Talk:WikiJournal of Science/Evolved human male preferences for female body shape

Plagiarism check
✅ Report from WMF copyvios tool: No overlaps detected. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 03:22, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Author response to reviews

 * Editor's note: The author order has now been corrected. T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 22:38, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Editor's note: The reviewers have now both responded
 * Martin Brüne - I believe the authors did a fine job in revising their manuscript.
 * Don Lucas - I am satisfied with the changes made by the authors.
 * T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 05:04, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

About the abbreviation "SES".
The abbreviation SES is first used in a sentence within the section:

Evidence that male mate preference for female body shape has evolved to vary predictably by population with resource availability

"Variation in female body shape preferences could be indicative of the body type representative of success in the local environment, such that males in rural or low-socioeconomic environments (SES) will favor heavier females because being heavy is indicative of higher resource acquisition relative to the population when resources are scarce and hunger is common"

Being its first appearance in the text, inside a parenthesis following a expression, im confident that most reader interpret this as a definition of the abbreviation, due to the convention of following the unabbreviated expression with its abbreviation inside a parenthesis, signaling to the reader that both might be used interchangeably throughout the text from this point onwards. With that in mind, the natural conclusion most arrive is that SES stands for  This immediately falls apart when we get to  "low-SES" and "high-SES" (low-low-socioeconomic environment?). But even if we assume that SES stands for just   , we still have problems!

The text treats SES as a magnitude of sorts, something quantifiable. This section outright refers to it within the context of an arithmetic operation:

"differences in SES must reach a certain threshold in order to significantly impact male use of female body shape cues."

But these are not contexts SES seems to fit in, or at least what we were told SES to be, the. Even the expression given at its first appearance, "low-socioeconomic environments (SES) ", doesn't make much sense, what is a low-socioeconomic environment?

is it a socioeconomic environment that is low, or is it an environment that is socioeconomically low?

in the former: what does it mean for it to be low? is there a hidden variable, implicitly assumed to be low in the expression "low-socioeconomic environment"?

in the latter: again, is there some hidden variable, that is considered to be socioeconomic, and is implied to be low in the expression?

As a disclaimer, im not familiar with the area, but it is my understanding that a text such as yours should do it its best to be as inclusive as possible, and this article absolutely does that, the only exception being the very section that includes the whole SES thing, and i believe a simple but consistent definition of SES would do this article a great service. Otherwise it is very confusing to anyone that doesn't already know what SES stands for.

I decided to write up how my mind, completely unfamiliar with the area, worked trough the section, i feel like this might be valuable insight, considering how reviewers can't simply emulate not knowing what SES stands for, so issues like these might go unnoticed. That being said, i obviously googled SES almost immediately after reading it, together with various combinations of terms found close by... And every result unanimously told me that SES actually stands for   , which makes a lot sense, and works perfectly with how the article uses the abbreviation...  except when it says "SES status" (socioeconomic status status?). I'm 99% this is a typo, but the remaining 1%, brought about by my unfamiliarity with the area, stops me simply editing the article ...

Summing up the issues:

1) Confusing/wrong use/definition of SES, being first introduced with "low-socioeconomic environments (SES)", implying   =

2*) "SES status" having a redundant "status", unwrapping it to "socioeconomic status status"

* only if SES indeed stands for "socioeconomic status", which im fairly - yet not completely - certain is the case.

Nilanz (discuss • contribs) 02:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)