4 ms·

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 reasonabl

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.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    No need to spend a millennium on the problem, it'll be substantially peer reviewed the world over many times with additional discoveries supporting or not supporting it well before 1/100th that time. Minding motivations until that point not only plays a role but is a core component, doesn't take long for major discoveries as interesting as this, and does help illuminate the truth as time marches on. Acting like biases aren't relevant doesn't help any of that. Science isn't some absolute truth waiting to be mined it IS that process of discovery, insight, doubt, and review repeated forever. To skip part of it only makes it worse not better.
    - aussiesnack 4y ago
      Peer review doesn't include tests of nationalism, nor biographical investigations. Bias is neither ignored by following the evidence (which is precisely what can indicate it!), nor exposed by wild claims about the nationalism of non-default US/Euro scientists.
      - zamadatix 4y ago
        Extensive peer review tests the evidence which in turn removes biases like the ones you listed. To not do it leaves room for those biases to remain which is what triggers reason to keep suspicion at first.

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.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  No need to spend a millennium on the problem, it'll be substantially peer reviewed the world over many times with additional discoveries supporting or not supporting it well before 1/100th that time. Minding motivations until that point not only plays a role but is a core component, doesn't take long for major discoveries as interesting as this, and does help illuminate the truth as time marches on. Acting like biases aren't relevant doesn't help any of that. Science isn't some absolute truth waiting to be mined it IS that process of discovery, insight, doubt, and review repeated forever. To skip part of it only makes it worse not better.
  - aussiesnack 4y ago
    Peer review doesn't include tests of nationalism, nor biographical investigations. Bias is neither ignored by following the evidence (which is precisely what can indicate it!), nor exposed by wild claims about the nationalism of non-default US/Euro scientists.
    - zamadatix 4y ago
      Extensive peer review tests the evidence which in turn removes biases like the ones you listed. To not do it leaves room for those biases to remain which is what triggers reason to keep suspicion at first.