Yesterday the New York Times Science section and today Good Morning America reported on a new study that came out in Nature: Why Pregnant Women Don’t Tip Over.
Now, I don’t subscribe to the journal, so I don’t know if that’s the title of the research paper, but it is the title of both the article and the GMA segment. They credit evolution with the design. Some absolutely surreal lines:
“Even without the benefit of advanced study in biomechanics, women tend to deal with the shift — and avoid tumbling over like a bowling pin — by leaning back.”
“‘Katherine was a genius for thinking of that,’ she said. ‘And you go, “Hey — why didn’t we think of that before? It seems so obvious now.”‘”
Those are from the NYT, and these from GMA:
“Science is offering an answer to a burning question about physics and pregnancy…”
“There have been thousands and millions of women who have simply fell over, right on their face, because of the fact that the center of gravity was pushed forward.”
I wonder if it was hard for the anchor to keep a straight face while calling this a “burning question”. And now that I think about it, it is a wonder that women could learn that whole leaning back thing with out some training in biomechanics. What’s more amazing is that every person alive that has ever carried a heavy box has learned the same lesson. Fantastic!
And a scientists reasoning for why evolution won’t continue to make pregnancy easier: “Evolution has slowed down. Get used to it!” Not that I would have expected it, but there was no room in the report for a mention of the Intelligent Design perspective. It would have been a much shorter report though, and way less entertaining.
I’m sure this isn’t the last of the men-and-women-are-different stories that are going to hit news stands. Why is this news?
Technorati Tags: news, pregnancy, Science
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