Sometimes ya gotta wonder...

So in my usual reading around the 'net, I came across this article on NewScientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11833-the-face-not-the-body-attracts-a-mate.html

What gets me is this note on the "research,"
Twelve women and 12 men took part in a trial to assess the attractiveness of people in photographs, on a scale of 1 to 7.

The journal cited was Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2006.07.012. I tried looking up the article via the university's library, but for whatever reason it's not showing up in the table of contents, and quite frankly I'm too tired to pursue it further.

But all I can think is: Wow.....that's some test group you got there. 24 people. And this is published in a journal? It doesn't surprise me that it's referenced for mass media science appeal...but that's a whole other story there. I suppose my Physics lab professor would laugh at me if she heard my internal response:

12 men and 12 women...just *how* reliable is that R² value?

I digress....


There's a culmination of thoughts that have been bubbling through various articles I've read regarding how fat America has become, but that diatribe is going to require more brain power than what's firing off at the moment. Thank god school is over, for now.