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Author Topic:   Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate, Darwinius masillae
Dr Jack
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Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 5 of 45 (509292)
05-20-2009 8:41 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
05-20-2009 7:18 AM


quote:
"Any pop band is doing the same thing," Jorn H. Hurum, the lead scientist on the Darwinius masillae project tells the NY Times. "Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science."
from The Link? "Going Broad" with Darwinius masillae
I'm not impressed by this. I think this kind of organised media stunt co-inciding with the release of the first paper on the subject does the presentation of science to the public no good at all. We need more considered science reporting, concentrated on work that has been properly established, not even more rush headline reporting.

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 Message 1 by Stile, posted 05-20-2009 7:18 AM Stile has replied

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 23 of 45 (509334)
05-20-2009 2:37 PM
Reply to: Message 19 by Taz
05-20-2009 12:35 PM


Re: Sittin' on the fence all day
But it really doesn't seem to me like the kind of hype you guys are talking about.
My problem with it is that it's exactly the kind of early, ill-considered hype I dislike in science reporting. Science reporting tends to consist of two things: false balance and early other-enthusiasm. I'd want to see more science reporting of things that have been properly investigated by multiple parties and on which a decent spread of research has been done. I dislike the selling of this as "like an asteroid", "the rosetta stone", "the missing link" or "changes everything" - this is bollocks, it doesn't.
Again, this fossil is a really important find. I'd say it's the find of the century. I don't see what's wrong with actually getting people to know it. I don't want it to be viewed as just another fossil. I want people to realize how important a find this is.
It's an important find, I'll agree. It's a stunningly well preserved fossil but I don't believe it's the most important find of the century; I'd say Tiktaalik roseae and Puijila darwini are both more significant, just off the top of my head. What's more there is already considerable disagreement over whether the fossil shows what the paper's authors claim it does (that the Adapids are basal to the anthropoid primates) not helped by the fact that the paper doesn't include a decent cladistic analysis. Now, the authors may be right, but it seems awfully like they're found a really neat fossil and then jumped straight to claiming it supports their existing view on primate evolution without properly establishing their case. That's disappointing in a paper on an exciting discovery anyway but when they've coupled that with a massive co-ordinated media assault, well, colour me unimpressed.

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 32 of 45 (510049)
05-27-2009 4:07 AM
Reply to: Message 31 by Taz
05-25-2009 10:46 PM


I watched the UK version, with David Attenborough, last night. After the first two minutes which included the choice quotes Percy gave earlier I wasn't hopeful. But apart from some shoddy editing choices (hint to directors, when you're telling us about how you can see seeds in the fossil giving us a slow, blurred zoom in on it is not helpful), the actual program was quite good. It covered the reasons why they claim this creature links prosimians and anthropoids quite well, and while it was somewhat simplified in places I thought it was, altogether, quite good and generally worthy of the great David Attenborough.

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 36 of 45 (532160)
10-21-2009 5:30 PM


New analysis questions Darwinus position as human ancestor
Blog link here
This is the summary image:
A different group have done studies on another primate closely related to Darwinus and called the conclusions of the group describing Darwinus into question.
How long before this gets trotted out as an Evolutionist fraud?

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 39 of 45 (532336)
10-22-2009 8:04 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by Perdition
10-22-2009 3:02 PM


Re: Linkus Failus
Which is why I'm not a big fan of the way this discovery was trotted out to the world like it was a blockbuster movie premier. While I agree science needs to be pushed to the front pages of newspapers, it shouldn't do so in a way that can so easily blow up in our faces. Especially considering the enemies we're fighting: ignorance and deception.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the way it was trotted out either.
However it would be nice if this kind of actual, real, scientific debate could be conveyed to the public sensibly. The fact is that neither the original group, nor this new study, can actually claim the crown of the scientific fact of the matter. It disappoints me that both the original claim and this new claim are uncritically accepted by the media at large and that the information that makes both claims actually pretty credible is not presented front and center. There's a general stench in public debate (certainly in my country) that disagreement within ranks represents weakness rather than strength and this stench imeasurably weakens politics as well as the public understanding of science.

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 41 of 45 (532378)
10-23-2009 4:32 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by hooah212002
10-22-2009 9:17 PM


Re: Linkus Failus
Yes, but who pushed it out? The MEDIA. However, there will not be the distinction between the two. This wil be viewed as a science fraud, not a media fuck up.
In this case, I think this is untrue. The media circus was deliberately and systematically arranged by the team that described the fossil. They organised the TV shows, the news briefings and so forth to co-incide with the papers release.
The real reason this is not fraud is the usual one: being wrong is being wrong*; it's not fraud.
* - assuming the new research pans out suitably, and they are wrong.

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 45 of 45 (549018)
03-03-2010 9:03 AM


Another damning assessment.
There's been another paper published confirming that Darwinius is not a direct human ancestor.
Read about it here.

  
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