Beware Research Done in Secrecy
Published by admin under Uncategorized on May 20, 2009Unlike Bill Munns openness of discovery and full disclosure of methods arriving at a potential conclusion, the breaking news hitting the streets is that a “missing link” or at times “the missing link” has been found. It seems Norway’s Museum of Natural History has been hiding a fossil for several years now being billed by the likes of Sir David Attenborough as the link that is no longer missing tying humans to other primates.
What is amusing is not so much the fossil – it is an amazing discovery. It is the process of the study and conclusions about its significance. Secretly studied according to news reports (see SkyNEWs for example), for two years it undergoes open discussion in of all places, the public and media. A wonderfully preserved specimen indeed. A wonderful example of a lemur. The link that ties us to this? Somehow the evidence is simply in the eyes of the beholder.
The authors of the paper should take lessons from Mr. Munns. If it really is what they claim, and there is news that one of the researchers has issues with the conclusions being promulgated, then let the evidence be subject to objective scrutiny. The truth is, what we have is a fossil of an early lemur, a 47 millon year old lemur if you can accept the number, that appears but for some minor differences, much like modern lemurs.
Call me a skeptic, but I find the best science is the science done in the open, subjected to various tests and scrutiny minus the media and celebrities to over-hype the data.
