It's Getting Downright Silly Now

Well, she doesn't know anything about economics, math, or politics, and now Megan McArdle is expanding her repertoire of things she has now clue about but will write a column on anyway to sociology and sex as she pans a book by Christopher Ryan on the theory of evolutionary sexuality because...she says so.  Ryan's response is classic.

But still, every party has the red-faced, humorless, easily-offended type. Yesterday, at The Atlantic web site, Megan McArdle provided a stellar example. Her comments begin strangely, with the admission that she's "in the middle" of the book. Note the urgency to condemn it publicly, even before reading the damned thing! And boy, does she lash out:

• "It reads like horsefeathers . . . like an undergraduate thesis,"
• "breathless rather than scientific"
• "cherry-picked evidence stretched far out of shape to support their theory,"
• "they don't even attempt to paper over the enormous holes in their theory."

Ouch! And that's just the first paragraph. But wait, it gets worse. The second paragraph is worth quoting in full, as it's really a perfect expression of the bug-eyed panic the book provokes in some people:

"For example, like a lot of evolutionary biology critiques, this one leans heavily on bonobos (at least so far). Here's the thing: humans aren't like bonobos. And do you know how I know that we are not like bonobos? Because we're not like bonobos. There's no way observed human societies grew out of a species organized along the lines of a bonobo tribe." (emphasis in original)

Got that? Humans aren't like bonobos because we're not like bonobos. No way! So there! Case closed.

And that's pretty much McMegan's argument.  Ryan then proceeds to dismantle her column like a Ford Mustang being stripped for parts, and it gets pretty brutal from there, do read it.

The larger point is McArdle continues to be employed when she has the intellectual and journalistic standards of wet cardboard in a hurricane, but that's just me. (via Oliver Willis)