Recently Amy and her boyfriend Kelly completed a 32-day road trip from Juneau, Alaska to Austin, Texas. Considering they both suffer from Paleo/Geo Nerd Syndrome they made many stops along the way to admire the rocks of geological and/or historical significance, as well as a few stops to visit their nerdy friends like Meaghan! To recount this thrilling 7,000 mile opportunity to discuss regional tectonics and ancient seas we're bringing back our favorite form of poetry: Limericks.
This is a classic example of disappointing sparkle-hand science - something which occurs a lot when a scientist gets into the rut of trying to prove the reasoning behind an evolutionary direction. The actual methodology behind the article doesn't come across too poorly, and had some interesting conclusions: they had people punch bags with their fists, then with open palms, then with fists using the thumbs as a support structure, and found no difference in strike force only in the levels of flexation. The actual science concludes that performing the five point palm exploding heart technique is more likely to break your fingers, but you can put just as much force behind it, which is a pretty valuable piece of information that kung fu movies should take note of.
Unfortunately when dealing with our own evolution human beings become overly-involved in their theories, particularly ones that aren't testable (which this one isn't - it's very much testable, at least to a certain degree, which is the WORST BIT). The real struggle of this article is when it starts traipsing blithely down the path of Denying the Antecedent, with an extended sideways jaunt into Unrelated, Dear God What a Stretch road.
Meaghan has a huge, throbbing science boner for one of Dr. Carrier's earlier theories, so she really, really wanted to like this article. Instead, she let a little bit of her soul die while reading through the series of unproven, untestable, and frankly unrelated hypotheses that made fists still mightier than the bitch-slap that her idol then didn't bother to test. If you want us to believe that the sexual dimorphism of arm length in men versus women has anything, goddamn it anything to do with the evolution of hands, you need to test that, not vomit pseudoscientific glitter on a discussion section and hope that your wool-gathering is impressively deluded enough to slip past further scrutiny. Instead the authors blithely and prolifically cite things as support that actually have very little to do with the topic, like a paper that says that men and women differ in the lengths of their middle and pinky fingers when their whole article is about thumbs versus other fingers.
Listen, guys, if your introduction has the defense that babies make
fists and therefore it's the natural posture of anger, you might want to
check yourself cuz it's likely you're about to head down the path of
soft science into the realm of Nuh-Uh land. After all, babies also suck
on their thumbs, but that doesn't mean that human thumbs are their
natural food group. Plus, they poop their pants on a very regular basis, and taking candy from them is ridiculously easy -
using them as an expert in any situation is probably a bad idea, unless
you're discussing the validity of the aftermath of a baby food hurricane as an
art form.
The whole thing reads like a drunken Thanksgiving argument: it's
mostly that one uncle preaching dramatically after consuming too many hot-toddies, tossing out a few tidbits you think are
probably true and may have to google later, and wrapping them all up in a big blanket of bullshit suppositions. However, even this hot mess of a scientific article is better than Self-Proclaimed Hand-and-Banana Morphology Expert, Ray Comfort.
Ahh, bananas. Nature's perfectly packaged, delicious, seedless - OMG WHAT IS THAT NIGHTMARE FRUIT? Oh, that's a wild banana? And the glorious yellow laxative we pick up for cheapsies in the grocery store is actually a highly refined, genetically modified monster? Interesting - and probably great for the banana. While we like to put a lot of emphasis on the difference between artificial and natural selection, the truth is that the delineation between the two is rooted in anthropocentric thinking. Today, the domesticated banana grows in over a hundred countries, on six continents. Yes, that success is due to humans cultivation and spread - which we never would have done if the banana hadn't been so delicious, especially the new hybridized species that was selected for by human consumption. If that's not the definition of success by the banana's standard, what is? The banana isn't the Atheist's nightmare, it's a botanical evolutionary powerhouse - it's a model of what selection can achieve.
Now, if the above "science" hasn't yet turned you off the topic yet and you're looking for a mental palate cleanser for all the stupidity we made you endure, we recommend checking out "the spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme," by Gould & Lewontin. It discusses the pervasive scientific problem of focusing on the why, rather than the how of evolution... but instead of making you want to tear your own eyeballs out and stomp them into oblivion, it'll probably make you point emphatically at the screen and shout "yes, yes, that's exactly what I thought!" And what could make a weekend better than having the same thought process as Stephen Jay Gould?
Recently,
Amy and Meaghan have been forced to read some pretty atrocious articles.
Navigating the world of science is tricky enough without bombs like these
lurking about; to save you the trouble of reading, we've summarized them... in
limerick form. You're welcome.
ON
SAUROPOD GAS
With a made-up ‘measure’ of masses
And an unreasonable basis for gasses
Some dudes did some math
And oh what a laugh
This “science” is straight from their asses.
"Could methane produced by sauropod
dinosaurs have helped drive Mesozoic climate warmth?" Probably,
they say; of course, their math also requires a herd density of sauropods 10x
that found in modern elephants, and assumes that their gastrointestinal systems
were similar to that of guinea pigs instead of, say, birds. Or reptiles.
Presumably the pet store was all out of things that dinosaurs are closely
related to. But leave out all the hand waving and math a kindergartener could
do, you are left with... nope, actually, still a pretty shitty article.
A
LIMERICK TO YOUR GRANDMA
There once was a stab in the dark
That ‘explained’ a human mark
Anecdotal at best
With “sparkle-hand” tests
This ‘hypothesis’ is still just a lark!
The factors were out of control
The concepts are therefore quite droll
Without better facts
This ‘research’ quite lacks
A message to placate our souls.
Did
you know that Grandmothers only survive because they bake the best cookies?
Also the reason that you're a dependent, moody, angsty, nervous wreck of a teenager for so many years is
their fault; without them you could have graduated from zits much sooner. Apparently the author's grandmothers didn't teach 'em science as well as they taught them the best place to go giggin' frogs or pickin' blackberries, because this article left us with more questions than answers: Where are all the tubers? Was there some sort of potato extinction event we didn't know about? Also, what sort of control group could you possibly have for this - who's going to just let you kill all their post-menopausal ladies and then see how that screws up their kids and evolutionary history? Soft science man, ugh. Friggin' soft science.
