading, and then make worthwhile contributions. If an argument can be improved, do so. If there is a missing reference, find one. As a professor with a specialization in EP, I can tell you that those of us in this field have thoroughly evaluated the criticisms -- and many of them are either uninformed mis/dis-information about EP, or they are simply straw men (i.e., arguments that suggest that evolutionary psychologist believe something that they do not). It doesn't help the critics' case when it is clear that they have little knowledge of the field. However, we are certainly willing to review and seriously consider informed criticism, and we encourage its discussion here. Memills (talk) 16:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

The editor you addressed that comment to was as shocked to read it as I was. Your comment is completely at odds with the stated goals of Wikipedia. We don't pick and choose to represent criticism you feel is "correct". We represent the topic fairly, accurately, and without bias, and editors who uphold the policies and guidelines most certainly do not have an "ax to grind". I would like to see this problem addressed in a timely manner, otherwise I will consider nominating the POV fork for deletion per WP:POVFORK which recommends that route. Viriditas (talk) 10:58, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Disagree (surprise!). Sounds to me like wikilawyering. All points of view are NOT represented on WP scientific topic pages. There are no astrological criticisms considered on the astronomy page, but there is a link to an Astrology and astronomy controversy page. There are no alchemy criticisms seriously entertained on the chemistry page. There are no flat earth arguments on the geology page, but there is a flat earth page. Creationist criticisms are not seriously entertained on the evolution page, but there is a link to the creation-evolution controversy page. And on and on...

All POVs don't get to play on WP scientific topic pages. The scientific method identifies empirically which POVs to discard. To fairly represent a scientific topic in Wikipedia, non-scientific arguments cannot be seriously entertained (other than perhaps a brief mention and links to other pages). A philosopher, a Pope, a literary critic, a feminist, a capitalist, a vegetarian, a creationist don't get a place at the scientific table just because they may have strong opinions. However, if they bring along some empirical evidence with them (and maybe a nice dessert too, say, tiramisu), we will offer a chair. I welcome critics who bring empirical evidence to the EP page. Memills (talk) 14:29, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Memills, your response has been addressed several times above and shown to be a wildly inaccurate misinterpretation of NPOV and what other editors are saying. As a result, it appears that you are the one engaging in wikilawyering. To recap: 1) At no time has anyone said that all points of view are represented, anywhere 2) NPOV states that "All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources." The POV in dispute have been published by reliable scientific journals and reliable publishers. There is not a single, pseudoscientist among them, and your continued mischaracterization of these critics as "astrologers" and "creationists" appears deliberately misleading. Wikipedia does not use WP:SPOV it uses WP:NPOV, and you don't get to change that policy in any article. Viriditas (talk) 20:03, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

What is a "significant" point of view? Wait... isn't the answer to that question a POV?! Yes, it is! So NPOV is not entirely NPOV, is it, because folks make decisions about what is significant in a particular context.

A "significant" portion of the population believes in astrology. They spend a significant amount of money on astrology books, read the astrology column in the daily newspapers, join astrological compatibility dating services, etc. But we know that astronomy is a science, and that astrology is not. So astrology is not a "significant" POV in an astronomical science context, so it is not included on the astronomy page.

I don't want my POV reflected here; I want the POV of the current science of evolutionary psychology accurately represented. That is what is "significant" on this page. That includes all empirical evidence that bears on EP hypotheses -- whether it is corroborating or not.

Speculation and criticism by scientists is interesting, but it is always trumped by the empirical data. That is why the few scientists who have written thick books about intelligent design are pretty much ignored by evolutionary scientists. They haven't brought any empirical data. I don't think anyone much cares what my opinions are about whether, say, string theory will ultimately prove to be the theory of everything, or a complete waste of time. Even if I write a very articulate, passionate and persuasive book to philosophically challenge string theory, unless I actually bring some relevant empirical data to the table, it just isn't very scientifically interesting or significant.

We need to come to consensus on what is to be considered significant criticism that will be given more than a brief mention on the EP main page. My vote is that because EP is a science, not a philosophy, criticisms should be primarily judged by scientific standards, not philosophical ones. Memills (talk) 03:09, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Significant views of EP have been covered in a plethora of reliable sources, so much so, that your continued hemming and hawing around the topic appears to me to be in bad faith. These significant criticisms are found in books, textbooks, journal articles, magazines and newspapers, and are part of the history of the discipline. The content fork you created, evolutionary psychology controversy continues to lack an appropriate summary style in this article, making it a POV fork. Is there a reason you have not fixed this problem? Significant views on the subject are appropriate for this and any other article per WP:NPOV. Viriditas (talk) 09:26, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, my bad... Sorry, I'll fix that right away for you...

Please understand and respect the fact that others disagree with you on this issue (see some examples above). You have clearly articulated your opinions here so that further repetition of them is unnecessary.

The main issue with which you apparently disagree: Non-scientific critiques do not deserve much ink on a scientific topic. That trumps any amount of WP police work to try to suggest otherwise. This is obviously true on all WP science topic pages. It is clearly in the spirit of WP science pages even if it has not been extensively legislated and encoded in WP ordinances. It is.... common sense.

You fail to make the common sense distinction between the WP NPOV policy and how it must be applied differently on scientific topic pages. On those pages NPOV is constrained by empirical scientific evidence. Otherwise, there would be no worthwhile WP scientific topic pages. They would be thoroughly cluttered by an infinite variety of opinions and arm-chair observations. Scientific topic pages need to accurately reflect the discipline as viewed by the scientists working in it.

The implied consensus of opinion on wikipedia is counter to yours regarding the appropriate interpretation of WP policy on scientific topic pages. None of these pages include much discussion of philosophical or political critiques. If they are included, the are briefly noted, and then sometimes linked to other pages for additional content. Memills (talk) 16:08, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Memills, you haven't fixed anything. I don't see anyone who disagrees with the NPOV policy except for you. Furtheremore, I have never stated my "opinion" of the policy; you have, by inventing restrictions and addendums and even resurrecting deprecated proposals from several years ago. Since I have done nothing more than quote the policies and guidelines directly, your claim that the "implied consensus of opinion on Wikipedia is counter" to my own is absurd. I know you haven't had much experience on Wikipedia, after all, you are a WP:SPA who has spent the last several years making only a few hundred edits confined to mostly one article, an article that happens to be poorly written and incompatible with existing policies and guidelines. In all that time, you haven't expanded your horizons to follow non-EP discussions and edit other scientific articles. Because of this, you may not be in a position to comment on how to apply policy and guidelines. That's ok, and I don't fault you for that, but it's time for someone of your limited experience to step aside and let other editors fix the problem. You are welcome to keep making up things that I've never said and inventing incidents that never occurred, but it might be in your best interest to keep them to yourself. Your misleading strategy of referring to critics of EP as pseudoscientists, astrologers, and creationists just doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Most if not all of the critics under discussion are biologists, psychologists, and philosophers who have been published in RS on the subject. The most significant of these views have been addressed by EP proponents in journals, textbooks, magazines, and other media. That's the criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia, and that's something you refuse to accept because it is at odds with your POV. Therefore, you need to step aside. We're writing an encyclopedia here, using science, history, philosophy and every other significant viewpoint that merits inclusion based on RS; We are not in the business of presenting a one-sided view of a topic. That's the essence of NPOV. And the fact that I have recommended framing the disputed issues using pro-EP sources for direction, undermines your claims about my intentions. You have recently stated that you don't have the time required to improve this article. I would expect you to step aside then, and let those who do have the time, work on it. You are welcome to use the talk page to discuss these ideas, but I hope you do not fall back into the edit warring behavior that brought this article to my attention in the first place. Viriditas (talk) 21:31, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

No need to respond to that -- for most folks, I think it pretty much speaks for itself. Memills (talk) 22:38, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

One thing I just noticed is that your arguments are confusing the difference between WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV. The dispute concerns the representation of significant minority viewpoints, not singular, fringe opinions. Viriditas (talk) 23:56, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you like the suggestion about the subsections. But like I also suggested, let's just put the whole "generalized-criticisms-of-EP-in-the-abstract" thing on the back burner for the moment...by now, it should be clear that it's just going to go round and round. Let's instead focus on developing those 5 subsections with actual EP hypotheses and research...which ironically is nonexistent in the article! As its been mentioned, if the article gets too large, it's not as big of an issue to split the page...so make the article large with EP research and source it. And if someone adds a sourced criticism of EP, and if the criticism doesn't "square up" with the sourced research or hypothesis right above or below it, then the absurdity of the criticism will speak for itself to the reader. Having said that, you (as an evolutionary psychologist) must have TONS of stuff you could fill into those proposed 5 subsections, correct? EPM (talk) 02:36, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Tons. But not tons of time. And, a 3 year old who, despite having a well developed theory of mind, and an excellent grasp of parent-offspring conflict theory (and practice), has some serious dependency, sociopathy and narcissism issues... ;-)

Actually, here's an idea: in the Fall semester I might make some assignments for my EP class to contribute to the new sub-sections above. But that will not start until September, so dig in now if anyone is so inclined. Memills (talk) 04:35, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the proposed sections above, this would be a good place to add David J. Buller's criticism of Buss's studies of jealousy and Daly and Wilson's Cinderella effect. The criticism should be very briefly described with an appropriate brief response from the original authors addressing why Buller's criticism fails to succeed; This could be as short as four sentences. And please don't bring up the empirical restriction again. If Buller is good enough for MIT Press, Trends in Cognitive Science and other journals, he's good enough for Wikipedia. NPOV covers all significant viewpoints. Viriditas (talk) 11:42, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Temporary page created

(I copied and pasted the following from above):

I copied the article over to the temp page and "shut off" the categories with colons, as requested by Wikipedia policy. I also added some subsections to the "Research areas" section, (which are empty at the moment), and added an "Integration of psychology" section with various subsections. So if everybody thinks this is an acceptable way of structuring the article, how about people start filling it in? If it helps, I can gather some links to academic papers and put them in the appropriate subsections to get things started...a little "information gathering" so to speak. EPM (talk) 22:54, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I added some information to the Mating section. It is by no means complete, but hopefully will instigate others to expand and elaborate on those points.Cjb wiki (talk) 21:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks great! I added some links to articles (where I could) for your citations. I also italicized the names of books and journals. EPM (talk) 02:05, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Epigenetics

The implications of Epigenetics must be profound for the field of Evolutionary Psychology. I would urge anyone with the brainpower and education needed to address this to add a section to this page.98.210.118.158 (talk) 00:17, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, ideas from epigenetics are probably used far more often in evolutionary developmental psychology...good point to be brought up, though! EPM (talk) 00:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Sexual Selection Definition in Offensive Apparently....

an IP has changed the stuff on sexual selection to make it less 'offensive to homosexuals'. Sexual selection though, is defined, from what I have read, in the way we had it earlier. I do not feel like getting into an edit war with an IP, but what do people think? SHould we revert it back to the way it was? I see a real danger is worrying if definitions 'offend' anyone. Dbrodbeck (talk) 14:07, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I am going to go ahead and revert it back. I have left a note on the talk page of the IP, an IP that has today already been caught vandalizing. Dbrodbeck (talk) 14:13, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Wason

I was surprised to find no mention of Wason's interesting experiments about social reasoning. Well maybe not surprised, since this article seems to be a battle ground. Sigh. DonPMitchell (talk) 03:50, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

True and true. I plan to have my Evolutionary Psychology class work on this page in the Fall 08 semester to add relevant material. Memills (talk) 04:54, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Repetition

Is there a reason that 4 of the middle level theories are repeats from the foundations? Shouldn't they be one or the other? If not for logic's sake (can something be a foundation AND build on the foundations?), then for readability and reducing redundancy.Dillypickle (talk) 09:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, the article needs a cleanup, there is a lot of redundancy and some material is better dealt with in other articles. I don't see the need to explain natural selection. I will attempt to do some house cleaning. Wapondaponda (talk) 05:32, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I took out the entries from the middle level theories that were already in the foundation theories. As neither have references, i'm not sure whether some of them should have been removed from foundation instead, but the table seemed more likely to have come from a source.Dillypickle (talk) 13:18, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

After removing more redundancy, i see that both section do have sources, but the sources may not explicitly call the theories mid level or foundation, and if they do, then they are in disagreement. Is there any opposition to me combining the underlying theory section in a prose format, rather than having the table? My text books do not make this split.Dillypickle (talk) 13:29, 14 January 2009 (UTC)