[General Battuta]

And now you're down to squabbling over the use of the word 'choice' as if it must imply some kind of conscious volition rather than a process internal to the female.

You're now conceding the argument that these papers have methodological problems and returning to the notion that we do not have strong evidence to prove any form of internal selection. Which is not a point that's been asserted. Females can select sperm internally, that much is (probably) apparent, and that was asserted. Past that, though, are there any points on the floor that you're interested in engaging in?

[Luis Dias]

And now you're down to squabbling over the use of the word 'choice' as if it must imply some kind of conscious volition rather than a process internal to the female.

I knew it! We reached semantics.

If you want to deflate the words "female choice" to something on the order of "female body manipulated by male's actions", then case closed, the jury's out, I win.

Specially because the way you used the words "choice" in the human context in the first place.

(mumbojumbo on how "choice" isn't really happening in human brains in 3...2....)

[General Battuta]

Reread my last post.

We're training you to work with empirical data here. You failed to extract the necessary information to address your points here; it had to be delivered for you. Just try to apply that to Karajorma's recommendation in the future.

[General Battuta]

What I'm saying is that if you keep having to move the goalposts back I don't think this discussion is going anywhere except 'save face' territory. It just isn't meaningful without the ability to engage with the empirical data. And that's assuming you want to do that - you've clearly moved away from your original fallacies which is an outcome I'm satisfied with.

[Luis Dias]

You're now conceding the argument that these papers have methodological problems

Where? p-values of 0.01 do not impress me that much, young padawan.

...and returning to the notion that we do not have strong evidence to prove any form of internal selection.

Nor strong nor weak. You have a male who rubs her partner's legs, and gets increased fitness by the reaction of her body.

And this is evidence that human females can pick and choose which kind of sperm penetrate their eggs, from a multiple selection of those, after some "productive action" with multiple males (or something equivalent), which was your original point.....  .... exactly in what kind of fairy tale?

What I'm saying is that if you keep having to move the goalposts back I don't think this discussion is going anywhere except 'save face' territory.

So you are denying you made the point that human females do *in fact* choose male sperm, as something factual, not possible?

[Luis Dias]

Reread my last post.

We're training you to work with empirical data here. You failed to extract the necessary information to address your points here; it had to be delivered for you. Just try to apply that to Karajorma's recommendation in the future.

You have delivered nothing novel, the paper I was able to read that had the most information about this issue contained the same type of evidence you are now championing..... perhaps with worse p values. (If I remember it recalled 0.02)

[General Battuta]

So you are denying you made the point that human females do *in fact* choose male sperm, as something factual, not possible?

Here is the exact point I made:

I really don't see how. As fact, it seems to me, rather the opposite, women get to be extremely selective of any sperm that gets inside her.

Exactly - but the very fact that they can be selective within themselves (and they can) provides the incentive for them to get a lot of sperm inside!

This point is unrelated to the current debate: it states that women benefit from sperm competition, though I can see how it would be taken as an endorsement of a strong cryptic choice position.  It was a rejoinder to your idea that women benefit from strong external, rather than internal, selectivity, a position since abandoned.

If you're interested in cryptic female choice in primates, I suggest "Female Control: Sexual Selection by Cryptic Female Choice" and "The Potential For Cryptic Female Choices in Primates", both of which do a decent job of presenting the as-yet-incomplete evidence.

You have delivered nothing novel

I've delivered every piece of empirical evidence in this discussion and single-handedly rendered this one of the most educational threads on HLP.

(If I remember it recalled 0.02)

This P value is inside the acceptable margin for work in this field, though you should also be careful to look at effect sizes and the tailedness of the tests used.

[General Battuta]

Man I'm not getting paid to participate in this debate any more.

[Luis Dias]

I've delivered every piece of empirical evidence in this discussion and single-handedly rendered this one of the most educational threads on HLP.

Ah yes, touché. Albeit I have learned little more than the fact that there are flies who rub other flies, and that there are people who think women can make cryptic choices about male sperms. Which is a provocative question.

Man I'm not getting paid to participate in this debate any more

Me neither.

[General Battuta]

Well I was all day, I made bank 

[Luis Dias]

I'm not an english speaking, so bear with me... how making bank is something sad?

[IceFire]

I've delivered every piece of empirical evidence in this discussion and single-handedly rendered this one of the most educational threads on HLP.

Consider myself enlightened. I'm a bit (a very tiny bit) of a renaissance man these days so I do try and stay informed on as many subjects as possible... but this is not one of them. Interesting material!

[Grizzly]

I've delivered every piece of empirical evidence in this discussion and single-handedly rendered this one of the most educational threads on HLP.

And by doing that... you've turned it into a monster! .

[The E]

But what a well-educated monster it is!

[Shivan Hunter]

I'm not an english speaking, so bear with me... how making bank is something sad?

Well, I guess he could have rotated about the forward axis in his reference frame

A+++ thread, would read again

[Drogoth]

captain i'm detecting some turbulence in steps 1 2 3 4 and the other steps

You brought this subject up, not me. It's not my fault if you ridiculously decide that I *must* accept speculative science as factual.

I'm sure a lot of people in Europe said similar things about the earth being round back in the day pal. GB has scientific evidence, which is pretty legit. Now unless they're handing out PhD's at your local Safeway as a grocery coupon, I'm going to bet the people running these studies have a very solid understanding of the process, and their studies made it through peer review, peers just as smart as them. Swallow hard and back down Luis, you've turned this debate into a temper tantrum.

Edit-

My apologies, I posted that  shortly after reading the post I quoted, frankly it didnt look like anything was going to calm down. Paging over the rest, i see that it did, to some degree that is.

[Luis Dias]

I'm sure a lot of people in Europe said similar things about the earth being round back in the day pal. GB has scientific evidence, which is pretty legit. Now unless they're handing out PhD's at your local Safeway as a grocery coupon, I'm going to bet the people running these studies have a very solid understanding of the process, and their studies made it through peer review, peers just as smart as them. Swallow hard and back down Luis, you've turned this debate into a temper tantrum.

So now that you've recanted, I'm asking what is exactly your opinion on the quality of empirical evidence that shows that homo-sapiens sapiens women have cryptic post-coital choice abilities.

To say silly things like "but he haz peer-reviewz" doesn't count, for the papers he brought up were *not* about "empirical evidence that shows that etc", but empirical evidence that shows that bugs rub their female partners after the pleasure-act, and that such rubbing has small effects on the fertility rate.

So as you see, there are an infinite amount of papers that "prove" that homo-sapiens do in fact do this kind of thing, if your criteria of "papers that prove blablabla" do not have to do with the matters at hand .

[watsisname]

I'm still noticing a profound lack of any peer-reviewed scientific sources that state otherwise.

[General Battuta]

I'm sure a lot of people in Europe said similar things about the earth being round back in the day pal. GB has scientific evidence, which is pretty legit. Now unless they're handing out PhD's at your local Safeway as a grocery coupon, I'm going to bet the people running these studies have a very solid understanding of the process, and their studies made it through peer review, peers just as smart as them. Swallow hard and back down Luis, you've turned this debate into a temper tantrum.

So now that you've recanted, I'm asking what is exactly your opinion on the quality of empirical evidence that shows that homo-sapiens sapiens women have cryptic post-coital choice abilities.

To say silly things like "but he haz peer-reviewz" doesn't count, for the papers he brought up were *not* about "empirical evidence that shows that etc", but empirical evidence that shows that bugs rub their female partners after the pleasure-act, and that such rubbing has small effects on the fertility rate.

So as you see, there are an infinite amount of papers that "prove" that homo-sapiens do in fact do this kind of thing, if your criteria of "papers that prove blablabla" do not have to do with the matters at hand .

It's already been explained to you exactly what point the empirical evidence in the papers supports, and it's not the absolute existence of cryptic choice in female humans, it's the possibility of cryptic choice in female humans, which you began by laughing at and now (happily) acknowledge. You're still misreading them too (and introducing inaccurate terminology like 'pleasure act'; don't anthropomorphize the subject). Reread this quote to understand part of your mistake (the other is that you think rubbing behavior in the beetles happens after mating, it doesn't:

This pattern, however, was absent in manipulated males, where female perception of male behaviour differed from that actually performed. Thus, female perception of male copulatory courtship behaviour, rather than male behaviour per se, apparently governs the fate of sperm competing over fertilizations within the female, showing that copulatory courtship is under selection by cryptic female choice.

Let the thread go. Feel free to check out my reading recommendations:

If you're interested in cryptic female choice in primates, I suggest "Female Control: Sexual Selection by Cryptic Female Choice" and "The Potential For Cryptic Female Choices in Primates", both of which do a decent job of presenting the as-yet-incomplete evidence.

[General Battuta]

Also this is a good read

CONCLUSIONS AND PROSPECTS
There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn regarding the potential for
CFC in primates:
• Despite the challenges in demonstrating that CFC exists, there are compelling
theoretical reasons as to why CFC is likely to act and have acted in primates.
• There are multiple mechanisms by which CFC can be accomplished. These mechanisms
can act anytime after the initiation of copulation and even include post-birth
events.
• CFC is at times co-existent with pre-copulatory female choice. For example, what
may be pre-copulatory female choice towards one male may at the same be CFC
against a previously mated male. Or, pre-copulatory choice on the basis of some
male trait(s) can be followed by CFC based upon the same or different male trait(s).
288 Reeder
• CFC is most likely to act in those species where females routinely mate with more
than one male.
Despite what I believe to be the high potential for CFC in primates, it may in fact be
very difficult to demonstrate unequivocally due to factors such as the generally small
sample sizes of primate studies and the level of invasive work that may be required.
Nevertheless, in many ways, the time is right to begin to explore this field. This comes
about in large part by many recent methodological advances that allow us to approach
this topic from a variety of angles. A particularly important advance of course is DNA
analysis, which is becoming more routine and more accessible. Without the ability to
assess paternity, the definitive demonstration of CFC in most cases is impossible. As
with DNA analysis, our ability to track animals via telemetry has been around for some
time, but is currently better than ever, with smaller and more reliable transmitters and
tracking equipment. Field studies on primates are being carried out throughout the
world, which should increasingly provide the broadly based comparative data needed
to answer many questions about the behavioral, anatomical, and physiological components
of CFC. The numerous studies conducted in captivity are also shedding light on
the processes potentially underlying CFC. In particular, the advances made in understanding
reproductive physiology by the biomedical community allow us to begin to
explore things such as female influences on sperm transport. Information gathered
through the use of all of these technical advances can be combined in a synergistic
way such that we can now examine CFC from multiple perspectives. In fact, the study
of CFC and its relationship to SC provides an excellent opportunity to integrate physiological
and behavioral mechanisms with evolutionary theory [Gomendio & Roldan,
1993; Eberhard & Cordero, 1995].
As primatologists, we tend to draw our conclusions from what we observe, both in
captivity and in the field. In this chapter, I hope to have illustrated how observed male
mating success and male paternity can be two very different things, influenced in large
part by interactions with the female’s behavior, anatomy, and physiology. That this
discussion of the potential for CFC has carried on for many pages, and even that it
warrants a chapter in this text, is testament to the need to continue to recognize the
active role that females play in reproduction. In the words of Eberhard [1996, pg. 420],
“Abandoning the idea that females are morphologically and behaviorally passive and
inflexible in male-female interactions promises to give a more complete understanding
of sexual selection.”

full text here