From Colin Barras at New Scientist: The team discovered that male and female baboons each produce four vowel-like sounds. Females produce one that males don’t, and vice versa, so in total there are five distinct vowels. They correspond to the second syllable in “roses”, and the vowel sounds in “you”, “thought”, “trap” and “ah”. … “We believe that one of the major advantages of our study is that we worked on real vocalisations, which were spontaneously produced by baboons in a social context,” says Fagot. But Philip Lieberman at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, is not convinced. He thinks the researchers have unwittingly processed the baboon calls in a way that accentuates the fundamental frequency of the call and Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: This research challenges the classically accepted view that reduction of tooth size in hominins is linked with having a larger brain. The reasoning is that larger brains allowed hominins to start making stone tools and that the use of these tools reduced the need to have such large chewing teeth. But recent studies by other authors found that hominins had larger brains before chewing teeth became smaller, and they made and used stone tools when brains were still quite small, which challenges this relationship. The new study evaluates this issue by measuring and comparing the rates at which teeth and brains have evolved along the different branches of the human evolutionary tree. “The findings of the study indicate Read More ›

From O’Leary for News at MercatorNet: Social media are no more dangerous than life generally. But they require different interpretation skills from what we need for face-to-face contact. So do books, telephone, radio, and TV. And the current angst isn’t a new phenomenon. It normally follows the introduction of new communications technologies. One example is the anxiety that resulted from printing, especially of Bibles. The anxiety was not baseless; widespread literacy was one driver of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. But would suppressing the printing press have been any help? Was controlling it much of a help? The seething anger already existed and would lead to wars in any event. Literacy helped many people understand their problems in terms of Read More ›

From John Mooallem at New York Times: Neanderthals Were People, Too “New research shows they shared many behaviors that we long believed to be uniquely human. Why did science get them so wrong?” Friends have noted that the piece is a refreshing change from the snark or (worse) odious virtue signaling that infests science writing today. Mooallem really does want to know why we might have got it wrong. The real surprise of these discoveries may not be the competence of Neanderthals but how obnoxiously low our expectations for them have been—the bias with which too many scientists approached that other Us. One archaeologist called these researchers “modern human supremacists.” The correct answer, which no one gives with complete honesty Read More ›

We are excited to report that we have received a steady stream of submissions to AM-Nat Biology over the last few weeks. If you haven’t submitted your abstract, please do so soon.
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Readers will recall Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech, a defense of the fundamental difference between language as we know it and the squawks, moos, and gibbers we hear outside. Wolfe defended linguist Daniel Everett against the Colossus of MIT, Noam Chomsky. Now Everett himself offers some thoughts at Aeon: In 2005, I published a paper in the journal Current Anthropology, arguing that Pirahã – an Amazonian language unrelated to any living language – lacked several kinds of words and grammatical constructions that many researchers would have expected to find in all languages. I made it clear that this absence was not due to any inherent cognitive limitation on the part of its speakers, but due to cultural values, one Read More ›

This bears on the question of whether human beings can apprehend reality. Top naturalists are dedicated to the opposite view. Much politicking around freedom of the media depends on whether one believes that humans can apprehend reality and make choices based on information therefrom. From O’Leary for News at MercatorNet: It wasn’t so much fake news as *missed* news. … The internet changes a great deal but it does not change the fundamental nature of reality. One small Atlanta-based pollster sensed that the military wife or the WalMart manager might not wish to risk humiliation, even in the abstract, by giving an honest opinion. So he asked his respondents who they thought their neighbours would vote for. He called the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Although it is widely viewed as a vestigial organ with little known function, recent research suggests that the appendix may serve an important purpose. In particular, it may serve as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria. Several other mammal species also have an appendix, and studying how it evolved and functions in these species may shed light on this mysterious organ in humans. Heather F. Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, is currently studying the evolution of the appendix across mammals. Dr. Smith’s international research team gathered data on the presence or absence of the appendix and other gastrointestinal and environmental traits for 533 mammal species. They mapped the data onto a phylogeny Read More ›

Recently over on this thread started by Barry we have been discussing one of the tired atheist arguments against God’s existence: bad design.  The discussion has been primarily in the context of some of Carl Sagan’s remarks cited by john_a_designer, but Sagan is by no means unique in his failed efforts. Commenter rvb8 had the audacity to claim that the faulty “bad design” line of argumentation is in fact a “well argued point,” warning in the same breath that we mustn’t question Sagan because, well, Sagan was an important science guy. When pressed on the matter, rvb8 dug in his heels and reasserted that the bad design line of argumentation “is sound,” pointing out that God was tremendously wasteful. Now I’ve heard Read More ›

Many sources feel that we readily believe fake news. Concern trolls in social sciences are often heard on this point, usually demanding government and corporate action. Having spent a life in news, I would say that the ability to detect fakery increases with familiarity with the medium, as any magazine rack will show. That’s because human are decision-makers. The humans analyzed are as much decision-makers as the analysts. Those who think that chickens are just like people, apes are entering the the Stone Age, and rocks have minds probably think that there are “scientific” formulas for getting around the reality of the independence of other people’s minds. From O’Leary for News (Denyse O’Leary) at MercatorNet: Fake news is hard to define. Read More ›

A lot of people have picked out what is broken in college, but I think perhaps a more core issue about college is a simpler one – that we are sending people to college immediately after high school.
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Traffic way down. Here: . . . unless people start reading them. Today virtually all the serious posts were animal- or science-related. Traffic is way down (about 60% of normal) which means people aren’t reading them. What do you want—clickbait? More. Of course, this could be a hack. In case not, let’s help Jerry. He brings us lots of traffic so it’s only fair. What clickbait could he offer? Readers, ideas? Is it just possible that lack of interest in defenses of classical Darwinism is related to growing interest in exciting new areas? Naw, that never happens in real life. See also: Darwinism: Replacement or extension? Quantum-like model of partially directed evolution? The thought seems information must already be present Read More ›

From science writer Robert Wright at New York Times: That said, one interesting feature of current discourse is a growing openness among some scientifically minded people to the possibility that our world has a purpose that was imparted by an intelligent being. I’m referring to “simulation” scenarios, which hold that our seemingly tangible world is actually a kind of projection emanating from some sort of mind-blowingly powerful computer; and the history of our universe, including evolution on this planet, is the unfolding of a computer algorithm whose author must be pretty bright. You may scoff, but in 2003 the philosopher Nick Bostrom of Oxford University published a paper laying out reasons to think that we are pretty likely to be Read More ›

From Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology: Abstract: (paywall)The background of this study is that models of the evolution of living systems are based mainly on the evolution of replicators and cannot explain many of the properties of biological systems such as the existence of the sexes, molecular exaptation and others. The purpose of this study is to build a complete model of the evolution of organisms based on a combination of quantum-like models and models based on partial directivity of evolution. We also used optimal control theory for evolution modeling. We found that partial directivity of evolution is necessary for the explanation of the properties of an evolving system such as the stability of evolutionary strategies, aging and death, Read More ›

From Ben Mauk at LiveScience: To say we are more “evolved” than our hairy cousins is just wrong. (See how long you last naked in the Congo Heartland, and then tell me who’s got the evolutionary upper hand.) More. Ah, a question we can answer without a Google search! Free-living apes must survive naked in the Congo Heartland but few humans ever need to, or not for long. Which is why apes live in our conservation programs and we do not live in theirs. So we have the upper hand, no contest. Pop science is funny that way. People can make really inane statements and they pass for the best of science wisdom. Actually, a different variety of pop science Read More ›