April 4th, 2004, 7:47 pm
Color me skeptical but I doubt that the second woman could be appealing in any cycle... not even in a Martian cycle. Well, maybe after 6-10 beers. First one is stunning in both pictures though. This is junk "science." The picture showing a fertile woman was chosen by 51-59% of each group - a statistically significant result, says Roberts.Hah! That's just a bit better than a coin toss. Let's look at the sample size... they chose 50 women, photographed them and then asked 125 men & 125 women to judge. This is a very small sampling size. You can calculate your own error intervals. Without plugging in any numbers, my intuition tells me that these results are not as significant as they claim them to be. Now, they tell us nothing about when in the "cycle" they photographed these women and in which order. Were they first photographed at the height of the cycle and then in the middle or was it vice versa. What exactly were these women told when they went in when they were photographed? This is important because I'd assume that if they didn't know they were to be photographed the first time, they sure did know they would be photographed the second time and they would make sure they clean their face set their hair etc. This paragraph answers their question:QuoteA few women had changed their hairstyle between pictures, so Roberts wondered if that was playing a role in the viewers' decisions. The team covered up the hair and ears on the pictures and asked people to rate them again.Covering up the hair did not make much of a difference to a woman's looks as far as the men were concerned. But, while women still picked the picture of the fertile woman more often, they did so less reliably when the hair was disguised.How the heck did this get published in Nature?!