tgamble

Scientists are as human as anyone else. Consequently the literature on these topics suffers from a profusion of statements unsupported by evidence and from unspoken and largely untested assumptions. The canons of scientific rigor are often not applied at all to the profoundly important questions of human biology. D.J. Futuyma {EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, 1979, p.471, under the subtitle, "The Myth of Scientific Objectivity"}

No fossil or other physical evidence directly connects man to ape. John Gliedman {"Miracle Mutations," SCIENCE DIGEST, Feb. 1982, p.90}

Stephen Jay Gould concurs: Most hominid fossils, even though they serve as a basis for endles speculation and elaborate storytelling, are fragments of jaws and scraps of skulls. {THE PANDA'S THUMB, 1980, p.126}

Colin Patterson states: Accounts of human evolution rely heavily on fossils, and the number of different stories is almost as great as the number of fossils. {EVOLUTION, 1978, p.172}

I'd look these up myself but the local library isn't very well stocked. Aside from being 20 years out of date they look like they've been taken out of context.

John Solum

Here's the paragraph from page 126 from Gould's essay "Our Greatest Evolutionary step" from "The Panda's Thumb" that contains the quote:

I think the most significant problem with this quote is that it is out of date, as you said.

Here's a list of prominent hominid fossils from the talk.origins archive (there are a lot that are pre-1980 and a lot that aren't):

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html</a>

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: John Solum ]</p>