Sound Bite Science

Paleoanthropologist Tim White shows how to respond when your work is criticized. Nature just printed an article attacking the conclusion he advanced in Science in 2009, that Ardipithecus was a human ancestor, and he had this to say:

With no new data, no new ideas, no new methods, no new hypothesis, no new experiments, no new fossils, not even a new classification, this paper will leave everybody wondering what’s happened to the peer review process at Nature.

To which the lead author of the new study, Bernard Wood, replied,

Researchers have to stop publishing papers that say, essentially, ‘This fossil is an early hominid, so suck it up and accept it. Nature and Science could change this practice overnight if they wanted to.

Isn't science great? Leave it to The Onion to offer the best take on these and similar anthropological debates, the "One Large Goat" hypothesis:

Funded by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution, the 17-year inquiry into the origins of the human race brought together 12 top anthropologists from around the world to pursue the single-large-goat theory, which participants in Monday's presentation assured audience members "felt more plausible when we came up with it, really it did."

The landmark study culminates in this week's release of a 270-page report explaining the structure of prehistoric humans' short, upturned woolly tails and identifying the roots of early Indo-European† language in goat bleating, which, Ochs stated, "maybe [they] should have double-checked real quick" before the paper went to publication.

"There may be some slight inconsistencies in a few of our results, but I assure you these bone samples and behavioral analyses are all, well…look, I'm not going to stand here and tell you they're not a little ridiculous-looking," said Regina Hubbard-Price, associate director of the American Anthropological Association. "Obviously, with hindsight, yes, it's somewhat odd that our theory presupposes complex hunter-gatherer societies composed of large, 250-pound bipedal goat-men. But a lot of thought went into this, I swear."

"Maybe we should have listened to Cliff [Geertz] back at the beginning when he kept emphasizing that humans don't look like goats," Hubbard-Price added.