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Brian Switek in Times Online on Ida

By razib on May 25, 2009.

Brian Switek of Laelaps has an op-ed in on Ida. Here's the conclusion:

What could have been a unique opportunity to communicate science has quickly developed into a fiasco. Science proceeds through discovery and debate, and hypotheses do not become accepted by flooding the media with press releases. Scientific scrutiny of Ida has only just begun, and regardless of who her closest living relatives are, I hope the debate surrounding her will not sink away from sight. She truly is an amazing find, but for now I think that she has taught us more about science communication than our ancestry.

It seems to me one of the issues with "missing links" is that they reinforce the Great Chain of Being which is implicit in the public's understanding of evolutionary processes.

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I have lost all confidence in the scientific establishment's ability to debate. I previously considered "science" a dispassionate search for the truth; well, until I started looking into HBD. Scientists are so largely swayed by their own political and ideological biases that it's difficult to parse the genuine from the rhetoric. While the elites mock the conservative creationists, many of them still won't admit that race is a biological concept.

I imagine this current debate over this fossil will be affected by the same pathologies affecting the race/intelligence debate.

Please visit my new HBD blog and comment!