You are mistaken.

If you take the time to read the thread with care, you will notice that gekkogecko, AZRedHot, and I each stated our opinion. You might also notice that the opinions that under scrutiny have been gekkogecko’s, and then only because he was unable to leave well enough alone. AZRedHot and I also provided reasons for our opinions. OK. Fair enough; it is possible for reasonable people to disagree. As it then stood, that was that.

Not satisfied with expressing his own opinion, he then proceeded to challenge mine.

gekkogecko led off his next post with “Not quite the point jseal.” This presumes that the point was something other than if the work in question was good science, as was my opinion. gekkogecko mistakenly assumed that his POV was the correct one, and mine was not.

He then questioned the validity of the study “… why study this at all? It's pretty much an irrelevant aspect of human interaction”. The notion that a study of one of the drivers of human mate selection is irrelevant is laughably immature. Very few things are more important to animals than to breed. Learning what drives them to make the selections they make, and how to avoid potential problems is vital.

He then presented two possible justifications for the study, both of which impugn the ethics of the authors of the study; “spending grant money so they can spend grant money”, or that they “were paid to go looking for "evidence” that supported a hidden agenda.”. He followed that with a non sequitur, “… if you for one moment think that isn't a possibility, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.” I had not raised the question, let alone suggested that it was not a possibility.

I shall ignore the red herring as to how the results may or may not be used. How knowledge gained from this study will be used does not change the science the authors presented.

He then asserted that “When one digs down deep enough, one *usually* finds that the people who paid for the study got the results they were looking for”. A bold claim – if it were true. Note that he has been either unwilling or unable to show that this is a fact, although I have asked him to do so.

Further, he used the word *usually*. Not *seldom*. Not *infrequently*. Not *occasionally*. No, he used *usually* to describe the frequency that one “finds that the people who paid for the study got the results they were looking for”. Let us assume that he meant what he wrote. Looking up "usually" in a thesaurus, I find it defined as "In an expected or customary manner; for the most part." Synonyms for it are: commonly, consistently, customarily, frequently, generally, habitually, naturally, normally, often, regularly, routinely, typically.

Given this generally accepted used of the word usually, we might then reasonably ask if this is true for the journal in question. The publications of the Royal Society are in England as those of the American Association for the Advancement of Science are here in the States. The Royal Society is THE independent scientific academy of the UK. I can only presume that gekkogecko is unfamiliar with the subject material. I cannot believe that he would advance such a bizarre notion otherwise.

geckogeck is entitled to his opinion, as is AZRedHot, and as am I. He is not entitled to take me to task for expressing my opinion, while presuming that his opinions are somehow sacrosanct.

You are mistaken scotzoidman. It was not about my opinion at all. It was all about gekkogecko’s opinions, that he feels comfortable expressing them to gratuitously challenge the opinions of others, and that he presented them as being facts, when they are either demonstrably false, or unsubstantiated.

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Eudaimonia