Afarensis 2006

Evolution advocates are all atwitter about a skeleton uncovered in Africa that has finally become ready to begin examining. First, let me qualify; I say 'evolution advocates' and that sounds contentious but that's not to say I disbelieve evolution. However, I wouldn't be a contrarian scientist if I believed every popular piece of pop science that came along. Instead, I would be an anti-religion, anti-Republican, anti-non-scientists scientist. In effect, I would be every single Associate Professor who writes for scienceblogs.com, the science communities' answer to Slate Magazine. Biologists in the evolution camp have become so entrenched in wanting to believe anything that might be more evidence for evolution, they tend to miss the big picture. And when they aren't missing the big picture, they are redefining it so that their evidence only leads to the conclusion they like. This is arcane stuff, people, and if you try to argue the point, they will give you a list of books citing why evolution is a law. Conveniently these are the only books that are worth reading to them. Sounds like religious fundamentalism, right? Indeed. They're not as bad as environmentalists, of course. Any time an environmentalist makes a claim, you should reach for your wallet ... and hope the grain of salt replaces the money you are about to lose. You only have to live in California a little while and see the windmills that environmentalists claimed would pay for themselves immediately to see what $15 billion in waste looks like. Biologists that are on the fringes of the evolution argument are along the same vein as the abortion groups on both sides, the homosexuality groups on both sides, or any other group which morphs its hypotheses into its religion. They need to convince you and they desperately want to live in important times. Sometimes that means overstating evidence ... for your own good. NATURE Magazine ( sorry - journal, it sounds more scientific if you say journal ), coming out next week, will have all the latest details on this find - at least the details they like, in carefully crafted language. NATURE is nothing if not biased in its articles but they don't claim to be objective so we gauge them accordingly. Does this new find really gain any ground for either side? No, so beware people who will insist it does. When people are looking at data through a political prism, they tend to see what they want to see. I'll link the article when it comes online. In the mean time, get your hysteria and evolutionary claim-jumping at scienceblogs.com