News items enrage the people

Various people I know are all in a tizzy over two recent news bytes.

The first stems from a recent article over at the Journal of Evolution and Human Behavior. It seems some scientists ran a study which found that children born to mothers with a low ratio of waist circumference to hip circumference scored the highest on cognition tests. The issue is that there are a couple of different ways to spin the article. the actual article abstract is here.

• The blurb over at New Scientist paraphrased the findings simply: A low waist-hip ratio (WHR) is a proxy measurment for the amount of Omega-3 fatty acids stored in the mother's body. Children whose mothers had wide hips and a small (a low waist-hip ratio) scored highest on cognition tests, leading the researchers to suggest that fetuses benefit from a rich supply of useful fatty acids from the mother.
• The blurb on iTwire, an online Australian IT news magazine describes the findings but adds this bit from the article's abstract: "These findings support the idea that WHR relects the availability of neurodevelopmental resources and thus offer a new explanation of men's preference for low WHR."

Guess which sentence is generating all the controversy? One person I know is incensed that dollars are being spent on research of this type instead of research that improves the lot of the worlds most impoverished citizens. Another person I know is incensed that resources are being spent to come up with scientific explanations that reinforce the notion men prefer low WHR. Yet another friend seems to think that articles like this suggest that human behavior is all hard-wired, making free-will a fraudulent concept, and thus a terrible thing.

Honest exploration of the forces that shape human evolution is a good thing. I don't think human evolution has been well studied, and I don't think we know much at all about how our species has evoloved and is evolving. I am wary of anything that purports to explain that certain races are disposed one way. Low WHR occurs all over the world, but has a larger geographic distribution near the equator. One thing not clear from the abstract is whether the researchers factored for race and ethnicity.

Meanwhile a different bit of research about human behavior in the news has ME up in arms. Today's headlines included news that a recent study attempts to pin child abuse on break-down of the biological family. Apparently, the children at greatest risk are those living in households that lack BOTH biological parents.

The article I read was infuriating. The headline mentioned the lack of both biological parents, but the article chiefly discussed households where only one biological parent was missing.

From a science standpoint, it's not news that in the mammalian kingdom males kill or maim offspring of other males. Yet, the article I read didn't contain any facts or figures about whether it is non-biological males (or females) who are most engaged in actively targeting children for death or injury. Nor did it contain any breakdown of the numbers comparing abuse meted out by biological parents and non-biological adults in abusive households. And there was no discussion about whether the abuse was direct, or simply neglect, nor were there numbers for that.

Lastly, and in my mind, most importantly, the research didn't seem to address a primary factor: abuse reporting trends for the last 20 years. It's likely that, due to the increase in single-parent homes headed by women, more third party observers are reporting abuse in households where one biological parent is missing. However, there is nothing indicating that abuse reporting in homes where both biological parents are present has gotten much better.

What was the point of all that ink, except to take a side swipe at households headed by single mothers?