You've summed up the technical bit of this perfectly, nothing to add there. Would be a very interesting bit of research, but the speculation really drives me m

You've summed up the technical bit of this perfectly, nothing to add there. Would be a very interesting bit of research, but the speculation really drives me mad, as it's so out there and without evidence to back it up that it's not even worth considering. I have to go further, though - that the researcher is so quick to automatically draw that line connecting two phenomena that both involve group theory as being causally related indicates, to me, that we should be skeptical even about whether the explanation of the bee behavior is correct in any detail. Sometimes when you already know what you really want to "discover", it's very easy to see connections and patterns that don't hold up very well under further scrutiny. The "this group has something to do with bees, and it's also in QFT, ZOMG bees must read quantum fields!" line of logic is so naive (yummyfajitas explained why) that it really makes me suspicious about the whole bit of research. Scientists should keep sloppy thinking like that to themselves (analogy is a great way to guide your research efforts, and once in a while two appearances of the same group in seemingly unrelated phenomena will, in fact, be connected), and when they don't even realize that this kind of thinking is sloppy, it's not a good sign...