Fields: Evolutionary medicine and evolutionary psychiatry
Goal: To understand why natural selection left us us vulnerable to disease
New book on evolutionary psychiatry      Order a copy
New article on evolutionary psychiatry

Research Professor of Life Sciences, and Founding Director (2014-2019), The Center for Evolution and Medicine, Arizona State University; Professor Emeritus, Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, and Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan; Founding President:  The International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health

What is evolutionary medicine?           Darwinian medicine IS Evolutionary medicine. 
Core Principles for Evolutionary Medicine, 2019
Why do mental disorders persist? Book chapter, 2022
Evolutionary psychiatry: foundations, progress and challenges, World Psychiatry, 2023
How to frame and test evolutionary hypotheses about a disease      2 p. version
Tacit Creationism   Evolutionary psychiatry  
Diseases do not have direct evolutionary explanations. They are not adaptations shaped by natural selection .
However, traits that make a species vulnerable to disease need evolutionary explanations, and several may be needed. 

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: 

Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry 

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• The Economist "Books of the Year" 

• This book will surely change the face of medicine -- and deservedly so.  —Robin Dunbar

• This is a wise, accessible, highly readable exploration of an issue that goes to the heart of human existence.  —Robert Sapolsky

• A bold book that would have made Darwin proud. Cutting-edge and compassionate at the same time —Lee Dugatkin

• It is no exaggeration to say that he opens the door to a new paradigm in thinking about human beings and their conflicted lives. —Michael Ruse

• A provocative book full of intriguing explanations about human nature in all its strengths and weaknesses. —Carl Zimmer

• Someday nearly all psychiatry will be identified as evolutionary psychiatry. If so, Randolph Nesse’s book should be seen as the field’s founding document. — David Barash in The Wall Street Journal