David A. Meyer and Melanie W Quong,
``The bio-logic of facial geometry'',
Nature 397 (25 February 1999) 661-662.

The concluding paragraph of the letter by Perret, et al. [Nature 394 (1998) 884-887], which remarks that ``preferences would encourage a youthful, neotonous appearance in the species generally'', conflicts with the semantics - of `masculine' and `feminine' - used to construct the argument presented. Brennan's caricatures of Ronald Reagan - reproduced in the News and Views gloss by Enquist and Ghirlanda - hint at this conflict. In this note we examine the logic of this conflicted argument and suggest that biological data might strengthen Perret, et al.'s inferences.

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Last modified: 28 feb 99.