Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
As I'm sure you've heard by now, there's a new fossil find that's just been published in PLoS One, a 47 million year old specimen called Darwinus masillae, or more casually, Ida.. I suspect you've also heard that scientists have finally found the "missing link" and that the find "promised to change everything that we thought we understood about the origins of human life." Trouble is, this is all bullshit.
Yes, it's an extraordinary find. Yes, it provides evidence that fills a gap in our knowledge and will undoubtedly help us understand the development of primates more completely than we did before. But this find has been announced with the kind of hype and distortion usually reserved for movie premieres and newly improved laundry detergents. They did everything but have Billy Mayes declare that Ida will take the wrinkles out of your clothes.
As soon as I saw a link to the first article about the find and the words "missing link" I was annoyed. As John Wilkins correctly points out, this is an absurd idea based upon a misunderstanding of how evolution operates. Any time you encounter that phrase in an article about evolution, you know you're dealing with mostly ignorant bullshit.
Then you see all the absurd hype being shoveled out even by the scientists who wrote the paper, all of them very well respected. Jorn Hurum, who should know better, calls Ida "the first link to all humans." Phillip Gingerich, who really should know better, says the find is "a kind of Rosetta Stone." And Sir David Attenborough tells the press, "The link they would have said until now is missing ... it is no longer missing."
And you notice that even before the paper was published and available for other scientists to examine and critique, there's already a documentary about the find being aired on the BBC and the History Channel. And a book already written about it. And you realize that the Hollywoodization of science is now complete.
The other Science Bloggers have been all over this one. Brian Switek at Laelaps does an excellent job of cutting through the hype and looking at the facts and analysis of the paper itself. Brian writes:
Is Darwinius important to understanding primate evolution? Of course! It is an exceptionally preserved specimen that could do much to aid our understanding of adapid evolution and paleobiology. The grand claims about it being our ancestor, though, can not be upheld as true. The researchers simply did not do the work to support their case, and even if their language was more reserved in the technical paper they have gone hand-in-hand with the History Channel to create an aura of sensationalism around the fossil. I hardly think this is a responsible way to conduct or communicate science...
It's not. It's highly irresponsible. Unfortunately, some of the authors of the paper seem to be caught up in this hype.
"Any pop band is doing the same thing," said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. "Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science."
No. No we don't. Science doesn't have the same goal as a pop band or an athlete. Scientists are typically very careful not to overstate their case. The practice of peer review has largely acted as a break on such hype and exaggeration; a scientist who overclaims the evidence and offers shoddy analysis of it loses credibility with their peers. And this is at is should be. The goal of a pop band, on the other hand, is to sell records and make money. The goal of an athlete, in this context, is to get endorsement deals. Truth has no little to do with such pursuits, while it has everything to do with science.
Carl Zimmer does his usual excellent job of cutting through the nonsense as well. And he quotes a couple of other scientists as being rather annoyed by this PR blitz. Chris Beard of the Carnegie Museum says, "I've been deluged today by journalists regarding this. It is a marketing campaign for the ages."
Switek sums it up perfectly:
This is a shame. I would have hoped that this fossil would receive the care and attention it deserves, but for now it looks like a cash cow for the History Channel. Indeed, this association may not have only presented overblown claims to the public, but hindered good science, as well. As Karen James has suggested, the overall poor quality of the paper and the disproportionate hyping of the find make me wonder if this research was rushed into publication so that the media splash would occur on time. The paper tried to cover so much, so quickly, and contained so many shortfalls that I honestly have to wonder why it was allowed to be published in such a state. Perhaps we will never know, but I am sickened by the way in which a cable network has bastardized a legitimately fascinating scientific discovery, with the scientists themselves going along with it every step of the way. I can only hope that Darwinius will eventually receive the careful analysis it deserves.
In this age of hype and glitz, scientists and the universities that pay their salaries have hired publicists and those publicists are doing what publicists do - get publicity. But if they can only get that publicity by exaggerating and distorting and pretending that every find is revolutionary, the public's understanding of science will be even further diminished from its already paltry state.
Just as bad, they are handing ammunition to the creationists, who are more than happy to use it. Stop it. Stop it now.
Comments
It's complete bullshit. A wonderful find, but a (or the) "missing link?" There is no such animal. The idea of a link, missing or not, harkens back to pre-Darwin concepts of evolution, specifically the "Great Chain of Being," a ladder-like concept of progress, where we sit at the (destined) top of a a ladder, perhaps intelligently designed.
The hype will hurt science. This, unfortunately, reminds me of the "science by press release" approach which was so thoroughly criticized after the cold fusion fiasco.
Bob
Posted by: Bob Carroll | May 21, 2009 9:49 AM
I've been following this story with the same frustrations as well.
Sky News was the worst of all the mainstream articles I saw. Of course that's the one that the Drudge Report used to first report this story. (Link doesn't past well, google: sky news ida.)
The Wall Street Journal articles, which broke the story and was published prior to the name Darwinus masillae even being approved has done a wonderful job of accurately reporting this find.
Carl Zimmer at his blog on Discover has also done a good job rounding up objections by these scientists peers to how they're marketing their finding and how I think PLos failed miserably at the peer-review, peer-publication process; which goes back to an argument I made here several weeks objecting to more free, open publications being ready for the responsibility of being the primary publication for scientific papers in order that the public can access the original articles.
Besides Brian Switek, Jerry Coyne and especially PZ Myers at his personal scienceblogs.com blog and repeating that post at Panda's Thumb have done a great job of putting this outstanding find in its proper context.
What's frustrating to me is that a primary conduit to perpetuating all the 'missing link' nonsense is that the authors reporting on Ida failed to perform a phylogenetic analysis due to TV show deadlines (the History Channel special).
This whole fiasco immediately reminded me of the Jesus ostuary story though Ida can't be ignored like that finding ultimately was. While more and more scientists get it, i.e., the criticality of adhering to optimal scientific methodology, we still have some examples of bad behavior, augumenting my argument we need to keep these findings in respected scientific journals to insure a modicum of the scientific method is used.
Posted by: Michael Heath | May 21, 2009 9:52 AM
As a working scientist, I just cannot find the strength to gin up the appropriate amount of moral outrage. If you have been working in the field of public science in the past ten years and this surprised you, you should really pull your head out from the sand.
You have an overlarge science faculty (in many cases, still fairly young) as a legacy from the rapid expansion in public funding in the Clinton years; you have a tenure and promotion system that is also a holdover from the Clinton expansion, with most schools requiring the equivalent of one or two major grants in order to qualify for tenure; you have a public funding system that has essentially been contracting the past eight years; you have an increasingly active Congress earmarking research funds to go towards specific research problems (which, of course, is whatever is sexy at the moment), putting more importance on making your field of research sexy enough to attract attention; and finally, you have increasing amounts of emphasis at both the university level and the granting agency level being put on dissemination of scientific results to a lay public that gets its science from CSI and/or the 700 Club.
What the hell were you expecting?
Science has become another victim of the short-term syndrome infecting American life and politics. It used to be enough to do consistently do good work in your field. Now, if you do great work for years but no one is talking about it, you can find yourself looking for a new job, with the lovely moniker "failed academic".
Posted by: Shygetz | May 21, 2009 10:16 AM
The only theory of evolution this find could possibly revolutionize (and it's not a high likelihood) is the strawman version argued against by creationists. You know, the one that says the universe popped into existence from nothing. It always amazes me how creationists can scoff at such a notion, yet believe an invisible personal friend of theirs did it just that way.
I find my self desperately longing for a popular public figure, like Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, who had a deep and abiding interest in science. One who would also find and give a platform to a scientist with a gift for communicating to the public, like Carl Sagan could, without betraying the science itself.
Posted by: Ray S. | May 21, 2009 10:41 AM
As a fellow academic who can relate to much of what you just said (tenure decisions are looming even now), I don't think I was surprised by the activity, just the level of the hype and the complicity of the scientists involved. Its fairly common these days for universities to hire PR people to promote anything that will be big for donors and funding agencies (and the sciences are big sources of soft money), but usually the PR/marketing crazies go overboard while the scientists try to keep it level and true. It seems that this time, the PR/marketing folk were running the scientists and they bought into the hype even putting out a mediocre paper to boot. That, I think, is where I'm a little surprised and disappointed.
I have to comment quickly on Michael Heath's argument about open-access publishing. While I am still unsure of the open-access model (I don't use it), I'm not sure its a good argument that the current system is a better guard on the scientific literature. There are a flood of pay-for-access journals out there and many of them include studies that aren't worth the paper they are written on. There are even plenty of good journals that will take less-than-stellar work because of its 'sexy' nature. As working scientists, we recognize that problem and its the reason we have to evaluate individual studies on a case-by-case basis. That's not to say that papers from my top journal aren't given a little more leeway, but we use good science from anywhere and its up to individual scientists to evaluate the studies. Pay-for-access does not do a better job that open-access on guarding against bad papers. If you need me to, I can cite you LOTS of bad papers in the pay-for-access journals, even some of the better ones.
Posted by: Scott Reese | May 21, 2009 10:46 AM
Scott - sounds like your governing or organizing bodies need to establish some stricter standards for what is and isn't a qualified publication venue in order to formally separate most of the chaff from the wheat. It would also help the media more easily distinguish authentic scientific articles from poseur articles published at the Institute for Creation Research or the dribble that Dembski 'publishes'.
Posted by: Michael Heath | May 21, 2009 11:12 AM
I wonder if it mattered that these scientists were (mostly?) non-Americans: you can at least _sort_ of see the thread by which their not quite as insane statements got expanded and placed in new contexts by the particular way the US media works. That's something that they may not have been as familiar with. And I have a very hard time thinking the Attenborough quote was truly in context, because Attenborough knows very well that "the" major human evolution "gap" in the primate record, the one creationists care about, are ancestors of chimps and humans.
Note, however, that that one author gives absolutely no justification for WHY science needs to be the same way: he just says "look, athletes and pop stars are doing it, so it's imperative we do to!" Obviously coming up with great science media and innovative educational material is very important. But at this point, I think it might be wise to consider whether it's ever a good idea for totally NEW research.
I found a decent family tree painting that I'm liking more and more for its simplicity in illustrating how all we know yet about this fossil is that it falls in a general area in a VERY wide range of branches and lineages. It WILL tell us a lot about all the nearby branches. But saying anything about where exactly it lies and how important it is to the human line is simply silly at this point.
Posted by: Drew | May 21, 2009 11:19 AM
Any truth to the rumor that male versions of the species bore an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Federline?
Posted by: kehrsam | May 21, 2009 11:24 AM
Michael - There really is no such thing as a 'governing' body in science. The organizations we have don't really have the structural capacity to impose any such thing. Science isn't a top-down organization, rather its a collection of very independent researchers; I think it works better that way for science. I think that's why we need good science writers and communicators that can wade through the literature and decipher it for journalists and the rest of the public.
Posted by: Scott Reese | May 21, 2009 11:33 AM
Drew @ 7: I don't think the country-of-origin of the authors has anything to do with it. Dr. Hurum was previously involved with another widely hyped discovery, a large pliosaur, that was accompanied by a History Channel show (Predator X). I think the problem lies with having a big PR machine backing the findings (both History and the AMNH) and with the authors of the paper not reigning in the press releases' overblown statements.
Posted by: MAL | May 21, 2009 11:58 AM
Yes, the way science is reported is frustrating. I think the best thing would be to have news organizations hire people who are literate in the sciences - and able to write about them in a way that is comprehensible to the layperson without being condescending to the layperson - to do their science reporting. Much of the evidence implies that most news organizations aren't doing that consistently at this point.
Perhaps then some of the hype would be toned down a bit. Don't know what to do, however, about the researchers who seem all too eager to jump on the bandwagon to hype their discoveries because they see themselves as the next Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould or Donald Johanson or whoever, in becoming the next "household name" in science.
Of course, I also get frustrated at the portion of the science community which mutters darkly about "popularization", as if science should only be for the fraternity of scientists while they pat laypeople on the head and tell us "you wouldn't understand", and feed us only the most simplistic pap about new discoveries.
It's kind of a fine line sometimes.
Posted by: Elaine | May 21, 2009 12:32 PM
Ditto Scott; a topdown organization for science would be disastrous.
Elaine, the problem is that no one is sufficiently literate in all areas of science to grasp new advances well enough to prevent misunderstandings. So, even educated science reporters will have to rely upon the researchers themselves to explain the results and their significance. When you combine this necessary reliance on the researcher with a strong incentive for the researchers to hype their results, you end up with the situation you have now.
And don't delude yourself--what happened with Ida isn't new, it's just more visible this time. There has been a self-reinforcing spiral of over-selling results for some time now. I saw that Time is carrying some of the backlash over Ida; hopefully this negative reinforcement will propagate to tone down this problem.
Posted by: Shygetz | May 21, 2009 1:28 PM
I am very much in favor of popularizing actual science. We can all use these incidents of hollywoodizationism to teach crtical thinking, the scientific method, and the pratice of scientific research to our students, peers, friends and family. I think we all need to activly resist when media tries to dumb down content for a greater ratings share. That being said it is hardly suprising that science news is reported in this way as it competes directly with the truly glamorous intersting subjects such as the sex lives of famous people etc.
Posted by: mark duran | May 21, 2009 1:30 PM
Scott Reese stated:
Which was I stated in my comment your responded to:
The manufacturing industry, which is my background, also doesn't have any powerful, formal governing bodies. However we still leveraged our organizing bodies to create standards we could use. For example, quality standard certifications, educational certifications to normalize one's manufacturing-specific capabilities beyond college degrees, bar code schemes & electronic communication in order that one company can communicate raw data with another.
This effort was a major contributor to the advancement of American manufacturing capabilities n terms of product quality, reliability, delivery, and speed & flexibility of the supply chain; and while we've lost jobs here at home due to uncompetitive labor costs and a few other reasons, those standards (many of which in the quality realm were developed in Japan) have been globalized at an astounding rate to the benefit of all.
I can see zero downsides to leveraging an organizing body to develop standards, certify and subsequently audit publishers policies to objective standards. The comments out of PLOS regarding this article that they published revealed both sloppy thinking and avoidance of process, along with passing the buck on their responsibility regarding what they print and won't print. See Peter Binfield's comments in this blog post thread (Zimmer's Update 3); Binfield is the managing editor of PLOS One, in this link . He essentially published online a paper he knew before hand didn't have the rights to use the Darwinius nomenclature.
I admit my position is merely arguable, however I really can't see a downside to Science setting standards for its publications and articles, measuring and segregating entities and articles by those standards, and ultimately improving the standards as the industry achieves the initial standards set (the idea of continuous improvement).
Posted by: Michael Heath | May 21, 2009 1:55 PM
Michael-I recognized what you were saying initially and addressed both aspects to a limited degree.
1. Science doesn't have governing bodies, that was addressed I think.
2. The organizing bodies we have aren't the kind you are talking about. They are very loose coalitions of like-minded scientists who want to collaborate on a particular topic. There is no discussion of the sorts you are talking about taking place in these organizations. The people not doing good science, don't get published in good journals and don't get cited, but that is as far as we can push things with the current scientific structure.
Hell, NSF and NIH are as close to grand organizing bodies as science currently has and they just make broad suggestions of things they want studied and then scientists decide to do it or not in their own ways (with lots of peer-review for quality control). They also don't influence even the majority of science.
You cannot think of science in the same way as you think of business; I know many folk (a lot of them in university administrations these days) that would like the scientific community to adhere to business principles like you suggest, but it doesn't and its not a good idea to force it. The free exchange we currently have has its drawbacks, but its been wildly successful.
Scientists shouldn't be changing science to make it more accessible to non-scientists if that also limits the science that ends up occurring. Instead, we should recognize that the scientific literature is hard for the untrained (that extremely important to admit, I don't read physics primary literature even though I'm a scientist) and we should focus on training individuals who can accurately bridge the science-public divide rather than trying to force scientists to do it all the time.
Posted by: Scott Reese | May 21, 2009 2:29 PM
David Attenborough made a missing-link comment? And he wasn't joking? Holy shit. I thought better of him.
Posted by: Uncephalized | May 21, 2009 2:41 PM
Funnily enough, I'm sitting here with BBC2 on in the background (I'm in the UK) and a trailer has just been on for the documentary.
Narrated by David Attenborough FFS. He should know better.
Posted by: MarkW | May 21, 2009 3:02 PM
I just feel great disillusion with The History Channel now.
Posted by: Jon Lester | May 21, 2009 3:24 PM
Jeez. I thought this "missing link" nonsense was dealt with a long time ago. But IMO it really isn't any worse than calling certain Indonesian hominin fossils "hobbits" or what the BBC did to a certain medieval battle(they called the whole episode "The Battle for Middle Earth". I guess this is the only way they can get anybody's attention these days.
Anne G
Posted by: Anne | May 21, 2009 8:06 PM
Elaine:
"I think the best thing would be to have news organizations hire people who are literate in the sciences - and able to write about them in a way that is comprehensible to the layperson without being condescending to the layperson - to do their science reporting."
Terrific idea; it would be nice thought, if they start by hiring people that are just plain literate.
I'm with Ray S.@#4 I like the idea of "The Late Show with Bill Nye".
Posted by: democommie | May 22, 2009 7:59 AM