the buzz log

The upside: Women may be getting better-looking. The downside: Men, apparently, are not.

According to news reports, a University of Helsinki study looked at 40 years' worth of data for 1,244 women and 997 men, including their high school photographs. This study claims to bolster earlier research by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa that, as The London Times puts it, "evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors."

Naturally, a premise like this raises many questions. Below, some ones that might pop up, and answers found in Forbes' dirty details:

• Who comprised the beauteous sample pool? The scrutinized women were 1957 high-school graduates throughout Wisconsin.
• Who decided on the lookers? Not the Finnish. In the scientific version of Hot or Not, Wisconsinites rated participants' yearbook photos on a scale of 1 to 11.
• What's happening with the ladies? Helsinki researcher Marcus Jokela says their looks signal "fecundity" and good health, so they offer better breeding odds.
• Why are guys still looking like their knuckle-grazing forefathers? Apparently females are less shallow.
• How does the cycle continue? Women who are easy on the eyes have 16% more children. Curiously, good-looking gents beget more daughters than sons.
• Out of places that conduct all the longitudinal studies, why the Badger State? Must be the cheese.

As much as the British and Aussie press have been tickled by the study, doubts remain about its premise. One skeptical science blog points out serious statistical problems in Kanazawa's previous studies (detailed in Journal of Theoretical Biology in 2007), and basically the whole concept of finding "correlations between beauty and mutational loads."

And really, judging a face by a high-school senior picture? That just isn't fair.