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Monthly Science Summary
(lemmy.world)
🔔 Monthly Science Summary Brief overview of major studies - stay up-to-date
🔭 Sources & Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_in_science
This was the one I originally read,
https://www.thejakartapost.com/culture/2023/09/16/skepticism-about-claim-human-ancestors-nearly-went-extinct.html
and there's this
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-ancestors-nearly-went-extinct-900-000-years-ago/
that also specifically mentions the problem of fossils from the same time in many other parts of the world that were not examined at all or even mentioned by the original study,
This one summarizes several problems with the claim very well:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a45156157/human-ancestors-almost-went-extinct-says-study/
So the main problems is that the study that this number 1280 comes from focuses, very specifically on one group of fossils but pretends(or at least allows readers to make the assumption) that the results are representative of the entire fossil, archaeological and human record around the world, which they simply are not.
Another problem is that their conclusion is based on a new algorithm this team created to work out from 3,000 individuals(unknown how these individuals were chosen for this study) how many humans were left 900,000 years ago.
Even mathematically, the fact that their declared result range is only from 1270 to 1300 humans left on Earth is suspicious because it's such a narrow range for such a subjectively determined algorithm based on incomplete anthropological assumptions of a population event that occurred almost a million years ago.
The data this new study is based on is not actually new data either. They just put this old data into their new algorithm.
It is a great story and it might have even happened in the area that the tested fossils are from since population crashes and explosions do occur, but there is very little in this specific study that is scientifically rigorous or has concrete, broader ramifications for the anthropological record because of its incomplete, broad and subjective methods.
Thank you, will look into this. I had my doubts when I first heard about this but even with these sources I still think the study is significant beyond the large attention (and that itself is also a factor). I don't think there's much doubt that "The precision of the findings, though, may be a stretch" is true which doesn't invalidate the study and like a critic said "The conclusions, she says, “though intriguing, should probably be taken with some caution and explored further."
Also consider that I usually have 8 main tiles and two brief ones, the only other alternative main tiles this month were the dogxim, Y chromosome and astrocytes ones which could get summarized nicely very briefly at the bottom while this one should be included but was hard to summarize that briefly.
Oh, I certainly don't mean to throw any shade on you, I was personally interested in this particular article and very wary when I saw their claim so I looked into it for a time after reading that initial popular article, but the vagueness of the research and the specific number sounded way too fishy,
It looks like all of your tiles are confirmed science in one way or the other, and after my interest in this article I remembered it was not as solidly scientific or comprehensively significant as the other subjects you post.