Sermons and straw men

Keith Sutherland Straw Men and Diamond Dogs

John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and the author of the book under review should not be confused with the John Gray who thinks that men are from Mars and women from Venus. Our man is a political philosopher, best known for a string of books on liberalism and a lot less sanguine about the prospects for humanity than his New Age namesake. In fact, perhaps ...

Straw men and fairy tales: Evaluating reactions to A Natural History of Rape.

In this paper we respond to two frequent criticisms of our book, A Natural History of Rape (Thornhill & Palmer, 2000). The first criticism portrays the book as little more than a "just-so story" that human rape is an adaptation. We demonstrate that this portrayal is not accurate. The second criticism reflects a common response to the book s challenge of the popular assertion that rapists are no...

Straw men don't get Lyme disease: response to Wood and Lafferty.

Wood and Lafferty [1] (hereafter WL) attempt a synthesis of two views of the ecological factors underlying variable Lyme disease (LD) risk. LD emerged during the 1970s following the post-agricultural reforestation of the northeastern USA, which provided the habitat required by the blacklegged tick vector (Ixodes scapularis) and many of its hosts [2]. However, within the large and growing North ...

Jousting with straw men: comment on Westen, Novotny, and Thompson-Brenner (2004).

Empirically supported treatments (ESTs) do not cure every patient, and the randomized trial is not a flawless methodology. Upon these often-noted and widely accepted points, D. Westen, C. M. Novotny, and H. Thompson-Brenner (2004a; see record 2004-15935-005) built a critique of ESTs and EST research. However, important work developing effective, clinically relevant treatments for serious proble...

Straw, Sand, and Sophistry