When Hype Interferes With Science

We moderns tend to take the night sky for granted. We know it is there while we sit comfortably at home in Alexandria going about our daily lives but we don't pay it much attention. And if we did, our towns and cities create vast domes of artificial light such that the splendor of the stars and planets is often washed out and we are puzzled at what the ancients found so interesting about it. We forget that for them, reading the sky was a matter of survival.

By Michael Gryboski
Commentary  

Many learned individuals draw a line between objective science and popular science.
 
For the former, the environment includes technical papers and peer reviewed research, with findings and articles confined to periodicals and lecture halls.
 
For the latter it is prime time television documentaries, front page news stories, and of course oftentimes horrendously exaggerated and oversimplified claims.
 
Typically its one that gets to party and the other that has to clean up the mess. Recent news on the origins debate is the claim of a new great find, a debate-ending missing link showing once and for all that evolution is the origin of the human species and this is how.
 
Its scientific name is Darwinius masillae, but its popular name is Ida. Whatever the appellation, the fossil in question is described by National Geographic as “lemur-like” and having “primate-like characteristics, including grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and relatively short limbs.”
 
Ida is hailed by its finders, who turned to popular media to advance their theory, as the great link between all primate species.
 
And mass media gobbles it all up.
 
There is a major documentary about how the find changes everything, a Web site, and a popularly published book. Even Google got in on the excitement and for a time changed their search engine homepage to feature an illustration of the fossil. So we know how much of a thrill this gives our major media outlets and dinner conversations.
 
But what do scientists say about this find? Do they all believe it to be the ultimate discovery on the origin of man, putting to rest nonreligious criticism of the evolution theory? Or maybe, contrary to the hype, many experts hold grave doubts about the claims made.
 
Paleontologists like Richard Kay of Duke University take issue with how the fossil has been classified. As reported by ScienceNOW Daily News, in researching primate evolution, the typical analysis compares 200 to 400 traits between the species.

Jørn Hurum and Philip Gingerich, the two men propagating the fossil as the great find on human evolution, only compared 30 traits. "There is no phylogenetic analysis to support the claims, and the data is cherry-picked," says Kay. Another expert, K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, doubts the significance of the major claim made by Hurum and Gingerich.  "I actually don't think it's terribly close to the common ancestral line of monkeys, apes, and people," said Beard.
 
Some call to question the originality of the thesis proposed by Hurum and Gingerich, like paleoanthropologist John Fleagle.
 
Upon learning about Ida, he remarked “What does it tell us about human evolution that we didn't know? Precious little." Others deny the validity of what the fossil is being used for, which is the claim that it is the great link to all primates. This crowd would include paleoanthropologist Christ Gilbert of Yale University.
 
 “On the whole I think the evidence is less than convincing,” Gilbert said and then added, “They make an intriguing argument but I would definitely say that the consensus is not in favor of the hypothesis they're proposing."
 
Tell that to Google.com, who put the illustration on their search engine homepage. Tell that to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who called Ida an "astonishing breakthrough."
 
Finally try and tell that to the millions of people without a scientific background who will undoubtedly watch the documentary, read the book, and believe the hype.
 
Using popular culture to advance a questionable academic thesis has been done many times before, as seen with The Da Vinci Code, the Jesus Tomb, the eugenics movement, and Piltdown Man.
 
This is not a good group to be associated with, yet as the gap between what popular science says and what objective science says about Ida grows, one should wonder how long it will take for people to realize the reality of the situation.
 
Michael Gryboski lives in Alexandria. He is a 2009 graduate of George Washington University.