History of evolutionary thought theory were particularly controversial, spawning the neutralist-selectionist debate over the relative importance of mutation, drift and selection, which continued into the 1980s without a clear resolution. In the mid-1960s, George C. Williams strongly critiqued explanations of adaptations worded in terms of "survival of the species" (group selection arguments). Such explanations were largely replaced by a gene-centered view of evolution, epitomized by the kin selection arguments of W. D. Hamilton, George R. Price and John Maynard Smith. This viewpoint would be summarized and popularized in the influential 1976 book "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. Models of the period seemed to
The Evolution of Beauty that was adapted from "The Evolution of Beauty", stating that it is "both erroneous and confusing, for it misrepresents sexual selection, natural selection, and modern evolutionary theory." He later described the book as a "mixed bag" but stated that the bad parts outweighed the good, and stated that Prum's arguments were "tendentious". Evolutionary biologists Gerald Borgia and Gregory Ball state that Prum misrepresents opposition of scientists to the model of runaway selection and that he fails to make a case for its ubiquity. Further, they claim Prum inappropriately injects politics into biology, conflating eugenics and genocide with female mate choice