Faux News Headline: Time to rethink Evolution

[brettdale]

www.foxnews.com

[SeattleGirl]

1. Dear Faux Noise: Um, no.

Jury's been in on that one for many, many years.

Fuck you very much,

SeattleGirl

[Bluebear]

2. You said it. nt

[bluerum]

3. "just say no" to Faux.

[Enthusiast]

4. Okay, I read it.................

There is nothing new here and nothing that refutes the theory of evolution or human evolution. Fundis have a problem here. They think a new discovery that change scientist's understanding of human evolution somehow diminishes it. They couldn't be more incorrect. Science is about refining our understanding, not in maintaining the status quo as in things biblical.

[rodeodance]

15. Headline maybe could have been a bit more discript, yet not all that bad>.

Actually good write up---as it takes in how science work. Nothing 'bliblical" about it.


Headline at this time:

Skull Suggests Two Early Humans Lived at Same Time

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

[Philosoraptor]

5. I once reconsidered gravity, but am still earthbound.

[ClintonTyree]

6. If anything......

it bolsters the theory of natural selection. Of course I'd never expect FAUX Noise to present the argument in that fashion. It wouldn't sit well with their knuckle dragging viewers' vision of the world. :eyes:

[Crunchy Frog]

7. The actual article isn't so bad.

Except that it's arguing against a cartoon image of human evolutionary history, that hasn't been taken seriously by scientists for decades.

The article doesn't try to cast doubt on the validity of evolutionary theory, it just tries to make a big deal out of the fact that different hominid species coexisted in the past. Just Faux trying to get cheap thrills out of a very old piece of scientific news.

[Maddy McCall]

11. It's a huge deal...

if after peer review there is agreement with Leakey that H. erectus is not from the same evolutionary line as H. habilis.

She isn't just claiming that they co-existed. She's claiming that habilis is probably not the ancestor of sapiens.

The evidence that Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived at the same time in the Turkana basin makes it "unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis," says Meave Leakey, a lead author of the paper announcing the discovery in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature.

Like I said in my other post...it doesn't bring into question the theory of evolution, just the particulars.

[Maddy McCall]

8. It's actually a very interesting article.

Mary Leakey's considered credible in the field--she's responsible for the Laetoli footprints find, also Louis Leakey's wife, Richard Leakey's mother.

I will say, though, that the Leakey family has postulated some kinda crazy stuff, like the Calico Hills reverse migration theory which almost got Louis laughed out of the profession. Anyway...back to the article...

In this article, Leakey claims that H. habilis and H. erectus lived "side by side" 1.5 MYA, that H. sapiens sapiens did not evolve lineally from habilis. Or that there's no evidence that H. habilis and H erectus ever interbred (that does not mean that they didn't interbreed, it just means that no evidence has been found to demonstrate that they did).

That doesn't leave anthros to rethink the THEORY of evolution, only the lineality of evolution.

The article's appearing in other news outlets--not just Fox. (Of course, fundamentalist Christians will use this article to say, "See? Scientists don't know what they are talking about. They can't even get the timeline right.")

Here's another link:

http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2846545.ece

[StClone]

9. Old Nudes

Faux Noise -- We distort, you deride -- semi-human animals, hominids of different stripes found to live side-by-side is old news.

[piedmont]

10. Bad headline, good article.

Here's the closing paragraph:
"All the changes to human evolutionary thought should not be considered a weakness in the theory of evolution, Kimbel said. Rather, those are the predictable results of getting more evidence, asking smarter questions and forming better theories, he said."

[MichaelHarris]

12. as long

as we get to ride dinosaurs I'm cool with it.

[krispos42]

13. So then the thinking on Evolution has to ..... evolve?

n/t

[SalmonChantedEvening]

14. REthink?

You never did any thinking the first time around.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. Oops, it's gone

But there is an interesting article on the list:

Skull Suggests Two Early Humans Lived at Same Time.

On edit: New wineskin, old wine. That is, it's the same article with a new title.

And nary a wise-ass remark about Adam and Jabez riding around on dinosaurs to be found. At least SOME of the Fox staff stayed awake in science class.

--p!

[skip fox]

17. It's a good article (though all things Faux are suspect), yet the headline

suggests they're debunking evolution. Instead, the are doing ONE of their tricks: looking at internal debates and discoveries within the evolutionary model and focusing on that. (The crazed go one step further and use controversies and new discoveries to claim that evolutionary scientists don't know what they're talking about . . . as they used Stephen Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" to claim that he disproved evolution . . . and boy would Gould get mad when they did that!)

1. Show the model is not so smooth inside as people may believe (= cast general doubts)

2. Knowing most people don't get past the headlines (ann I'll bet that percentage is very low with Faux readers/watchers), they write a headline that seems to show great flaws in evolutionary theory itself. (When what's really happening is a relatively minor refinement . . . minor compared to the general theory. It like saying a town in Iowa might elect a teen-aged Clerk of Courts, therefore the historical validity of the United States needs reconsidered.)

You bet.

More editorial tricks even when they're reporting a story straight.

It's "No Spin" because their entire field of engagement is so slanted everything falls off.