You don’t have to look to hard to find bad science writing. Here at Discoblog, we do our best to chronicle, analyze, and explain the worst of it, from the playing hockey with facts to the over-reliance on questionable studies to the always-popular “slapping pseudo-science on a stereotype and declaring bulletproof validation.” But sometimes an article comes along that’s so egregious, so sloppy, so far from anything resembling actual fact, that even we are astonished.
Case in point: “Shopping is ‘throwback to days of cavewomen,’” a piece by Ben Leach at the U.K. Telegraph. It refers to a study (we use the term loosely) led by David Holmes of Manchester Metropolitan University, which “found” that “skills that were learnt as cavemen and women were now being used in shops.” According to Holmes:
Gatherers sifted the useful from things that offered them no sustenance, warmth or comfort with a skill that would eventually lead to comfortable shopping malls and credit cards. In our evolutionary past, we gathered in caves with fires at the entrance. We repeat this in warm shopping centres where we can flit from store to store without braving the icy winds.
The lead of the news article, found directly below a photo of a Nordic beauty staring lustfully into a shop window (since, naturally, when an article like this refers to the “humans” who love shopping what it really means is “women”), reads as follows:
Shoppers are using instincts they learnt from their Neanderthal ancestors, researchers have found.
So let’s review: According to the study, we learned to spend our days in malls maxing out AmEx cards from our ancient Neanderthal precursors. Except for the fact that Neanderthals are not direct ancestors of modern humans, and the two didn’t have any overlap. So just when did these “instinctual gathering” lessons occur? When we were all riding on the backs of Tyrannosaurs spearing woolly mammoths?
Not to mention the glaring definitional problem: If our non-ancestors are indeed responsible for “teaching” us all these spend-happy behaviors, how are they “instincts”?
And to top it all off, you’ll never guess who commissioned the study:
The study was commissioned by Manchester Arndale shopping centre in response to a rise in January visitors, according to the Daily Express.
Related:
Disco: Worst Science Articles of the Week
Disco: The New Genre Soon To Appear on iTunes: Neanderthal Music
Image: iStockPhoto
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Has this study perhaps overlooked the influence of shopping carts – and their possible cave-person equivalents ?
Research from the Université de Toulouse in 2008 :
” investigates how such a trivial device as a shopping cart may surprisingly contribute to shaping exchanges in supermarkets. “
further details and links :
http://reallymagazine.com/month_archive_51.htm#22FEB08
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
[...] [Link: Worst Science Article Ever? Women “Evolved” to Love Shopping | Discoblog | Discover Magazine] [...]
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
[...] See more here: Worst Science Article Ever? Women “Evolved” to Love Shopping … [...]
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 pm
What’s depressing is that this isn’t terribly surprising. I keep hearing all the time about human nature but it’s really pseudo-scientific cultural observations and pop-psychology. I heard a couple of times in conversations people saying that it’s human nature to keep ‘pushing the limit’ because most drivers exceed the speed limit, but that can be explained as a stimulus response to the way it’s policed, as well as the social anxiety of where the limits are set and several other things that have NOTHING TO DO WITH EVOLUTION OR HUMAN NATURE.
You’d think magazines and newspapers would have anthropologists/sociologists on staff considering how much of what get written could benefit from their work. I suppose the ‘hard’ scientists can share in this frustration, hence this blog posting.
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Boy, you should visit the mexican newspaper Reforma website’s science section one of these days. I’ve read there that a single gene is the culprit for HIV’s infections, that geckos and salamanders are the same animal, and that they’ve recently discovered the gene for being nice persons.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d98/sabotabby/evopsychbingo.jpg
I call O3!
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
[...] so sloppy, so far from anything resembling actual fact, that even we are astonished." Discoblog – Worst Science Article Ever? Women
March 4th, 2009 at 8:01 am
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March 4th, 2009 at 10:10 am
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March 4th, 2009 at 10:15 am
[...] Lafsky, Worst Science Article Ever? Women “Evolved” to Love Shopping It does deserve a place in the hall of [...]
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
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August 20th, 2009 at 11:45 am
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