Friday, November 6, 2009

The "missing link" is, well, not a missing link...

Same song, 7134th verse [**yawn**]...


You may have missed this retraction. If so, don't worry. It was easy to miss it. There wasn't nearly the fanfare circulating around the correction as was made around the giddy announcement. Here's the scoop from the AP with the headline: "‘Missing link’ primate isn’t a link after all: Ida is as far from monkey-ape-human ancestry as primate can be"
NEW YORK - Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans.

Experts protested that Ida wasn't even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction.

In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.
Well, alrighty then.

Hmmm...what kind of lessons do we learn about Ph.D's in this area? The media? Does this inform the way you view dogmatic 'scientific' announcements on the subject?

Just asking....

2 comments:

Dave said...

Hmmm...what kind of lessons do we learn about Ph.D's in this area?

Biased... just like, for example, pastors. (Call it theologically pre-suppositionalism or or psychologically confirmation bias)

John said...

@ Dave,

Everyone is biased and has their presuppositions. I gladly admit mine.

The point here is that scientists have theirs as well, even when they are claiming to be objective and following the evidence. There are, as the preeminent presuppositionalist, Van Til, once said, no brute facts.

btw, I 'heart' Ph.D's!