Earlier, I commented on developmental biologist P.Z. Myers' criticism of Casey Luskin's article on Homo naledi. Needless to say, Luskin's article was not a peer-review piece appearing in a respected palaaeoanthropological journal by a professional palaeoanthropologist but an intellectually dishonest and misleading attack on the subject by a laywer with no formal training in palaeoanthropology.
The palaeoanthropologist James Kidder has now commented on Luskin's article, and combines specific expertise in palaeoanthropology with a more irenic tone to provide yet another voice pointing out why Luskin cannot be trusted to provide an accurate, disinterested, informed comment on this subject. In short, Luskin's article deliberately aims to mislead and misrepresent. As Kidder points out, "[t]he problem is that he uses selective passages and slanted wording to
imply that the case for it having "human" traits is overblown." In other words, he resorts to the tried and tested special creationist practice of quote mining.
Kidder's irenic tone if anything makes the depth of Luskin's intellectual dishonesty even more apparent:
For example, Luskin writes:
For anyone wondering why Casey Luskin is regarded extremely poorly by credible, mainstream scientists, this article by Kidder should provide an excellent overview of the reasons why he has such a reputation. It should also serve as a warning to laypeople in our community that any evolution denialist who is not a professional biologist or palaeontologist and relies on the Discovery Institute for their arguments against evolution is advancing arguments, that to quote Wolfgang Pauli, are not even wrong.The hands are claimed to be humanlike but they have key unique features and, unlike human hands, are tailored for climbing. ABC News reported: "Homo naledi had human-like hands and feet, but Tattersall said it was impressive that it also had climbing features, more similar to an ape." CNN reports: "Its hands are superficially humanlike, but the finger bones are locked into a curve -- a trait that suggests climbing and tool-using capabilities." And even Berger states: "It's pretty clear from those fingers that they're [for] climbing."All of this is done to shift the emphasis away from the fact that, while the hominin did possess primitive traits, it also possessed derived ones. Let's see what Berger actually writes about the find:
The hand shares many derived features of modern humans and Neandertals in the thumb, wrist, and palm, but has relatively long and markedly curved fingers (Kivell et al., 2015). The thumb is long relative to the length of the other digits, and includes a robust metacarpal with well-developed intrinsic (M. opponens pollicis and M. first dorsal interosseous) muscle attachments.Note the characteristics that Luskin leaves out. With regard to our understanding of its taxonomic designation, Luskin writes:
Even Berger admits, "It doesn't look a lot like us." He also states: "There may be debate over the Homo designation" since "the species is quite different from anything else we have seen."It wouldn't be surprising if later analyses change our understanding of the fossil.He then puts in the following quote from an interview of Carol Ward in The Scientist:
Carol Ward, a professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the University of Missouri who was not involved with the study said she was disappointed by the lack of empirical data presented in the paper. "There are only tiny composite pictures of the fossils, so you can't see them and there are no comparative data comparing it to anything else," said Ward. "There's nothing we can use to make our own judgments about the validity of what they are saying."The problem is that he leaves out a rather significant statement that Ward makes. Here is the entire passage from the article (emphasis added):
“H. naledi possesses a combination of primitive and derived features not seen in the hand of any other hominin,” the authors wrote, but Carol Ward, a professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the University of Missouri who was not involved with the study said she was disappointed by the lack of empirical data presented in the paper. “There are only tiny composite pictures of the fossils, so you can’t see them and there are no comparative data comparing it to anything else,” said Ward. “There’s nothing we can use to make our own judgments about the validity of what they are saying.”Luskin has done two things here. By removing the ellipses in from of the initial part of the quote, he suggests that this is a self-contained thought, which it clearly is not. Further, by not quoting the initial statement of Ward's, he omits that she sees not just primitive but derived traits as well. This is a pattern throughout his piece. (Emphasis in original)
