Brian Switek in Times Online on Ida

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.

More like this

      Artist rendering of Darwinius.        Image: Julius T. CsotonyiLast year's publication of the fossil primate Darwinius masillae claimed it to be the oldest haplorhine primate ever discovered and a multimedia blitz campaign touted the find as the ultimate "missing link" (an erroneous term…
The restored lower jaw of Afradapis. From the Nature paper. This past May a 47 million year old fossil primate named Darwinius masillae, better known as "Ida", burst onto the public scene. The lemur-like creature was proclaimed to be the "missing link" and the "ancestor of us all", but the…
According to multiple reports released yesterday, scientists will announce the discovery of a new species of two-million-year-old hominin this week. Do you know what that means? That's right; writers are breaking out the pop-sci boilerplate to tell us all about the new "missing link." To paraphrase…
The good news: Earlier today I had the pleasure of participating in an interview about "Ida" on the BBC4 program Material World. I was a little nervous (this was my radio debut), but it was a lot of fun. I just wish we had some more time! You can check it out here (if you're in the UK) and here (if…

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!