It is a tragic loss. Had our brave forefathers demurred the investigation of such scientific mysteries as “do foxes get endometriosis worse than uggos?” we’d all still be eating raw dinosaur meat from carts with square wheels.
You can continue to believe that, or you can read the multiple posts where people explained to you very clearly why the topic you want to discuss has very little merit. Up to you.
Thanks for your concern, but those “many posts” could charitably be called “30-40 posts by 3 or four people.”
Are you ever going to address the actual content of the posts? Or just analyze their metadata?
As babale says, people have addressed the merit of the topic repeatedly. The tiny factual question buried in the OP you offered is trivially answered with “no.” Why aren’t you interested in responding to that?
So you had an extremely broad question about whether physical attractiveness (Across all cultures? Across all genders?) has any connection to health issues, and you decided to use as an illuminating example a ridiculous, deeply flawed, sexist, and invalid study on one specific health issue? There’s your first problem.
Your second problem is that you asked in the OP, “Is this quackery, or the first step (of many) to something meaningful and important?” despite the obvious quackery of the study, as noted in the linked article by both Dr. Gunter and the author and as you yourself implied in your post.
Third, you asked if “cheekbone shape, waist-to-hips ratio, breast firmness”–all more traditionally female characteristics–were tied to disease but neglected to include muscle mass, a V-shaped torso, and shoulder breadth, more traditionally masculine characteristics. So you were really asking if “hot” women have more health issues.
The mods were right to close the thread, if for no other reason than that the OP was, frankly, a hot mess.
It would have been trivial to respond with the fact that hotness being subjective and inconsistent over time and between individuals and cultures that any metric of hotness or correlation of disease with hotness would be misleading at best. Self righteous indignation expressed via editorializing and insults were not necessary.
Attempts to justify that thread on generalized philosophical principles of what we should and shouldn’t be able to discuss in the interests of free speech and fighting ignorance are misplaced. It seems to me that the situation (and the moderation) are better understand in these terms:
Misogyny and objectification of women have been commonplace here in the past, and have alienated many women from participating on the board. There’s a consensus to want to change that. There are plenty of other places when men can talk about hot women if they desire, so there’s no “free speech” violation in preferring that those conversations just don’t take place on SDMB.
With that backdrop - although that maybe there are some discussions that might be appropriate that involve the physical appearance of women, it’s surely easy to grasp that unless it’s clear cut that such subject matter serves some compelling intellectual rather than salacious purpose, mods are now likely to err on the side of shutting it down. Good moderation, imo.
I wonder whether those same scientists are following up with a study of whether hot dudes get more prostate cancer.
It’s unethical to be carrying out these studies on humans, an appropriate model organism would presumably be the hot dog.
Huh.
Is the general form question “Is a self and/or external perception of attractiveness in either gender correlated with health outcome A or rates of diagnosis X?” Intrinsically offensive or necessarily ascientific?
No.
Those perceived as attractive or unattractive may have different experiences based on that factor and experience different stressors. Healthcare systems could interact with them differently (as is documented to occur based on superficial factors like obesity and race) leading to different rates of diagnosis even when incidence is identical. Lots of potential mechanisms to develop as hypotheses if some such correlation was in fact documented. Those perceived by others as attractive, male and female both, are treated differently by others than those perceived as unattractive. Those who self perceive themselves as unattractive (even if others do not share that belief) experience the world differently than those who believe in their attractiveness. Each can have impacts.
The fact that the specific question of cited study was dumb and poorly asked poorly does not mean asking if the general form question is valid to ask trollish.
What does any of this have to do with the OP? Reread the OP: it doesn’t suggest that perceptions of attractiveness are the issue, it suggests that things like “cheekbone shape, waist-to-hips ratio, breast firmness” are.
There are questions related to this question that are fine. Your question is somewhat related. But it’s not at all a restatement of the OP’s question.
To go farther in our society at least the impacts may also play out differently for men and women. It IS reasonable to hypothesize that perceived level of attractiveness impacts health outcomes more for women then men in our society as women may be judged and even value themselves more by that metric than men do because of cultural factors whether those factors are pure misogyny or other.
Rephrasing the actual op as other than it was was unfair.
…but rephrasing the actual op as other than it was is exactly what you’re doing.
Posted without seeing the comment above.
If limiting to that specific rather than the general form then it is a fair question. “Do physical features that are recognized as signs of fertility over evolutionary history (or conversely “more masculine”) correlate with any health outcomes or diagnoses?” This is a question asked by real scientists all the time.
You would ask that question about individual traits.
Asking about a vaguely defined group of traits instead is exactly what makes the study unscientific.
For example. Google Scholar
Do you see the difference between “does sexual dimorphism in human faces signal health?” and “are hot chicks more likely to get sick?”?
But that’s simply a similar thing phrased differently.
It’s the issue we’ve been clashing over on this message board for months with no clarification: Is something offensive OK if it is dressed in academic-speak, but not OK if phrased bluntly and crudely?
Yes.
Do you see that the op was not asking that? The mod mischaracterizing the op as saying that was unfair.
The op asked if looking at individual features that are associated with attractiveness and seeing if they correlated with outcomes was “quackery”.
Individual features may correlate with outcomes. Or may not. Globally rated attractiveness may or may not. Asking if the general type of question is valid to ask is not misogynistic. The general form question is not. The mischaracterized question not actually asked was and the specific study was at best worthless but the op was not endorsing it.