The historic discovery of li’l ol’ Ida, the 47 million-year-old creature given the inversely pompous scientific name, Darwinius masillae, has created quite a media stir.   Hailed as the “Holy Grail of human evolution” by the New York Daily News, and by lead scientist John Hurum as “like finding the Lost Ark,” Ida is now officially on the road to pop-culture celebrity, being imbued with all the nonsensical notions that such creatures are typically imbued with. Yet something of a wait-and-see attitude is coming from the general scientific community.

As usual, there is something nearing outright collusion going on between those responsible for the find and those responsible for getting people to read about it.  Regarding the hopelessly definitive statements about the find, the “Ida show” has been referred to as “over the top” by Berkeley paleontologist Dr. Tim White.  Dr. Brian Richmond from George Washington University seems hopeful in noting that, “From this time period there are very few fossils, and they tend to be an isolated tooth here or maybe a tailbone there.  So you can’t say a whole lot of what that [type of fossil] represents in terms of evolutionary history or biology.”  Meanwhile, MSNBC points out that the official, peer-reviewed paper submitted by the scientific team is devoid of such far-reaching claims.  Why?  For one thing, there is no such thing as a human ancestor “missing link.”  There are either a lot of “missing links” or none in particular, depending upon your point-of-view (see Myth of the Missing Link).  But that is too complex a subject to get into now.  What isn’t too complex are the movie and book deals.

The History Channel and Little, Brown Book Group are both reaching for the pot at the center of the poker table along with the scientific team and ABC, which has reached an exclusive deal for its news department; the announcement has been publicised for weeks; and a vast and impressive website has been created in order to hype the discovery well beyond all reaches of common sense.  According to lead scientist Jorn H. Hurum, “Any pop band is doing the same thing. Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.” (source: New York News & Features)

While you mull over the potential impact of scientists thinking the same way as pop bands and athletes, I’ll quickly interject that he must be thinking of becoming money-grubbing propagandists, as opposed to doped up, logic-evading simpletons.  But is this a noble goal for scientists, who already have amongst them such leading headache spewing proselytizers as Richard Dawkins, and who regularly allow themselves to be dragged willingly into such farces as The Jesus Tomb?  And what about all the money made promoting anthropogenic global warming as though it were as clear as a sun drenched sky?  I would say the lurid affair between science, media, propaganda and money has been going strong for some time now.  Perhaps a return to just science would be a better direction to take.

Whatever the future analyses of Ida might bring, the future of science isn’t helped by infusing it with extra-curricular nonsense.  Make no mistake, science can’t be, and shouldn’t be, stopped due to the behavior of a few outliers, but public skepticism will continue to increase so long as new discoveries are handled in the same way, only with much more money and flair, as common sideshow attractions.

(Updated:  Reading back, I could not be certain if my initial interpretation of Dr. Brian Richmond’s statement was accurate.  I changed the commentary surrounding his quote to reflect what I felt was a more accurate reflection of his opinion, which I gather is that he believes Ida to be an important and likely relevant discovery in the study of human evolution.  Initially I read it to say that because the surrounding fossil record from the period was weak, and that one would be somewhat limited, therefore, in the interpretation of the impact of the Ida find.)