Publishing on human origins

[Kirk Fitzhugh]

At 02:15 PM 5/27/04 -0400, John Grehan:
>The journal Natural History turned down an article because they found it
>very problematic that the DNA sequencing data for the relationships
>between hominids and apes is still open to question. Without a genetic
>argument to support a human-orangutan connection they would not publish
>something that openly challenged what they consider to be settled science.
>...the editors did not find any fault with the morphology, just the idea
>that morphology might call DNA sequence data into question).


"If an investigator wishes to decide what credence to give to an empirical
hypothesis or to what extent to rely on it in planning his actions, then
rationality demands that he take into account all the relevant evidence
available to him; if he were to consider only part of that evidence, he
might arrive at a much more favorable, or a much less favorable, appraisal,
but it would surely not be rational for him to base his decision on
evidence he knew to be selectively biased." (Carl G. Hempel 1962,
Deductive-nomological versus statistical explanations).

and...

"If the available evidence includes the premises of both arguments, it is
irrational to base our expectations concerning the conclusions exclusively
on the premises of one or the other of the arguments; the credence given to
any contemplated hypothesis should always be determined by the support it
receives from the total evidence available at the time.  ...What the
requirement of total evidence demands, then, is that the credence given to
a hypothesis h in a given knowledge situation should be determined by the
inductive support, or confirmation, which h receives from the total
evidence e available in that situation." (Carl G. Hempel, 1966, Recent
problems of induction).