making up nonsense

" MEN are born with a highly tuned infidelity detector designed by nature to help them ensure they are supporting their genetic offspring and not those of an interloper.

It's so sensitive, though, that suspicious men are prone to see cheating when it doesn't exist, according to US evolutionary biologists.

The new findings fit with statistics reported yesterday in The Australian that one in five fathers who seek private paternity tests have their suspicions confirmed that they are not the biological father of the child."

The above is from an article in The Australian that contains more of the usual nonsense we have come to know and love from "evolutionary biologists" both here and overseas.

I'm not going to address the "findings" from the "research" here. I'm interested in the statistics on paternity tests. This claim that one in five fathers who have paternity tests discover to their shock and horror that they aren't the fathers is often tossed around. By tossers.

Surely it is far more accurate to point out that four in five or 80% or the overwhelming majority of suspicious men who get paternity tests done are proven wrong and are in fact found to be the biological fathers. Only a minority, one in five or 20%, have their doubts confirmed. Bugger all in the greater scheme of things. And certainly not enough to suggest that these males have any bloody idea at all how to sniff out paternity.

UPDATE: dr faustus has a similar problem with a BBC report of having sex within 24 hours of first meeting