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Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

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Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#81

Post by Barrin92 »

mrfusion wrote: post #33
cm2187 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar evolution with no selection pressure: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/wisdom-teeth-evol... I don’t think Darwinism is scientifically established. It has become a bit of a sacred cow because of its opposition with religion, but it is merely a good explanation compatible with the data. That doesn’t prove it. It may be that life evolves and adapts through other mechanism than mere selective pressure.

I’ve always wondered that. Like why hasn’t evolution itself evolved as well?

evolution itself does evolve. Eusociality or sexual dimorphism, group dynamics and all kinds of complex phenomena obviously weren't present in the primordial soup but are pathways themselves carved out by evolution.

Rate of mutations may change, new mechanisms of evolution may turn up, humans ironically by understanding our genome have acquired the ability to manipulate it in intelligent fashion, and so on.

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#82

Post by danieltillett »

evandijk70 wrote: post #78
danieltillett wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having personally read through a large number of grant applications I would say 25% is about accurate. It really doesn’t change anything if we were to raise the threshold to say the top 50%. The key to success is to remove the human element of trying to determine what is a top 5% grant from a top 10% grant. This has been proven to be impossible. You can stop the grant stuffing gaming by limiting the number of grants…

Don't forget that the people writing the grants are heavily influenced by what is required to obtain a grant. If the aim of writing a grant becomes to not be in the bottom 25%, than the average quality of grants will go down. I think it has not been proven to be impossible to determine the difference between a top 5% and a top 10% grant, it has just been proven that the current system does not do that. In trainings f…

It doesn’t matter if the average quality of the grants goes down (it would actually be a good thing if it reflected less time being spent on grant writing), what matters if the average quality of the science goes up. Grants are a means to an end, not an end in themselves (administrators feel different about this I will admit).

It has been proven that grant reviewers can’t agree amongst themselves what are the top 5% verses the top 10%. Having personally gone through the process as a reviewer I can identify the difference between a good and a bad grant, but I can’t with any reliability determine the difference between a top 5% and a top 10% grant. Once you get into the top 25% of grants the ranking gets very arbitrary. I might like one grant more than another purely because I like the area more, but my taste should not be the criteria on which grants are chosen.

The crazy thing is all of this is known by everyone involved in the grant process yet everyone continues on as though the system is working.

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#83

Post by mci »

mci wrote: post #28

I have procured a PDF of the paper. Ctrl+F race finds nothing in it. The authors treat e.g. these results equivalently: * Adachi, B. (1928) Das Arteriensystem der Japaner. Kyoto, Japan (8.00%) * Kodama, K. (2000) Arteries of the upper limb. Tokyo, Japan (8.2%) * Henneberg, M. and George, B.J. (1992a) High incidence of the median artery of the forearm in a sample of recent South African cadavers (27.10%) * Cheruiyot,…

Here is a polished version of my argument: https://marcinciura.wordpress.com/2020/10/11/bad-medicine-th...

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#84

Post by bonoboTP »

danieltillett wrote: post #77
bonoboTP wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it goes way deeper than just grants. Who will get tenure for example? Citations and publication counts are used for many many things. Also, making your findings sexy is not just done to improve metrics for promotion and grants. Sexy research also draws attention among experts and lay media alike. They will be invited to give talks at conferences and seminars etc. more if their findings are exciting.

The same approach can be applied to tenure. Set a basic threshold that someone needs to meet, then run a lottery to chose who gets tenure. Would end an amazing amount of unproductive gaming of the system.

This would work if people are roughly equally good above that low bar. But there are vast differences. The current metrics aren't perfect but they do correlate with ability. And as I said, you can't randomize everything, like talk invitations or "followers", collaboration offers, research stay offers at prestigious places, media exposure etc.

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#85

Post by eecc »

lopmotr wrote: post #54
eecc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Natural Selection doesn’t necessarily mean that only advantageous genes survive the Darwinian hustle, it can also mean that in the absence of negative external pressure also neutral variations are not systematically culled. It’s like living in a civilized society; you don’t have to worry of starving tomorrow so you take on making art...

It seems like we're on a terrible path with this absence of evolutionary pressure. What's happening to all the babies who survive today that would have died in childbirth had they been born at any time in human history before 100 years ago? Since infant mortality was so high, it must have been an close battle for evolution to keep it under control. Now the brakes are off and whatever mutations were regularly killing…

I can’t even decide where to start picking apart these arguments... it’s mostly just a “the skies are falling” fear-trip occurring whenever some significantly new status quo emerges.

Sure, literacy made people less willing to spend their lives farming for a pittance, but we managed to industrialize farming and some of those peasant families contributed to society more than a couple loads of bread.

Let’s put it this way: we’re on the path to fully disassemble cellular processes, we won’t need natural selection to tune our immune system when we can design a better one ourselves

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#86

Post by learc83 »

Retric wrote: post #70
learc83 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the vast majority of people who die from heart disease don’t develop it until they are older. Which is why it’s misleading to talk about it being America’s #2 cause of death when discussing evolutionary pressure.

Heart disease starts at a young age. Mentioning deaths is relevant to demonstrate how common it is, not that the only impact is death.

No it doesn’t. At least not normally. Google the prevalence rates of heart disease in people under 40.

About 0.6% of people under 40 have the most common type of heart disease

https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@smd...

Again pointing out that it is the 2nd most common killer vastly overestimates its evolutionary impact. The same is true of cancer.

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#87

Post by Retric »

learc83 wrote: post #86
Retric wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heart disease starts at a young age. Mentioning deaths is relevant to demonstrate how common it is, not that the only impact is death.

No it doesn’t. At least not normally. Google the prevalence rates of heart disease in people under 40. About 0.6% of people under 40 have the most common type of heart disease https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@smd... Again pointing out that it is the 2nd most common killer vastly overestimates its evolutionary impact. The same is true of cancer.

Normal blood pressure increases steadily with age. https://www.idealbloodpressureinfo.com/blood-pressure-chart-... Target and maximum heart rates similarly decline from your teens.

The point where these get called a precursor to heart disease is largely semantics. But they do impact heath before it’s noticeable as a problem.

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#88

Post by sradman »

mci wrote: post #83
mci wrote: post #28

I have procured a PDF of the paper. Ctrl+F race finds nothing in it. The authors treat e.g. these results equivalently: * Adachi, B. (1928) Das Arteriensystem der Japaner. Kyoto, Japan (8.00%) * Kodama, K. (2000) Arteries of the upper limb. Tokyo, Japan (8.2%) * Henneberg, M. and George, B.J. (1992a) High incidence of the median artery of the forearm in a sample of recent South African cadavers (27.10%) * Cheruiyot,…

Here is a polished version of my argument: https://marcinciura.wordpress.com/2020/10/11/bad-medicine-th...

> The conclusion of the paper is just bad science, not an example of human microevolution.

"Bad science" might be a bit harsh. I read the paper as a call to arms (no pun intended). The data presented in Table 1 is good science but the sample is far too limited to support the paper's subtitle "A microevolutionary change".

It is plausible that a microevolutionary change has occurred (ditto environmental change or no change). We need much larger surveys that span populations and geographies to first establish that a change has occurred and then quantify the causal factors.

Perhaps the fault lies in the culture surrounding the publishing of scientific papers with an emphasis on strong conclusions rather than unresolved questions. Maybe I'm being too forgiving because I was previously unaware of the adult median artery phenotype. Regardless, your criticism is important and appreciated as is tgbug's point that we are lacking data on population wide anatomical variation.

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#89

Post by Ericson2314 »

Izkata wrote: post #65
Ericson2314 wrote: post #16

> Humans haven’t developed mutations or superpowers just yet, but a new study shows our species is still evolving in unique ways and changes in natural selection could be the major reason. Ewwww. Why is university press the worst? If we are still evolving and this isn't just about genetic recombination then by definition mutations are involved. Also the publicist writes > This evolutionary trend will continue in thos…

> Ewwww. Why is university press the worst? If we are still evolving and this isn't just about genetic recombination then by definition mutations are involved. The use of "superpowers" alongside it indicates they're referring to pop culture mutations (in the sense of the X-Men).

Yes, but does using that overloaded word cover anything "superpowers" didn't? I'd think it just adds ambiguity.

Re: Forearm artery reveals human evolution continues?

#90

Post by learc83 »

Retric wrote: post #87
learc83 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn’t. At least not normally. Google the prevalence rates of heart disease in people under 40. About 0.6% of people under 40 have the most common type of heart disease https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@smd... Again pointing out that it is the 2nd most common killer vastly overestimates its evolutionary impact. The same is true of cancer.

Normal blood pressure increases steadily with age. https://www.idealbloodpressureinfo.com/blood-pressure-chart-... Target and maximum heart rates similarly decline from your teens. The point where these get called a precursor to heart disease is largely semantics. But they do impact heath before it’s noticeable as a problem.

You’re trying awful hard to save your point.

Target heart rate declining and blood pressure rising with age in no way implies that most people who later die of heart disease are somehow less reproductively fit when they are younger.

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