Tom Pittman's WebLog

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2006 July 3 -- Red-Handed Pseudo-Science

In their breathless groupie style, WIRED magazine -- not known for scientific accuracy -- reports the Neanderthal DNA research of Eddy Rubin even before it has gone through the peer review process. Big Mistake. Fortunately for the rest of us, the guy is so cocky that he wears his methodological flaw out in front where everybody can see it:
DNA from modern humans won't show the predicted level of decay -- that can be tossed out -- p.119
Any high-school science student is familiar with this methodology. You throw out the data that doesn't agree with the textbook. Later in life we give it more sophisticated names like "SWAG" but it's the same dishonesty that made Korean clone jock Hwang Woo-suk famous -- the second time. As a consequence of this procedure,
Rubin's team was able to read only 76,000 base pairs from the Neanderthal -- a tiny slice if you consider that the complete human sequence is 3 billion base pairs long. -- p.121
Small wonder! They threw out all the data that might disprove their hypothesis.

Fortunately also for us, there are enough pseudo-scientists (aka Darwinists) whose theories disagree with Rubin's that they are likely to notice the discrepancy within a year or so of publication. Unlike people (like myself) who see the error more quickly because the result is so wrong, the Darwinists have access to the power structure, so their voice can be heard.

I wonder how long it will take.