Instapundit links to a study with the titilating name of Female mediation of competitive fertilization success in Drosophila melanogaster. What does the study investigate?
“Because females of most species mate with multiple males within a reproductive cycle, intrasexual competition and intersexual choice can continue in the form of sperm competition and cryptic female choice,” says Pitnick. “Our investigations have demonstrated that the morphology of the female reproductive tract, which is rapidly divergent, determines how females bias paternity in favor of particular sperm morphologies. In fact, complex ejaculate-female and sperm-female interactions are emerging as more the rule than the exception.”
Remember when Todd Akin said:
It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.
In other words, the female reproductive tract, which is rapidly divergent, determines how females bias paternity in favor of particular sperm morphologies. Well, maybe. If my interpretation of the summary of the article of a study based on a limited data set and some mind reading on Todd Akin’s part are accuratish.
Of course, those who felt Akin was waging a war on women lit into him for legitimate rape, which implies that some rapes are illegitimate. What he meant to imply, as far as I can guess, is legitimate claims of rape. This, you see, implies that claims are not legitimate, and copulation outcomes where those claims might not be true might not have the same impact on how females bias paternity, and that in cases of legitimate rape, the female might bias against.
It’s science, so it’s tricky and full of doubt and “we thinks” and room for error.
But politics is less so. Especially when flocks of low information workers linger around politicians’ every appearance like a flock of nightingales around the house of the dying. If they catch onto a phrase they can use, they shriek and caper all night as they work themselves up over it without considering the words and meaning of it. If they don’t, they calm down quickly and wait for the next appearance.
So the truly thoughtful and skeptical will at the electoral mercy of the “thoughtful.”
Which reminds me of a proverb: Do not be wise in your own eyes.
