Oh yeah? Well your grandma was an oranguatan

I missed a few weeks of Jon Stewart while we didn't have cable, so many thanks to David Bruggeman for pointing out this awesome Daily Show clip of scientists failing to communicate. I'm still chortling.

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My favorite part is when Oliver gets the chimp guy to admit no one will read his papers.

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The spot was hilarious ... but really all it showed was an ultra geeky chimp guy whose appearance and mannerisms are hard to respect, versus the orangutan guy ... who was willfully ignoring modern genetics entirely so he could use morphology to alone to support his theory.

And most will only see the spectacle, and be unaware that orangutan guy is a borderline crackpot, that the media should have filtered him out.

Chimp guy may as have debated a "aquatic ape" nut or a YEC.

Yeah, the guy from NYU saying that the only thing that will change is what is in textbooks made me wince. That and placing chimps and orangs as ancestors in the classic "march of progress" diagrams that directly followed... ugh. Overall it was pretty painful to watch. Granted, the Daily Show interviews are meant to mock the people being interviewed, but neither scientist did us any favors.

"an ultra geeky chimp guy whose appearance and mannerisms are hard to respect"

Uh.... What about him was hard to respect? That he spoke fluent English and used complete sentences? That he made eye contact with the person/camera he was talking with? Or was it that he had an unconventional haircut and wore a beard? What about his characteristics made him "hard to respect"? Please, be specific.

By oscar zoalaster (not verified) on 12 Aug 2009 #permalink