I neglected to include another bit of foolishness from that ridiculous Pivar paper. This is a perfect example of “looks like” biology, which is all the paper is: drawing correspondences by saying X looks like Y, based on superficial morphological similarities, and worse, then announcing that because X looks like Y, you have therefore explained both X and Y.
Behold, Figure 20!
Eyeballs and testicles, they’re both paired spheres dangling from stalks, am I right? Therefore, just pointing that rough similarity out simultaneously shows that they are produced by the same process, and explains how they developed and evolved. Done! Gimme my Nobel prize!
Holms says
I take it that the journal in which this was published is trash…? At least, I hope it is – I would be dismayed if this came out of somewhere reputable.
llewelly says
bollocks, I say.
madtom1999 says
So if I kick Pivar in the balls and his eyes pop out its all proved?
marcoli says
You are just hoping to be sued again, right?
PZ Myers says
Well, since even a $100,000 lawsuit would wreck me financially, and I’ve got one $2 million lawsuit hanging over my head, adding a couple more can’t do any more harm.
robro says
Does this mean females can’t have eyes? Actually, the connection between gonads and eyeballs may explain some things about men in a sort of “foot bone connected to the leg bone” way, and the reason for a certain multi-billion dollar industry that caters to the connection.
PZ Myers says
No, no. Men have testicles in their eye sockets, while women have ovaries.
Dark Jaguar says
Well robro, they did say ovaries were in the same family of similarity, so their wrongness at least isn’t specific to one gender.
In general, this goes right along with all those silly Freudian statements about how if it’s a artificial object with one dimension significantly longer than the other two, it must be a penis substitute, every time. You know, those “guns are clearly just a penis, and that’s why they look like that” types, as though a gun could be shaped any other way and still, ya know, actually do the lord’s work of blowing off someone’s friend’s face by accident.
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says
you know male “bits” are just female parts inside out. *snark*
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says
re @9
delete@9
davidc1 says
Hi Doc ,who is trying to sue you for $ 2 Million ?, do tell .
Rowan vet-tech says
As a vet tech at a shelter that does high volume spay/neuter I can firmly say that testes do not look like acorns. They do not have a cap. And where the hell is the epididymus? Oh wait, I know. It’s not there because then it would look nothing like an eye in the drawing.
Jaws says
What, nobody has commented about “one-eyed monster” thinking yet?
Wait, I just did. Although I strongly suspect that limiting this ignoramus to a single one of either of his pairs of eyes would be both painful and vociferously objected to…
ChasCPeterson says
It more closely resembles the ovary + oviduct w/ infundibulum than testis + vas. And MUCH more closely than kidney + ureter.
It’s a Platonic Ideal of Intrinsic Form Patterning. see now?
taraskan says
@11 I imagine it’s Carrier.
Are any legal scholars here able to tell me why lawsuits always have to be in the millions of dollars, even when levied against individuals or not-for-profit organizations? Is it just to get the attention of the media or does anyone actually believe spoken words cost money?
leftwingfox says
I hate to say it, but this theory sounds just plain nuts.
garydargan says
Adds a whole new meaning to “One-eyed trouser snake”.