Friday, February 13, 2009

Neanderthal genome


In my novels Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids, I argued that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens probably didn't crossbreed in nature. At the time I was writing those books, it was a very contentious issue in paleoanthropology, with some vociferously arguing that, in fact, Neanderthals hadn't really gone extinct at all, but that we'd just co-opted them into our own gene pool.

But the first-draft of the Neanderthal genome, released just yesterday, shows that Neanderthals were indeed a distinct species that didn't intermix genetically with us.

I found it intriguing that yesterday, a special US federal court ruled that the case, also vociferously fought, that vaccinations caused autism had no scientific merit.

And, of course, yesterday was Darwin's 200th birthday, and we all know people who have devoted their lives to arguing that he was wrong.

I wrote a story called "Flashes," first published in Lou Anders's 2006 anthology FutureShocks, and since reprinted in my own collection Identity Theft and Fiona Kelleghan's anthology The Savage Humanists, in which SETI succeeds and we receive the long-sought-after Encyclopedia Galactica, and droves of scientists who have spent their careers arguing positions that were totally off base end up committing suicide.

It was a grim little story, but I do wonder how people who spend their whole lives advocating something that turns out to be wrong make their peace with that. (Of course, the answer is that in many cases they don't: they refuse to accept the new evidence, because the cost of accepting it -- and realizing they've wasted so much of their time -- is too much to bear.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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4 Comments:

At February 13, 2009 11:51 AM , Blogger Michael A. Burstein said...

When I saw the article, I thought of you...

 
At February 13, 2009 12:06 PM , OpenID cgyrask said...

Not related to the post, but I thought you'd get a kick out of this gem by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAXobwC8egA

 
At February 13, 2009 5:36 PM , OpenID rvitelli said...

"But the just first-draft of the Neanderthal genome, released just yesterday, shows that Neanderthals were indeed a distinct species that didn't intermix genetically with us."

There seems to be some controversy over how the researchers went about announcing this. Rushing to a press conference before the paper goes to peer review is probably a mistake.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/neandertal_genome_or_a_prematu.php

 
At February 13, 2009 6:01 PM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

Welllll rvitelli, as the BBC coverage says, "Prof Paabo released details about the latest stage of his research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)." Lots of cutting-edge science is first reported at conferences. Yes, we're all looking forward to a paper on this, but it's not as if there wouldn't have been people criticizing and questioning the data as it was presented at the AAAS meeting. (There'd be no point attending conferences if the research presented there had already all been published in journals, of course.)

 

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