Talk:Recent human evolution

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"predatory open access"

Regarding this, I am not convinced that summary blanking is the proper reaction to questionable business practices of a scientific publisher. Especially since the citation in question is not an original study but simply a literature aggregation that can easily be replaced by direct references to the original studies.

The relevant items, ADRA2b, BDNF, and 5-HTTLPR, are attributed to

Therefore, if we want to somehow boycott the Chinese publisher, the solution will be to refer to these studies directly, not to simply blank all mention of them. --dab (𒁳) 08:30, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Reworking entire page

Hey, I'm going to take the time to rework and flesh out this entire document. Feel free to make edits to this current document. I will check them from time to time, but over the next month I plan to create a whole new format with more information. I suggest anyone who wants to make edits to do them and I will take into account the new information for my final revisions. I will look over all the current sources and add new ones. Thanks to anyone who contributes! Aerradin (talk) 19:44, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, and welcome! Coincidentally, I have plans to add a lot more information to this page as well. But I cannot make any guarantees because it all depends on how much time and energy I have. I do have one request for you, though. Please avoid making this topic too technical the way it is now. If you use a technical term, please explain what it means. If you mention a specific gene or allele, please mention what it does. This is better than leaving internal links because the reader ends up web-surfing rather than reading. Thank you! Nerd271 (talk) 21:46, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I was actually planning on making the article more user friendly by reducing technicality. I also plan to create a list of known traits. I know this likely won't be exhaustive given the time I have available, but others can add to the list. Thanks for the heads up about also working on this! I will have my work uploaded by early June. Aerradin (talk) 16:01, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Well you absolutely blew my plan out of the water! This is incredible. I will try to revise a few things here or there, but this is magnificent. You have out done me here. Well done! Aerradin (talk) 20:49, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Aerradin: Glad you like what I have written. Please revise the article to make it better. I have more sources on my list. Hopefully I will empty it by early June so I can move on to other articles. Nerd271 (talk) 02:11, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Aerradin: I think you should consider working on the page timeline of human evolution. It could use some updates. Nerd271 (talk) 01:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"least sign of evolution"

This is regarding these edits, which have been reverted.

I would've thought that it's obvious, but there are a lot of very serious problems with implying that Africans are somehow "less evolved" than non-Africans. Whether intentional or not, the previous wording made this implication. It is also an unresolved contradiction to say that Africans are more genetically diverse, wile also indirectly implying that they have undergone less change.

Further, due to the heavy reliance on Nicholas Wade, who is controversial specifically for this topic, I will post a comment to WP:FRINGEN seeking additional input. I am concerned that this perspective is, at best, going to be misinterpreted by naive readers as endorsing racist pseudoscience.

At the very least, this article, including the lead, should be adjusted to make it clear that mutations are not simplistically caused by evolutionary pressures. Alcohol doesn't cause a mutation, as the previous wording implied. Likewise, humans benefited from the protection that dark skin provided, but the loss of fur did not cause this mutation -that's just far, far too simple. Evolution already has a lot of misconceptions, so Wade's seemingly off-the-cuff attempt at explanation should not be presented in an encyclopedic tone as basic information. It may be fine, arguably, for a pop-sci article, but not for an encyclopedia. Grayfell (talk) 01:34, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Convenience link to FRINGEN thread: Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Recent human evolution implied that Africans are less evolved. Grayfell (talk) 01:59, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We are talking about biology, not human worth. If humans first evolved in Africa, then it stands to reason that humans in Africa have evolved to be more or less well suited to the environments of Africa in the last 300,000 years or so. The prehistoric humans who migrated out of Africa clearly found themselves in evolutionarily novel environments, which of course must have intensified selection. (Otherwise, humans would have gone extinct outside of Africa, which clearly did not happen.) Take a hypothetical analogous situation. Suppose that one day, large numbers of humans migrate to Mars and beyond. They cannot possibly remain like Homo sapiens today, can they? Humans on Earth therefore show less signs of evolution than they do. How is that controversial? Again, we are not talking about human worth according to somebody's agendas but adaptations to a given environment.
Alcohol does not cause a mutation, but drinking a lot of it can favor a mutation that makes a person less likely to be drunk. There are people who get drunk more easily than others. This is a case of gene-culture co-evolution.
Just because it is "pop-sci" does not mean it is wrong. I have included a variety of sources, including many accessible ones, for the benefit of the readers who are skeptical or who want to learn more on their own. Nerd271 (talk) 15:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"It stands to reason" is not how WP:OR and WP:V work. It's also pseudoscientific in this context. Evolution doesn't stand still. Africa is not some monolithic place where everything has been exactly the same for 300,000 years! Africa is varied in climate, resources, challenges, etc. People within Africa move around, and have for all of human history. Ignoring this ans treating Africa as some sort of time capsule is a very common, but very wrong, underlying assumption about human evolution. Another poorly-supported assumption is the simplistic notion that Africans and non-Africans can be cleanly divided into separate evolutionary populations where suitability can even be compared. Changes in Africa correlate with changes in Europe and the rest of the world, so even if the populations were truly isolated (which they absolutely were not) this comparison still wouldn't work. Further, some parts of Asia and Europe are very, very similar to some parts of Africa, and this is especially true spanning hundreds of thousands of years of change. How well-suited a constantly changing population is to a constantly changing environment cannot be presented in these hyper-simplistic terms.
Hopping from one pop-sci source to another, WP:SYNTH of flimsy sources, and using an informal WP:TONE to imply broad conclusions, are all a problem regardless of your stated intentions. Further, this also implies an awful lot about "human worth" whether you see it or not. Grayfell (talk) 08:19, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are the one assuming human worth. I am merely describing things as I understand them. Local conditions matter. However, this is a moot issue now that I found something more recent, which suggests that a more sensitive scan does in fact reveal rapid selective sweeps among at least one African population as well. Nerd271 (talk) 00:22, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of your own understanding, you should describe them according to reliable, academic sources. There are thousands of potential sources about genetics which could be cited for one point or another, but that's never been how this works. Avoid using WP:PRIMARY studies for broad claims. Using "something" about "at least one African population" to support broad conclusions about all of human evolution risks WP:SYNTH. Grayfell (talk) 03:04, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I could mention specifically which one that is, no problem. Nerd271 (talk) 14:33, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fringe theories tag: Inclusion of references written by Nicholas Wade

As per the section of Nicholas Wade's biography article that summarizes his book A Troublesome Inheritance (2014) as well as the Wikipedia article about the book itself. -- CommonKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:18, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Per the above section, and points raised by me and others at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 78#Recent human evolution implied that Africans are less evolved, this article has a lot of serious problems. Reliance on Wade's work is a good start, but there is a lot of WP:SYNTH here used to imply some fringe ideas without having to directly state any of them. Grayfell (talk) 22:04, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've accomplished the first step, which is WP:BOLDly ridding the article of references to Wade and all the statements sourced to him. Some of these included quotes from real scientists, but if these scientists' views merit inclusion they should be found in reliable sources (i.e. those by authors who are not notorious for misrepresenting geneticists as Wade is). Much more will need to be done, however, to evaluate the other sources used in this article and whether they are accurately represented. For those who aren't yet aware, see the posting on FTN earlier this month: Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Recent_human_evolution. Generalrelative (talk) 02:42, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I consider the removal of sources by Generalrelative to be very inappropriate for a WP article, and I consider that making them as a groups of massive edits without detailed individual discussion to be disruptive editing, which I have reverted.
Articles on general scientific topics of general human interest need to be sourced by RSs of various degrees of sophistication. Some aspects of such an article does require the use only of reliable scientific sources--possibly even some that meet MEDRS.But WP is written for the general reader, and high quality general sources, especially those generally accessible, that are themselves designed either for the general scientific reader or the general educated person are both necessary and appropriate. It can indeed be a problem that sometimes such sources, especially in book form, are considerably behind the current changes in the scientific consensus; it can indeed be a problem if they are taken from contentious sources or those given to advocacy. (And I am aware there is some dispute over the specifics about one point in a book by one of them). But for general statements, they are often clearer than specialized sources, and good science writers write much more clearly than all but a few scientists. Even more, for statements about the human impact of science, or the human understanding of science, they are often better and more balanced than scientists in the field involved, who are expected to be to some degree advocates for their own positions, and expected to be concerned about the veracity of their work, not the social effect it might have.
I am not saying the article was perfect, or that all the wording was ideal, or that all the sources were appropriately used. But corrections here have to be made carefully, one at a time , anddiscussed individually--otherwise, they are generally regarded as disruptive editing. This is especially true when it is a question of rejected sources from the world's major general science journals intended for a general readship, such as Science and its auxiliary publications, or newspapers and magazines with a reputation for particularly good coverage of science, such as the New York Times. These soureces should not have been removed in this fashion. For a few, it is quite possible that there willl be an explicit consensus that they should be removed, but I would regard it as disruptive to attempt to remove them again, or to carry out similar mass removals, without such consensus.
III. By the way, I consider myself uninvolved with respect to the subject; I have never edited significantly or even commented in the area of physical anthropology, except for some special topics which this article wisely does not attempt to discuss.
I am however aware that it is likely that the editor concerned may think of me as an opponent, so , by my own standards, I'm involved. This is therefore a warning, not an administrative action. DGG ( talk ) 06:57, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For now I'll only comment on the "warning" bit: DGG, you have explicitly admitted to having a certain prejudice about me during this SPI, addressing GeneralNotability instead of me because you were persisting in the belief that they and I are the same account (despite my having previously corrected you here and GeneralNotability expressing that they were taken aback by the assertion here). You said: As I see it, you are very much involved in the topic area, given assistance to a user who is part of the problem here-- tho I must admit a certain prejudice about anyone who gives assistance to NH, since NH is of the opinion that "DGG is someone who, despite his ignorance about race and genetics" (Curt Stern, who signed my PhD thesis and Alan Wilson, in whose lab I was a postdoc), might judge differently.[1] Note that DGG has already been warned by Bishonen for jumping to false conclusions about my edits and misusing templates with regard to me [2]. Normally I would not comment on such matters on an article talk page, but DGG has thought proper to lodge their "warning" here, so here is where I have responded. Generalrelative (talk) 13:56, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
if you look at the link to my talk p, you will see the two of us attempting to make peace. It doesn't seem to have worked, but I remain open to polite argument with anyone. I usually ignore abuse, which is easy because it's so rare. Some of the comments on this were one of the only 2 examples I remember. I will now return to my rule of not replying more than 2 or 3 times in any one discussion. DGG ( talk ) 17:51, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
DGG, I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to convey. I certainly harbor no ill will toward you. It was you who took it upon yourself to "warn" me for what was obviously a good faith attempt on my part to implement a rough talk page consensus, both here and at FTN. You called my edits "disruptive" without any policy-based justification. And you stated the editor concerned may think of me as an opponent when it is rather you who has stated that you feel this way about me. I replied in such a way that others who may stumble upon this exchange can be aware of your history of interacting with me in an (arguably) inappropriate manner. I'm happy to drop the stick now but please do not behave this way again. Generalrelative (talk) 21:02, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I indented most of your paragraphs.
Focusing on those parts that are relevant for this Talk page:
good science writers write much more clearly than all but a few scientists Yes, but is not relevant here, since, as has already been made clear, Wade is not a good science writer. He misrepresents what scientists say. Generalities, like your essay about Articles on general scientific topics of general human interest, do not help in such cases. Bad sources need to be rooted out, and Wade is a bad source. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK.start a specific discussion on what just statements Wade documents and whether he is a reliable source for each of them. And if you want stability, advertise it a little more widely outside the few editors concerned. The presumption is that science writing in the NYT is reasonably correct, and you need to overcome that. I've been known to change my views with evidence. DGG ( talk ) 07:59, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
He is a reliable source for none of them. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:40, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously: Why is notorious for misrepresenting geneticists so difficult to understand? --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:46, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh right: There was nothing "disruptive" about Generalrelative's edits. It was announced 11 days ago that something like was going to happen, and Generalrelative even used the word "BOLD". Those edits were normal, correct behaviour. To depict them as "disruptive" is itself disruptive. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:50, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think this issue requires a scalpel and not an axe. The context and appropriateness of statements made by Wade need individual assessment. Wade's journalism seems to be held in higher esteem than the speculative/argumentative portions of his popular science books. As biologist H. Allen Orr writes in reviewing Wade's Before the Dawn: "More than any other recent book on human evolution, Wade's requires careful picking and choosing on the part of the reader. Reject the book wholesale and you reject important truths; embrace it wholeheartedly and you embrace a good deal of nonsense."[3]. In reviewing A Troublesome Inheritance, Orr writes: "Science and science journalism are different things.... Despite my admiration for his work as a journalist, I'm afraid that Nicholas Wade's latest book reminds us of the risks inherent in blurring the distinction between these endeavors." A Troublesome Inheritance is divided into two parts, a review of population genetics research and a speculative portion. Orr writes: "Wade's survey of human population genomics is lively and generally serviceable... In the latter half of A Troublesome Inheritance, Wade ventures into far more controversial territory."[4] Jerry A. Coyne also seems to make this distinction, writing: "Wade's book isn't bad because of scientific errors (although it has its share of them), but because it offers a comprehensive thesis... without the scientific evidence to support it."[5]. I don't think anyone is arguing to cite A Troublesome Inheritance as a statement of fact or at all in this article. There may well be cases where Wade is the only science journalist to cover a study or quote a mainstream scientist. The New York Times is not a fringe source, and not everything under the byline of Nicholas Wade presents a fringe point of view. --Animalparty! (talk) 22:17, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I respect that position, though I would argue that the specific nature of Wade's disgrace (wantonly misrepresenting the positions of scientists, and geneticists in particular, specifically with regard to the topic of recent human evolution) renders his previous work here suspect, even if published by the New York Times. But you've presented reasons, and if those reasons persuade others I will be happy to let the mass revert of my mass cuts stand, and perhaps others who are comfortable wielding a scalpel where Wade is concerned will go in and do so. Generalrelative (talk) 23:30, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your edits were entirely appropriate and improved the article in multiple ways. We have to be willing to document fringe perspectives as fringe perspectives. From past experience, the "scalpel" is too often used to justify filibustering, especially if the closest we get in practice is a quick shave with a safety razor. Grayfell (talk) 01:29, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think the conclusion here this issue requires a scalpel and not an axe shows a misunderstanding of the word "reliable". A reliable source is a source you can rely on. If we, as editors, have to "pick and choose" Wade's good stuff from the bad stuff, that means we cannot rely on him. When Wade is the only science journalist to cover a study, how do we know that in this case, he did not misrepresent it? It's a gamble, and we should avoid it.
Reliable sources are categorized according to what they are reliable for. Science, economics, current events. What is Wade reliable for? It's not science. Is it "non-speculative science"? --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:19, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. At this point the tally appears to be 4 to 2 in favor of the axe. I'll give it another couple days to see if anyone else would like to weigh in. If there is no shift in the consensus I'll reinstate my cuts. Generalrelative (talk) 20:32, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Make it 4 to 3. Unless you can point to problems with the content of the NYT article specifically, why remove it? I would assume the NYT doesn't publish pseudoscientific claims. Ficaia (talk) 04:02, 24 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Given the state of the discussion here and at FTN, Ficaia's latest comment notwithstanding, it's clear that WP:ONUS is not met for the disputed content. I assume that everyone here is aware of what that policy says, but since there's been an uncareful accusation of "disruptive editing" above, I suppose it can't hurt to quote: The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. I'll therefore restore my cuts and then re-introduce the productive edits made by X-Editor and an IP. Generalrelative (talk) 20:11, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
[[edit conflict] Specific beats general. The reasoning at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 78#Recent human evolution implied that Africans are less evolved, which was linked above, beats your assumption. Unless the NYT routinely lets scientists check what science journalists write about those scientists' specialties, it will publish pseudoscientific claims if one of their science journalists wants them to. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:13, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Unless there are new arguments to be had about Wade, we can now move on to discussing how to deal with the other issues raised in that previous FTN discussion, including the article's use of Henry Harpending and others whose writing may not reflect the mainstream scientific consensus. Generalrelative (talk) 20:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But there are much more substantial problems with the article

Specifics

1.I have made a few changes to introduce qualifiers for statements which might perhaps be too general. Anyone who disagrees can revert--I think they;re better, but not so critical as to be worth discussing.

2. Usually in the article "Neanderthal" is , properly, contrasted with "modern human"/ It shouldn't be contrasted with just "humann" I changed one or two--I probably missed some.

3. I am not comfortable with the use of Neanderthals/Denisovans/homo sapiens as the total list of progenitors. The last few years indicate there may be other groups, possibly analogous to the Denisovans. The extremely recent discovery of the Denisovans implies there are likely to be more; all previous statements that we have identified all the fossil lines have been wrong, so this one will probably be also)

5. The paragraph on brain size has only non-academic references (22)-(23). This is important enough to need exact sourcing. (for example, brain size also relates to size of the organism, and Neanderthals were larger.) And I see there's a second paragraph saying more or less the same thing in the Nelithic section. They should at least be connected. I haven't looked, but there must be some studies more specific than brain size, discussing the size of regions of the brain, since this is often visible in fossils..

6. There are other genes necessary for lactose metabolism than just the LP gene (see ILactose Intoleranceand Lactase persistence for some of the other factors involved. ) . We need the source for "milk-drinking humans could produce offspring up to 19% more fertile than those without the ability, putting the mutation among those under the strongest selection known"--it's not self evidently true.

More general problems

1.Every statement of relation to a phenotypic trait really needs a quantitative statement about frequency, significance, and variation. Paragraph 3 in the "Upper Paleolithic" section is I think exaggerated, and the statements relating the traits to the environmental variable, may or may not be significant. This particular section sounds very 19th century. Paragraph 5 refers to studies by various workers without giving the actual references. " East Asian women are known for having comparatively small breasts and East Asians in general tend to have thick hair" is at the level of a high school elementary school textbook.

2. The dates given shouldn't be given as exact, but as a range. "about 14,000 years ago" is insufficient, and "so,000- years ago or so" is even worse. And the anthropological way of giving these dates is not "years ago" but "before the present" (almost always abbreviated to bp)

3. "Biologists working in the early twenty-first century A.D. consider human culture itself is a force of selection" is unclear and overgeneral. Which biologists, and in respect to what. I think the intended meaning is that once human culture changes, the changes that are introduced also give selective pressure, thus driving future evolution.

4. The first paragraph in Neolithic of New Stone Age beginning "In 2006" is both too old to use here and much too general. Everythingin it has been said earlier in the article. I suggest just removing it.

5. I'm not sure how much consensus there is about the effect of neutral mutations.

6. I don't see any discussion about hte evolutionary effect of genes introduced by viruses.

DGG ( talk ) 07:51, 22 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It appears you are busy redecorating the attic while the basement is still flooded. Are you still giving Harpending and Cochran's pure pseudoscience the benefit of the doubt? Using obscure primary studies, pop-sci sources, and worse means that there will always be this kind of busywork available to editors who are looking for it. Don't take the bait. Look at this article from the perspective of a reader who doesn't already know about these subtle details. It's a disaster. Good editing means throwing out bad content. Grayfell (talk) 01:09, 23 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot help but suspect so much opposition to this topic is on ideological grounds rather than anything else. People past and present have opposed the teaching or discussion of biological evolution for those very reasons, religious or political. And they intimidate those who disagree.
@Grayfell: You accuse me of using low-quality pop-sci articles or "fringe" sources even though we have a variety of sources, including secondary sources which are mainstream news outlets and primary sources, which are peer-reviewed research articles. Of course, this article could continue to be improved and updated. That's why I came back when I found something relevant and interesting. Nerd271 (talk) 14:47, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Unfortunately, DGG is dead, this is for other people to read.)
1) There is nothing wrong with sounding like the 19th century, as long as the information is relevant and up-to-date. A writer might even consider that a complement. That broad description of East Asian women pertains to the average. And there is nothing sexual about it. It is merely a description of a biological trait.
2) Same difference. Years ago == before present. Ranges are desirable, though.
3) The intended meaning is indeed, "that once human culture changes, the changes that are introduced also give selective pressure, thus driving future evolution." I will further note that human cultures are partly shaped by local geographical features and constraints, and the local environment most certainly affects local human evolution.
4) While I agree that biology advances rapidly, 2006 is not that long ago compared to the current time of writing (2024) with regards to human evolution. But as always, the page could continue to be updated.
5) Neutral mutations by definition neither harm nor benefit the organism. But they can be used to gauge the rate and frequency of mutations in a given gene pool, which is relevant to the topic of evolution.
6) That is a relevant and fascinating topic in its own right. Perhaps some of the people reading this might help include new information pertaining to it in the future.
Nerd271 (talk) 15:05, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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