Criticism of evolutionary psychology  Evolutionary psychology has generated significant controversy and criticism. The criticism includes: disputes about the testability of evolutionary hypotheses, alternatives to some of the cognitive assumptions (such as massive modularity) frequently employed in evolutionary psychology, alleged vagueness stemming from evolutionary assumptions (such as uncertainty about the environment of evolutionary adaptation), differing stress on the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, and political and ethical issues. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that many of the criticisms against it are straw men, and are based on an incorrect nature versus nurture dichotomy, or are based on misunderstandings of the discipline. The history of the debate from a critic's perspective is detailed by Gannon (2002). Critics of evolutionary psychology include the philosophers of science David Buller (author of "Adapting Minds"), Robert C. Richardson (author of "Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology"), and Brendan Wallace (author of "Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work"). Other critics include neurobiologists like Steven Rose (who edited "Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology"), biological anthropologists like Jonathan Marks, and social anthropologists like Tim Ingold and Marshall Sahlins. Responses defending evolutionary psychology against critics have been published in books including Segerstråle's "Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond" (2000), Barkow's "Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists" (2005), and Alcock's "The Triumph of Sociobiology" (2001). Other responses to critics include Confer et al. (2010), Tooby and Cosmides (2005), and Hagen (2005). Evolutionary psychologists have postulated that the mind is composed of cognitive modules specialized to perform specific tasks. Evolutionary psychologists have theorized that these specialized modules enabled our ancestors to react quickly and effectively to environmental challenges. As a result, domain-specific modules would have been selected for, whereas broad general-purpose cognitive mechanisms that worked more slowly would have been eliminated in the course of evolution. A number of cognitive scientists have criticized the modularity hypothesis, citing neurological evidence of brain plasticity and changes in neural networks in response to environmental stimuli and personal experiences. Steven Quartz and Terry Sejnowski, for example, have argued that the view of the brain as a collection of specialized circuits, each chosen by natural selection and built according to a "genetic blueprint", is contradicted by evidence that cortical development is flexible and that areas of the brain can take on different functions.