Busted. Scott nabbed me when I was acting against my own principles. The apparent humor in the idea of male ants cheating seduced me, and I failed to check out the actual evidence.
The idea of cheating ants came from the scientists themselves, who call out cheating as a mechanism or at least its effect at least five times in the abstract alone. Now cheating is not determinate function, it is a moral discrepancy. It requires a decision being made to enhance one's own existence by purposely declining to follow a set of rules or expectations, at the expense of someone else. Now if ants are deterministic, they do not make such decisions, and in fact cannot.
If ants are behaving per the genetic instructions, they are not cheating. They do not have the independent agency to decide against following their genetic instuctions and instead decide to follow a different path in order to enhance their genetic pass-through. There is no such thing as cheating in a deterministic world.
So why did the abstract emphasize cheating? Could it be that they don't understand the difference? Could it be that the use of the (unexpected and inappropriate) term might bring attention to them that the otherwise dull work would not command? It succeeded with MSNBC, who was suckered into misinterpreting the cheating involved.
So who is actually cheating here? Apparently it is NOT the ants.
Some say you can't be cheated unless you allow yourself to be. I let down my guard here. I'll try not to in the future.
2 comments:
Stan, in fairness to you, this is an endemic problem in the literature. Researchers typically have the context needed to know what is meant by 'cheating', even though it doesn't involve any philandering by the males. Ever since sociobiology got up and running as a research program in the mid-1970's, these things have occurred.
A classic example was the 1977 article by Barash, 'Sociobiology of Rape in Mallards'. This led to a firestorm of criticism on a number of grounds. Feminists were dismayed by the suggestion that rape could be adaptive in some populations, but perhaps more fundamentally, the usage of the term 'rape' essentially anthropomorphized the discussion, leading to the possibility that non-specialists would draw unwarranted conclusions.
Probably should've said something about that earlier, instead of just snidely caviling. Sorry!
No need for apology, I knew better but let down my defenses for a while.
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