E., I’m pretty sure your thoughts on this will be interesting too And I still have my reply to your last comment ripening in the quiet moments here…

I don’t advocate „changing facts about the universe“ at all. I just don’t believe in facts very much any more to begin with. What you call „fact“ to me is: A description of and perspective on reality to which you come asking specific questions, embedding yourself in a specific (scientific and general) culture and tradition of thinking. Thus, these findings are never innocent to me.

We take our presuppositions about the universe and build computers and space rockets. If our presuppositions would be false, these machines wouldn’t work. I therefor disagree. We don’t know a lot, but there are things we do know.

So: yes, all these stupid little mistakes can make you find something completely in the wrong direction, and that even and especially when it also „just makes sense“ like the evolution stuff. 

That’s science. People make stuff up? They will eventually be found out and corrected. Let wrong ideas come up into sight so that the sun can melt them (Darwin, quoted from memory and probably not 100% correclty).
I am not good with gender stuff in EvoPsy, my work is on depression and other mental disorders. I know the work on reproductive strategies and foraging (women have much better spatial memory and recall items with higher caloric density better than men). There is no alternative theory for this than an evolutionary theory. So if people don’t like when a science explains human behavior statistically (which is what psychology does, it can never be applied to a single person), then they need to come up with a better hypothesis. That’s how science works, it’s elegant and correct. 
I feel tired commenting on the fact that people abuse science for their own means. Should we stop astronomy because crazy writers exploit the stupid people selling them millions of books about bullshit? No. There is no relation. I said all I have to say regarding this point, and I think I made it pretty clear what my opinion is.
I also said that understanding jealousy from an EvoPsy point (the only point explaining why J exists in the first place) is the only way to reflect about this, to make people think about this, and to help them control these unuseful emotions that are hardwired programs in our minds. 

Apart from that, I don’t actually see the point of evolutionary as opposed to proximate explanations on a practical level.

Oh, I do. But we can disagree here, that’s fine.Daly & Wilson showed in one of the most convincing studies that the risk for a child to die by abuse by the parents is  80x higher in families with step parents, and still 30x higher when you control for everything else (e.g. socioec. status). This study was conducteed because people had an evolutionary hypothesis about human behavior. And so many studies are conducted with these ideas, and we find things out about the world. Without the theory of evolution we wouldn’t have the means to create these ideas and show that some of them are correct. 

Regarding alternatives: science is without alternative, even if you don’t like it. There is no other way to reliable find truths in this world, that is at least my opinion. And if we don’t agree here, that’s fine.

I think more people should be constructivistic about science, but from within. They should see how humans are biased and flawed and how people make up data, but that doesn’t make science bad. It makes humans imperfect doing science, and makes the progress and process of science slower and more tedious.
It’s still the only way, and there are absolute truths out there. And although we will never answer the majority of them, we might answer some. And that is very, very interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zi699WzAL0

Eiko
PS.: I love Ioannidis. But it’s a mistake to think he’s criticizing science from without, he’s doing it from within, to make it better. That’s exactly what we need.

I don’t advocate „changing facts about the universe“ at all. I just don’t believe in facts very much any more to begin with. What you call „fact“ to me is: A description of and perspective on reality to which you come asking specific questions, embedding yourself in a specific (scientific and general) culture and tradition of thinking. Thus, these findings are never innocent to me.

And I consequently actually believe that it’s not too hard for each and every specific finding in the evolutionary gender research to point out what it misses and which important, central aspects of human experience and behavior it doesn’t explain. And what methodological flaws it has, many of which will be impossible to do better in practice. Sadly, that is often taken by scientists (of all disciplines) as petty criticism — if you point experimental researchers to studies that show how strongly your preconceptions influence your results (remember the famous behaviorist rat thing? And we’re talking humans here!) they agree in theory, but they manage to dissociate that from their work and results — yeah, there could be a small influence, but it won’t change my results completely. In my opinion, it often does, and I find support for that belief in studies like Ioannidis‘. So: yes, all these stupid little mistakes can make you find something completely in the wrong direction, and that even and especially when it also „just makes sense“ like the evolution stuff. 

„We describe, explain and predict human behavior, and we do it better (that’s my opinion) than any other field in psychology.“ — Do you really think that? Have you seen much research beyond questionnaires? Does the evo-gender stuff explain what you see in your own life and personal environment, even using your trained (and thus also one-sided) perception? For me, as I said, the answer is a clear no. And I side with Amanda Marcotte when she notes that the support evo-gender-research gets publicly seems to almost exclusively come from men who feel at the same time entitled and frustrated sexually. Who get some comfort from the idea that their own sciency selves just don’t trigger these „alpha-seeking programs“ in women who still want cave-man-beasts. But that by pursuing their path and getting rich they will eventually at least trigger the „status-seeking“ ones. And they overlook that maybe their central dating problem is their disrespect for women’s perspectives both individually and as a group. 

Have you ever heard ravings about evo-gender stuff from a woman? A woman who says these theories just explain so elegantly and well how she feels and behaves?

Apart from that, I don’t actually see the point of evolutionary as opposed to proximate explanations on a practical level. If so many murders are due to jealousy, what does it help us to know why inclinations towards jealousy and violence in romantic relationships evolved? Apart from the fact that you probably have to see murder of a former or current partner as dysfunctional (even in an evolutionary sense) in all contexts, and if it’s a disorder, functional applications don’t apply any more? I think it will help much more to look into proximate triggers of jealousy and domestic violence, and protective factors, and even societal stuff like access to guns… And I think feminist research has made real progress along these lines.

As for the reflexivity issue, where you say „Please think about this argument and apply it to all kind of other non EvoPsy explanations for behavior in psychology. Actually, you criticize the whole gender field itself.“ Yes I am, and am aware of that. But I’m saying that by being conscious of and goal-oriented with these effects (again, having an explicit agenda) you can make that problem work for you. In a way that’s an argument similar to the placebo business, but I know I’m opening a whole other barrel here.

Last words concerning your creationism comparison, partly crazy: The moral implications that come with both are part of the reason why I prefer the story of science over the one of creation, and it would actually be a valid argument (even though not the only one) for me if I saw that differently. I also think that engaging creationists on that basis (is the implication of „just do what some higher being tells you“ as opposed to „find rules as an individual and together as a society“ really what you prefer?) can be much more fruitful than trying to scream „facts“ at them which they won’t trust anyway because these „facts“ already take as their basis what they want to prove „right“ (a science approach to the world). And: I’m always highly skeptical of „ONLY ways“. I was very impressed when „without alternatives“ became the German „un-word“ in one of the recent years.

Concerning the need for legitimacy: This is a side note I maybe should have left out, has little to do with my main argument. Still, I believe that a science should have a certain consciousness of its agenda, and I see that much more in your examples of other sciences than in the gender parts of EvoPsy, which is in the center of my criticism for obvious reasons. The connection to the main criticism is that it also demands attention for aspects of science other than the „corresponds to reality“ part.

Concerning constructivism, I don’t know how much good it does to shout at you if you find the whole thing boring and useless from the start. I’ll give it a try though. I think we are pretty much on the same page concerning this: „In other fields, we have hard times understanding reality, and in some fields we might never understand or measure reality because of different limitations“ but we draw different conclusions. Yours as far as I understand is campaigning for standards of good science in the sense of achieving better correspondence with reality. I’m not opposed to that, but (at least while we’re still far away from that ideal) I argue that we need to supplement that with other ways of evaluating science. I hope you agree that the research methods in evolutionary gender psychology don’t warrant a high level of confidence on a „correspondence with reality“ level? For me in any case this is a clear example of „classical“ criteria for good science being insufficient.

So then to the big part of my text that was cryptic:
Evolutionary Psychology has to be measured by its societal effects as well as on „correspondence with reality“ standards. The whole gender field does exceptionally poor in that (former) respect. We have good reasons to believe that the findings (and how they are communicated) contribute to cultural beliefs that enable rape — keyword rape culture. This means because of the evolutionary gender stuff, more rapes happen, more rape victims go without justice, often getting blame on top of the pain, more rapists remain free to rape again. In a similar vein, the evolutionary research contributes to conservative political agendas concerning power hierarchies, gender relations etc.. In the absence of really good arguments what your stuff is good for (legitimacy again), this means you shouldn’t be doing it.

My related „reflexivity“ argument: You cannot exempt yourself from your theories as a social scientist. I don’t believe economists who describe everybody as self-interested rational agents but themselves as noble scientists theorizing and modeling for the best of everybody. I don’t believe evolutionary psychologists who see all behaviors as ultimately governed by arguments along the lines of „access to mates“, but what they do is just „objective“ science for the fun of it or even nobler reasons. And (the circle closes) what scientists tell us about our nature changes what we do. It does so in economics, where we can’t even imagine a not immediate tit-for-tat any more (read the link I had there). It does so for relationships, where reiterating the story of „women want status and money, men want sex with different women“ shapes behavior.

More than a couple of sentences I fear, I hope you bear with me