Evolutionary psychology seeks to identify and understand human psychological traits that have evolved in much the same way as biological traits, through adaptation to environmental cues. Furthermore, it tends toward viewing the vast majority of psychological traits, certainly the most important ones, as the result of past adaptions, which has generated significant controversy and criticism from competing fields. These criticisms include disputes about the testability of evolutionary hypotheses, cognitive assumptions such as massive modularity, vagueness stemming from assumptions about the environment that leads to evolutionary adaptation, the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, as well as political and ethical issues in the field itself.

Evolutionary psychologists contend that many of the criticisms against it are straw men, based on an incorrect nature versus nurture dichotomy, and/or based on misunderstandings of the discipline. In addition, some defenders of evolutionary psychology assert that critics of the discipline base their criticisms on a priori political assumptions, such as those associated with Marxism.

Examples of critics and defenders

The history of the debate from a critic's perspective is detailed by Gannon (2002). Critics of evolutionary psychology include the philosophers of science David Buller (author of Adapting Minds), Robert C. Richardson (author of Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology), and Brendan Wallace (author of Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work). Other critics include neurobiologists like Steven Rose (who edited Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology), biological anthropologists like Jonathan Marks, and social anthropologists like Tim Ingold and Marshall Sahlins.

Responses defending evolutionary psychology against critics have been published in books including Segerstråle's Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond (2000), Barkow's Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists (2005), and Alcock's The Triumph of Sociobiology (2001). Other responses to critics include Confer et al. (2010), Tooby and Cosmides (2005), and Hagen (2005).

Criticism of key assumptions

Massive modularity

Evolutionary psychologists have postulated that the mind is composed of cognitive modules specialized to perform specific tasks. Evolutionary psychologists have theorized that these specialized modules enabled our ancestors to react quickly and effectively to environmental challenges. As a result, domain-specific modules would have been selected for, whereas broad general-purpose cognitive mechanisms that worked more slowly would have been eliminated in the course of evolution.

A number of cognitive scientists have criticized the modularity hypothesis, citing neurological evidence of brain plasticity and changes in neural networks in response to environmental stimuli and personal experiences. Steven Quartz and Terry Sejnowski, for example, have argued that the view of the brain as a collection of specialized circuits, each chosen by natural selection and built according to a "genetic blueprint", is contradicted by evidence that cortical development is flexible and that areas of the brain can take on different functions. Neurobiological research does not support the assumption by evolutionary psychologists that higher-level systems in the neocortex responsible for complex functions are massively modular. Peters (2013) cites neurological research showing that higher-order neocortical areas can become functionally specialized by way of synaptic plasticity and the experience-dependent changes that take place at the synapse during learning and memory. As a result of experience and learning processes the developed brain can look modular although it is not necessarily innately modular. However, Klasios (2014) responds to Peters' critique.

Another criticism is that there is little empirical support in favor of the domain-specific theory. Leading evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have found that performance on the selection task is content-dependent: People find it easier to detect violations of "if-then" rules when the rules can be interpreted as cheating on a social contract. From this Cosmides and Tooby and other evolutionary psychologists concluded that the mind consisted of domain-specific, context-sensitive modules (including a cheater-detection module). Critics have suggested that Cosmides and Tooby use untested evolutionary assumptions to eliminate rival reasoning theories and that their conclusions contain inferential errors. Davies et al., for example, have argued that Cosmides and Tooby did not succeed in eliminating the general-purpose theory because the adapted Wason selection task they used tested only one specific aspect of deductive reasoning and failed to examine other general-purpose reasoning mechanisms (e.g., reasoning based on syllogistic logic, predicate logic, modal logic, and inductive logic etc.). Furthermore, Cosmides and Tooby use rules that incorrectly represent genuine social exchange situations. Specifically, they posit that someone who received a benefit and does not pay the cost is cheating. However, in real-life social exchange situations people can benefit and not pay without cheating (as in the case of receiving gifts or benefiting from charity).

Some critics have suggested that our genes cannot hold the information to encode the brain and all its assumed modules. Humans share a significant portion of their genome with other species and have corresponding DNA sequences so that the remaining genes must contain instructions for building specialized circuits that are absent in other mammals.

One controversy concerns the particular modularity of mind theory used in evolutionary psychology (massive modularity). Critics argue in favor of other theories.

Environment of evolutionary adaptedness
One method employed by evolutionary psychologists is using knowledge of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) to generate hypotheses regarding possible psychological adaptations. Part of the critique of the scientific basis of evolutionary psychology is that it often assumes that human evolution occurred in a uniform environment, whereas critics suggest that we know so little about the environment (or probably multiple environments) in which homo sapiens evolve, that explaining specific traits as an adaption to that environment becomes highly speculative.

The evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides state that research is confined to certainties about the past, such as pregnancies only occurring in women, and that humans lived in groups. They argue that there are many environmental features that are known regarding our species' evolutionary history. They argue that our hunter-gatherer ancestors dealt with predators and prey, food acquisition and sharing, mate choice, child rearing, interpersonal aggression, interpersonal assistance, diseases and a host of other fairly predictable challenges that constituted significant selection pressures. Knowledge also include things such as nomadic, kin-based lifestyle in small groups, long life for mammals, low fertility for mammals, long female pregnancy and lactation, cooperative hunting and aggression, tool use, and sexual division of labor. Tooby and Cosmides thus argue that enough can be known about the EEA to make hypotheses and predictions.

David Buss also argued that the EEA could be sufficiently known to make predictions in evolutionary psychology. Buss argued that aspects of the environment are known - the Earth's gravity was the same, as was its atmosphere. Dinosaurs and giant Carboniferous insects were extinct and humans still lived in groups, while there were two sexes. Groups consisted of old and young members, healthy and sick, varying degrees of relatedness and so on. Buss notes that while some critics agree that the general environment is known, the specific selection pressures might never be understood due to being highly context sensitive. David Buller used an analogy including birds, observing that while all male birds must attract all female birds, they do so in different ways; Buller alleges that the evidence is simply not available to be able to determine which the specific mate-attraction problems for humans. However, Buss argues that this can be solved by proposing different evolutionary psychology hypotheses and uses data, confirmation strategies and discovery heuristics to determine which ones can be advanced. Furthermore, Buss argues this criticism is selectively sceptical - Buss notes that Buller had no problem writing confidently about the evolved mate functions of bird species, of whom there is even less knowledge about selective pressures, so it is not clear why Buller is willing to infer the mating strategies of ancestral birds by analysing living ones yet is unwilling to infer the mating strategies of ancient humans by analysing living humans.

John Alcock argues that the fact that many traits in humans are presently adaptive is suggestive that they originally developed as adaptions. This is because if an organism diverges too much from its original environment, it is unlikely that its traits will be adaptive to the new, changed environment and it is at risk of going extinct. Thus evolutionary psychologists doubt that the modern world is largely novel compared to that of the EEA.

Steven Pinker argues that there is enough evidence available about the historical environments humans evolved in for evolutionary psychologists to make inferences and predictions from. Pinker argues that the evidence indicates that the ancestral environment lacked "agriculture, contraception, high-tech medicine, mass media, mass-produced goods, money, police, armies, communities of strangers, and other modern features", which Pinker argues all have profound implications for minds that evolved in such an environment.

Testability of hypotheses

A frequent criticism of evolutionary psychology is that its hypotheses are difficult or impossible to test, challenging its status as an empirical science. As an example, critics point out that many current traits likely evolved to serve different functions from those they do now, confounding attempts to make backward inferences into history. Evolutionary psychologists acknowledge the difficulty of testing their hypotheses but assert it is nevertheless possible.

Critics argue that many hypotheses put forward to explain the adaptive nature of human behavioural traits are "just-so stories"; neat adaptive explanations for the evolution of given traits that do not rest on any evidence beyond their own internal logic. They allege that evolutionary psychology can predict many, or even all, behaviours for a given situation, including contradictory ones. Therefore, many human behaviours will always fit some hypotheses. Noam Chomsky argued:

"You find that people cooperate, you say, 'Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.' You find that they fight, you say, 'Sure, that's obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."

Leda Cosmides argued in an interview:

"Those who have a professional knowledge of evolutionary biology know that it is not possible to cook up after the fact explanations of just any trait. There are important constraints on evolutionary explanation. More to the point, every decent evolutionary explanation has testable predictions about the design of the trait. For example, the hypothesis that pregnancy sickness is a byproduct of prenatal hormones predicts different patterns of food aversions than the hypothesis that it is an adaptation that evolved to protect the fetus from pathogens and plant toxins in food at the point in embryogenesis when the fetus is most vulnerable – during the first trimester. Evolutionary hypotheses – whether generated to discover a new trait or to explain one that is already known – carry predictions about the nature of that trait. The alternative – having no hypothesis about adaptive function – carries no predictions whatsoever. So which is the more constrained and sober scientific approach?"

A 2010 review article by evolutionary psychologists describes how an evolutionary theory may be empirically tested. A hypothesis is made about the evolutionary cause of a psychological phenomenon or phenomena. Then the researcher makes predictions that can be tested. This involves predicting that the evolutionary cause will have caused other effects than the ones already discovered and known. Then these predictions are tested. The authors argue numerous evolutionary theories have been tested in this way and confirmed or falsified. Buller (2005) makes the point that the entire field of evolutionary psychology is never confirmed or falsified; only specific hypotheses, motivated by the general assumptions of evolutionary psychology, are testable. Accordingly, he views evolutionary psychology as a paradigm rather than a theory, and  attributes this view to prominent evolutionary psychologists including Cosmides, Tooby, Buss, and Pinker.

In his review article "Discovery and Confirmation in Evolutionary Psychology" (in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Psychology) Edouard Machery concludes:

"Evolutionary psychology remains a very controversial approach in psychology, maybe because skeptics sometimes have little first-hand knowledge of this field, maybe because the research done by evolutionary psychologists is of uneven quality. However, there is little reason to endorse a principled skepticism toward evolutionary psychology: Although clearly fallible, the discovery heuristics and the strategies of confirmation used by evolutionary psychologists are on a firm grounding."

Steve Stewart-Williams argues, in response to claims that evolutionary psychology hypotheses are unfalsifiable, that such claims are logically incoherent. Stewart-Williams argues that if evolutionary psychology hypotheses can't be falsified, then neither could competing explanations, because if alternative explanations (e.g. sociocultural hypotheses) were proven true, this would automatically falsify the competing evolutionary psychology hypothesis, so  for competing explanations to be true, then evolutionary psychology hypothesis must be false and thus falsifiable.

Edward Hagen observes that critics of evolutionary psychology often argue that because a trait could have evolved as an adaptation or a by-product, it is impossible to determine which it is since it evolved in a past environment and thus evolutionary psychology hypotheses about a traits origin are untestable. According to Hagen, critics using this argument have a flawed understanding of science; Hagen argues that science is fundamentally an abductivist methodology e.g. inference to the best explanation. Hagen argues that hypotheses compete to provide the best explanation of a phenomenon, where "best" is measured via criteria like predicting new and surprising observations, parsimony, coherence and so on. Abduction does not require scientist to provide direct evidence for every single prediction. Evolutionary psychology hypotheses make predictions and thus compete with other hypotheses to explain traits. Hagen further argues that while some critics conclude that evolutionary psychology explanations for mental traits cannot be true because they can't be tested for the above reasons, this is a false conclusion to draw; even if evolutionary psychology hypotheses could not be tested, this does not mean they are false, it just means the evidence for them could not be acquired, not that traits don't exist because of evolutionary reasons.

Dominic Murphy explains that one of the most common objections to evolutionary psychology is the "time machine" argument. This is the argument that while evolutionary psychology can make predictions about things we should see in the modern world if the evolutionary psychology hypothesis is true, there are too many alternate explanations for the origin of a trait which would also predict this phenomenon e.g. a trait evolving as a by-product could predict the same evidence as the same trait evolving as an adaptation. Therefore, a potentially infinite number of alternative historical explanations are possible. Thus without a time machine, it is impossible to determine which possible explanation for the evidence seen in the modern day is correct. Murphy argues this argument is flawed on multiple grounds. Firstly, if an explanation for a trait is forwarded and a prediction for what we would see in the modern day is made based on that explanation, then one cannot just propose alternative explanations. Instead, these alternative explanations require testable predictions of their own to be forwarded, preferably multiple different predictions. In addition, not all explanations may predict the same evidence, thus Murphy argues that if one explanation predicts a great deal of evidence for modern day observations and alternative explanations struggle to explain this, then it is reasonable to have confidence in the former explanation. In addition, Murphy argues that if the "time machine" argument was applied to other sciences, it would lead to absurd results - Murphy observes that cosmologists have confirmed predictions about the Big Bang by studying available astronomical evidence and current understanding of particle physics, with no need for a time machine to travel back to the beginning of the universe. Similarly, geologists and physicists investigating the hypothesis that it was an asteroid impact that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs did so by looking for modern day evidence. Murphy thus concludes that the onus is on the sceptics to prove why evolutionary psychology is allegedly untestable on "time machine" grounds if other historical sciences are not, as "methods should be judged across the board, not singled out for ridicule in one context."

A similar argument was made by Andrew Goldfinch, who argued that this entire criticism is due to the issue of underdetermination - many rival explanations can potentially accommodate a phenomenon, making it difficult to discern which explanation is the correct one. Furthermore, one can also challenge the interpretation of an experiment's results, revise an explanation to accommodate a novel fact or even question the reliability of the experiments conducted. However, Goldfinch argues that this is a ubiquitous problem in all of science and not unique to evolutionary psychology, so it is not clear why this is seen as a criticism of the field if it would be dismissed elsewhere. Lastly, Goldfinch argues that one way to distinguish between competing explanations is to make a distinction between programmes that makes new predictions and discovers novel facts and those programmes that simply accommodate the fresh discoveries of other programmes. Those programmes which are actually making and testing predictions should be favoured over those simply accommodating the discoveries of others.

Alleged disregard for alternate explanations

Environmental explanations
Critics assert that evolutionary psychology has trouble developing research that can distinguish between environmental and cultural explanations on the one hand and adaptive evolutionary explanations on the other. Some studies have been criticized for their tendency to attribute to evolutionary processes elements of human cognition that may be attributable to social processes (e.g. preference for particular physical features in mates), cultural artifacts (e.g. patriarchy and the roles of women in society), or dialectical considerations (e.g. behaviours in which biology interacts with society, as when a biologically determined skin colour determines how one is treated). Evolutionary psychologists are frequently criticized for ignoring the vast bodies of literature in psychology, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, linguistics, philosophy, history, and the natural sciences. Both sides of the debate stress that statements such as "biology vs. environment" and "genes vs. culture" amount to false dichotomies, and outspoken critics of sociobiology such as Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon Kamin helped to popularise a "dialectical" approach to questions of human behaviour, where biology and environment interact in complex ways to produce what we see.

Evolutionary psychologists Confer et al. argue that evolutionary psychology fully accepts nature-nurture interactionism, and that it is possible to test the theories in order to distinguish between different explanations.

Other evolutionary mechanisms

Critics point out that within evolutionary biology there are many other non-adaptive pathways along which evolution can move to produce the behaviors seen in humans today. Natural selection is not the only evolutionary process that can change gene frequencies and produce novel traits. Genetic drift is caused by chance variation in the genes, environment, or development. Evolutionary by-products are traits that were not specially designed for an adaptive function, although they may also be species-typical and may also confer benefits on the organism. A "spandrel" is a term coined by Gould and Lewontin (1979a) for traits which confer no adaptive advantage to an organism, but are 'carried along' by an adaptive trait. Gould advocates the hypothesis that cognition in humans came about as a spandrel: "Natural selection made the human brain big, but most of our mental properties and potentials may be spandrels – that is, nonadaptive side consequences of building a device with such structural complexity". Once a trait acquired by some other mechanism confers an adaptive advantage, it may be open to further selection as an "exaptation". Gould argues that one cannot mistake the utility of a trait in the current environment for its adaptive origin. On the other hand, evolutionary psychologists suggest that critics misrepresent their field, and that empirical research in evolutionary psychology is designed to help identify which psychological traits are prone to adaptations, but also which are not.

Edward Hagen argued evolutionary psychology's reliance on adaptive explanations is grounded in the fact that the existence and survival of life is highly improbable. Hagen argues that most organisms do not survive to reproduce and that is only through adaptations that organisms can hope to do so; alternate explanations like genetic drift are only relevant if an organism can survive and reproduce in the first place and it is the fact that organisms do manage survive and reproduce, despite the odds against such a thing occurring, that evolutionary psychologists are interested in. Similarly, Steven Pinker argues that complex organs like eyes require many precise parts in exacting arrangements, which indicates they evolved via selective pressure, as it would be extremely improbable for such an arrangement to arise fortuitously out of genetic drift or as a byproduct of another trait. Hagen also argues that a way to distinguish spandrels from adaptations is that adaptations have evidence of design (that is to say they did not simply arise by pure chance but were selected for). While Hagen agrees that one can risk over-attributing adaptation, he observes that one can also risk under-attributing it as well. Hagen argues that tonsils can become infected and it needs to be known whether or not it is safe to remove them. Insisting that tonsils could just be spandrels is not helpful, whereas hypothesising that they may be adaptations allows one to make predictions about them to see if they do have a function and thus whether or not it is safe to remove them.  Conversely, Steve Stewart-Williams argues that it is not true that evolutionary psychologists do not consider non-adaptive explanations, arguing that evolutionary psychologists have suggested alternate explanations such as byproducts, observing that the hypothesis that obesity is caused by a mismatch between ancestral and modern environments is one of the most famous cases of a byproduct explanation in evolutionary psychology. Pinker makes a similar argument, arguing that evolutionary psychology has long held the view that things such as art, music, science, religion and dreams are probably byproducts or spandrels of other mental traits.

Laith Al-Shawaf argues that evolutionary psychologists use adaptations as a starting point for research - if the evidence in favour of the adaptation hypothesis fails to materialise, evolutionary psychologists will abandon it, so it is untrue to claim that evolutionary psychologists do not consider alternate hypotheses. Sven Walter observes that while critics of adaptationist hypotheses argue that alternative evolutionary explanations could exist, what these alternative explanations are and how they lead to the kind of traits evolutionary psychologists study is not always elaborated upon (for example, if a trait is proposed to be a byproduct rather than an adaptation, it is not always clear what it is supposed to be a byproduct of). Thus Walter argues that if there is no reasonably plausible alternative hypothesis, if the adaptationist hypotheses is logically plausible and if empirical evidence exists to support it, then there is thus reasonable support for the evolutionary psychologist's adaptationist hypothesis.

Steven Gangstead argues that demonstrating that a trait is beneficial is not sufficient to prove it is an adaptation. Rather, to show something is an adaptation it must be shown that it exhibits special design. Special design is when a trait performs a function (function meaning it increases the reproductive fitness of the organism) effectively and it is difficult to conceive of an alternative scenario where the trait would have evolved. Gangstead observes that the eye is an extreme example, as it is highly effective at the function of seeing, yet it is difficult to conceive of a scenario through which it would have evolved other than one where it was selected for its optical properties and thereby its function of sight. Evolutionary psychologists have also argued that a lack of special design is evidence of a trait being a byproduct rather than an adaptation; for example, it has been found that men find women's scent more attractive when they are fertile phase than their infertile luteal phase. While men finding this scent more attractive may be an adaptation, there is no evidence that women possess the adaptation to smell better when fertile, instead it is likely a byproduct of changing hormone levels, which men have been selected to detect and differently evaluate. Evolutionary psychologists consider evidence that a trait is an adaptation if it has many features that are improbably well suited to solving an ancestral adaptive problem, that the phenotypic properties are unlikely to have arisen by chance alone and that the trait is not better explained as a  byproduct or the consequence of some other adaptive problem. To show a trait is a byproduct, it must be shown that something else is an adaptation and then that the trait in question is a side effect of that adaptation. Co-opted exaptationist and spandrel hypotheses have an additional evidentiary burden compared to adaptationist hypotheses, as they must identify both the later co-opted functionality and the original adaptational functionality, as well as what caused the trait to be co-opted to their new function; it is not sufficient simply to propose an alternative exaptationist or spandrel hypotheses to the adaptationist one, rather these evidentiary burdens must be met. Leda Cosmides argues that raising the objection that a trait could be a spandrel is meaningless because an organism contains a potentially infinite number of spandrels. Instead, one must demonstrate what the trait is a spandrel of, rather than simply just suggesting it could be a spandrel.

Berry et al. argue that critics of adaptationist hypotheses are often guilty of uncritically accepting any alternative explanation provided it is not the adaptationist one. Furthermore, the authors argue that while critics insist that "adapative function" refer only to original adaptive function the trait evolved for, they argue that this is a nonsensical requirement. This is because if an adaptation was then used for a new, different, adaptive function, then this makes the trait an adaptation because it remains in the population because it helps organisms with this new function. Thus the trait's original purpose is irrelevant because it has been co-opted for a new purpose and maintains itself within the species because it increases reproductive success of members of the species who have it (versus those who may have lost it for some reason); nature is blind to the original "intended" function of the trait.

Durrant et al. agree that alternative explanations to adaptation have to be considered. The authors argue that an issue with adaptationist explanations is underdetermination. A theory is underdetermined when the evidence used to support it could be equally used to support one or more other competing theories. Underdetermination is an issue in science due to the problem of induction; in the great majority of cases, the truth of the data does not deductively entail the truth of the hypothesis. While this is an issue in general in science, sciences which deal with unobserved entities and processes, which evolutionary psychology does, are particularly vulnerable. Even if the theory can make predictions, these predictions do not necessarily confirm the hypothesis, as competing theory could also predict it; the authors argue that the prediction of novel facts does not necessarily mean acceptance of the theory, historically speaking, observing that while Einstein's theory of general relativity is famously held as being accepted because it predicted light would bend around black holes (which was unknown at the time), neither Einstein nor many of his contemporaries regarded it as a strong confirmation of his theory. Durrant et al. thus propose that the problem of underdetermination can be solved by judging competing theories on a range of criteria to determine which one best explains phenomena by having the best explanatory coherence; criteria suggested include explanatory breadth (which theory explains the great range of facts), simplicity (which theory requires the fewest special assumptions) and analogy (the theory is supported by analogy to theories scientists already find credible). Thus any criticism of adaptationist theories must demonstrate that an alternative theory offers greater explanatory coherence than the adaptationist one.

Other overall areas of criticism

Alleged ethnocentrism
One aspect of evolutionary psychology is finding traits that have been shown to be universal in humans. Many critics have pointed out that many traits considered universal at some stage by evolutionary psychologists often turn out to be dependent on cultural and particular historical circumstances. Critics allege that evolutionary psychologists tend to assume that their own current cultural context represents a universal human nature. For example, anthropologist Susan McKinnon argues that evolutionary theories of kinship rest on ethnocentric presuppositions. Evolutionary psychologists assert that the degree of genetic relatedness determines the extent of kinship (e.g., solidarity, nurturance, and altruism) because in order to maximize their own reproductive success, people "invest" only in their own genetic children or closely related kin. Steven Pinker, for instance, stated "You're either someone's mother or you aren't". McKinnon argues that such biologically centered constructions of relatedness result from a specific cultural context: the kinship category "mother" is relatively self-evident in Anglo-American cultures where biology is privileged but not in other societies where rank and marital status, not biology, determine who counts as a mother or where mother's sisters are also considered mothers and one's mother's brother is understood as the "male mother".

However, evolutionary psychologists point out that their research actually focuses on commonalities between people of different cultures to help to identify "human psychological nature" and cultural universals. It is not a focus on local behavioral variation (which may sometimes be considered ethnocentric) that interests evolutionary psychologists; rather their focus is to find underlying psychological commonalities between people from various cultures.

Alleged reductionism and determinism
Some critics view evolutionary psychology as influenced by genetic determinism and reductionism.

Evolutionary psychology is based on the theory that human physiology and psychology are influenced by genes. Evolutionary psychologists assume that genes contain instructions for building and operating an organism and that these instructions are passed from one generation to the next via genes.

Lickliter and Honeycutt (2003) have argued that evolutionary psychology is a predeterministic and preformationistic approach that assumes that physical and psychological traits are predetermined and programmed while virtually ignoring non-genetic factors involved in human development. Even when evolutionary psychologists acknowledge the influence of the environment, they reduce its role to that of an activator or trigger of the predetermined developmental instructions presumed to be encoded in a person's genes. Lickliter and Honeycutt have stated that the assumption of genetic determinism is most evident in the theory that learning and reasoning are governed by innate, domain-specific modules. Evolutionary psychologists assume that modules preexist individual development and lie dormant in the structure of the organism, awaiting activation by some (usually unspecified) experiential events. Lickliter and Honeycutt have opposed this view and suggested that it is the entire developmental system, including the specific features of the environment a person actually encounters and interacts with (and not the environments of distant ancestors) that brings about any modularity of cognitive function.

Critics argue that a reductionist analysis of the relationship between genes and behavior results in a flawed research program and a restricted interpretation of the evidence, creating problems for the creation of models attempting to explain behavior. Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin instead advocate a dialectical interpretation of behavior in which "it is not just that wholes are more than the sum of their parts, it is that parts become qualitatively new by being parts of the whole". They argue that reductionist explanations such as the hierarchical reductionism proposed by Richard Dawkins will cause the researcher to miss dialectical ones. Similarly, Hilary Rose criticizes evolutionary psychologists' explanations of child abuse as excessively reductionist. As an example she cites Martin Daly and Margot Wilson's theory that stepfathers are more abusive because they lack the nurturing instinct of natural parents and can increase their reproductive success in this way. According to Rose this does not explain why most stepfathers do not abuse their children and why some biological fathers do. She also argues that cultural pressures can override the genetic predisposition to nurture as in the case of sex-selective infanticide prevalent in some cultures where male offspring are favored over female offspring.

Evolutionary psychologists Workman and Reader reply that while reductionism may be a "dirty word" to some it is actually an important scientific principle. They argue it is at the root of discoveries such as the world being made up of atoms and complex life being the result of evolution. At the same time they emphasize that it is important to look at all "levels" of explanations, e.g. both psychologists looking at environmental causes of depression and neuroscientists looking the brain contribute to different aspects of our knowledge of depression. Workman and Reader also deny the accusation of genetic determinism, asserting that genes usually do not cause behaviors absolutely but predispose to certain behaviors that are affected by factors such as culture and an individual's life history.

Steven Pinker argues that the charge of reductionism is a straw man and that evolutionary psychologists are aware that organisms develop due to complex interactions between genes and the environment. Pinker argues that Lewontin, Rose and Kamin misrepresented Dawkins in this regard. Pinker argues that when evolutionary psychologists talk about genes "causing" behaviour, they mean that said gene increases the probability of a behaviour occurring compared to other genes, which is averaged out of the organism's evolutionary timescale and the environments it has lived in. Pinker argues that this is a nonreductionist and nondeterminist view of genes, which is common in evolutionary biology.

Disjunction and grain problems
Some have argued that even if the theoretical assumptions of evolutionary psychology turned out to be true, it would nonetheless lead to methodological problems that would compromise its practice. The disjunction and grain problems are argued to create methodological challenges related to the indeterminacy of evolutionary psychology's adaptive functions. That is, the inability to correctly choose, from a number of possible answers to the question: "what is the function of a given mechanism?"

The disjunction problem occurs when a mechanism appears to respond to one thing (F), but is also correlated with another (G). Whenever F is present, G is also present, and the mechanism seems to respond to both F and G. The difficulty thus involves deciding whether to characterize the mechanism's adaptive function as being related to F, G, or both. "For example, a frogs pre-catching mechanism responds to flies, bees, food pellets, etc.; so is its adaptation attuned to flies, bees, fleebees, pellets, all of these, or just some?"

The grain problem refers to the challenge in knowing what kind of environmental 'problem' an adaptive mental mechanism might have solved. As summarized by Sterenly & Griffiths (1999): "What are the problems 'out there' in the environment? Is the problem of mate choice a single problem or a mosaic of many distinct problems? These problems might include: When should I be unfaithful to my usual partner? When should I desert my old partner? When should I help my sibs find a partner? When and how should I punish infidelity?" The grain problem therefore refers to the possibility that an adaptive problem may actually involve a set of nested 'sub-problems' "which may themselves relate to different input domains or situations. Franks states that "if both adaptive problems and adaptive solutions are indeterminate, what chance is there for evolutionary psychology?"

Franks also states that "The arguments in no sense count against a general evolutionary explanation of psychology" and that by relaxing assumptions the problems may be avoided, although this may reduce the ability to make detailed models.

Neglect of individual genetic differences
A common critique is that evolutionary psychology does not address the complexity of individual development and experience and fails to explain the influence of genes on behavior in individual cases. Evolutionary psychologists respond that their discipline is not primarily concerned with explaining the behavior of specific individuals, but rather broad categories of human behaviors across societies and cultures. It is the search for species-wide psychological adaptations (or "human nature") that distinguishes evolutionary psychology from purely cultural or social explanations. These psychological adaptations include cognitive decision rules that respond to different environmental, cultural, and social circumstances in ways that are (on average) adaptive.

Specific areas of controversy

Rape and attraction to aggression
Smith et al. (2001) criticized Thornhill and Palmer's hypothesis that a predisposition to rape in certain circumstances might be an evolved sexually dimorphic psychological adaptation. They developed a fitness cost/benefit mathematical model and populated it with estimates of certain parameters (some parameter estimates were based on studies of the Aché in Paraguay). Their model suggested that, on average, the costs of rape for a typical 25-year-old male outweigh benefits by a factor of ten to one. On the basis of their model and parameter estimates, they suggested that this would make it unlikely that rape generally would have net fitness benefits for most men. They also find that rape from raiding other tribes has lower costs but does not offer net fitness benefits, making it also unlikely that was an adaptation.

Beckerman et al. (2009) disputed explanations of male aggression as a reproductive strategy. In a study of the Waorani tribes, the most aggressive warriors had the fewest descendants.

Waist-to-hip ratios
Others have criticized the assertion that men universally preferred women with a waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) of 0.7 or the "hourglass" figure. Studies of peoples in Peru and Tanzania found that men preferred ratios of 0.9. Cashdan (2008), investigating why the average WHR among women was higher than 0.7, wrote that a higher WHR was associated with higher levels of cortisol and androgens, and argued that these hormones caused better stress response, and higher assertiveness and competitiveness, respectively. She argued that these effects were also adaptive and counteracted the mate-attracting and fecundity effects of lower WHR, and that women's WHR was higher where they are more dependent on their own hard work or where the environment is difficult, and lower in societies where they gain resources by attracting a mate, with male preferences shifting accordingly. A 2019 review of numerous hypotheses concluded that researchers should focus on differentiating the conclusions of different analyses of these hypotheses, considering a lot of the contradictions within the data and the vague definitions of "mate-value". Recent studies utilizing stimuli that match what is found in the local culture show that men display a cross-cultural consensus in preferring a low waist-to-hip ratio (i.e., hourglass-like figure), with some fluctuation depending on whether the local ecology is nutritionally-stressed. Congenitally-blind men also display a preference for hourglass figures in women.

Behaviors that reduce reproductive success
"Maladaptive" behaviors such as homosexuality and suicide seem to reduce reproductive success and pose a challenge for evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists have proposed explanations, such that there may be higher fertility rates for the female relatives of homosexual men, thus progressing a potential homosexual gene, or that they may be byproducts of adaptive behaviors that usually increase reproductive success. However, a review by Confer et al. states that they "remain at least somewhat inexplicable on the basis of current evolutionary psychological accounts".

Debate over implications

Ethical

Many critics have argued that evolutionary psychology and sociobiology justify existing social hierarchies and reactionary policies. Evolutionary psychologists have been accused of conflating "is" and "ought", and evolutionary psychology has been used to argue against social change (because the way things are now has been evolved and adapted) and against social justice (e.g. the argument that the rich are only rich because they've inherited greater abilities, so programs to raise the standards of the poor are doomed to fail).

It has also been suggested by critics that evolutionary psychologists' theories and interpretations of empirical data rely heavily on ideological assumptions about race and gender. Halford Fairchild, for example, argues that J. Philippe Rushton's work on race and intelligence was influenced by preconceived notions about race and was "cloaked in the nomenclature, language and 'objectivity'" of evolutionary psychology, sociobiology and population genetics.

Moreover, evolutionary psychology has been criticized for its ethical implications. Richardon (2007) and Wilson et al. (2003) have cited the theories in A Natural History of Rape where rape is described as a form of mate choice that enhances male fitness as examples. Critics have expressed concern over the moral consequences of such evolutionary theories and some critics have understood them to justify rape. However, empirical research has found that, compared to a control group, exposure to evolutionary psychology theories had no observable impact on male judgments of men's criminal sexual behavior.

Evolutionary psychologists caution against committing the naturalistic fallacy – the idea that "ought can be derived from is" and that "what is natural" is necessarily a moral good. In the book The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker contends that critics have committed two logical fallacies: The naturalistic fallacy is the idea that what is found in nature is good. It was the basis for Social Darwinism, the belief that helping the poor and sick would get in the way of evolution, which depends on the survival of the fittest. Today, biologists denounce the Naturalistic Fallacy because they want to describe the natural world honestly, without people deriving morals about how we ought to behave -- as in: If birds and beasts engage in adultery, infanticide, cannibalism, it must be OK. The moralistic fallacy is that what is good is found in nature. It lies behind the bad science in nature-documentary voiceovers: lions are mercy-killers of the weak and sick, mice feel no pain when cats eat them, dung beetles recycle dung to benefit the ecosystem and so on. It also lies behind the romantic belief that humans cannot harbor desires to kill, rape, lie, or steal because that would be too depressing or reactionary.

Similarly, the authors of A Natural History of Rape, Thornhill and Palmer, as well as McKibbin et al. respond to allegations that evolutionary psychologists legitimizes rape by arguing that their critics' reasoning is a naturalistic fallacy in the same way it would be a fallacy to accuse the scientists doing research on the causes of cancer of justifying cancer. Instead, they argue that understanding the causes of rape may help create preventive measures.

Political

Part of the controversy has consisted in each side accusing the other of holding or supporting extreme political viewpoints: evolutionary psychology has often been accused of supporting right-wing politics, whereas critics have been accused of being motivated by Marxist view points.

Linguist and activist Noam Chomsky has said that evolutionary psychologists often ignore evidence that might harm the political status quo:

Chomsky has also said that not enough is known about human nature to point to any political conclusions.

In a review of Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate, which draws partially on evolutionary psychology, Louis Menand wrote:

Evolutionary psychologist Glenn Wilson argues that "promoting recognition of the true power and role of instincts is not the same as advocating the total abandonment of social restraint". Left-wing philosopher Peter Singer in his book A Darwinian Left has argued that the view of human nature provided by evolution is compatible with and should be incorporated into the ideological framework of the Left.

Researchers conducted a 2007 study investigating the views of a sample of 168 United States PhD psychology students. The authors concluded that those who self-identified as adaptationists were much less conservative than the general population average. They also found no differences compared to non-adaptationist students and found non-adaptationists to express a preference for less strict and quantitative scientific methodology than adaptationists. A 2012 study found that evolutionary anthropology students were largely of a left-liberal political stance and differed little in political opinions from those of other psychology students.

See also
Biopsychiatry controversy

References

Further reading

Books and book chapters
 Alcock, John (2001). The Triumph of Sociobiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Barkow, Jerome (Ed.). (2006) Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Buller, David. (2005) Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature.
 Buss, David, ed. (2005) The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. .
 Degler, C. N. (1991). In search of human nature: The decline and revival of Darwinism in American social thought. New York: Oxford University Press.
 Ehrlich, P. & Ehrlich, A. (2008). The dominant animal: Human evolution and the environment. Washington, DC: Island Press.
 Fodor, J. (2000). The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology
 Fodor, J. & Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (2011). What Darwin got wrong.
 Gillette, Aaron. (2007) Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
 Gould, S.J. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
 Joseph, J. (2004). The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope. New York: Algora. (2003 United Kingdom Edition by PCCS Books)
 Joseph, J. (2006). The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes. New York: Algora.
 Kitcher, Philip. (1985). Vaulting Ambitions: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature. London:Cambridge.
 Kohn, A. (1990) The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life
 Leger, D. W., Kamil, A. C., & French, J. A. (2001). Introduction: Fear and loathing of evolutionary psychology in the social sciences. In J. A. French, A. C. Kamil, & D. W. Leger (Eds.), The Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol. 47: Evolutionary psychology and motivation, (pp. ix-xxiii). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
 Lewis, Jeff (2015) Media, Culture and Human Violence: From Savage Lovers to Violent Complexity, Rowman and Littlefield, London/Lanham.
 Lewontin, R.C., Rose, S. & Kamin, L. (1984) Biology, Ideology and Human Nature: Not In Our Genes
 Malik, K. (2002). Man, beast, and zombie: What science can and cannot tell us about human nature
 McKinnon, S. (2006) Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology
 Rose, H. and Rose, S. (eds.)(2000) Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology New York: Harmony Books
 Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.
 Richards, Janet Radcliffe (2000). Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction. London: Routledge.
 Sahlins, Marshall. (1976) The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology

 Segerstrale, Ullica (2000). Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Wallace, B. (2010). Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work

Articles

 Lewontin, R.C. (1998) 'The evolution of cognition: questions we will never answer', in D. Scarborough and S. Sternberg (eds), An Invitation to Cognitive Science. Vol. 4: Methods, Models and Conceptual Issues. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 107–32.

 McKinnon, S. (2005). On Kinship and Marriage: A Critique of the Genetic and Gender Calculus of Evolutionary Psychology. In: Complexities: Beyond Nature & Nurture, McKinnon, S. & Silverman, S. (Eds); pp. 106–131.

 Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. & Hill, K. (2000). Evolutionary analyses of human behaviour: a commentary on Daly & Wilson. Animal Behaviour, 60, F21-F26.

Other documents
 Stephen Jay Gould."Darwinian Fundamentalism", New York Review of Books, Volume 44, Number 10 · June 12, 1997
 David Buller. "Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology" Scientific American. December 19, 2008.
 David Buller. "Sex, Jealousy & Violence. A Skeptical Look at Evolutionary Psychology". Skeptic.
 "Paul Ehrlich challenges Evolutionary Psychology"
 John Klasios. "The evolutionary psychology of human mating: A response to Buller's critique".
 Malik, Kenan. 1998. "Darwinian Fallacies". Prospects.

 Alas Poor Evolutionary Psychology: Unfairly Accused, Unjustly Condemned. Robert Kurzban's review of the book Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology.
 Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2005). Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Full text
 Tooby, J., Cosmides, L. & Barrett, H. C. (2005). Resolving the debate on innate ideas: Learnability constraints and the evolved interpenetration of motivational and conceptual functions. In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S. (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Content. NY: Oxford University Press.
 Controversies surrounding evolutionary psychology by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
 Why do some people hate evolutionary psychology? by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. (See also: his Evolutionary Psychology FAQ which responds to criticisms of evolutionary psychology.)
 Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! ... and here's why ... Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181–202.

 The Never-Ending Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology: Persistent Falsehoods About Evolutionary Psychology by Gad Saad
 Evolutionary Psychology Under Attack by Dan Sperber

Online videos
TED talk  by Steven Pinker about his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
 Margaret Mead and Samoa. Review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by Mead's book "Coming of Age in Samoa."
 Secrets of the Tribe Documents the conflicts between cultural and evolutionary anthropologists who have studied the Yanomamo tribes.

Criticisms
Criticism
Psychology controversies

Criticism of evolutionary psychology


Michael Earls, S.J. (1875–1937) was a Jesuit priest, as well as a writer, poet, teacher, and administrator.

Life
The eldest of ten children, he was born in 1875 to Irish immigrant parents, Martin Earls and Mary (Shaughnessy) Earls, in Southbridge, Massachusetts, a manufacturing town in south, central Massachusetts.

He attended school in Southbridge and later prepared for college at Memramcook, near St. John's New Brunswick.  He entered College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. in 1893, beginning what would be a long  association with one of the first Catholic colleges in the U.S., graduating with an A.B.

He studied literature at Georgetown University from 1896–1897, earning an MA and then served as a tutor on a trip to Europe, after which, in 1898, he entered the Grand Seminary at Montreal, Canada.

He later decided to attend the Jesuit novitiate at Frederick, Maryland. He taught at Boston College High School, was affiliated with the school literary magazine, and produced a play.  He returned to Woodstock and was ordained in 1912.

He was Professor of Rhetoric at Holy Cross from 1916 to 1926, Father Minister of the community from 1926–1929, and taught English from 1929 to 1931. In addition to these academic roles, he also held a number of other church positions, including parish priest at St. Mary's in Boston's North End from 1933 to 1935.

Over the course of his life, he was frequently drawn to leading literary figures and counted among his friends and correspondents Louise Imogen Guiney, Joyce Kilmer, and G. K. Chesterton.

As director of the Holy Cross Alumni Association, he was struck by a heart attack in New York City while boarding a train to Cleveland. He died at St. Vincent's hospital on January 31, 1937.

He is memorialized by a stained glass window at the Dinand Library of Holy Cross College.

Works

Poetry
The Hosting of the King
The Road Beyond the Town (1912)
Ballads of Childhood
Ballads of Peace in War
From Bersabee to Dan
In the Abbey of the Woods

Short stories
Melchior of Boston
Stuore

Novels
Wedding Bells of Glendalough
Marie of the House d`Anters

Essays
Under College Towers
Manuscripts and Memories

References

Kuzniewski, Anthony J.,  Thy Honored Name: A History of the College of the Holy Cross, 1843-1994 (Catholic University of America Press, 1999)
The Record of an American Priets: Michael Earls, S.J., 1873–1937, American Ecclesiastical Review, 1957

External links

 Google Books (scanned copy) Manuscripts and Memories

Georgetown University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
19th-century American Jesuits
20th-century American Jesuits
1875 births
1937 deaths
College of the Holy Cross alumni
People from Southbridge, Massachusetts

Michael Earls


Windows Vista, an operating system released by Microsoft for consumers on January 30, 2007, has been widely criticized by reviewers and users. Due to issues with new security features, performance, driver support and product activation, Windows Vista has been the subject of a number of negative assessments by various groups.

Security

Driver signing requirement
For security reasons, 64-bit versions of Windows Vista allow only signed drivers to be installed in kernel mode. Because code executing in kernel mode enjoys wide privileges on the system, the signing requirement aims to ensure that only code with a known origin executes at this level. In order for a driver to be signed, a developer/software vendor has to obtain an Authenticode certificate with which to sign the driver. Authenticode certificates can be obtained from certificate authorities trusted by Microsoft. Microsoft trusts the certificate authority to verify the applicant's identity before issuing a certificate. If a driver is not signed using a valid certificate, or if the driver was signed using a certificate which has been revoked by Microsoft or the certificate authority, Windows will refuse to load the driver.

The following criticisms/claims have been made regarding this requirement:
It disallows experimentation from the hobbyist community. The required Authenticode certificates for signing Vista drivers are expensive and out of reach for small developers, usually about $400–$500/year (from Verisign).

Microsoft allows developers to temporarily or locally disable the signing requirement on systems they control (by hitting F8 during boot) or by signing the drivers with self-issued certificates or by running a kernel debugger.

At one time, a third-party tool called Atsiv existed that would allow any driver, unsigned or signed to be loaded. Atsiv worked by installing a signed "surrogate" driver which could be directed to load any other driver, thus circumventing the driver signing requirement. Since this was in violation of the driver signing requirement, Microsoft closed this workaround with hotfix KB932596, by revoking the certificate with which the surrogate driver was signed.

Flaws in memory protection features
Security researchers Alexander Sotirov and Mark Dowd have developed a technique that bypasses many of the new memory-protection safeguards in Windows Vista, such as address space layout randomization (ASLR). The result of this is that any already existing buffer overflow bugs that, in Vista, were previously not exploitable due to such features, may now be exploitable. This is not in itself a vulnerability: as Sotirov notes, "What we presented is weaknesses in the protection mechanism. It still requires the system under attack to have a vulnerability. Without the presence of a vulnerability these techniques don't really [accomplish] anything." The vulnerability Sotirov and Dowd used in their paper as an example was the 2007 animated cursor bug, .

One security researcher (Dino Dai Zovi) claimed that this means that it is "completely game over" for Vista security though Sotirov refuted this, saying that "The articles that describe Vista security as 'broken' or 'done for,' with 'unfixable vulnerabilities' are completely inaccurate. One of the suggestions I saw in many of the discussions was that people should just use Windows XP. In fact, in XP a lot of those protections we're bypassing [such as ASLR] don't even exist."

Digital rights management
Another common criticism concerns the integration of a new form of digital rights management (DRM) into the operating system, specifically the Protected Video Path (PVP), which involves technologies such as High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and the Image Constraint Token (ICT). These features were added to Vista due to licensing restrictions from the HD-DVD consortium and Blu-ray association. This would have concerned only the playback resolution of protected content on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, but it had not been enabled as of 2017. A lack of a protected channel did not stop playback. Audio plays back as normal but high-definition video downsampled on Blu-ray and HD DVD to slightly-better-than-DVD quality video.

The Protected Video Path mandates that encryption must be used whenever content marked as "protected" will travel over a link where it might be intercepted. This is called a User-Accessible Bus (UAB). Additionally, all devices that come into contact with premium content (such as graphics cards) have to be certified by Microsoft. Before playback starts, all the devices involved are checked using a hardware functionality scan (HFS) to verify if they are genuine and have not been tampered with. Devices are required to lower the resolution (from 1920×1080 to 960×540) of video signals outputs that are not protected by HDCP. Additionally, Microsoft maintains a global revocation list for devices that have been compromised. This list is distributed to PCs over the Internet using normal update mechanisms. The only effect on a revoked driver's functionality is that high-level protected content will not play; all other functionality, including low-definition playback, is retained.

Notable critics
Peter Gutmann, a computer security expert from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, released a whitepaper in which he raises the following concerns against these mechanisms:
 Adding encryption facilities to devices makes them more expensive, a cost that is passed on to the user.
 If outputs are not deemed sufficiently protected by the media industry, then even very expensive equipment can be required to be switched off (for example, S/PDIF-based, high-end audio cards).
 Some newer high-definition monitors are not HDCP-enabled, even though the manufacturer may claim otherwise.
 The added complexity makes systems less reliable.
 Since non-protected media are not subject to the new restrictions, users may be encouraged to remove the protection in order to view them without restrictions, thus defeating the content protection scheme's initial purpose.
 Protection mechanisms, such as disabling or degrading outputs, may be triggered erroneously or maliciously, motivating denial-of-service attacks.
 Revoking the driver of a device that is in wide use is such a drastic measure that Gutmann doubts Microsoft will ever actually do so. On the other hand, they may be forced to because of their legal obligations to the movie studios.

The Free Software Foundation conducted a campaign against Vista, called "BadVista", on these grounds.

Reaction to criticism
Ed Bott, author of Windows Vista Inside Out, published a three-part blog which rebuts many of Gutmann's claims.

Bott's criticisms can be summarized as follows:
 Gutmann based his paper on outdated documentation from Microsoft and second-hand web sources.
 Gutmann quotes selectively from the Microsoft specifications.
 Gutmann did no experimental work with Vista to prove his theories. Rather, he makes mistaken assumptions and then speculates wildly on their implications.
 Gutmann's paper, while presented as serious research, is really just an opinion piece.

Technology writer George Ou stated that Gutmann's paper relies on unreliable sources and that Gutmann has never used Windows Vista to test his theories.

Gutmann responded to both Bott and Ou in a further article, which stated that the central thesis of Gutmann's article has not been refuted and the response of Bott is "disinformation".

Microsoft published a blog entry with "Twenty Questions (and Answers)" on Windows Vista Content Protection which refutes some of Gutmann's arguments.

Microsoft MVP Paul Smith has written a response to Gutmann's paper in which he counters some of his arguments. Specifically, he says:
 Microsoft is not to blame for these measures. The company offered this solution as an alternative to not being able to playback the content at all.
 The Protected Video Path will not be used for quite a while. There is said to be an agreement between Microsoft and Sony that Blu-ray discs will not mandate protection until at least 2010, possibly even 2012.
 Vista does not degrade or refuse to play any existing media, CDs or DVDs. The protected data paths are only activated if protected content requires it.
 Users of other operating systems such as Linux or Mac OS X will not have official access to this premium content.
Microsoft also noted that content protection mechanisms have existed in Windows as far back as Windows ME.

Since mainstream and extended support for Windows Vista ended on April 10, 2012, and April 11, 2017, respectively, plans to enable the Protected Video Path for Windows Vista is very unlikely.

Hardware requirements and performance
Around the time of its release, Microsoft stated, "nearly all PCs on the market today will run Windows Vista," and most PCs sold after 2005 are capable of running Vista.

Some of the hardware that worked in Windows XP does not work, or works poorly in Vista, because no Vista-compatible drivers are available due to companies going out of business or their lack of interest in supporting old hardware.

Speed
Tom's Hardware published benchmarks in January 2007 that showed that Windows Vista executed typical applications more slowly than Windows XP with the same hardware configuration. A subset of the benchmarks used were provided by Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (or SPEC), who later stated that such "results should not be compared to those generated while running Windows XP, even if testing is done with the same hardware configuration." SPEC acknowledges that an apple-to-apples comparison cannot be made in cases such as the one done by Tom's Hardware, calling such studies "invalid comparisons." However, the Tom's Hardware report conceded that the SPECviewperf tests "suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista". For this reason the report recommended against replacing Windows XP with Vista until manufacturers made these drivers available.

The report also concluded in tests involving real world applications Vista performed considerably slower, noting "We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios". Other commonly used applications, including Photoshop and WinRAR, also performed worse under Vista.

Many low-to-mid-end machines that come with Windows Vista pre-installed suffer from exceptionally slow performance with the default Vista settings that come pre-loaded, and laptop manufacturers have offered to "downgrade" laptops to Windows XP—for a price. However, this "price" is unnecessary, as Microsoft allows users of Windows Vista and Windows 7 to freely "downgrade" their software by installing XP and then phoning a Microsoft representative for a new product key.

File operation performance
When first released in November 2006, Vista performed file operations such as copying and deletion more slowly than other operating systems. Large copies required when migrating from one computer to another seemed difficult or impossible without workarounds such as using the command line. This inability to efficiently perform basic file operations attracted strong criticism. After six months, Microsoft confirmed the existence of these problems by releasing a special performance and reliability update, which was later disseminated through Windows Update, and is included in Service Pack 1.

Nonetheless, one benchmark reported to show that, while improving performance compared to Vista's original release, Service Pack 1 does not increase the level of performance to that of Windows XP. However, that benchmark has been questioned by others within ZDNet. Ed Bott both questions his colleagues' methods and provides benchmarks that refute the results.

Game performance
Early in Vista's lifecycle, many games showed a drop in frame rate compared to Windows XP. These results were largely the consequence of Vista's immature drivers for graphics cards, and higher system requirements for Vista itself.
By the time Service Pack 1 was released in mid-2008, gaming benchmarks showed that Vista was on par with Windows XP. However, games such as Devil May Cry 4, Crysis and Left 4 Dead stated that their memory requirements on Vista were 1.5x–2x higher than XP.

Software bloat
Concerns were expressed that Windows Vista may contain software bloat. Speaking in 2007 at the University of Illinois, Microsoft distinguished engineer Eric Traut said, "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system, and that's maybe a fair characterization, I have to admit." He went on to say that, "at its core, the kernel, and the components that make up the very core of the operating system, is actually pretty streamlined."

Former PC World editor Ed Bott expressed skepticism about the claims of bloat, noting that almost every single operating system that Microsoft has ever sold had been criticized as "bloated" when they first came out; even those now regarded as the exact opposite, such as MS-DOS.

Vista capable lawsuit
Two consumers sued Microsoft in United States federal court alleging the "Windows Vista Capable" marketing campaign was a bait-and-switch tactic as some computers with Windows XP pre-installed could only run Vista Home Basic, sometimes not even running at a user-acceptable speed. In February 2008, a Seattle judge granted the suit class action status, permitting all purchasers in the class to participate in the case.
Released documents in the case, as well as a Dell presentation in March 2007, discussed late changes to Windows Vista which permitted hardware to be certified that would require upgrading in order to use Vista, and that lack of compatible drivers forced hardware vendors to "limp out with issues" when Vista was launched. This was one of several Vista launch appraisals included in 158 pages of unsealed documents.

Laptop battery life
With the new features of Vista, criticism has surfaced concerning the use of battery power in laptops running Vista, which can drain the battery much more rapidly than Windows XP, reducing battery life. With the Windows Aero visual effects turned off, battery life is equal to or better than Windows XP systems. "With the release of a new operating system and its new features and higher requirements, higher power consumption is normal", as Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC noted, "when Windows XP came out, that was true, and when Windows 2000 came out, that was true."

Software compatibility
According to Gartner, "Vista has been dogged by fears, in some cases proven, that many existing applications have to be re-written to operate on the new system."
Cisco has been reported as saying, "Vista will solve a lot of problems, but for every action, there's a reaction, and unforeseen side-effects and mutations. Networks can become more brittle." According to PC World, "software compatibility issues, bug worries keep businesses from moving to Microsoft's new OS." Citing "concerns over cost and compatibility," the United States Department of Transportation prohibited workers from upgrading to Vista. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said that the rollout of Vista is significantly behind schedule because "several key programs still aren't compatible, including patient scheduling software."

As of July 2007, there were over 2,000 tested applications that were compatible with Vista. Microsoft published a list of legacy applications that meet their "Works with Windows Vista" software standards as well as a list of applications that meet their more stringent "Certified for Windows Vista" standards. Microsoft released the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 application for migrating Vista-incompatible applications, while virtualization solutions like VirtualBox, Virtual PC 2007 or those from VMware can also be used as a last resort to continue running Vista-incompatible applications under legacy versions of Windows.

Microsoft also provided an Upgrade Advisor Tool (.NET Framework must be installed and an Internet connection is required) which can be used on existing XP systems to flag driver and application compatibility issues before upgrading to Vista.

Removal of announced features
Microsoft has also been criticized for removing some heavily discussed features such as Next-Generation Secure Computing Base in May 2004, WinFS in August 2004, Windows PowerShell in August 2005 (though this was released separately from Vista prior to Vista's release, and is included in Vista's successor, Windows 7), SecurID Support in May 2006, PC-to-PC Synchronization in June 2006. The initial "three pillars" in Vista were all radically altered to reach a release date.

Pricing
Microsoft's international pricing of Vista has been criticized by many as too expensive. The differences in pricing from one country to another vary significantly, especially considering that copies of Vista can be ordered and shipped worldwide from the United States; this could save between $42 (€26) and $314 (€200). In many cases, the difference in price is significantly greater than was the case for Windows XP. In Malaysia, the pricing for Vista is at around RM799 ($244/€155). At the 2007 exchange rate, United Kingdom consumers paid almost double their United States counterparts for the same software.

Since the release of Windows Vista in January 2007 Microsoft has reduced the retail and upgrade price point of Vista. Originally Vista Ultimate full retail was priced at $399, and the upgrade at $259. These prices have since been reduced to $319 and $219 respectively.

Software Protection Platform
Vista includes an enhanced set of anti-copying technologies, based on Windows XP's Windows Genuine Advantage, called Software Protection Platform (SPP). In the initial release of Windows Vista (without Service Pack 1), SPP included a reduced-functionality mode, which the system enters when it detects that the user has "failed product activation" or that the copy of Vista is "identified as counterfeit or non-genuine". A Microsoft white paper described the technology as follows:

Some analysts questioned this behavior, especially given an imperfect false-positive record on behalf of SPP's predecessor, and given at least one temporary validation server outage which reportedly flagged many legitimate copies of Vista and XP as "Non-Genuine" when Windows Update would "check in" and fail the "validation" challenge.

Microsoft altered SPP significantly in Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Instead of the reduced-functionality mode, installations of Vista left unactivated for 30 days present users with a nag screen which prompts them to activate the operating system when they log in, change the desktop to a solid black colour every hour, and periodically use notification balloons to warn users about software counterfeiting. In addition, updates classified as optional are not available to unactivated copies of Vista.
Microsoft maintains a technical bulletin providing further details on product activation for Vista.

Windows Ultimate Extras
Windows Vista Ultimate users can download exclusive Windows Ultimate Extras. These extras have been released much more slowly than expected, with only four available as of August 2009, almost three years after Vista was released, which has angered some users who paid extra mainly for the promised add-ons. Barry Goffe, Director of Windows Vista Ultimate for Microsoft states that they were unexpectedly delayed on releasing several of the extras, but that "Microsoft plans to ship a collection of additional Windows Ultimate Extras that it is confident will delight its passionate Windows Vista Ultimate customers."

Vistaster
This term was coined as a disparaging substitute for the proper name of the Vista operating system. Use of the term was popularized by its use on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a technology and pop culture comedic blog where author Daniel Lyons writes in the persona of then Apple CEO Steve Jobs. This use is in reference to the failure of Vista to meet sales and customer satisfaction expectations. Lyons published an article in Forbes using the term, and it was soon picked up by international media outlets: Jornal de Notícias, Rádio e Televisão de Portugal, La Nación, The Chosun Ilbo, and 163.com.

Retrospective analysis

Keith Ward of Lifewire said that "Windows Vista was not Microsoft's most-loved release. People look at Windows 7 with nostalgia, but you don't hear much love for Vista. Microsoft has mostly forgotten it, but Vista was a good, solid operating system with many things going for it."

See also
 Criticism of Windows 10
 Mojave Experiment

References

External links
 Bad Vista FSF campaign

Microsoft criticisms and controversies
Windows Vista
Windows Vista

de:Windows Vista

Criticism of Windows Vista


The acinaces, also transliterated as akinakes ( Greek ) or akinaka (unattested Old Persian *akīnakah, Sogdian kyn'k) is a type of dagger or xiphos (short sword) used mainly in the first millennium BCE in the eastern Mediterranean Basin, especially by the Medes, Scythians, Persians and Caspians, then by the Greeks.

The acinaces, of Scythian origin, but made famous by the Persians, rapidly spread throughout the  ancient world. The Romans believed that this weapon originated with the Medes.

The acinaces is typically 40–60 cm (14–18 in.) in length and double-edged, and although there is no universal design, the guard may be lobed with the hilt resembling that of a bollock dagger, or the pommel may be split or of the "antenna" type. The scabbard – as much as anything else – defines the acinaces, and usually has a large decorative mount near the opening, allowing it to be suspended from a belt on the wearer's right side.

Identification
Ancient texts say very little about the acinaces, other than that it was a type of "Persian sword". Because of this, authors writing in Latin throughout history tended to equate the word with whatever type of weapon the contemporary Persians were using. Thus, it is frequently used in medieval Latin texts to mean scimitar or the like, a meaning it still retains in scientific Latin. Paulus Hector Mair even goes so far as to translate dussack as acinaces, because it is curved like a scimitar, and likewise in the works of Jesuit authors describing Japan, acinaces is used for katana.

However, the Persian shamshir is a relatively recent weapon, and did not exist in antiquity. The Achaemenid-era Persians made use of more than one kind of sword. Ancient Persian art typically shows the king's bodyguards and important nobles wearing ornate diagonal daggers. Greek art, on the other hand, frequently shows Persian soldiers using the kopis. One must therefore do some research to figure out which type is the acinaces.

One useful bit of evidence is that Greek and Roman texts sometimes mention the acinaces being given out by the king as a sign of favor. This would tend to point to the dagger.

A ritual use of acinaces, offered as a gift to the sea by the Persian king Xerxes, is also mentioned by Herodotus (History, VII, 54), in the ritual contrition scene following the episode known as Flagellation of Hellespont.

A very revealing passage is found in Josephus' Jewish Antiquities 20.186, where the weapons used by the sicarii are described:

This also seems to indicate that it is the dagger which is properly called the acinaces though there are those who deny this, translating the above passage as "concave like the Roman sica".

Gallery

See also
 List of daggers
 Shamshir

References

External links

Akinakes
Ancient Persian swords

Blade weapons
Ancient Near East weapons
Daggers
Middle Eastern swords
Iranian inventions

Acinaces


Tetracycline is a family of antibiotics discovered as natural products  in 1945. It is a broad-spectrum antibiotic because it works against a range of bacteria.

Tetracyclines was first prescribed in 1948. It is produced naturally by the Streptomyces genus of Actinobacteria. It is a protein synthesis inhibitor.

In 1950, Harvard University professor Robert Burns Woodward worked out the chemical structure of the related  oxytetracycline (Terramycin). The patent protection for its production was also first issued in 1950.

Tetracycline is an antibiotic used to treat a number of bacterial infections. It is commonly used to treat acne and rosacea. Historically it was important in reducing the number of deaths from cholera. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.

References

Antibiotics
Organonitrogen compounds

Tetracycline


Lev Shankovsky (, ), (pseudonym - "Dzvin", "Oleh Martovych") was a Ukrainian military historian and former Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) soldier, a leading member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. He was a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

Shankovsky was born in 1903 in the village of Duliby, Stryi Raion. He received military education in Ukrainian and Polish schools and served in the armies of the UPR and the UGA. Participants of the First Winter Campaign (1920). During the Second World War, he participated in the Resistance in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

In January 1944, Shankovsky, as a leader of the UPA forces, headed the initiating commission that established contacts with representatives of former Ukrainian political parties as well as nonpartisan activists.

Author publications: "Ukrainian Liberation Movement in Modern Times" (1951), "UPA and Its Clandestine Literature" (1952), "The Original Group of OUN" (1958), "Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the struggle for statehood" (1958), "Ukrainian Galician Army" (1974).

Shankovsky died on 25 April 1995, aged 91, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was interred in the Ukrainian Orthodox Cemetery in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.

References

External links
Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council
Оброшинська ЗОШ ім.Л.Шанковського І-ІІІ ст., Лев Шанковський

Ukrainian Austro-Hungarians
People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Ukrainian Insurgent Army
Ukrainian nationalists
Military personnel from Lviv Oblast
1903 births
1995 deaths
Polish emigrants to the United States

Lev Shankovsky


Raja Ki Aayegi Baraat () is a 1996 Indian Hindi-language drama film written and directed by Ashok Gaikwad. The film stars Shadaab Khan and Rani Mukerji. The film marked the Hindi film debut of actress Rani Mukerji and the lead debut of Shadaab Khan. Starting in 1995, principal photography took place in Gangtok and was coordinated with the filming of Biyer Phool, another home production of Ram Mukherjee, Rani's father, which Rani was simultaneously shooting in the area. The film was remade into Tamil as Prathi Gnayiru 9 Manimudhal 10.30 Varai (2006).

Plot

Mala, a young school teacher, has idealistic dreams for her future. She hopes for a grand love affair, with a large, extravagant wedding and a dashing bridegroom who will arrive on a horse. One day, Mala's friend confides in her about her relationship with the son of a wealthy man, with whom she has been intimate, but is now marrying someone else. Mala accompanies her friend to the man's wedding, successfully managing to disrupt it and reveal the truth. The groom's friend, Raj, is enraged and insults Mala, in response to which she slaps him. Looking for revenge, Raj seeks Mala out and, in the presence of her pupils, beats and rapes her. Mala is distraught and ashamed, getting home to her shocked family with the help of her pupils. The police get involved and Raj is arrested.

Raj's powerful father, Rai Bahadur, attempts to cover up the situation by bribing Mala's guardian Karthar Singh, who refuses to accept the money. Raj's sister and brother-in-law support Mala and defend her in the case. The judge finds Raj guilty and orders that he marry Mala in the next twenty-four hours, because her honor has been ruined and no other man would be likely willing to marry her, in her eyes. Raj unsuccessfully tries to kill Mala, and so they get married without great pomp and ceremony. After the marriage, Mala moves into Raj's home, and his family begins to treat her badly. Rai Bahadur travels abroad and instructs his family to deal with Mala and ensure that she is belittled and tortured, with the hope that she is eventually driven out of their house. Raj's elder sister-in-law Sharda is especially tough on Mala since plots for her own sister to be married to Raj, due to his wealth.

Sharda and her siblings lie to Raj about Mala, telling him that she asked them to leave the house. Raj angrily tries to beat Mala but is stopped by Kartar Singh. Raj's uncle makes plans for the couples honeymoon and promises to protect Mala, however it is revealed that he is also trying to kill her.

Raj's uncle leaves a snake in the house while Mala is having a shower. When she gets dressed, she sees the snake and faints out of fear. The men believe that she has been bitten. While he is checking on Mala, the snake bites Raj's leg. Mala awakens and saves him, however she is poisoned in the process. Raj is shocked at Mala's actions and realizes that his treatment of her was wrong. His uncle tells Raj that he should leave Mala to die, however he calls a doctor and she recovers. His attitude towards her softens and he stands up to his uncle, who tries to influence him against Mala. The couple gradually fall in love.

Seeking revenge, Raj's uncle and Sharda plot to kill Mala via a gas explosion in the house. Raj's sister and brother-in-law unexpectedly arrive, and his sister goes into the kitchen to light the stove, which results in her death. Rai Bahadur's arrives back in India for his daughter's funeral, where Raj and he argue about Mala. When Raj decides to leave, an altercation arises and Mala is badly wounded. Raj takes her to the hospital and she is in critical condition. The family realises their terrible treatment of Mala, telling Rai Bahadur that they do not want to have anything to do with him. Rai Bahadur mends his ways and comes to apologise. When the police arrive to investigate the matter, Raj tries to spare his father and implicate himself, but Rai Bahadur accepts the fault. Mala regains consciousness and she saves her father-in-law by lying about the incident. After seeing Mala's kind character, she is accepted by Raj's family the couple are remarried in a grand ceremony similar to Mala's dreams.

Cast
Shadaab Khan as Raj Bahadur Diwanchand
Rani Mukerji as Mala (credited as Ranee)
Javed Khan as  Pratap, Mala's lawyer.
Gulshan Grover as Gyani Kartar Singh, Mala's foster father.
Divya Dutta as Sharda's sister
Shashi Sharma as Sharda, Rai Bahadur's elder daughter-in-law.
Gajendra Chauhan as Pratap, Prosecutting attorney.
Sulabha Deshpande as Kaushalya, Maid servant.
Yunus Parvez as Judge
Mohnish Behl as Ramesh
Saeed Jaffrey as Rai Bahadur Diwanchand
Arjun as Police Inspector Khan
Asrani as Sharda's brother
Dinesh Hingoo as Mechanic Kartar's autoservice
Raza Murad as Raj's Uncle "Mama"
Goga Kapoor as Yanand Prakash
Javed Khan Amrohi as Mechanic Kartar's autoservice
Ghanshyam Rohera as Mechanic Kartar's autoservice
Kunika Sadanand as Sharda Devi
Jennifer Winget as School kid

Music
"Aankhein Ladi Tumse" - Kumar Sanu, Asha Bhosle
"Chanda Ki Chori Karke Chakori" - Aditya Narayan, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Sababat Akhtar
"I Love You" - Vinod Rathore, Poornima
"Kya Roop Hai Tera Kya Rang Hai Tera" - Udit Narayan, Poornima
'Love Bird Kehte Hai Mujhko" - Vijay Benedict
"Palkon Mein Sapne Chamke Ahista" - Poornima
"Rab Ka Hoon Banda" - Mangal Singh
"Raja Ki Aayi Hai Baraat" - Vijayta Pandit

References

External links

1990s Hindi-language films
1996 films
Films scored by Aadesh Shrivastava
Films shot in Sikkim
Films directed by Ashok Gaikwad
Hindi films remade in other languages

Raja Ki Aayegi Baaraat