A most interesting discussion has got started here at “But ‘Lucy’ herself is mostly an artifact”. Commenter KL got it going, I suspect, by observing that
I certainly don’t consider you hicks. However, my spouse and associates are primate researchers, physical anthropologists, geologists and archeologists. It’s strange to come here and see their work dismissed as a just so story. Some of them have been in the field extensively and have published many, many papers. Are you guys saying that somehow all these people are simply mistaken?
Yes, it is quite possible.
My question is, is there anything fronted by “evolution researchers” that KL wouldn’t believe? How about the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution? Or Marc “Well, the monkeys talk to me!” Hauser? How about any single item on this list? Is there nothing that KL would even wonder about? Does he know that E. O. Wilson has retracted his own kin selection theory?
Two things: The public of a free society is not stupid. When we see a parade of amazing nonsense – marketed as evolution – we wisely don’t believe any of it. I don’t bother sorting through it for the same reason as I don’t scan the tabloids to see if anything in them is true.
It is no use berating us, let alone blaming us for low science scores. Revisit your strategy.
And second, would KL be willing to read The Nature of Nature, to understand what the controversy is really about? Then we could have a serious discussion.
(Note: KL has a spouse and associates in primate research, and I have a number of relatives and friends in medicine. That does not commit me to any particular theory, no matter how widely espoused, and a good thing too: Look how much medicine has changed. )