So, seeing as the fuckwitted cretin has spoken again, it is time to post post post.
Satoshi Kanazawa is mainly a disgusting vile misogynist and a pathetic excuse for a human being (see below), currently paid money to be more disgusting and vile by the London School of Economics (Hi thar, LSE!). Why LSE wants to continue paying Satoshi Kanazawa to be increasingly disgusting and vile is indubitably one of the greatest mysteries of the universe*.
Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist. Evolutionary psychology is an eminently useful field of study, which has the potential to yield many scientific explanations to the sort of human behaviour we take for granted.
However, evolutionary psychology is also infested with woomeisters and complete idiots incapable of statistical analysis, critical thinking, and failing at Anthropology 101 (such as: SO THERE ARE CULTURES IN THE WORLD THAT ARE DIFFERENT THAN THE WESTERN EUROPEAN????? IMPOSSIBLE).
The woomeisters have been many a time lambasted by Ben Goldacre, like in this post which points out, among other things, the European bias in the research claiming that pink is more girly because of the girly genes that like pink more. I won’t even bother with any criticism, because, seriously, words fail. As Ben Goldacre says:
Boys who were raised in pink frilly dresses went down mines and fought in World War 2. Clothing conventions do change over time.
Yes, well.
Unfortunately, Satoshi Kanazawa is one of the least competent evolutionary psychologist on Earth, possibly even in the universe. (He is also very very evil.)
Apart from his marketing genius and pure evilness (Kanazawa is known to have been called the Ann Coulter of evolutionary psychology), Satoshi Kanazawa is most known for:
1. His ridiculous research trying (and failing) to link “attractiveness” with reproductive strategies and reproductive success, and all sorts of vacuous claims regarding “attractiveness”. His statistics proved to be flawed and were many times criticised, which Kanazawa obviously ignored.
He also claimed that women are getting more “attractive” faster than men, which is absolutely ridiculous. Why it is so is obvious even to a non-specialist: males and females receive HALF their genes from BOTH male and female parent, thus any actual physical differences between males and females take an extremely long time to emerge. (More at Gene Expression).
Also, the question of “attractiveness” itself remains largely unresolved. Attractiveness is dependent on the cultural milieu, and has no absolute value. There’s nouniversally recognised definition of “attractiveness”. The method of judging the relative attractiveness of research subjects is very subjective, and, in the end, rather meaningless (also, see Jezebel – also for the links to the press coverage of the whole debacle).
Of course, despite valid criticisms the first thing Kanazawa does after spitting out another 5000 words of vapid ejaculations is running off to meet the press.
2. His dubious claims about the link between lower average IQ and poverty in Africa. Kanazawa says:
Having examined the effects of economic development and income inequality on health, he was ‘surprised’ to find that IQ had a much more important impact, he said. ‘Poverty, lack of sanitation, clean water, education and healthcare do not increase health and longevity, and nor does economic development.’
Because I’m not a racist scumbag and also can think logically, I’d rather be inclined to say that the causation goes the other way round: because of poverty on the average the brains of poor children in Africa do not develop the way they could if not for lack of proper nutrition and so on, and so forth. But then, what do I know? I don’t even have a PhD. Also, I’m politically correct.
What was however, absolutely disgraceful, was the way LSE backed Kanazawa in his claims. The thing is, the CRITICS his research did not demand that he be silenced and it had nothing to do with “academic freedom”.
That is, unless you think that academic freedom is your god-given right to publish poorly-if-at-all fact-supported racist drivel in peer-reviewed journals, forever unchallenged.
3. For being a despicable human being. Because faced with statements like that I have actually nothing more to say, I urge you to read his op-ed about the war on terror for yourself:
Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.
Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who’s running**.
Wow. So it’s okay for hundreds of milions of completely innocent people to die as long as they’re not USians? OKAY!
(Also, if I were Ann Coulter, I’d be seriously offended)
(But then, Ann Coulter is Ann Coulter, so she most likely wasn’t)
Well, now Dr Kanazawa came to tell us all what exactly he thinks about those eevuhl feminists, pardon, feminazis, and their evil feminazi agenda. At this point, this particular kind of drivel was only expected and a matter of time:
Why modern feminism is illogical, unnecessary, and evil
Feminism is the radical notion that women are men (
link)
Fortunately, so far nobody’s postulated the radical notion that Kanazawa has a brain.
Not in a jar in his study or something really radical like that, but inside his skull.
Which is by the way empty, save for a lonely, lonely colony of maggots.
But I digress!
In his op-ed, Kanazawa argues that because women can gain access to resources by having sex with men***, it means there is no inequality PRESTO! While arguing his point, Kanazawa makes so many blunders I didn’t even have the patience to finish reading, but for those less irritable:
Among mammals, the female always has more power than the male, and humans are no exception. It is true that, in all human societies, men largely control all the money, politics, and prestige. They do, because they have to, in order to impress women. Women don’t control these resources, because they don’t have to. What do women control? Men. As I mention in an earlier post, any reasonably attractive young woman exercises as much power over men as the male ruler of the world does over women.
ETA: 21/05/2011 removed some problematic wording <3
* Or not. Follow the money! Also, it must be very convenient for racist people over at LSE to have a brown-skinned person who will conveniently say for them all those racist things they want to say, but are no longer allowed to in public.
** Hillary Clinton was running for the president at the time.
*** But only if they are reasonably attractive. Where attractive = Kanazawa would like to have sex with them.
ETA: here it is, the Evolutionary Psychology Bingo! (Via lolscience)
梅雨眠中 