tgamble

In trying to support the claim that scientists are ridiculed and persecuted for challenging current views, a creationist posted the following.

"
>"Homer, call it rubbish all you want, but its the truth. A good example is Colin Patterson, who was/is? the Pres. of the British Museum of natural history. He went from saying that he had absolutely no evidence of early transitional fossils (before Australopithecus) to basically apologising, and going 180 on it. All throughout history we have seen that scientists are ridiculed and often lose credibility and respect from going against the prevailing view.Look at Raymond Dart, the guy who found the Taung child. And he was right! But he was ridiculed because there's no way that life could have originated in Africa. It had to start in Europe where they are superior."

I'm not sure if the patterson quote refers to the one refuted on talkorigins. I'm mainly interested in the claim about Raymond Dart. Thanks.

Oolon Colluphid

Sorry, but who cares? If this imbecile doesn't know the difference between scientific criticism and ridicule, then don't criticise him, ridicule him.

Ask him to provide examples of this ridicule.

Oolon

Daydreamer

The difference is in what is known at the time: in both of his examples, the dissenters used new data to support a new and highly critized view, while in the Evolutionist/Creationist debate, the dissenters are using misquotes and out-of-context data in desparate attempts to prove Evolution impossible.

The former is commendable, the later dispicable.

tgamble

good point. But ridicule or critisism, was the reason the one given? It doesn't make much sense to me anyway.

MrDarwin

If you're really curious, do some homework. Here's the very first thing that popped up when I did a google search using the keywords "Raymond Dart Taung Child":

<a href="http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/information/biography/abcde/dart_raymond.html" target="_blank">Raymond Dart</a>

[ April 25, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

MrDarwin

I think the moral of this story is that scientists are willing to change their minds and accept new hypotheses and theories, if there is evidence for them. But the evidence has to be there, and the more iconoclastic or outlandish the hypothesis, the more convincing the evidence needs to be.

Contrast that with creationists, who will never, under any circumstances, change their minds, no matter what evidence they are presented with.

Oolon Colluphid

The earliest non-Neanderthal fossils were all found in Asia, eg the so-called Java Man skullcap found by Dubois in 1891 in Java. Formerly called Pithecanthropus (lit ‘ape-man’) erectus, it’s actually pretty similar to other Homo erectus skulls, and that’s what it’s now classified as. This was back in the days when, if you had to have humans as part of the same tree of life as apes, you’d still put them as far away from apes as possible. (Even up to the 1980s Ramapithecus was still being called the earliest true hominid.)

All science is criticised from within, but naturally the stuff that doesn’t seem to fit with the current picture is the most strongly criticised. Anatomically, the African apes are most similar to humans, so it was reasonable to suppose that Africa is where humans originated... but until things like Dart’s 1924 Taung child skull, Australopithecus africanus, most hominid fossils were from Asia. So, man evolved in... well, probably Asia. It can’t be Africa, because we’ve got all this Asian stuff...

Palaeontologists are notorious for making much of a few scraps of bone and for sticking to their positions in the face of new ideas (ducks swipe from Ergaster if she’s here ). Exhibit One: the trouble Sarich and Wilson had getting anyone to accept the much younger date of the human-African ape divergence -- the bone folks came into line because new fossils bore out the molecules, not because they accepted the molecules per se.) And now Exhibit Two: it took till the 1950s for the Australopithecines to be accepted as hominids.

Palaeontologists may be slow on the uptake, but this is still standard science. If you want to propose something that goes against the (already supported) contemporary view, you’d better have good evidence.

I’m not sure where your creationist got the idea that humans had to originate in Europe. Get him/her to supply some refs. But I love the "And [Dart] was right!" bit. Ask him right about what?

Oolon

DrLao

Dart probably isn't the best example a creationist could use for this because his discoveries actually succeeded in changing the status quo. The moral of the story is that scientific ideas that have merit and good evidence to back them up eventually rise to the top. So, where does that leave creationism?

Oolon Colluphid

But of course he and those like him are the only ones they can use, because those that didn't change the status quo were very probably wrong! and what's the point of making a fuss about them?

Oolon

Ergaster

(Taking that swipe):

I guess the question is--how much evidence is enough? Or--why immediately assume that the molecular evidence *was* correct per se without any corroborating evidence? In hindsight, it might look like scientists took their time accepting new hypotheses that now appear to be so self-evident, but how self-evident did they seem at the time?

For example: when cladistics first became a tool in phylogeny reconstruction, those using it refused to believe that fossils could contribute anything meaningful, because fossils retain so little information compared to living organisms. Turned out they were wrong--fossils may preserve little in the way of soft-tissue characters or clues to behaviour, but inclusion often turned hypotheses of relationships upside down.

Don't forget that Darwin himself proposed that humans originated in Africa, because of the close physical resemblance he saw between humans and the African great apes.

Deb