Ryan F. Mandelbaum at Gizmodo:
It’s not often that a paper attempts to take down an entire field. Yet, this past January, that’s precisely what University of New Hampshire assistant philosophy professor Subrena Smith’s paper tried to do. “Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?” describes a major issue with evolutionary psychology, called the matching problem.
The field of evolutionary psychology is no stranger to critiques, given its central idea: that human behaviors can be explained in evolutionary terms and that the core units governing our actions haven’t changed since the Stone Age. But Smith’s paper garnered a particularly strong response after science journalist Adam Rutherford discussed it on Twitter and PZ Myers discussed it in his Pharyngula blog.
We at Gizmodo have long rolled our eyes at the often-nonsensical conclusions that some people come to when employing evolutionary psychology theory, so we were excited to chat with Smith about her work.
More here.