General Discussions

[LP]

From 2016 :

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016...ns/7481360

From 2018, not quite on topic, but close :

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/scienc...-australia

Yes, what we read are two sides of a debate about an investigation.

Having that debate about the investigation isn't my issue, my concern is that one side is politically ensuring the investigation and debate only goes in one direction. They are inhibiting or denying the right to ask the question. Shouldn't the truth be all we care about?

You would have also found those invested in the "Out of Africa" hypothesis now heavily defending that in the face of the 65K year data being disclosed now. It's politically unsavoury, because it affects so many histories, and also because some tout it for political purposes. But that 65K data is built on the same reliable methods as the counterargument, it's not a case of one technique being superior or another wrong. Much of the counterargument at this stage is that 65K isn't correct because we have already reported it as 50K, and they follow up comment is therefore I doubt 65K can be true!

I've sensed in this debate that below is the bigger issue, which puts the recent minority Australian research trying to hold sway against a tsunami of tenured specialists who have formed a "consensus";

The original study by Dr Adcock and his co-workers was broadly publicised internationally not only because it suggested there were humans in Australia before Aboriginal people but because it challenged a single African origin for all modern humans.

This bit in bold is looking a bit if not very shaky for the long term, the latest discoveries which seem to be surfacing with increasing frequency really suggest many pathways to modern human, but it's staunchly denied by some. The professors will eventually be made redundant by their students, that is when the refreshed data becomes mainstream.

So I weigh all this in the context of academic tenure as well, which is a double edged sword, so there is considerable resistance to new information that sometimes survives or can also make a career's worth of work redundant. That is a pretty fair "why risk it" motivation!

If 65K is true, it won't be the last time modern science built on 19th century natural-philosophy turns out to be full of bogus assumptions. True science is never right, it just gets closer to being correct with every validated revision.