A world of hype

The Sky News article about the discovery of Darwinius masillae states:

The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years—but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York. [Italics added.]

And David Attenborough is quoted:

This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of the mammals. This is the one that connects us directly with them. [Italics added.]

But how is a 47,000,000 year old lemur like creature a direct connection between “us” and anything? “We” (Homo sapiens) did not exist for another 46,800,000 years after this creature.

Maybe the name of our species should be changed to Homo hypeans.

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Carol Iannone writes:

Your thread on this is very good. Get this part of the article (emphases are mine):

“When Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859, he said a lot about transitional species,” said Prof Hurum

“…and he said that will never be found, a transitional species, and his whole theory will be wrong, so he would be really happy to live today when we publish Ida.

“This fossil is really a part of our history; this is part of our evolution, deep, deep back into the aeons of time, 47 million years ago.

“It’s part of our evolution that’s been hidden so far, it’s been hidden because all the other specimens are so incomplete.

“They are so broken there’s almost nothing to study and now this wonderful fossil appears and it makes the story so much easier to tell, so it’s really a dream come true.”

What’s that? The specimens are incomplete, all broken, almost nothing to study? I never heard that before. They always act as if they have plenty. Now they’re admitting this because they have this new creature to flaunt. The liars.

LA replies:

Yes. All along they have acted as if they had it all, they were on top of the world, Darwin rules! But now they find this 47 million year old fossil (the real significance of which they haven’t yet actually stated), and suddenly they’re admitting that they’ve had nothing up to this point, they’ve been the scientific equivalent of Bowery bums, so that this one discovery makes them so happy.

LA writes:

The sad thing is, that while this really is a remarkable discovery, the hype has completely replaced any legitimate scientific discussion. I’m looking forward to finding out what the real meaning of this discovery is.

Dale F. writes:

A quote from an ABC News article makes clear, as you pointed out, that there’s a lot more hype than science in the presentation of this fossil:

But Jens Franzen of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Germany, who was on the team assembled to examine the fossil, said, “I don’t think so, that we are dealing with a direct ancestor.

“We are not dealing with our grand, grand grandmother, but perhaps with our grand, grand, grand aunt.”

In response to a reporter’s question, Hurum also agreed it would be hard to call “Ida” a direct human ancestor. But he said he was comfortable with the publicity surrounding it.

“That’s part of getting science out to the public, to get attention,” he said. “I don’t think that’s so wrong.”

May 20

Kristor writes:

Reminds me of the old Mel Brooks line—I forget which movie—“Moichandising, moichandising. It’s all about the moichandising.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 19, 2009 10:10 PM | Send