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It frustrates me that people on HN, an intelligent crowd, draw conclusions without a serious basis. Why not ask, 'Is this study disregarding the humans who nev

It frustrates me that people on HN, an intelligent crowd, draw conclusions without a serious basis. Why not ask, 'Is this study disregarding the humans who never reach the reproductive age or the ones who cannot keep their offspring alive? Is there is some survivorship bias baked into the methodology?' You might find out - we might find out - rather than you guess wrong, never find out, and we all carry the error with us.

MobiusHorizons 4y ago
As I understand it, what the OP is saying is not something any study could ever control for without perfectly preserved DNA from a statistically significant sample of DNA from human populations going back to old generations. Any study that uses DNA collected from modern humans will weed out the DNA of humans whose descendants are not living today. Hence survivorship bias.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  The problem is turning your 2 minute analysis into a conclusion instead of an informed question. The Internet is filled with such conclusions; another adds nothing.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    >>The Internet is filled with such conclusions; another adds nothing. reply Problem is, the internet is also filled with studies that prove or disprove anything you want, best to be skeptical. I personally don't put much credence into any studies that seriously thinks they can make any factual accurate statements about things that may or may not have happened 250,000 years ago. Science is never settled.
usrusr 4y ago
The study seems to look exclusively at the outcome in the contemporary gene pool. And not at archeological DNA samples, because then the x axis would be in years not in generations. There's nothing to compensate for or disregard, the study simply does not claim to describe anything it cannot (very indirectly) see.
scajanus 4y ago
If anything, more intelligent people might be more suspectible to these kind of errors -- assuming their intelligence applies and extends to fields they have little knowledge of. And also just enjoy intellectual speculation as such. From the comments, it is pretty clear to me that people lack understanding of biology/modern computational genomics, and the models used and their limitations.

MobiusHorizons 4y ago

As I understand it, what the OP is saying is not something any study could ever control for without perfectly preserved DNA from a statistically significant sample of DNA from human populations going back to old generations. Any study that uses DNA collected from modern humans will weed out the DNA of humans whose descendants are not living today. Hence survivorship bias.

wolverine876 4y ago
The problem is turning your 2 minute analysis into a conclusion instead of an informed question. The Internet is filled with such conclusions; another adds nothing.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>The Internet is filled with such conclusions; another adds nothing. reply Problem is, the internet is also filled with studies that prove or disprove anything you want, best to be skeptical. I personally don't put much credence into any studies that seriously thinks they can make any factual accurate statements about things that may or may not have happened 250,000 years ago. Science is never settled.

usrusr 4y ago

The study seems to look exclusively at the outcome in the contemporary gene pool. And not at archeological DNA samples, because then the x axis would be in years not in generations. There's nothing to compensate for or disregard, the study simply does not claim to describe anything it cannot (very indirectly) see.

scajanus 4y ago

If anything, more intelligent people might be more suspectible to these kind of errors -- assuming their intelligence applies and extends to fields they have little knowledge of. And also just enjoy intellectual speculation as such. From the comments, it is pretty clear to me that people lack understanding of biology/modern computational genomics, and the models used and their limitations.