{"id":72903,"date":"2012-07-26T09:46:57","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T17:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=17550"},"modified":"2012-07-26T09:46:57","modified_gmt":"2012-07-26T17:46:57","slug":"the-new-york-times-is-ginning-up-fake-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2012\/07\/26\/the-new-york-times-is-ginning-up-fake-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times is ginning up fake controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> That charlatan David Klinghoffer seems to be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.evolutionnews.org\/2012\/07\/the_study_of_hu_1062581.html\">enjoying this<\/a>. As a rule I don&#8217;t follow <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/loom\/2012\/07\/23\/and-finally-the-hounding-duck-can-rest\/\">dishonest propagandists<\/a>, but it&#8217;s interesting how appealing this sort of &#8220;two sides&#8221; story is to Creationists. <strong>End Update<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Reading this article this morning, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/07\/27\/science\/cousins-of-neanderthals-left-dna-in-africa-scientists-report.html?_r=1&amp;hp&amp;pagewanted=print\">DNA and Fossils Tell Differing Tales of Human Origins<\/a>, really aggravated me. <strong>I believe that it&#8217;s totally misrepresenting the tensions in the scientific process here, and misleading the public.<\/strong> The standard conflict\/&#8221;two views&#8221; format is used, and to disastrous effect. Here are some of the sections which I found alarming:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The geneticists reached this conclusion, reported on Thursday in the journal Cell, after decoding the entire genome of three isolated hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa, hoping to cast light on the origins of modern human evolution. But the finding is <strong>regarded skeptically by <em>some<\/em> paleoanthropologists<\/strong> because of the absence in the fossil record of anything that would support the geneticists\u2019 statistical calculation&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In a report still under review, a third group of geneticists says there are signs of Neanderthals having interbred with Asians and East Africans. <strong>But Neanderthals were a cold-adapted species that never reached East Africa.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Although all known African fossils are of modern humans, a 13,000-year-old skull from the Iwo Eleru &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update: That charlatan David Klinghoffer seems to be enjoying this. As a rule I don&#8217;t follow dishonest propagandists, but it&#8217;s interesting how appealing this sort of &#8220;two sides&#8221; story is to Creationists. End Update<br \/>\nReading this &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,514,2082],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthroplogy","category-paleontology","category-richard-klein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72903"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72937,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72903\/revisions\/72937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}