WHEN it comes to scientific facts, the identity of our closest living relative is about as certain as they get. Genome sequencing has confirmed to the satisfaction of pretty much everybody that this dubious honour goes to chimpanzees.
Yet this week sees the publication of a paper that seeks to blow that fact out of the water. The authors argue that the DNA evidence is flawed and that, based on traditional taxonomy, orang-utans are clearly closer to us than chimps (see “Are orang-utans our nearest relatives?”).
It’s true the locals call orangs the “people of the forest”. But recall the old saying about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. So far, the research appears to be failing that test. All the experts we contacted dismissed the paper’s main conclusion, a reaction that seems likely to be repeated when the paper reaches the wider world.
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If its claims are so outlandish, should the research even have been published? Some scientists would clearly have preferred it if the paper had never seen the light of day, and question the judgement of the journal.
“If its claims are so outlandish should the research even have been published?”
That is territory we should tread with care. Ideas that mainstream opinion “knows” to be wrong occasionally turn out to be right. The insights of Galileo, Stan Prusiner – who discovered prions – and many others were once denounced as heresy. And even those that are wrong can be valuable.
Science proceeds by questioning its own assumptions and regarding every “fact” as provisional, so alternative hypotheses should be given an airing, if only to reaffirm the strength of the orthodoxy. Science that pulls up the drawbridge on new ideas risks becoming sterile. The journal recognised that and should be applauded for its decision to disseminate this challenging paper.
One possible outcome, though, is that creationists will trumpet the paper as evidence that the theory of evolution is crumbling. If the experts themselves cannot get their story straight, they will crow, why should we believe anything they say?
That, of course, is shameless intellectual dishonesty (though what else would you expect from a movement built on intellectual dishonesty?). A paper questioning one aspect of evolution is not evidence that evolution itself is in trouble. Quite the opposite. It is science doing what it is supposed to do. We cannot censor ideas just because we are worried that a small bunch of religious fanatics will twist them for their own ends.
If the paper achieves nothing else, though, it is a reminder of how uncannily similar humans and red apes are, and what we stand to lose when – for sadly it now appears inevitable – these great apes go extinct in the wild.