There you go, being all logical and clear headed, when the Evo Psych people have got it all mapped out. How could you?

Yes, its absolutely true that smaller families end up with more money because the resources do not get spread around. Or, there is an alternate scenario, that of very rich people who come from large families but refuse to help them out, something that is condoned in this culture but condemned in others. In the past, we saw families send daughters to a life in the nunnery to avoid paying a "dot" for their marriage, or sending second and third sons into the priesthood or war to preserve family fortunes for the eldest son. All of this is limiting reproduction in the service of consolidating wealth--the exact and precise opposite of what the Evo Psych people claim occurs.

In other words, money isn´t tied to reproductive success. But the Evo Psych folks keep pushing this idea--why?

It´s very simple. The behavior of the kinds of people who tend to end up rich is, in reality, pretty damn sociopathic and unnatural. As mentioned above, they are seriously short of altruism even for their own kin, much less others. Self-sacrificing they are certainly not. Many rich are at least unethical, and any number are downright criminal (hence the famous quote, "every fortune is founded upon a crime, and every great fortune upon a great crime").

What the rich do is abnormal, dysfunctional human behavior, but the Evo Psych people want to normalize and legitimatize it, and even declare it the most elemental form of human nature. The rich deserve their wealth, in this line of argument because they are "fitter" somehow than the rest of us. Or because there is a "selfish gene" at work--I guess this is the new version of "the Devil made me do it". Really, how are we supposed to argue with somebody when being a selfish bastard is in his genes?

That´s where all this comes from--it´s really just a form of conservatism. The Evo Psych people offer us an otherwise unpalateable heaping plateful of social conservatism with a thin pseudo-scientific sheen. We´ve already had somebody on this thread argue that political authoritarianism is "normal" in Evo Psych terms (Bush was our big silverback in the hour of danger? really?). And as per the conservative viewpoint, women are to be focused on plumping their breasts and lips, dying their hair blonde, and sleeping with smelly old men for money and having their children--because it´s all "natural", just like following Bush was.

Sorry. I call bullshit.

I can appreciate the distinction you are trying to make, even if I don´t 100% agree with it...scientists are, after all, only human too and also have their pet agendas. Hence there are gay scientists striving to uncover a "gay gene" (yes, the pioneers of this effort are gay themselves...look it up if you don´t believe me) because the existence of a gay gene would legitimize their own existence in the eyes of bigoted people who believe gay people can and ought to be "fixed" (for the record I do believe that many people are gay from birth, that there´s not really any argument about that any more, and also that there are people who are gay out of mere preference, and nothing wrong with that).

There are also horny socially conservative old guys with stunted, medieval, self-serving fantasies about the nature of wealth, sex, and power, who try to legitimatize their own existence in a world in which women and the poor are becoming ever more vocal about wanting a share of their mea...um, pie. Actually they have been spouting off for more than a hundred years; they started spouting off while Darwin was still alive, and Darwin was reportedly appalled by them.

Generally, I think you are right...the data is sensationalized and hence misinterpreted....but still, we musn´t accept on faith the supposed impartiality of "real" scientists--they are as flawed as the rest of us.