tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post3894271428957224729..comments2024-03-19T07:48:54.021-06:00Comments on Gus Van Horn: Don't Kowtow to Experts: Question ThemGus Van Hornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05126749051688217781noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-13586180494892785572016-09-08T13:27:29.018-06:002016-09-08T13:27:29.018-06:00Dinwar,
Thanks for the interesting discussion abo...Dinwar,<br /><br />Thanks for the interesting discussion about the problems of pinning down the origin of camel humps. It reminded me a little of news of an interesting recent attempt to determine the <a href="http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2016/04/4-2-16-hodgepodge.html#1" rel="nofollow">minimal genomic requirements for life</a>, wherein the researchers had to admit that they had no idea about the function of about a third of the presumably essential genes.<br /><br />Sometimes the limits of our knowledge can be almost as interesting as the knowledge itself.<br /><br />GusGus Van Hornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05126749051688217781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-51266108238163773562016-09-08T12:41:00.766-06:002016-09-08T12:41:00.766-06:00I'm still not sure how to handle expert opinio...I'm still not sure how to handle expert opinions....On the one hand, experts aren't deities handing out The Truth; but on the other hand, they DO know more than the average person, so if you're going to argue with them you at least need to know more than the average high school education provides. It's a complicated topic, one I'm in no way sure of myself. <br /><br />I will say that the camel thing sounds vey sketchy to me. The issue is, humps are extremely hard to study in the fossil record. For example, cave drawings show that the Irish Elk had a fairly substantial hump (not as pronounced as camel humps, but still significant), despite there being no osteological evidence for it. Soft tissue rarely survives long-term. What that means is that we can't say for certain when humps arose in camels. Tying these fossils to modern camels via biochemistry is not, in my opinion, sufficient, because this doesn't tell us when the first humps in this lineage arose. Humps could have arisen numerous times in the lineage--lizards lost their legs in multiple lineages, independently. <br /><br />This isn't just an issue with camels, by the way--the question arises with dinosaurs as well. The model dinosaurs you've seen on store shelves, or pictures in books, suffer from what's called the "shrink wrap" effect: the models are reconstructed with the skin as tight to the bones as the artists can make it. A researcher once used the same methods to reconstruct a cat skeleton, with terrifying results! There are also several structures (hadrosaur crests, Spinosaurus vertebral spines, and the like) that could represent humps or hump-like features. But without soft tissue, there's simply no way to know for sure. <br /><br />I want to be clear: It's a reasonable explanation. And it may well be true. I'm just not convinced that they've demonstrated that it is. It also demonstrates that "expert" is a sliding term. I may count as an expert in fossils, but I'm reasonably certain that these questions have been addressed somewhere by the authors of these reports (they were not in the reports you linked to). It's fairly common in science; we all have our niche of expertise. Dinwarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06138006602385020048noreply@blogger.com