The
Times Online reports on a recent study by University of Helsinki researcher Markus Jokela, who found that women are getting more beautiful:
Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.
The article doesn't mention where Jokela published his study, so I'll have to go by the article's description of his work. But on the basis of that, his claim is absurd. Beauty isn't something like height that can be objectively tracked and measured over time. Standards of beauty change over time and across cultures. Which makes it meaningless to say that women are getting more beautiful.
The
Gene Expression blog also criticizes Jokela's claim, pointing out that "males and females inherit half their genes from an opposite sex parent." Which means that if gorgeous women are mating with ugly cavemen, their children will be half ugly caveman, which contradicts Jokela's thesis.
Comments
List of staff:
http://www.helsinki.fi/psykologia/english/introduction/personnel.htm
Markus' frame:
http://elias.it.helsinki.fi/PSYKO/Psykolog.nsf/6002abba1de8a08bc225733e004973a5/0d73ac84d83edde4c225702f001fb5ed?OpenDocument
And he is in the psychology department. But that doesn't prove anything, since some hoaxster could easily have snagged a real name.
Alex is dead on in his comments.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T6H-4W80GJ1-4&_user=1026342&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=968782178&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050565&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1026342&md5=026f241d25bcf5180b3fa332b88674b9
The Times report is (as so often) a misleading one, more concerned with a catchy headline than an accurate report.
Key phrase:
"These findings indicate that physical attractiveness may be associated with reproductive success in humans living in industrialized settings."
In other words: attractive women tend to have more children than unattractive women. (For men: if you're really ugly, you'll have fewer kids, otherwise, it doesn't much matter.)
But it's a relatively weak effect and is based on people born in the late 1930's (before effective birth control).
How The Times got from there to evolutionary pressure making women more beautiful is something to marvel at. But I'll bet lots of beer was involved....
(see that "movie" was good for something!!)
Essentially, with advances in dental, skincare etc women are better looking than they've ever been, regardless of how you like 'em. :cheese:
His full response can be found here. Before dissing, read either the original paper (linked by Finn above) or the commentary. Most of the press reports have got it Not Even Wrong - as usual for science journalism.