Sociobiology has given way to evolutionary psychology — a bold faith that every human behavior can be interpreted in terms of natural selection, as some form of adaptation. The enthusiasm leads to speculative claims that rely more on plausibility than evidence, and that rarely consider alternative explanations (Etcoff's Survival of the Prettiest is a prime example). Robert Richardson's excellent overview exposes many of the field's fundamental flaws — methodological problems that repeatedly generate hasty and ultimately unjustified claims.