I don’t get it. Maybe I misread the article but it sounds. like the study did nothing to tell us why the human brain evolved the way it did, it only explained what stopped the chimpanzee brain from evolving along the same trajectory?
I think they've misread the original paper. It's the chimps that have the specific retroviral element that silences the non-coding gene that in humans is required for normal brain development. The news article gets the conclusion backwards.
Yes, thats what I noticed. Strangely, I have seen a couple other headlines from different popular science publications, both also mischaracterizing the results of this study. What is going on here?
Copying each other, perhaps, or blindly allowing AI to summarise the paper? If you read the title of the original paper on its own, you might guess the retroviral element is 'beneficial', but once you get to the abstract it's clear that this is not what the researchers are arguing.
HandshakeOfCO | 23 hours ago
Fast forward a few years and now it’s “the pandemic owes its existence to a prehistoric human brain”
Looking at you RFK jr
Altruistic_Poet7443 | 22 hours ago
I don’t get it. Maybe I misread the article but it sounds. like the study did nothing to tell us why the human brain evolved the way it did, it only explained what stopped the chimpanzee brain from evolving along the same trajectory?
ChuckSouth63 | 22 hours ago
Yeah, the conclusion of the article kind of comes out nowhere with nothing to support it.
GammaDeltaTheta | 12 hours ago
I think they've misread the original paper. It's the chimps that have the specific retroviral element that silences the non-coding gene that in humans is required for normal brain development. The news article gets the conclusion backwards.
Altruistic_Poet7443 | 12 hours ago
Yes, thats what I noticed. Strangely, I have seen a couple other headlines from different popular science publications, both also mischaracterizing the results of this study. What is going on here?
GammaDeltaTheta | 12 hours ago
Copying each other, perhaps, or blindly allowing AI to summarise the paper? If you read the title of the original paper on its own, you might guess the retroviral element is 'beneficial', but once you get to the abstract it's clear that this is not what the researchers are arguing.
scumotheliar | 16 hours ago
That's the way I read it too
nimblybimbly3000 | 22 hours ago
Aliens
let_me_flie | 16 hours ago
Biological uplift
Remarkable_Cake_4735 | 14 hours ago
Banana for scale please