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(Disclosure: been to Oz three times & I love it) I hate to get all ad hominem here, but the fact that it comes from an Australian journal is just a tad bit sel

(Disclosure: been to Oz three times & I love it) I hate to get all ad hominem here, but the fact that it comes from an Australian journal is just a tad bit self-interested. It reminds me of the Chinese scientists who keep insisting that humans evolved in China, not Africa: https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/evolution/chinese-academics-point-to-fossil-finds-as-evidence-modern-humans-evolved-in-southeast-asia/news-story/759392de611a3c7ffb5e57f97a2d4c1a https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/evolution/chinese...

somishere 4y ago
Point taken, but where would you expect Australians to publish re a fossil found in southern Australia? In a North American Journal?
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Are there not international journals? Peer review by non-Australians?
  - somishere 4y ago
    It's peer reviewed by Australians?
  - kuhewa 4y ago
    Yeah unfortunately the great Aussie firewall won't allow the editors to send invites to non Australian email addresses.
twobitshifter 4y ago
I got the same feeling, the critical fossil is a type of tooth discovered by the author many years ago.
MichaelDickens 4y ago
I don't know anything about the subject itself, but I don't like that the article makes hyperbolic claims like > Together this weighty band of experts has just published a paper in the scientific literature that’s likely to be seen as landmark in our understanding of life on Earth.
- neRok 4y ago
  I think the article made that point to counteract any questions of "who is the source, and how reliable are they on this topic?". Especially because Tim Flannery has already been the target of many "callouts" on Australian media, eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LzlEkxE-zs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LzlEkxE-zs
aussiesnack 4y ago
So I take it you'd be equally suspicious of all the prior work from the Northern Hemisphere that claimed mammalian origins to be there? I guess that's reasonable. Western Europeans and North Americans are the default humans/scientists after all, and are completely objective about their central place in everything, even pre-human evolution.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  As much as I support the sentiment you're making an odd comparison. It is fair that anything which aligns with potential self interest should definitely have a higher bar of suspicion regardless of where that is. On the other hand it's not really reasonable to say an original consensus of "not Australia" from the rest of the world held for 100s of years and a new challenging claim of "Australia" from Australia are somehow comparable potential conflicts of self-interest or that we should be asked to have equal suspicion in them at the moment. That feels more like the exact self-interest amplification suspicion than a logical concern. The far better argument IMO would be "it's a lot easier for new discoveries to be made by and reported in the the country they occur in so it isn't necessarily surprising the initial challenge would come from and be reported in that country". The China human origin one had more problems than just initial suspicion but this one will probably sort itself out into overall consensus in time and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being true. However it's probably still getting more self-attention than it would if the discovery were somewhere else in the southern hemisphere than Australia and there is nothing wrong with keeping that in mind regardless where you are or what you currently think.
  - aussiesnack 4y ago
    My comment was satire, which is all the topic deserves because it's ludicrous. The 'suspicion' you speak of has nothing to do with assessing scientific claims. They stand alone on the evidence presented, and as later tested against competing claims. Later, if the claims don't stand up, someone may well when writing fiction/biography/history/journalism choose to use the writers' background as part of their plot. But it's all irrelevant to science qua science. The assessing motivations game has no role to play here, and no destination for that matter. You could spend the next millennium trying to determine whether this particular piece of research was published in an Australian journal for nationalistic reasons (and whose reasons?) vs whether it just so happened that a piece of Australian research got published in Australian journals (gosh!) vs whether the putative 'research must be reviewed by peers from outside the region' rule (created in an HN thread) was equally applied to default US and EU based researchers. None of it would illuminate the truth or otherwise of the proposed idea.

somishere 4y ago

Point taken, but where would you expect Australians to publish re a fossil found in southern Australia? In a North American Journal?

AlbertCory 4y ago
Are there not international journals? Peer review by non-Australians?
- somishere 4y ago
  It's peer reviewed by Australians?
- kuhewa 4y ago
  Yeah unfortunately the great Aussie firewall won't allow the editors to send invites to non Australian email addresses.

twobitshifter 4y ago

I got the same feeling, the critical fossil is a type of tooth discovered by the author many years ago.

MichaelDickens 4y ago

I don't know anything about the subject itself, but I don't like that the article makes hyperbolic claims like > Together this weighty band of experts has just published a paper in the scientific literature that’s likely to be seen as landmark in our understanding of life on Earth.

neRok 4y ago
I think the article made that point to counteract any questions of "who is the source, and how reliable are they on this topic?". Especially because Tim Flannery has already been the target of many "callouts" on Australian media, eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LzlEkxE-zs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LzlEkxE-zs

aussiesnack 4y ago

So I take it you'd be equally suspicious of all the prior work from the Northern Hemisphere that claimed mammalian origins to be there? I guess that's reasonable. Western Europeans and North Americans are the default humans/scientists after all, and are completely objective about their central place in everything, even pre-human evolution.

zamadatix 4y ago
As much as I support the sentiment you're making an odd comparison. It is fair that anything which aligns with potential self interest should definitely have a higher bar of suspicion regardless of where that is. On the other hand it's not really reasonable to say an original consensus of "not Australia" from the rest of the world held for 100s of years and a new challenging claim of "Australia" from Australia are somehow comparable potential conflicts of self-interest or that we should be asked to have equal suspicion in them at the moment. That feels more like the exact self-interest amplification suspicion than a logical concern. The far better argument IMO would be "it's a lot easier for new discoveries to be made by and reported in the the country they occur in so it isn't necessarily surprising the initial challenge would come from and be reported in that country". The China human origin one had more problems than just initial suspicion but this one will probably sort itself out into overall consensus in time and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being true. However it's probably still getting more self-attention than it would if the discovery were somewhere else in the southern hemisphere than Australia and there is nothing wrong with keeping that in mind regardless where you are or what you currently think.
- aussiesnack 4y ago
  My comment was satire, which is all the topic deserves because it's ludicrous. The 'suspicion' you speak of has nothing to do with assessing scientific claims. They stand alone on the evidence presented, and as later tested against competing claims. Later, if the claims don't stand up, someone may well when writing fiction/biography/history/journalism choose to use the writers' background as part of their plot. But it's all irrelevant to science qua science. The assessing motivations game has no role to play here, and no destination for that matter. You could spend the next millennium trying to determine whether this particular piece of research was published in an Australian journal for nationalistic reasons (and whose reasons?) vs whether it just so happened that a piece of Australian research got published in Australian journals (gosh!) vs whether the putative 'research must be reviewed by peers from outside the region' rule (created in an HN thread) was equally applied to default US and EU based researchers. None of it would illuminate the truth or otherwise of the proposed idea.