Geoffrey Miller, author of The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, has made a goof.

Miller is an evolutionary psychologist with an interested in IQ, the usual sex related things Evolutionary Psychologists are interested in, etc. etc.

On June 2nd he wrote this tweet:

Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbsk, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth

The number of way in which this is wrong is myriad.

Anyway, he’s in a heap of trouble. Here is a video from his university, the University of New Mexico, showing his department chair trying to do some damage control.

Good luck with that.

I’m guessing this … that if you are fat you are not PhD material … is not really a scientific assertion on the part of Professor Miller. Rather, it looks more like a bone-headed remark he made because of something personal that happened to him. Professor Miller may have demonstrated something useful, though. If you are X stay away from Twitter because you are a jerk. I’m not sure what X is. Maybe it is just being a jerk. If you are a jerk stay away from Twitter because you are a jerk. Hard to say.

Anyway, Professor Geoffrey Miller is digging in and/or backpedaling. As you can see in the video, and indicated on this UNM web page, Miller now claims that he is carrying out a research project in which he produces inflammatory tweets.

Do you think he’s telling the truth? What would you do if you were his department chair?