Talk:Aquatic ape hypothesis/Archive 4

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Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution Update

This web page is not only biased, it is now also very much out of date. A new eBook (see here for more details) has just been published which brings the idea up to date and effectively renames "it".

Was Man More Aquatic In The Past? Fifty Years After Alister Hardy ~ Waterside Hypothesis Of Human Evolution eISBN: 978-1-60805-244-8, 2011

The so-called "aquatic ape theory" was always a misnomer. "It" is not one idea, but several. They do not really propose an "aquatic" phase in any real sense anyway, and they do not only propose that wading, swimming and diving affected our ape ancestors, but perhaps also hominins and early modern humans too. It is time the anonymous authors of this entry started to lose their irrational hostility to what is a plausible, evidence-based set of ideas about human evolution. Some of us will be trying to update this page in the forthcoming weeks. It would be helpful if hostile pseudoskeptics did not try to sabbotage this attempt to update the public with the latest thinking on this matter. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 09:59, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

If you'd like to be taken seriously, please publish your work with a reputable publisher that conducts real peer review. Bentham does not qualify. For WP purposes, the book is essentially self-published and of little, if any, value for scientific content. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 00:09, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Not true, the book is published, was peer reviewed, and the authors include experts in their relevant fields, including Philip Tobias, who is described by Wikipedia as one of the world's leading authorities on the evolution of humankind, therefore it has to be considered a relevant text for Wikipedia purposes. We should assume the editors and authors acted in good faith unless there is some reason to doubt this, despite the publisher's poor past record.Yloopx (talk) 05:43, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

The RSN discussion seals it as far as I'm concerned, this is vanity press and shouldn't be included. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:04, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

You haven't addressed any of the points I've made WLU. We at Wikipedia should assume good faith, and therefore the publication should be judged on its contributors and content rather than the publisher's past record. Every publisher no doubt has published something they should not have, but that doesn't mean everything published by that publisher should be disregarded. Phillip Tobias is one of the world's leading authorities on the evolution of humankind according to Wikipedia, why would he need to publish in a vanity press? If the contents of the book have a problem then let's here what they are. But dismissing 15 chapters of research by experts in their field because the publisher once published something they shouldn't is not in the spirit of what Wikipedia is all about. Wikipedia stands for free and open information, yet you want to censor information as far as I can see.Yloopx (talk) 21:48, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, two points: Bentham Press (didn't we used to have an article on them?) is essentially a vanity press. Therefore anything published by them does not count as a RS because it's been published. Bentham pubs count about as much as a personal website would. On the other hand, Phillip Tobias is himself a RS. A personal website by him would count as a RS; we use personal websites of notable scholars in cases like this were there is not a lot of peer-reviewed literature out there. Therefore a Bentham pub by Tobias would count as a RS, not because it's published, but because it's Tobias. Now, I haven't seen the book, so I don't know what is in there; anything by other people, people whose websites we wouldn't accept, should not be accepted just because they're in this book. But Tobias's opinions are acceptable. — kwami (talk) 00:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Lack of peer review and reliable publishing house means it's attributed the same way a website would be - we would have to very clearly frame this as Phillip Tobias` opinion. In addition, that's not the way the book was used as a reference - the actual use was to say "The most up to date account of these ideas was recently published in an eBook to commemorate 50 years since Hardy's idea was first announced". First, that's extremely peacocky. Second, it's using the book itself as a primary source to prove a secondary point (i.e. it's not a review of the book, it's using the book itself to say it's the most up to date account of the AAH since Hardy). Also, note that Tobias isn't actually the editor of the book, they are Vaneechoutte, Kuliukas and Verhaegen - two of whom show up regularly on this talk page to argue that the AAH is the best explanation for human evolution out there. Tobias contributed one chapter, "Revisiting Water and Hominin Evolution". I invite everyone to read the chapter abstract, which portrays it in an almost joking manner. The page shouldn't be rewritten to portray this book as conclusive proof that the AAH is vindicated, it shouldn't be rewritten using this book to give the impression it's suddenly a mainstream and credible hypothesis, and it shouldn't be included as further reading (I would argue against using it as a reference except for Tobias' chapter). At best it can be used to demonstrate what believers think, little to no more. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 01:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Some comments on Hardy and his responses, 1960.[1] — kwami (talk) 00:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Shouting doesn't make your opinion any more valid WLU. Wikipedia's webpage on reliable sources states that there are three three factors that need to be taken into account, as well as context. The three factors, all of which have weight are: The authors (experts in this case) the content (latest research of the subject in this case) and the publisher (in this case a peer reviwed book that is avilable for anyone who wants to buy and read it). It does not qualify as vanity press. As far as context, the reference points to the fact that this is the most recent research on the subject. It gives no opinion as to the quality of that research and does not portray it as 'conclusive proof that the AAH is vindicated'. Again, we at Wikipedia urge good faith, so unless there is some reason why this ebook is not a relaible source,it must be included.203.129.46.84 (talk) 08:26, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Vanity press very much describes this book since the editors paid to publish it. Morgan, and many others, aren't credible experts as the theory is not taken seriously within the actual community. To include an analogy - David Icke is a world expert on shapeshifting lizards controlling the world, and publishes books regularly. That doesn't mean he gets cited when we discuss the United Nations. If the AAH carries real weight, where are the peer reviewed articles discussing it in substantive ways? Where are the secondary sources on bipedalism, divergence from a common ancestor, speech, morphology, fossil studies and the like that say "and of course the AAH is a serious contender for explanation"? The evidence provided that this is taken seriously by actual experts is...a self-published book. I don't believe the turnover-pulse hypothesis was put forth in a self-published book. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 11:42, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

WLU, the editors did not pay to have the book published and it was peer reviewed, so please stop repeating this. And please, what do shapeshifting lizard’s have to do with this? Wikipedia is supposed to be written from a neutral POV, yet drawing this analogy gives the impression you are far from neutral, and indeed that you have a very poor understanding of the science. If you are really interested in this subject you should at least for a start read the book we’re discussing here, instead of trying to censor it without any good reason. Again, Phillip Tobias is a leading authority on the evolution of humankind (according to Wikipedia) so the book he has contributed to has scientific credibility. Fifteen peer reviewed chapters would be a good place for you to start to get an appreciation of the actual science that has been going on in this subject in the last few years. Then tell us what you think.Yloopx (talk) 04:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

This is what Bentham itself says about payments to prospective book editors (full version here): "OPEN ACCESS PUBLICATION FEE: For authors who decide to have to have their book/chapter published as open access for free online viewing, a fee of US$ 900 per book/chapter published will apply. This fee is not mandatory, and is an option to authors to publish their book/chapter as open access." The editors of the "Was man more aquatic in the past" book obviously did not pay this fee, because anyone interested in the book has to buy it from Bentham Science, and it is not cheap (prices given here). Using the term vanity press to dismiss the book is therefore unjustified. Cricetus (talk) 08:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

WLU, your bias against this idea becomes more obvious with every post/change you make. How is the simple, factual, statement you edited out in any way "peacocky"? The book IS the most up to date account of the idea. It's a simple fact. It was published to commemorate 50 years since Hardy's idea. That's a fact too. Why are you trying to censor out these simple facts about the idea from this page? It's entirely pertinent and scholarly. My belief is that Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution (let's at least try to give them an accurate label) are as good as any other published idea to explain the human phenotypic differences from the other great apes. Can you point to an alternative? What is that, by the way? Is it still the savannah theory, or do you think that was just a straw man invented by Elaine Morgan? If not that, what then? drift? At least these ideas are evidence-based, plausible, modest and most importantly based on the principles of Darwinian natural selection. The fact that the field of paleoanthropology still haven't even got round to understanding what they are yet - even after 50 years, let alone discussing them and attempting a proper rebuttal is not our problem. Tobias does not portray it in a "joking manner" at all, he just has his own particular angle, like all the other authors - hence "waterside hypotheses" (plural). It's odd that you want to invite "everyone" to read Tobias' chapter but at the same time censor the ref to this key source from the web page. As, I said, I think you are just yet another biased and closed minded individual and I will keep opposing/reversing any changes you make to pull the wool over people's eyes on this. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 05:59, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

As the editor of a vanity press book who presumably makes money every time a copy is purchased, you really, really, really shouldn't be citing it. My "bias" comes from the fact that an enormous number of sources point to the AAH being nothing more than popular speculation by nonexperts. Your ideas may be as good as any alternative - but you've yet to actually convince the expert community. Otherwise you'd be publishing in Oxford University Press, not paying Bentham for the privilege. Call me biased and closed minded all you want - there are a tremendous number of sources pointing to the lack of serious attention for the AAH. That's where my "bias" is coming from. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

WLU, you really, really, really, really should stop your personal campaign against this idea here. The "vanity press" slur is actually slander. The book was peer reviewed. If people like you are determined to censor out citations to the peer reviewed literature like this, it brings the rules of Wikipedia into disrepute. Who decides when the "expert community" is convinced? Chakazul has shown that there are many experts who are at least open and interested, and often openly supportive, of the idea. I notice that to justify censoring this citation to a peer reviewed publication your main retort are three blog sites! Langdon (1997)'s paper is weak, as we point out in the book. Roede et al was marginally against an extreme view of the so-called "aquatic ape" - and that's it. The only other "refutation" is Jim Moore's masquerading web site. The three bloggs by middle-ranking anthropologists may have offered a word of support for Moore, but they show no sign that they have even read it. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 00:17, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The source is unacceptable for use on WP. It is self-published in a vanity press and is clearly not peer-reviewed. You have a clear conflict of interest and should not be adding your own work to this article. Further attempts to introduce this source will be reverted on sight as patent spamming. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 03:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

To respond to a few of the remarks made above:

• WLU wrote "At best it can be used to demonstrate what believers think, little to no more." Surely that is sufficient justification for including it, if it's made clear that that is the reason?
• He also wrote "David Icke is a world expert on shapeshifting lizards controlling the world, and publishes books regularly. That doesn't mean he gets cited when we discuss the United Nations." No indeed, but it does mean that he gets cited in an article specifically devoted to controversial theories about shapeshifting lizards etc, and that's the analogous situation to what we have here (with apologies to those who find the comparison offensive).
• I can't see any honest case for excluding the eBook while including Laden's blog (4 references) and Jim Moore's site. I'm not against their inclusion, but we must not have a double standard.

Accordingly I shall feel free to reinsert a reference to the eBook. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 16:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Do not insert text when there is no consensus to do so. To do otherwise is to edit war. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I could see using the book as a source to verify what proponents of the AAH believe. I do not think it is appropriate to include it in the lead with a description of it being "the most up to date account of these ideas" as was done multiple times by new accounts, single purpose accounts and anonymous IP addresses[2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]. Particularly when I have yet to see any evidence of a positive review in any scholarly press. If a sea-change (ahahaha) occurs in the paleoanthropological community which suddenly comes to attribute much of humanity's traits that are divergent from chimps to a period of strong adaptation to water - we document it. We do not proclaim it, in the lead, with a pay-to-publish book.

The double standard comes in the form of WP:PARITY, particularly when so many genuine experts point to Jim Moore's site as a valuable source of information debunking the AAH. Which, let us not forget, is pretty unambiguously a fringe hypothesis that has no genuine credibility in the majority of the actual scientific community. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, we can't use the book for anything, not even to illustrate what AAH proponents believe, until it has been discussed in the scholarly community. Otherwise, we have no way to assign weight. A notable scientist's ideas are not notable unless published in a real peer-reviewed publication or, if not, unless they have generated significant commentary in the relevant mainstream scholarly community. We have to be on the watch-out for walled gardens and "mutual masturbation", where discussion takes place only among the proponents themselves. Such sources cannot be considered truly independent. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 18:10, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry Dominus, I disagree. If we were using the book to portray the AAH as a valid hypothesis (as "the most updated version of the theory" would suggest), I would certainly agree with you. However, as a notable fringe theory we're permitted to use it as a parity sources to document the beliefs of the minority group who promote and discuss the theory in nonscientific, non peer-reviewed venues. Algis and the other authors/coeditors are notable (not WP:N notable, but within the popular usage) proponents and we can document what they believe. However, we don't give them the same weight as the skeptical viewpoints who represent the mainstream scholars that don't believe. Weight is determined by the fact that any attention paid by mainstream scholarly press is essentially critical, dismissive and negative. That's why the laundry list of claim-counterclaim is such a bad idea - it gives the impression that there's a real debate when there isn't. Better would be to remove the list, pare it down to a few brief examples, and note that there are alternative explanations of each one.

If the scholarly community does review the book and is in fact positive about it that makes things more complicated as it could point to a change in the opinion of the community that should be documented (because wikipedia changes as the experts change). But, cross that bridge as we go. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 19:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Parity is one of the most misunderstood guidelines on WP, and it doesn't help that it's subtlely written. It does not apply to fringe sources, but to the mainstream sources that criticize and discuss the theory. Mainstream sources published in peer-reviewed journals may not exist for many topics. That is why we set the bar lower for mainstream sources, as the theories they are used to criticize are rarely published in peer-reviewed publcations themselves. Parity makes it easier for us as WP editors to find mainstream sources that discuss the fringe sources.

Until a self-published fringe source is specifically discussed subsantially in the mainstream scholarly literature (peer-reviewed or parity), it essentially does not exist as far as WP is concerned. We don't report on what fringe proponents believe based on what they themselves say, but on what reliable independent scholarly sources report the proponents say. In other words, we don't provide a free soapbox for fringe proponents. We don't give them "equal time" or a venue to "make their case" or a "fair shot".

Dominus, you keep stating this "self-published" slur as if it was fact, when it is not. Whatever Bentham may have been accused of in the past, this book is not self-published. It also was peer reviewed. Most of the authors of the chapters are professional scientists, one of which is Philip Tobias, and of those that are not, the majority are PhD students at reputable universities under reputable supervision. This is not a soapbox, it's a scientific update about the very idea that this page is supposed to be informing the public about. If someone was interested to know what this idea was, and went to Wikipedia to find out, I think they'd expect that the latest book published on the subject would be cited so that they could find out more, wouldn't you? If one looks at any page on Wikipedia, it's usually updated very quickly with the latest information - this is surely one of the key features of this amazing resource [e.g. I just checked the page on the film "The Artist", and sure enough, someone's updated it today with the latest Oscar news], and yet here you are effectively censoring the latest (but already several months old) information from the public on the basis that some editors at Wikipedia have judged it as "not mainstream". You use, an excuse, that no-one in the scientific community has been discussing it at length yet. Well, so what? It sometimes takes years for the scientific community to "comment" on new papers and books, even ones in the mainstream, so just how many years are you prepared to wait for sufficient "comment" to allow this topical inclusion to be allowed? In terms of reliability, surely you can trust the authors of this book (i.e. the very proponents of the idea on which the page is based) to report what it is accurately, can't you? This, in fact, brings me to the most important point. There is a lot of ignorance about this idea, manifest in the over-reaction to this attempt at a very modest edit, shown by you and your fellow editors. The whole point of the book - one of them, at least - is to inform the public at large and the scientific community specifically what these (plural) ideas are really all about. It's simply outrageous and totally unjustifiable that this simple citation to help inform the public be censored out in this way. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 16:16, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The papers in this book are all new, and haven't been commented on by the mainstream scholarly community. As such, they have no weight. Basically, there's just no weight to assign, at least yet. Weight is assigned on the basis of prominence in the scholarly debate, and these papers have zero prominence as of yet. Nobody is seriously talking about them at length.

The identity of the author of a self-published fringe source does not add anything to the notability of the source, even if he is considered an expert in the field. Notability is determined solely by the amount of attention the source has received in independent scholarly sources. The amount of attention it receives from fellow proponents also adds very little weight, because they are not truly independent.

Read the Parity guideline carefully again. Most of all, remember that it is not an exception to WP:RS, WP:V and WP:NPOV designed to make it easier for fringe proponents. It's designed to make it easier to present the mainstream scholarly understanding of the proponents beliefs when there has been little discussion in the peer-reviewed literature by either proponents or mainstream critics. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:13, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The article is unbalanced

I thought the purpose of wikipedia is to give encyclopedic information on different kinds of things. So when looking up something like "Hypothesis X", I would expect the article to tell me who proposed hypothesis X, on what evidence, and what exactly the hypothesis hypothesizes. If hypothesis X is controversial, I'd also expect to be given information on the arguments that have been presented against it. If there is a generally accepted alternative hypothesis, I would also expect to be told what it is. But I would not expect an article on hypothesis X to list things related to hypothesis X so briefly that it is not even obvious how they relate to the hypothesis, and then dedicate five times as much space to arguing that hypothesis X must be wrong. Doing so does not conform with the principle of NPOV as I understand it. Cricetus (talk) 16:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy on neutrality requires we give weight to the topic in accordance with its representation in mainstream reliable sources. The AAH isn't a credible hypothesis, much of the attention it has received in real scientific journals by real anthropologists and archaeologists is critical. There is no evidence, just a series of "just so" stories. The AAH isn't a valid alternative, it presents a straw-man (the "savanna" hypothesis) that nobody believes and proposes an alternative as a false dilemma (i.e. since the savanna hypothesis is obviously false, the AAH must be true). You might be interested in this site which takes some of the claims and debunks them.

Put another way, your understanding of the policy on neutrality is indeed wrong, we are here to represent the mainstream scientific consensus, not promote a fringe theory. Morgan's theory was never a credible contender within the scientific community. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I am familiar with Jim Moore's website. It is no more scientific than Elaine Morgan's writings, and in some respects it is less so. For example, Moore's writing style in his website is aggressive and often verging on personal insults, whereas Morgan's style in her website is matter-of-factly even when she replies to the accusations made by Moore (many of which Morgan says to be unfounded and based on misunderstanding of misquotation of her work). What I would really like to see is that someone gave justifications for statements like "The AAH is a quasi-scientific hypothesis that lacks significant credibility", "The AAH isn't a valid alternative", "There is no evidence", and "nobody believes" it (all quotes from this page). The text I had added to the article under the section "The hypothesis" explained some of the evidence that has been presented in the literature, but it was promptly eliminated. If some statements were too partial, they could have been edited to be more neutral. But eliminating them entirely because they are mere "just so" stories is not logical, when at the same time another set of "just so" stories is accepted as proof against them in the section "Anatomical and physiological claims". It is also strange to claim that AAH would be based on the argument "since the savanna hypothesis is obviously false, the AAH must be true". In fact, the claim goes the other way round: according to its proponents, AAH provides the most parsimonious explanation for why the differences between humans and chimps have evolved, so AAH is more likely to be true than the less parsimonious set of alternative hypotheses. AAH is based on observations about living and fossil animals, just like all other hypotheses about human evolution, and indeed all hypotheses about any kinds of evolution. From the point of view of evolutionary biology, AAH is an alternative worth considering. The fact that paleoanthropologists have preferred not to take AAH seriously does not prove that it is wrong. And whether AAH is true or not, I think that an encyclopedic article about AAH should include a section that explains what AAH actually proposes. Cricetus (talk) 13:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, you are misunderstanding our poilcy on neutrality and what wikipedia is not. We represent claims to the extent found in reliable, mainstream sources (i.e. peer reviewed journals by actual experts). We give appropriate weight to fringe theories - which is to say we clearly present them as nonviable theories with no actual mainstream support. We don't give long, exhaustive explanations of the details, followed by a brief statement that the theory isn't taken seriously (in this case we're lucky because there is an actual mainstream source that clearly points out the AAH is not considered credible and critiques some of its points). We don't promote theories as "underappreciated" or "neglected by mainstream science". The AAH has no real credibility among actual, published experts - so we don't give it any here. See WP:NPOV, WP:SOAP, WP:FRINGE. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 14:51, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I have just undid a bulk revert by WLU on 11 Feb, which erased a lot of positive contributions like those by Cricetus (who refined many sessions and enriched the hypothesis definition) and Algis Kuliukas (who added a link to a recent publication on the topic).

Also I've added back a few external links which are beneficial to readers -- the website of the main proponent Elaine Morgan, and the website of the main opponent Jim Moore. These two are the most important figures on the topic (unfortunately both are not professional scientists).

And WLU, or other editors who frequently revert changes by others: You don't have the right to erase any positive contributions made by other Wikipedians. WP:NPOV or especially WP:UNDUE isn't an excuse to delete anything that you don't like. Or refer to this Wiki article that your perception of a lack of neutrality isn't an excuse to delete things. We are here to improve the article, not to let it remains in an out-dated and biased condition. If you or anyone wants to improve the page, please edit it by refining the details, providing reliable sources, and asking for it if there's no source cited -- Not reverting the works by others. Chakazul (talk) 23:09, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

On the fringe theory status and NPOV

Yes, the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis was and still is a fringe theory, and for "fringe" it means non-mainstream and not widely accepted by most in the academics. The fringe theory status by no means indicate that it is pseudoscience, has no evidence support, or no any scientist works on it. To the contrary, in the recent years there are academic publications that give moderate support to the AAH, and most of the authors are experts in the relevant fields (e.g. Carsten Niemitz in primatology, Phillip Tobias in paleoanthropology, Stephen Cunnane in nutrition science, Jon Erlandson in American archaeology, Anna Gislen & Erika Schagatay in diving physiology, etc)

• Carsten Niemitz (2010) - The evolution of the upright posture and gait—a review and a new synthesis [13]
• Stephen Cunnane & Kathlyn Stewart (eds.) (2010) - Human Brain Evolution: The Influence of Freshwater and Marine Food Resources [14]
• Mario Vaneechoutte et al. (eds.) (2011) - Was Man More Aquatic in the Past? Fifty Years After Alister Hardy - Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution [15]

WLU's claims that the AAH "isn't a credible hypothesis", "there is no evidence" or as "nonviable theories with no actual mainstream support", are only personal opinions without support from reliable and up-to-date sources. Jim Moore's personal website, which WLU mentioned, is NOT a reliable source, and John Langdon's 1997 paper, which is frequently cited, is an out-dated account that miss out the recent researches. Instead, those researches provide scientific evidence and positive opinions for the AAH (not my words but explicitly stated in the works). It's more accurate to describe the AAH today as "recently gained limited but substantial scientific support" Chakazul (talk) 23:48, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Moore's website is pseudoscience (or at best a polemic) and has no place here. Langdon's paper is a good, RS, but of course it doesn't address anything after 1997. — kwami (talk) 23:57, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Please see here for a discussion of Vaneechoutte's book. It's not a reliable source. Niemtz is already integrated three times, and given it only addresses the AAH as a single short section among numerous other short sections, noting it's extremely speculative and only even partially accepted in it's weaker form, I think that's adequate (I have added that brief note to the reception section [16]). Cunnane & Stewart would probably fall within those "brief mentions" and a search inside for "aquatic ape" or "Morgan" turns up very little of use (really, it's just "some people are interested", a point already made though I've added the citation here). Further integration of these sources can't be done without violating our policies on original research and reliable sources. Certainly, given the quality of the sources (Vaneechoutte's book) and the brevity of the discussion (the other two) there's absolutely no reason to include a wholesale rewrite to place far, far too much emphasis on Morgan's books (which were never taken seriously by the scientific community at large) and put it on the same footing as real research and publications regarding human evolution. Wikipedia is not a soapbox to promote a fringe theory about human evolution that has no real scientific acceptance. The human evolution page contains no mention of Morgan or the aquatic ape hypothesis; neutrality demands we treat it the same across the site - we can't pretend it's a serious contender for scientific interest on this page while it is completely ignored on the primary page dedicated to human evolution. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:33, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

It may be that the Cunnane & Stewart book does not mention AAH or Morgan very often inside the book, but this does not justify claiming that the book merely briefly mentions AAH. After all, the book has the title "Human brain evolution: The influence of freshwater and marine food resources", and its foreword leaves no doubt that the writers consider the results reported in the book to support the aquatic scenario as proposed by Hardy and Morgan. The often repeated claim that all scientists think that AAH is not worthy of consideration is simply not true; many experts in evolution find it a perfectly reasonable alternative. It is true, of course, that these scientists have not published much on the theme, but the lack of published support does not mean that everyone thinks the hypothesis is crap, as one could think from statements like "has not been accepted within the scientific community as a valid explanation" in the present version of the article. I also think that lack of mention of AAH in the 'Human evolution' article is no reason to delete explanation of what AAH is from an article titled "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis". Cricetus (talk) 18:57, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Please see WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, and above all - please provide reliable sources that explicitly discuss the AAH to substantiate your points. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 20:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

I have seen those guidelines, thank you. All the statements I added to the main article have been made before, and I cited the relevant sources, so there was no original research or original synthesis involved. As to WP:FRINGE, it says the following: "An idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea". This rule would be applicable if someone tried to convert the "Human evolution" article into an explanation of AAH, but we are not talking about the "Human evolution" article here; we are talking about the article focusing on AAH itself. As far as I can see, there is no prohibition against explaining a fringe theory in an article focused on the fringe theory itself. On the contrary, WP:UNDUE suggests that the sources on the topic of the article should be treated evenly, but now the AAH article gives more weight to a single critical paper by Langdon than to the much larger number of sources that have treated AAH favorably. Because most of the scientific community has been silent on the AAH, there is no reliable information on what scientists in general think about it. All we know for sure is what those think who have explicitly published on AAH, and their opinions are divided. Nevertheless, the AAH article now states in definite terms (and without giving a source) that "AAH has not been accepted within the scientific community as a valid explanation". Because we do not know to what extent this statement is true, it should be replaced by a more neutral formulation such as "AAH has not been accepted into the mainstream explanations of human evolution". My experience is that biologists (who should have some expertise in questions related to evolution) have a much more positive attitude towards AAH than paleoantropologists do. Of course this statement is entirely original research, which is why I only say so in this Talk page, and did not incorporate it in my edits of the AAH article. I repeat my opinion that "The hypothesis" section should give an accurate description of the hypothesis itself before the "Criticisms" section shoots it down. My edits were all aimed at improving the descriptions of the hypothesis itself, but even after the additions I had made, the criticism section was still longer. Now the article is back to just throwing criticisms at AAH without having given the reader a proper summary of the target first. Cricetus (talk) 00:14, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

The silence on the part of most sources regarding the AAH means we should not give it much credibility here. Since several sources are explicit in saying the AAH hasn't much mainstream support, that's how we portray it - not according to how we think it should be. Wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth.

Per WP:UNDUE:

However, these pages should still make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint wherever relevant and must not represent content strictly from the perspective of the minority view. Specifically, it should always be clear which parts of the text describe the minority view. In addition, the majority view should be explained in sufficient detail that the reader can understand how the minority view differs from it, and controversies regarding aspects of the minority view should be clearly identified and explained...Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view...To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject.

Per WP:FRINGE:

A Wikipedia article about a fringe theory should not make it appear more notable than it is.

Your experience with biologists is not a reliable source, but the numerous sources stating the AAH is not taken seriously are. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 02:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry I have to revert again to Cricetus/Kuliukus version, but this time I'll provide detailed reasons:

1) The article itself -- The article hasn't been changed much for years, you can compare with a version 2 years ago [17], which really hasn't changed much. It's understandable that there're more scientific publications on the subject only in the recent 1-2 years, that means the article needs a review to reflect the current status. That means, if there's a change in the balance of supporting / contradicting evidence and opinions, the article should be updated as such. Wikipedia is an ever-changing website, we can't imagine, for example, the Evolution article is based on the thinkings as of 1842, which surely won't give much credit to the theory (if Wikipedia ever existed in that era!)

Also the AAH article itself has a lot of problems. The very first statement "The AAH is an alternative explanation"... alternative to what? Is there a mainstream theory as we know? The hypothesis section is too brief that readers couldn't even get a glimpse of what is AAH before he can know its alleged weaknesses. E.g. only 3 words "A descended larynx" in the definition, but a whole paragraph in the criticism. This is ridiculous and unacceptable as an encyclopedia article.

Therefore Cricetus's version is much better to start with, as it gives a better definition (still smaller than the criticism). But still there're many problems, e.g. missing citations, too much words on sweating. We should start from this version, trim out the unsourced parts in hypothesis and criticism, and not fall back to the unbalanced version.

2) Reception of the hypothesis -- I agree with Cricetus that no one knows exactly how the AAH is received in the academic world. So far there's no worldwide survey to interview scientists, so we can only examine the published accounts (papers, books, videos, etc) made by relevant scientists or influential figures. Below is a list I've gathered throughout the years. Due to limited space I can't provide the details and sources here, but they're easily verifible in the 3 publications I cited above and by googling.

Explicitly argued for or done research supporting the AAH (or Cunnane's "Shore-based scenario" / Niemitz's "Amphibian Generalist Theory")

• (Paleo)anthropologists/paleontologist - Philip Tobias, Colin Groves, David Cameron, Chris Stringer, Kathlyn Stewart, Ian Tattersall, Jose Joordens
• Primatologists - Carsten Niemitz, Friedemann Schrenk, Frans de Waal, Richard Wrangham, Simon Bearder
• Nutrition scientists - Stephen Cunnane, Michael Crawford, Thomas Brenna, Frits Muskiet
• Archaeologists - Jon Erlandson, John Parkington
• Anthropologists - Chris Knight
• Parasitologists - Horst Aspöck, Julia Walochnik
• Diving researchers - Anna Gislén, Erika Shagatay
• Other scientists - William Calvin, Graham Richards, Derek Ellis, Frnk P Wesselingh
• Medical doctors - Michel Odent, Sebastiano Venturi, Peter H Rhys Evans FRCS
• Influential figures - David Attenborough, Jacques Mayol, Douglas Adams

Explicitly argued against or done research contradicting the AAH

• (Paleo)anthropologists/paleontologist - Nina Jablonski, Adrienne Zihlman, John Hawks, Henry Gee, Martin Pickford, Alan Turner
• Biologists - John Langdon, Peter Wheeler, Jan Wind, Paul Leyhausen, Caroline Pond, J Ghesquiere, Holge & Signe Preuschof
• Influential figures - PZ Myers

Neutral or open-minded to the AAH

• Anthropologist - Boguslaw Pawlowski, Roger Wescott
• Biologists - Desmond Morris, Richard Dawkins
• Primatologists - Vernon Reynolds
• Philosopher - Daniel Dennet

So we see that the scientists who publicly support the AAH is no fewer, but actually more than those who publicly reject it (welcome if you have any addition to the list). Notice that many proponents (e.g. Cunnane, Gislén, Shagatay) have done researches to yield supporting evidence, while so far most opponents are arguing in terms of opinions -- no or very few counter-evidence has yet produced from research.

So why there is an impression that the AAH is rejected by science? A few factors: (1) AAH is rejected mostly by paleoanthropology, but not much by other human-related sciences, (2) some writers, e.g. Jim Moore, promoted and exaggerated it without citing the actual scientists, (3) supports from recent literature and research are ignored, (4) silence from the majority is incorrectly equated to rejection (silence is silence).

WLU keeps claiming that "several sources are explicit in saying the AAH hasn't much mainstream support" or "stating the AAH is not taken seriously", which sources are you exactly referring to? Are these sources reliable and up-to-date, take the 21st century literature into account? It has been shown that the AAH has gained some support from mainstream scientists (listed above), and they do take it seriously. Please don't promote a false impression based on out-dated sources, and use them to justify your destructive actions to the article. Chakazul (talk) 04:27, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Added a few names to the list. Chakazul is right to point out that the idea that "mainstream" science has rejected the so-called "AAH" is simply a myth. If one searches the literature one finds there are far fewer attempts at "rebuttals" than neutral pieces, or even pieces in favour of the idea - and this from people who could hardly be described as "proponents". In addition what few "rejections" there are, are really quite poor and unscholarly. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 14:47, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Where did these people state their support? How many are primatologists, paleontologists, or other relevant disciplines? How many were publishing in scholarly volumes? How many are throwaway comments?

As for comments about the AAH being rejected, there's Langdon, Greg Laden's blog posting, Zihlman, Gee, Meier, Bridgeman, McNeil, Graham, Regal, all included in the page now, as well as the new sources cited below. I believe even the "pro" sources are more "the AAH has been unjustly rejected", thus tacitly supporting the idea that it has indeed not found mainstream acceptance.

As for the new sources "supporting" the AAH - I don't believe they say "early humans adapted to living in water", I believe it's more "early humans may have eaten a lot of fish". At best that's tepid support for a severely diluted version of the AAH.

The reason the "hypothesis" section was not lengthy was because it led to the idea that the AAH has lots of research support. It doesn't - there's some comparative anatomy that is superficially plausible, but as the "criticisms" section points out below, every single one of those claims has been contested. A better summary would put the two claim/counterclaims together (per WP:STRUCTURE), so readers don't finish the "hypothesis" section with the idea that the AAH has a substantial research basis behind it. In fact, my preference would be to leave out the specific arguments for the AAH completely, as well as the objections.

The newer publications are not ringing endorsements of water having a powerful effect on human evolutionary history. At best, they suggest early humans may have waded out into the water for some food sources. There's certainly no evidence of a sea-change in the paleoanthropoolgy community to suddenly accept the theory. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 21:13, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there is any doubt that mainstream paleoanthropology has rejected AAH in the sense that they have decided not to take it into account when considering alternative scenarios for human evolution. However, this is more properly called dismissal; AAH has not been rejected in the usual scientific sense, i.e. after proper evaluation of how well the alternative hypotheses explain the observed facts. Instead, most criticism against AAH has been of three kinds:

• AAH is not needed, because there are alternative explanations available
• AAH is a ridiculous idea proposed by a non-specialist, and although it is appealing to laymen, no real scientist takes it seriously
• most evidence that supports AAH is either irrelevant or interpreted incorrectly, because it has been put forward by non-paleoanthropologists

According to generally accepted scientific principles, none of these is a valid approach to choosing among hypotheses. The proper falsification of a hypothesis implies showing that there is another hypothesis that can explain the observed facts more parsimoniously. Those who have done such overall evaluation in a published source have ended up supporting rather than rejecting AAH. Those who have rejected/dismissed AAH have based their arguments on one or more of the above unscientific criteria. For example, the most recent list of "comments about the AAH being rejected" given by WLU contains the following:

• Greg Laden's blog posting: well, this is merely a blog posting. It is more focused on ridiculizing than evaluating. One of its main criticisms against AAH is that AAH explains too much.
• Zihlman: this is a review (published in 1991) of Morgan's book "The Scars of Evolution". The review makes statements that raise the question if Zihlman ever read the book, but it also laments that many students in anthropology classes find AAH attractive because it explains everything.
• Gee: this book includes a brief passage on AAH. This starts by saying that the aquatic scenario is plausible and might be true, and then goes on to list objections. It does not provide any evaluation of alternative hypotheses.
• Meier: this book is addressed for non-professional readers and is titled "The complete idiot's guide to human prehistory". It dismisses AAH with a couple of sentences.
• Regal: this book is titled "Human evolution: A guide to the debates". Much of the text that addresses AAH is focused on Morgan's person and especially her being a feminist.
• Graham: an interesting item in this list, as it is the most recent one (2008) and seems to be all in favor of AAH.
• Langdon: this is the only peer reviewed scientific paper in the list, and it is already 15 years old. Its sole purpose is to criticize AAH, so it does not provide any evaluation of whether the established view (which is not defined in the paper) really has more explanatory power than AAH.

As I said earlier, we still do not know the opinions of most scientists regarding AAH, but as Chakazul wrote, there are many scientists who have expressed support for it. In spite of this, the "Criticisms" section of the WP article now gives the impression that the scientific community as a whole has rejected AAH. In particular, the section "Theoretical considerations" is based on the sources in the above list, plus one book on human psychology (this one I have not seen so cannot comment on what arguments it uses). WLU's questions are also relevant when assessing the criticism against AAH: "How many are primatologists, paleontologists, or other relevant disciplines? How many were publishing in scholarly volumes? How many are throwaway comments?"

In the light of the published literature, it seems that the correct way to describe the reception of AAH in the WP article is to say that 1) it is not a part of the mainstream explanations of human evolution, 2) its explanatory power has never been compared with that of the mainstream hypotheses by its opponents, and 3) some scientists have expressed views against it and some in its favor. All this has been said before in published sources that can be cited. The supporting comments from scientists seem to have become more numerous in the recent years. Stating this may be original research, but it should become rather evident if one looks at the publishing years of the items in the reference list (provided, of course, that similar criteria are applied when choosing sources that oppose/support the hypothesis: if blog postings are not accepted as citable sources in favor of AAH, they should not be accepted as sources against it either). Cricetus (talk) 08:51, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Please re-read WP:NPOV - we represent theories in relation to their prominence in mainstream expert communities. The first sentence of NPOV is "Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources." If paleoanthropology doesn't discuss the AAH as anything but a curiosity, that's the approach the page should take - not a lengthy defense.

Graham explicitly says "But the theory is still met with profound skepticism, and needs much more evidence to be thoroughly accepted". Even this book, which likes the theory, acknowledges it's not accepted. And most of the criticisms of AAH are more along the lines of "it doesn't explain our divergence from our common ancestor with chimpanzees, it attacks a straw man of the savanna hypothesis that nobody believes, it's unparsimonious since it requires considerable evolution within a short time period - then requires considerable selection pressure to maintain traits once humans left their alleged aquatic environment, there is no actual hard evidence since it relies on items that do not fossilize, and most of the traits allegedly explained by the AAH are easily explained in other ways". Greg Laden is an expert in the field, making it a reasonable parity source for a fringe claim - most real experts don't give a crap about the AAH.

Our job is not to decide if the AAH is true or not - our job is to describe it as it is perceived in the relevant expert community. Where have actual experts published on the AAH in actual paleontology journals? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 11:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

WLU: Thanks for the citations provided. However, you showed a firm assumption that anthropology or paleoanthropology are the only "relevant expert communities" on human evolution studies (and I guess most paleo/anthropologists will proudly agree too!) Why should we believe in such an embarrassing assumption? And it's supported by no source. Human evolution is too big a topic that in fact all human-related sciences can and must contribute to it -- genetics, archaeology, medical science, nutritional science, linguistics, primatology, zoology... etc.

All the criticizing sources you've cited only focused on anthropology and paleoanthropology, stated that the AAH is dismissed on these grounds. This is quite evident and is properly addressed in the WP article (although I've found that there're no fewer paleo/anthropologists who say yes to the idea, I will not challenge your citations). But in other equally relevant fields, as I've shown above, the AAH enjoys mainsteam supports from many experts in their fields:

• Stephen Cunnane, Michael Crawford et al. proposed the Shore-based Scenario, and explicitly contribute it to the AAH
• Kathlyn Stewart, Jose Joordens supports the Shore-based Scenario (hence AAH) by their fossil studies of aquatic diet in early Homo
• Jon Erlandson supports the Shore-based Scenario (hence AAH) by his studies on American maritime archaeology
• Carsten Niemitz proposed the Amphibian Generalist Theory (AGT) emphasizing wading bipedalism, and noted its affinity to the AAH
• Horst Aspöck & Julia Walochnik supports Niemitz's AGT by their studies on water-borne parasites
• Erika Schagatay supports the AAH by her studies on diving physiology
• Anna Gislén supports the AAH by her studies on underwater vision
• Michel Odent supports the AAH by his expertise on water birth

All of them are renowned experts, have done the relevant research for more than 20 years, and sought to solve the puzzles in human evolution. Which means they are no less "relevant" than those from paleo/anthropology. Applying WP:NPOV to this broad definition of "actual experts" (including the experts listed above), there's no any reason to portrait the AAH as dismissed by the scientific community as a whole.

True that most of these works are only recently contributed to the AAH, which will affect how we cite them in the WP article. But what we focus here is how should the standpoint of these experts (they only "come out of the closet" in recent years) affects the balance of the article.

And if you bother to look at the points in criticism, most of them are actually original research from e.g. Jim Moore's website, but not actual research results or arguments explicitly against the AAH. They're here only because the article is supposed to be skewed to dismiss the subject. Chakazul (talk) 19:24, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Please read the nutshell for WP:FRINGE: "Fringe theory in a nutshell: To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea." I also point to the statements "The notability of a fringe theory must be judged by statements from verifiable and reliable sources, not the proclamations of its adherents" and here, quite explicitly, "Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community...ideas should not be portrayed as accepted unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources. However, a lack of consideration or acceptance does not necessarily imply rejection, either; ideas should not be portrayed as rejected or labeled with pejoratives such as pseudoscience unless such claims can be documented in reliable sources." Emphasis added. There are several sources that clearly state that the AAH is not considered credible within the relevant scholarly community. Fringe theories are also subject to WP:PARITY - we deliberately lower the bar for reliability of sources that are explicitly supporting the mainstream viewpoint - such as Greg Laden's blog - and raise the bar for non-mainstream sources. Why should we believe that only relevant expertise is important? Because that's what our policies say.

I wasn't aware the AAH stated "any time spent by the shore", I was under the impression that it stated that strong selection pressure resulted in the gross anatomical traits of modern humans. Rather than supporting the AAH, they support prehumans getting some food from water.

Jim Moore is not cited once in the page.

This is pointless, I'll make a posting on the fringe theories noticeboard when I find the time. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 20:45, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Chakazul just said what I was going to say next: paleoanthropology is not the only relevant expert community in relation to human evolution. So even if the paleoanthropological peer reviewed journals have not published more than one paper on AAH (Langdon's critical piece), peer reviewed journals in related fields have published more. When a hypothesis has been proposed and supported by scientists in scholarly texts, it would be preferable to source criticism on it using scholarly texts. Greg Laden's blog posting does not fit that criterion, no matter how much of an expert he is. Jim Moore's web page does not fit the criterion either.

One issue in the WP article is that the guidelines require that "the majority view should be explained in sufficient detail that the reader can understand how the minority view differs from it, and controversies regarding aspects of the minority view should be clearly identified and explained." Is someone able to explain what the current majority view is? When AAH was proposed decades ago, the prevailing paradigm was that humans became so different from other apes because only humans ventured out on the open savanna. Since then, the savanna scenario has lost credibility, and nowadays AAH is accused of attacking a strawman that no one believes in. But what has replaced the savanna hypothesis as the mainstream explanation for the uniquely human traits? To me the prevailing view comes across like "we do not know why humans became so different, but whatever the reason, we are convinced it had nothing to do with water". Cricetus (talk) 20:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to AAH, but we really do have to follow established opinion here. I agree that Moore has no place here, but that's because he attacks a straw man himself. (I agree with WLU on what he's said about sourcing here. I don't know why he keeps mentioning Moore as if he had any credibility.) But we shouldn't give the impression that the AAH is more accepted than it is. AFAICT, it's still quite a minority view in any field. Yes, there has been some support for what might be called AAH-lite, but has the AAH side ever come to accept that limitation? And even AAH-lite is AFAICT a minority view. It seems like even the most basic work to confirm the AAH, like comparing diving reflexes across primates, has not been done. — kwami (talk) 21:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

WLU: It still boils down to the question -- Is (paleo)anthropology the only relevant academic community to the question of human evolution? Please provide sources if you wish to claim so. To the contrary, we can find sources pointing out that human evolution is an interdisciplinary issue:

• Human evolution page -- "The study of human evolution uses many scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, linguistics, embryology and genetics."
• Biological anthropology page -- paleoanthropology, human behavioral ecology, and human biology ("an interdisciplinary field of biology, biological anthropology, nutrition and medicine") are the branches related to human evolution
• [18] -- "Human evolution, by its nature, is an interdisciplinary and diverse subject."

Therefore, AAH is considered a fringe theory within one circle only but NOT in science in general. WP:FRINGE would have limited application here. Also your use of Wikipedia:PARITY is questionable because there exist many RS available in favor of the AAH, that doesn't support the use of non-RS in criticism. You're welcome to discuss in fringe theories noticeboard, but according to the sources available, I don't think your POV is accurate on AAH's academic reception.

Hi Kwami: Those are not "AAH-lite" theories (not claimed as such by the researchers), but are dealing with different aspects of the AAH, e.g. Cunnane's Shore-base Scenario focus on diet and brain evolution, Niemitz's AGT focus on wading bipedalism, Erlandson et al. focus on maritime archaeology. Some like Cunnane's and Erlandson's are even influential in their fields, and by no means minority.

If we examine the various aspects of the AAH, each of them are facing different fates -- Some have not much going on (e.g. olfaction), some have faced moderate rejection (e.g. hair reduction, sweating), some have gained mainstream support (e.g. diving physiology, wading bipedalism), and many are still under heated debate among the experts (e.g. shore-based diet [19][20][21][22], water birth [23], and coastal migration to the Americas). Contrary to the saying that "there's not much going on", there're much academic debate and discussions for the details. Chakazul (talk) 03:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course paleoanthropology is not the only relevant field.

What does migration to America have to do with anything? That's like cave men riding dinosaurs. — kwami (talk) 07:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Care must be taken not to turn the page into a discussion forum, but docosahexaenoic acid is acquire relatively easily for any predator or scavenger that eats brains or marrow, and actual human requirements are quite tiny (in addition to people who don't eat fish regularly developing quite normally). Just because humans can give birth in water (and it's actually pretty dangerous, since you're essentially giving birth in a pool contaminated with feces and blood [24]) doesn't mean we evolved to do so. Just because we can build boats doesn't mean we're actually dolphins. Again, the weight given to the "truth value" of the theory is based on representation by relevant experts - and that doesn't include advocates for water birth. Having "expertise" in water birth (a little like having expertise in orgone energy) doesn't mean someone is qualified to expound upon human evolution (probably the opposite actually, since water births is profoundly antiscientific). Again, this underscores the idea that the AAH is not taken seriously by actual experts on human evolution; multidisciplinary doesn't mean "any discipline has the relevant expertise to advance a credible theory".

My recent reorganization should have underscored that for every claim by AAH proponents, there is a competing, more established counter-claim explaining the alleged evolutionary feature. The new sources below need to be integrated, the whole page could probably use a clean-up, but the overall status still hasn't changed - the AAH is not a serious theory within paleoanthropology. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:17, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Since when has "we already have hypothesis x so hypothesis y can be discarded" been a valid scientific argument? If competing hypotheses exist, the choice between them has to be based on their relative explanatory powers and parsimony. It is a fundamental principle of science that absolute truths do not exist; old hypotheses are expected to prove their worth again every time when they are challenged by new hypotheses, and if they fail to do so, they get replaced. Paleoanthropologists seem unwilling to follow this principle, as their reaction to this particular new hypothesis is either to ignore or to ridicule it. If the mainstream hypothesis about human evolution is so strong that it is able to explain all facts better and more parsimoniously than AAH does, this should be very easy to show by spellning out what exactly that mainstream hypothesis is. The WP article fails to do this, however. Instead, for every mentioned trait it merely argues for one or more non-AAH just-so stories. The text formulation often gives the impression that these represent the generally accepted view at present, but a disproportionate number of them come from a single paper published 15 years ago. Cricetus (talk) 23:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

That's because few other researchers care to do the amount of work necessary to refute it. We use the sources we have available. It's not up to us to evaluate which hypothesis better explains the data. — kwami (talk) 09:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Now that was a biased statement, but it does reflect the state of the WP article. Much of the article is now written as if its purpose were to do the refuting. Besides, science is not about refuting hypotheses, it is about testing them. Most paleoanthropologists have adopted the subjective stance that AAH is no good, but they have never tested it, so there is no reliable source that shows their opinion to be justified by actual evidence. Testing is not the same thing as criticizing; testing means actually comparing the alternative hypotheses with each other, not just arbitrarily picking one of them and trying to refute it. Identifying flaws is of course an integral part of scientific hypothesis testing, but it should be done to all of the alternatives, not just one. So far, Morgan's texts provide the best overall testing of AAH vs. mainstream view. She has been criticized for having used an outdated mainstream view in those comparisons, but no one has provided a new test using the current mainstream view. Therefore, the issue remains scientifically unresolved, and it should be presented as such in the WP article. At the moment, the article gives the impression that AAH has been proved wrong, which is not the case. And it still does not tell the reader what the actual mainstream hypothesis is. Cricetus (talk) 10:39, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Excellent points in my opinion. The fact is if there was as big a problem with the AAT as some opponents like to suggest, it would have been tossed aside years ago, and the easiest way to do that would be to put forward a more parsimonious alternative. The opposite in fact has happened. The mainstream, having rejected the AAT originally when the savanna theory was still in vogue, has since retreated to a position where they now proudly declare they don’t know how humans evolved, but it certainly wasn’t a water based evolution. This article is a complete mess and should be completely rewritten in my opinion. It should state how the idea originated, and give a history of the publications that have appeared since, including both for and against. It should not give opinions as to whether the idea is right or wrong, but state clearly and concisely the history of the ideas, the main protagonists (both pro and con) and perhaps also a section about AAT in the popular media. Treating the idea as completely discredited is unjustified as Cricetus points out, unless the alternative mainstream model can be succinctly argued. I think the article could be improved but only with co-operation. WLU and Cricetus and others are you willing to help draft a new improved Wiki article that follows the above structure?Yloopx (talk) 04:56, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

We don't give equal weight to pro and con. See WP:WEIGHT. There are a minority of scholars working on aspects of the AAH, and that should be covered, but within the confines of WEIGHT. If opinion shifts in favor of the AAH, we will report that, but for now opinion is generally against it. — kwami (talk) 05:19, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

An encyclopedic article is not supposed to take sides either pro or con. It is supposed to describe the subject matter neutrally. If the subject matter is controversial, then the article should describe the controversy but not take part in it. The previous structure of the AAH article had one section describing what the hypothesis has proposed and another describing the criticism against it. I think this is a practical structure that allows giving an overview of the issue. Describing a hypothesis is not the same thing as promoting it. If it is felt that some readers may miss on the criticism if they need to scroll down for it, we could try a table format: one cell in the left column for each argument made by the hypothesis, and the corresponding cell in the right column for the criticism and mainstream view. The current structure is a pain to read and needs to be changed.

The contents also need a lot of improving. Now it is impossible to figure out from the article what AAH actually is, because much of the text consists of very strong personal (unreferenced) opinions against it. WLU stated above that "Care must be taken not to turn the page into a discussion forum", but that is what the article has now become. It contains highly biased statements like "Morgan claims that naked skin is commonly found in aquatic mammals and land-dwelling mammals that have aquatic ancestors". This gives the impression that Morgan invented the whole thing, although she simply repeats the same well-known (at least among zoologists) fact that originally induced the marine biologist Hardy to propose AAH. Another example is the sentence "Swimming is also a learned trait, and though newborns are able to propel themselves inefficiently through water, they are unable to lift their faces to breathe", which is preceded by "Modern humans are inefficient swimmers". Walking is also a learned trait, and a newborn placed on the ground is not able to move at all (and if it is placed face down on a soft surface, it may suffocate because it is not able to lift its face to breathe). Compared with many other terrestrial animals, humans are also inefficient runners. So what? Statements like this are useless unless they are tied to the actual subject at hand, which would necessitate comparing the swimming abilities of humans with those of apes. This might require OR, however, unless someone knows a study that has looked into this. Cricetus (talk) 19:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Wrong. Re-read WP:NPOV. Neutrality means we explain things according to how real experts think. Otherwise, our article on creationism would "teach the controversy", our article on AIDS denialism would pretend we didn't know what caused AIDS, and the article on the 9/11 attacks would have one section on terrorists ramming planes into the twin towers, and another section talking about how the government hit the tower with a missile. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 11:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Since there is no evidence that any of us can do mind-reading, we do not know what real experts think. We only know what has been published, and in the peer reviewed literature the opinions on AAH are divided. Of course, it is a fact that AAH is not the mainstream explanation, and it should not be presented as such in the WP article, but from this does not follow that the article cannot explain what AAH has actually proposed. I've now made the text in "The hypothesis" section into a table to make it easier to give an overview of the issue. This should also make it easier to spot and edit those parts of the text that do not conform with NPOV or are missing appropriate sources. Cricetus (talk) 13:24, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

We demonstrate what the experts think by citing them - and there are many experts who say, quite clearly, that the AAH is a theory with great popular appeal and little scientific credibility. That's why the large list of traits the AAH purports to claim is a bad idea - it gives the impression of credibility and explanatory power which the theory itself does not actually have. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 19:56, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

There are also many experts who say that AAH is worth considering. Therefore, it is misleading to give in the WP article the impression that all scientists have rejected it. I still maintain that the purpose of an encyclopedia is to give the reader information about different topics. When the topic is a hypothesis, such as AAH, the article should tell the reader what the hypothesis is and what its claims are. Of course the article should also tell the reader what the critics of the hypothesis say about it, and how the hypothesis differs from the mainstream view. Spelling out what AAH proposes and how the critics have countered those claims is the perfect way to show why AAH has no explanatory power. But now it looks like some editors consider AAH to be taboo: it cannot be spelled out for fear that it starts "eating brains" (as Greg Laden put it in his scholarly blog). Cricetus (talk) 23:28, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Please cite these experts. With links.

The purpose of wikipedia is to be a respectable encyclopedia, not to promote unscientific theories. We are not the press, giving false balance to issues that lack two sides. For instance, our article on creationism doesn't tell both sides - it clearly and unambiguously portray it as nonsense. As this page should. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 02:22, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

It would be nice if the AAH page reached the same level of encyclopedic neutrality as the page on creationism has achieved. The introductory part of the Creationism article first gives a brief definition of creationism, then proceeds to explaining the origin of the term and briefly stating what different schools of creationists believe in, and finally states that creationism is in conflict with science. The actual article describes various kinds of creationism (just the index to their names fills a screenful), and only in the very last text chapter (called "Scientific criticism") do we get a summary of how creationism conflicts with science. As far as I can see, there is no labeling of cretionism as nonsense anywhere in the article.

If WP can handle creationism in such a dispassionate way, why is it so difficult to treat AAH similarly? Especially as AAH is a scientific hypothesis that is based on the very same generally accepted principles as all other evolutionary hypotheses (comparative anatomy and physiology, fossils, the concept of adaptation and the principle of natural selection). Yet, the article on AAH teems with statements like

• "but generally the evidence provided for the AAH is equally well accounted for by land-based adaptations without needing to posit an aquatic phase of human development" (my just-so story is better than yours)
• "In addition, the AAH is contradictory in several places" (show me a hypothesis on human evolution that is not)
• "Parallels made by proponents of the AAH… contradicts any claims of anatomical evidence for the hypothesis" (but of course it does not need to be specified how this non-obvious conclusion has been reached)
• There are numerous cases of "However," where what follows after the comma has the obvious purpose of refuting the claim made in the previous sentence. This is not encyclopedia style.
• "In addition, breath control is thought to be preceded by bipedalism" (On the basis of what evidence? How many and who think so?)
• "There is ultimately only circumstantial evidence to suggest, and no solid evidence to support the AAH" (an offhand remark presented without any evidence at all)
• With the exception of perhaps one or two, all references used in the sections "Theoretical considerations", "Habitat" and "Reception" come from the critics of AAH, and very large prominence is here given to blogs (where the style is far from scholarly) and other sources that do not even attempt an unbiased evaluation of alternative hypotheses.

We should be able to do better than that. Cricetus (talk) 21:20, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

At no point does the page attempt to portray creationism as actual science. It actually mentions that it is not science several times - and even labels it pseudoscience. At no point does it discuss the specific claims of creationism (thus validating them) then rebut them (again validating them by making them look like credible claims that need rebutting). So yes, it would be nice if the AAH were handled the same way creationism is. Would you support removing the entire list of claims and counter-claims and simply stating that the AAH is not considered by paleontologists as a credible explanation for human origins? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:00, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Astrology is the same: We present what it is, and then give scientific (and theological) criticism. However, this isn't really parallel: creationism and astrology are pseudoscience. We can therefore state upfront that they are pseudoscientific/regilious, and so don't need to contradict each point as it is made. The AAH is different: Since we're presenting it as a scientific hypothesis, the critics here may be right that we need to counter the points as they are made. The model we should follow is how we handle other minority scientific POV's: if we counter them point-by-point, we should do so here as well; if we present them and then present the majority rejection, we should do that here as well. — kwami (talk) 02:15, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I wrote that I would like the AAH article to obtain the same level of encyclopedic neutrality as the page on creationism. This means that the subject matter is described in a dispassionate style, which so far has not been achieved in the AAH article. The creationist article does mention specific claims of creationism, for example: "evolutionary creationists maintain that, although evolution accounts for biodiversity, evolution itself is cosmologically attributable to a Creator deity"; "with Martin Luther advocating the idea that creation took six literal days about 6000 years ago"; "a new belief developed that each of these biological species had been individually created by God" and "Ussher chronology based on Bible history giving a date for Creation of 4004 BC".

By the same token, there is no reason not to state what the specific claims of AAH are, especially since AAH is a scientific hypothesis, and those are meant to be exposed and tested. An encyclopedic article on AAH is quite useless if it essentially just says: "The aquatic ape hypothesis suggests that there was an aquatic phase in human evolution. Since it has not gained mainstream support, you do not need to know any details of it". Therefore, I would not support removing the entire list of claims and counter-claims. As to the two models outlined by kwami, I'd be happy with either one. The old version of the article was based on presenting the claims in one section and the counter-claims in another. The two parts were unbalanced, because the claims were not described properly, and several of the counter-claims criticized claims that had actually not even been mentioned in the claims section. Then WLU changed the structure such that the claim and the corresponding counter-claim were moved to the same paragraph. I tried to make that structure even more explicit by converting the text to a table, but someone disliked that layout and reverted it. Anyway, the main problem with the claims and counterclaims now is that they are not written in the style "the proponents of AAH say x, and the opponents say y", with a general remark saying that the opponents are the majority and that AAH has not been generally accepted. Instead, the writing style is "the proponents claim x, but that is incorrect". Such subjectivity should be weeded out from an encyclopedic article. Cricetus (talk) 10:00, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with WLU on the current article structure (each definition/support paired up with criticism), but the writing style still need to be more neutral, not like every point is stated and then refuted -- some points are more supported in RS like shore-based diet and diving responses. The central part now became too long that better add subtitles.

I think the AAH as of today is more like the Gaia hypothesis instead of Creationism or Astrology. The former two are having some supports from some scientific communities and remain non-mainstream, while the later two are undisputedly unscientific. Chakazul (talk) 16:36, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

There is another difference when one considers the creationism page, and that is that it is easy there to make a direct link to the page that describes natural selection. But what page would we link to from the AAT page for the alternative ’mainstream’ or ‘scientifically legitimate’ view? What page could we link to that describes why humans are naked, fat, bipedal, large brained, tool using apes with unusually (for a primate) well developed diving skills who can float on their backs and swim in ways that no other primate can (butterfly, backstoke, breastroke, sidestroke)? The point is there is no other model, so in other words every theory about human evolution is a fringe theory, including all the counterclaims in this article. Does the parasite explanation to explain human nakedness have universal acceptance in palaeoanthropological circles, for example? If so point to the reference that demonstrates this universal acceptance. Is sexual selection the universally accepted theory as to why human infants have more subcutaneous fat than other primates? And so on. If AAT is treated like a fringe theory, then OK, but at least be consistent and point out that ALL theories of human evolution are fringe, unless it can be illustrated through the appropriate sources where there is a universally accepted mainstream view.Yloopx (talk) 00:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't say that the current article structure is good, I think it's bad because it gives too much credibility to the idea. Again, the AAH is not a serious explanation for human evolution within paleoanthropology. Proponents publish their ides on webpages, self-published books, vanity press and the like. Mentions of the theory in real scientific venues are minor, and generally critical. The AAH is a popular idea, published and popularized outside of genuine scientific circles - and there are plenty of sources that explicitly state this.

Yloopx, you seem to think wikipedia is a place to either debate the veracity of the AAH, or promote it. It is neither. Nor do we decide which is right (or if it's probable), particularly by critiquing straw man descriptions of the actual theories of human evolution. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 09:02, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

WLU, you continue insisting that "AAH is not a serious explanation for human evolution", but we are still waiting for a description of what you consider to be a serious explanation. You also complain about "critiquing straw man descriptions of the actual theories of human evolution". It is hard to see where in the article that is done, as one of its problems is that it does not describe the mainstream view, or point out what the differences between AAH and the mainstream view are. Describing what the proponents of AAH have claimed is not the same thing as promoting AAH, if the text is written in a neutral style. Your refutations of the AAH that now dominate the article are not written in a neutral style because of your mission to show that AAH is wrong. Didn't you just say that it is not our job to decide which is right? Furthermore, your statement that proponents only publish in webpages etc. is plain wrong. There are several respected scientists who have published their support for AAH in peer reviewed journals. For example, Verhaegen's 2002 paper (which is cited in the article) on the aquarboreal ancestors appeared in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, which has the highest impact factor (14.4) of all scientific journals in the field of evolutionary biology. Cricetus (talk) 16:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

WLU, I do not think you even know what "it" is, and yet you seem to have set yourself (along with a group of other anonymous editors) as experts and authorities in this field. It's not even an "it". There are many waterside hypotheses of human evolution. One of the purposes of the latest book, which you have effectively censored from this page, is to inform the public and scientific community better about these ideas. There is clearly an awful lot of ignorance about them and I find it astonishing that such a fantastic, modern, resource like Wikipedia seemed to be actively working to maintain that ignorance. Whatever one thinks about the plausibility or quality of such ideas, as Critecus argues, it is not the purpose of Wikipedia to suppress a clear expression of what they are. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 16:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Do not accuse other editors of censorship, you have failed to provide reliable secondary sources, trying to add your own book to the article is a blatant conflict of interest. Until such a time as your book is published by a reliable publisher and it generates some reliable secondary source coverage there is nothing to discuss further. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if "censorship" is the correct word, but WLU is accused of presenting false claims (e.g. AAH proponents only use self-publishing) by ignoring the numerous RS published in reputable journals and book press, while repeatedly cite non-RS to justify the criticism.

Of course, the AAH is a minority view, not widely accepted in (paleo)anthropology, and we can cite RS rejecting it, but that's it -- it's also not pseudoscience, not rejected by most scientists outside (paleo)anthropology, and have evidence presented in RS. I consider WLU promoting a false impression on the reception and legitimacy of the AAH, which may heavily skew his (or other editor's) direction on how to edit the WP article. I hope we're not getting personal, but this is a serious editorial problem need to be solved. Chakazul (talk) 01:25, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Sources

• [25] explicitly criticized >> cites criticism by 2 anthropologists (John Langdon, Ian Tattersall) while praised by other 2 (Desmond Morris, Glyn Isaac)
• [26] brief mention >> AAH is in "scientific niches" and "[not] being accepted by a wider scientific audience", means it's accepted by some
• [27] brief mention and dismissal >> AAH was "never well accepted in the anthropological community". Mentioned some supports (e.g Cunnnane, Wrangham)
• [28] From John D. Hawks >> non-RS. Title: "Why anthropologists don't accept the Aquatic Ape Theory"
• [29] >> only cites 1 paleoanthropologist (Eric Delson)
• [30] >> "It is considered a just-so story by most paleoanthropolosists", also "the AAH is not a strong or mainstream scientific hypothesis"
• [31] >> no preview available
• [32] >> book title: "Anthropology for Dummies"
• [33] >> no mention of academic reception, also not entirely reject it
• [34] >> "the semi-aquatic theory ... is the minority view". Mentions both criticisms (Krywaniuk) and supports (Verhaegen, Crawford, the author himself)
• [35] >> duplicated
• [36] PZ Myers actual opinion of the AAH >> non-RS. No mention of its academic reception
• [37] >> non-RS. No mention of its academic reception
• [38] brief, and again saying the author personally finds the idea interesting - but most anthropologists are not convinced.
• [39] >> again, personally finds it interesting - experts don't accept it >> for "experts" you mean paleoanthropologist (Nina Jablonsky)
• [40] negative review of Cunnane's book >> "anthropologists have, by and large, avoided the aquatic ape hypothesis and its shore-based progeny."

Thanks WLU for the sources, but see my comments (after >>) that these sources don't support your more biased claims.

• All mention the negative reception within the (paleo)anthropology circle but not the scientific community as a whole.
• Even among (paleo)anthropologists, there're a few who don't reject the AAH.
• Some mention supports from other relevant fields (nutrition, parasitology, etc), even from the authors themselves.
• Some consider AAH scientific, while some consider it unscientific or pseudoscience.

Chakazul (talk) 16:02, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Taking a source that says "the theory is not accepted by most paleontologists" and turning it into a reference for "some paleontologists accept the AAH" is really, really, really wrong. It's a gross misrepresentation of the actual contents of the source. That comment's aimed at all new editors who might think that it's a good idea, but I assure you it's not. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I've given the names of the paleontologists above, "some paleontologists accept the AAH" is well supported.

Also, the AAH is a good idea or not isn't decided by you (at least inside WP). We have RS state that it's good and RS state that it's bad. Perhaps you can get a more accurate balance by counting the scientists who voiced out their support (30) or criticism (15) towards AAH in my list above. Chakazul (talk) 05:56, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Your error is thinking it's about someone on wikipedia deciding whether the AAH is a good idea or not. That's not our purpose. Our purpose is to document the relevant scholarly community's reaction to the AAH. There are many sources that explicitly say the AAH isn't taken seriously, isn't a good explanation for human evolution, isn't supported by the data and is at best an amusing hypothesis. We don't amplify those few who think the idea is a good one to become the main focus of the article, that is undue weight. The corollary to "some paleontologists accept the AAH" is "most do not". In fact, it's far more like "most experts don't think it explains human evolution", but somehow that's being turned into "there is support for the AAH". Sure, a minority may support it - but the far more relevant factor, for the public and per WP:UNDUE, is still that most do not. We represent things as expressed in the best sources - which quite accurately describe it as a minority opinion with compelling public interest and little empirical evidence. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 15:48, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

WLU, you certainly seem to have decided that AAH is not a good idea and that it is actually so bad that WP is not allowed to reveal that there is published RS support for it. Of course there are many sources that say AAH isn't taken seriously, but there are also many sources that do take it seriously, and also paleoanthropology sources that say it should be taken more seriously than has traditionally been the case. The list above contains 30 scientists who have voiced explicit support for AAH and 15 who have criticized it, so where is your evidence that scientists in general have rejected AAH? The article gives a much more negative picture of the situation than what the reality is, because you keep eliminating the RS voicing support for AAH, and assuming that everyone who has not published on AAH is against it. For example, the "History" now ends in the statement "Most mainstream paleoanthropologists reject AAH". This gives the impression that they represent all science, because you carefully eliminated the end of the sentence which said that several researchers in other fields support AAH. Cricetus (talk) 16:20, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

WLU has edited this page more than anyone else, twice as many times as the second most active editor (Tatarize, another who is on the skeptical end of the spectrum). His/her assurance that he has no personal agenda here, and is merely doing WP's neutral bidding, therefore, rings hollow. What is his/her expertise on human evolution anyway? WLU seems to have set him/herself up as some kind of gatekeeper of the truth on this matter.

The material points here are as follows, I think: Mainstream palaeoanthropology has largely ignored the idea. It is almost certainly true that the majority of professional anthropologists think so little of the idea that they would not waste any of their time on it. However, this is probably due to most of them misunderstanding (and exaggerating) what they think the idea is. (Hence my campaign to get these ideas relabelled and properly defined). Those that think it really is proposing some kind of "aquatic ape", in any real sense, obviously think it's away with the birds, whilst those who understand it's only proposing greater selection from wading, swimming and diving in our lineage than the chimps can't see what the fuss is all about. The consequence of this is that, as Chak has carefully tried to point out, there is, paradoxically, more in the scientific literature that is supportive of, or at least open to, the so called "AAH" than there is against it. As WP has to go by proper RS and not by coffee room gossip this puts the whole issue of undue weight into question. I understand WLU's desire to try to give the page a 'feel' that reflects the broad skepticism/hostility to the idea - which I would not deny, but as this is not properly documented anywhere it conflicts with WP's need for WP:RS. 202.89.189.114 (talk) 00:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Locking this Page

I'm appalled at the level pseudoskeptics go to pull the wool over people's eyes about this idea. It amounts to censorship. So what next? How can it be that a minority of pseudoskeptics can pull rank like this? The only change I wanted to make was to include a scholarly reference to the latest scientific publication about the idea. Somehow this has been censored out. On what basis? A groundless slur that Bentham is "vanity press"? Outrageous! Algis Kuliukas (talk) 07:44, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Please post new talk sections at the bottom of the page per the talk page guidelines. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 11:03, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Do you have any specific proposal with respect to the article? Some of their journals are known to accept random nonsense: [41][42]. Let me quote Marc Williams who was on one of Bentham's editorial advisory board on the subject of accepting papers without reviewing them: "What upset me was the fact that this happened at all, in any of [Bentham's] journals," Williams told The Scientist. "It really informs us that it may be a company policy that this is permitted in general." This highlights systematic problems with Bentham and thus not a reliable source. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Bentham Open is listed on "Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers", with the comment that it "essentially operates as a scholarly vanity press".[[43]] There's plenty of negative material about Bentham Open on the web to justify rejecting anything published by them as an unreliable source. Mr. Kuliukas made a very foolish decision in publishing his book with them. I hope he's learned a lesson. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:55, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

The lesson I have learned is that some Wikipedia editors are so biased against these ideas, they'll use any excuse to try to suppress proponents, of the very ideas on which the page in question is about, from accurately reporting what their ideas are. I am completely unaware of the past record of Bentham "Open" but as far as I am aware the book was peer reviewed and it was not an example of vanity press. To be accurate, the decision to go with Bentham was not mine. Once tarred, always tarred, is it? Algis Kuliukas (talk) 16:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

To my knowledge, I have never before to my knowledge commented on this article except about this incident and I also agree that Bentham is unreliable. I don't know much about the topic but what I do know is how to spot a reliable scientific source and this certainly isn't one. I have no particular opinion on AAH so I don't see how I could be "so biased against these ideas, they'll use any excuse to try to suppress proponents"? This sounds a lot like self-victimization rather than a legitimate argument. I suggest you publish your next book with a more reliable publisher. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Expensive, too

I wnated to read the eBook Was Man More Aquatic in the Past? Fifty Years After Alister Hardy - Waterside Hypotheses of Human Evolution edited by Mario Vaneechoutte, Algis Kuliukas and Marc Verhaegen, which there has been so much dispute about. I found it advertised here. Irrespective of its quality, a price of $99 for an eBook is a bit of a rip-off, and sufficient reason not to recommend it too highly, and for me not to buy it. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:17, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not defending the pricing but it's actually relatively cheap for a science book. Try going to the Kindle store and searching for a book about human evolution and you'll see what I mean. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 17:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Some publishers are sharks, who'll charge the earth if they have the copyright on a book which is regarded as essential reading. That's why there may be high prices even with electronic publishing, where the marginal cost of supply is effectively zero. Similar remarks apply to Langdon's paper, which is also overpriced at $20 for a shortish paper. It's different if a book is intended to be read just by people who find it interesting. All except one of Elaine Morgan's books are available on paper (second hand) at less than $10 each. It's rather grimly amusing that a bunch of editors in this page are desperately trying to prevent mention of a book that hardly anyone is going to read enyway, because potential readers can't borrow it or justify buying it. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 01:52, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

WikiPedia politics and Bentham e-books

Dear all, Some two years ago, Bentham addressed scholars around the world in a general e-mail, solliciting for e-books. Because e-books seemed to be a promise for the future, I took the initiative to compile an e-book on the aquatic ape hypothesis and invited, together with two proponents of the AAT, i.e. Marc Verhaegen and Algis Kuliukas, possible contributors. That is how a multi-author book is usually started and published, although one gets the impression from the posts above that this was rather a conspiracy to promote some odd ideas instead of trying to give a scientific overview of the state of the art of this view on human evolution. If you want to read the most recent findings and thoughts concerning this idea, I still think that this book is a good source. That is why I would like to insist that the AAT has this information in its first paragraph. I do not understand why it is found necessary by some to have all these allegations of commercial interests, fake science and so on, and to block the AAT page on Wikipedia (of course, in a version that is theirs ...). Most of the contributors of the e-book are well-respected scientists each in their own fields. Simply people doing their job, simply people inspired by a possibly useful idea. It is quite astonishing that I have to defend all of this in this manner. I would like to defend the ideas in a scientific discussion with arguments pro and con the hypothesis itself, not with discussions about the validity of Bentham or with replying to allegations as if we paid to publish this book. Why is it necessary to judge all Bentham books as if they were scam? Are they really? Please read the book and convince yourself. If you have problems with payment, let me know.

A recurrent criticism that I read, by WLU, is that this is not mainstream science. First, I have the impression, from the number of interested - open minded - people, it is already more mainstream than some ten years ago. Second, who is the omniscient person that can decide what mainstream is? Third, for example, Prusiners prions were ridiculized for years after he formulated his not so mainstream ideas (he won the Nobel prize since then), and Alfred Wegener died being ridiculized for his continental shift hypothesis. So please, be careful with established knowledge and mainstream scientific insights, because they have been proven utterly wrong several times. As has been the case for the open plain theory of our past, and although this has been admitted publicly by e.g. Leaky, Lewontin and Tobias, former defenders of the open plain hypothesis, already 20 years ago, this is still 'mainstream'.

For all of these reasons and many more, I therefore request that the page is opened again. I think the e-book should be mentioned, but if not, that is not a major problem to me, but a missed opportunity for WikiPedia. Unfortunately, I will find no time and courage to respond to further false allegations, but I am willing to discuss the pro's and con's of the hypothesis itself, because that is about science, and I thought that is what WikiPedia was about. Sincere regards Mario.http://atlas-service-enews.web.cern.ch/atlas-service-enews/2007-8/profiles_07-8/profiles_benslama.php@UGent.be Laboratory Microbiology Fac. Health Sciences University of Ghent, Belgium

PS. With regard to the price of the book: scientific books tend to be more costly than the 100 USD that is chareged for this one. I am not an expert on e-book prizes, but as I said, you can contact me in case the prize is a problem. In fact, we do not feel very happy ourselves with the Bentham politics of publishing either. We have been told to receive royalties, but the correspondence on this subject was (deliberately from their side?) very fuzzy. In the end, we also paid a fee (I think 200 USD) for figure quality improvement, because we did not manage ourselves to provide with the quality that was requested. Some state that we paid to get this book published, another allegation. This kind of respones really gets me tired...

~~Mario Vaneechoutte~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mvaneech (talk • contribs) 08:55, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The issue is that the publisher is unreliable and thus the book is essentially self-published and not reliable. Thus it is not suitable for wikipedia as it has no due weight, the price is irrelevant (wikipedia is not a forum). Fringe or not doesn't even come into the picture, you are putting up straw man arguments, the issue at the present is purely on the reliability of material which originate from that publisher. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:39, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Mario Vaneechoutte: I'm sorry to hear about your sad adventure with Bentham. However, there is nothing we can do. The book simply does not meet Wikipedia policies as a reliable source.

You may want to contact a good intellectual property attourney to see if you can recover the manuscript from Bentham and re-publish it with a reputable publisher. Then we can include it in the article. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 18:06, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

If the Bentham e-Book is considered non-RS here because its publisher is unreliable, we should demand the same standard on all sources.

Some citations in the article e.g. blog posts are non-RS in nature, so according to the high standard set by WLU etc, blog posts by Greg Laden, John Hawks and PZ Myers should not be used (even written by scientists). Either we discard both Bentham and ScienceBlog, or we allow them indiscriminately.

Jim Moore's non-RS personal website is out of question here, even it's repeatedly cited and promoted by WLU. It's ridiculous and awkward to see a non-RS supported by other non-RS's to be cited here.

Again, Wikipedia:PARITY won't help here because it only applies to subjects which is only defined by amateurs and non-RS.

Since the page is locked, this unbalanced situation (Bentham removed but blogs/personal websites persisted) may remain for sometime.

P.S. I think what Dominus Vobisdu said is reasonable. Similarly, if the blog posts and Jim Moore's website are being published (better with a reputable publisher), we can include them here. Chakazul (talk) 18:29, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Bentham is more unreliable than ScienceBlogs, ScienceBlogs is an invite only group and has a much better reputation [44]. As an aside: Can you give me the details (doi) for some these peer-reviewed papers from reputable scientific journals that are used in this article that you make reference to? (you can dump them on my talk page) IRWolfie- (talk) 20:18, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

All this criticism is of ‘Bentham Open’, but the ebook was not published by ‘Bentham Open’, so none of this criticism applies. ‘Bentham Science Publishers’ also publish non open access journals that are used as sources in Wikipedia - 'Current Alzheimer’s Research' , for example, a ‘Bentham Science’ Publication is referred to on Wikipedia's article on Alzheimer’s. Dr Vaneechoutte has made clear his motives for having the book published with 'Bentham Science Publishers' and this should be taken in good faith. Phillip Tobias is one of the world’s leading authorities on the evolution of humankind (according to Wikipedia) so surely any book that has a contribution from him should be considered a reliable source. Elaine Morgan also is a contributor, and since this article refers to Morgan as a leading proponent of the AAT surely this makes the ebook relevant, regardless of whether people think it is good science or not. ‘Bentham Open’ may have been irresponsible in the past in terms of publication, but to tar all publications by ‘Bentham Science Publishers’ with the same brush because of this is unjustified. Again, this book was not published by ‘Bentham Open’, so those criticisms are irrelevant. As for the inclusion of websites and blogs, I would have thought it was obvious these should not be included. Why not just use published sources?Yloopx (talk) 00:12, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The Bentham book needs to be judge by the quality of its authors, not the quality of its publisher. Articles written by authors we would accept as RSs are themselves RSs. I believe we agree on this? It's basic WP sourcing policy.

Moore's blog is anti-scientific, and by that standard is pseudoscience. However, WLU has presented quotes by RSs promoting it. Although I wouldn't use it in an actual citation (we can't know that any particular element of it is reliable), that probably warrants including it in the external links. Anyone know our policy on this? — kwami (talk) 00:43, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Not quite. An author's reputation in their peer-reviewed work does not necessarily carry over to their non-peer reviewed work, especially when fringe science is involved. There are lots of examples of great scientists publishing utter bullshit in their "off time".

The papers in this e-book would have to be judged individually on their own merits. Normally, this would involve peer-review conducted by a reputable academic press, but Bentham does not perform peer review on its e-books. It does not even perform editorial review:

"The editor will be responsible for the scientific content of the material to be published. It is assumed that the editor has reviewed and accepted the material regarding its scientific content before sending it to Bentham Science Publishers. The Publisher will not be responsible for technical or scientific editing." [[45]]

That means the papers will have to sink or swim depending on the response they get in the mainstream scientific community. If serious reliable independent scholarly sources can be found discussing the merit of the paper in depth (not book reviews, promotional material or anything in he popular or popular science press), we might be able to include it. However, this is a new book and not enough time has gone by to generate sufficient commentary.

We also have to be cautious about in-universe sources from fellow proponents. Scientists in fringe fields often group together in mutual adoration societies and promote each other's works. However, all that usually takes place in a walled garden, and does not reflect the significance of their works outside in the scientific community.

In short, the articles in this e-book have to rely on their own (as yet non-existant) reputations, not on the reputations of their authors. They cannot rely on the the reputation of the publisher, as normal peer-reviewed articles can. That leaves us with no way to determine their reliablility or assign weight to their contents.

Sadly, Mssrs. Vaneechoutte, Kuliukas and Verhaegen made a big mistake in publishing with Bentham. They know this already, and regret it. I feel truly sorry for them, and hope they can rectify the situation and get the book published properly.

As far as the other sources like Moore or PZ Meyer are concerned, that is an independent matter that has nothing to do with this ebook or the articles in it. Trying to link the two is not constructive, and is basically special pleading. Bringing up other WP articles is also not constructive. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 01:32, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

How about this? WP:SELFPUBLISH -- "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications" -- Regarding authors like Tobias, Gislen, Schatagay, Verhaegen, Munro inside the e-Book who have published relevant works in RS. Chakazul (talk) 07:54, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

How about reading the relevant policies and guidelines as a whole, and not cherry-picking quotes out of context. Yes, they MAY be used (as I said above), but not unconditionally. WP:FRINGE specifically states: "Points that are not discussed in independent sources should not be given any space in articles. Independent sources are also necessary to determine the relationship of a fringe theory to mainstream scholarly discourse." The papers in this ebook have not yet been sufficiently discussed in independent sources to be included here. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 08:38, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

The quote provided above from WP Fringe (I won’t say cherry picked) talks about ‘points that are not discussed in independent sources …”, but we are not talking here about any specific point, we are talking about the publication of a book that includes the latest research by proponents of the aquatic ape hypothesis (and non-proponents since Tobias is probably more neutral than anything). This isn’t something that can be disputed or needs to be further verified, it is self evident. If the reference were being used to suggest that this or that aspect of the AAT had been proven beyond doubt, then sure, this could and indeed should be legitimately challenged and require independent sources, but this sentence merely says that this is the latest research. It’s like saying we should have an independent source to say the sky is blue. Again, the context of the reference needs to be taken into account. There is nothing controversial about the fact that new research has been published. Whether people agree with the research or think it is worth the paper it is printed on (or not, in this case) is surely up to each individual to work out for themselves. Let’s not forget that this article is primarily about the Aquatic Ape Theory, as put forward by Hardy and Morgan. It’s good to be vigilant about what is or is not a reliable source, I agree, but not to the detriment of the article I would have thought.Yloopx (talk) 22:26, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Your ebook clearly fails to meet our policies and guidelines. If you want it included here, you will have to recover the manuscript and have it published by a real scientific press that carries out real peer review. Or wait a few years until it has been adequately and subtantially discussed in the independent scientific literature. Until then, it simply does not exist as far as WP is concerned. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Dominus, why not remove all of Elaine Morgan's books too? They weren't peer reviewed or published by "real" scientific press either so, presumably, they also don't exist as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Hey, why not just change the page to say that the "aquatic ape" idea simply does not exist because you refuse to recognise anything that is scientifically published that considers (or even describes) these ideas and everything else can safely pretended away as "not existing". Your bias against this idea is incredible. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 04:24, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Because Morgan's book has received abundant coverage by reliable independent secondary sources, and your ebook hasn't. I've given you some good advice: contact a good intellectual property attourney and see what can be done about recovering the manuscript from Bentham. Then publish it properly. You made a big mistake, out of naivite, but it's quite possible that it can be repaired. As an editor, you owe that to the authors whose papers you solicited to do your best to see that their work is properly published. Next friendly word of advice: let Mr. Vaneechoutte handle the matter. Frankly, your abrasive style and baseless cries of "censorship" and "bias" generate little sympathy, and will only make things worse. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 05:58, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

"Publish it properly" "You made a big mistake" "get a property attourney [to] ... recover the manuscript" etc - and you think I'm being abrasive! Whatever you have read about "Bentham Open" in the past should not in any way effect the perception/reputation of this book unless Wikipedia's rules are based on gossip and innuendo. How does this work in practice, by the way? If any issue of any publisher is ever tainted in any way to effect their reputation, then all the other publications they ever publish in the future are thus tainted too, forever, is that it? The almost gleeful and gloating way you have jumped on this, as an excuse to prevent the Wikipedia page from doing it's primary role (to inform the public about the latest pertinent, scholarly, information about a subject), implies to me that you have a strong bias. Therefore I simply do not recognise you as a fair authority here. Who can we appeal to that is above you? Algis Kuliukas (talk) 06:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Besides me, five other highly experienced editors have reverted your addition of the ebook to the article: DoriSmith, Johnuniq, WLU, Kwamikagami and IRWolfie. The last three and I have justified our opposition on the talk page by citing WP policies. Furthermore, another editor, Chillllls, has explained the policies to you on your talk page. On the other hand, you have failed to counter their opinions in terms of WP policies and guidelines, with which you are woefully unfamilar. You are also woefully unfamilair with the nature and purpose of Wikipedia. Normally, the "appeal" would be made at one of the noticeboards, like WP:RSN, WP:ORN, WP:POVN or WP:FTN. But without solid policy-based reasoning, you'd just be wasting your time there. Basically, you are going to be asked to provide two things: 1) evidence that the ebook underwent rigorous peer-review; and 2) evidence that it has been extensively discussed in depth by reliable independent sources within the relevent scientific field of study. Up until now, you have failed to produce any evidence for either of these WP policy requirements.

Wikipedia is not a forum, nor is it a platform from which you can advertise and promote yourself and your product. There are many other venues on the internet where you can do that. I recommend that you direct your attentions there. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 08:22, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The intention was not to promote anyone or anything. It was to update the page (and hence the public) with the latest information relevant to it. I thought that was the primary purpose of encyclopedias in general and Wikipedia in particular. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 23:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Bear in mind that wikipedia is about verifiability and not truth: WP:VERIFIABILITY. The encyclopedia should only really be as cutting edge as is possible for reliable sources to allow. By trying to have the very latest information in the article things start to border on WP:OR. It's also not a good idea to add references when you are the author as it suggests a conflict of interest. It is better to suggest them on the talk page instead and let other editors who are not involved weigh the source up for due weight WP:DUE. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:58, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

@Mr. Kuliukas: You're trying to achieve your goal based on vague (and not entirely accurate) suppositions about what Wikipedia is and how it operates. Please take the time to read and understand our core policies and guidelines and work within their framework. The relevant policies and guidelines here are: WP:V, WP:RS, WP:FRINGE, WP:NPOV, WP:COI, WP:N, WP:NOT, WP:CON, WP:AGF, WP:NPA, WP:DE,WP:TE and WP:SOCK. When you read these policies and guidelines, you will be able to understand the arguments that the other editors and I are using, and be able to respond appropriately. You will understand why the arguments you are making are falling on deaf ears. You will also understand why we are so unhappy with your behavior here. Until then, you're just thrashing around in the dark and creating an unpleasant situation for yourself and for us. I know it's a lot of reading, but understanding and adhering to our policies and guidelines is absolutely indispensible if you want to accomplish anything here. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 01:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

As I read the e-book, it's more like a summary, or a show case, of the previous academic works on the topic of AAH (or the influence of water on human evolution). Those previous works can be found in Google Scholar, where many of the arguments presented in the e-book can be traced back to:

• Phillip Tobias [46] [47]
• Anna Gislén [48] [49] [50]
• Erika Schagatay [51] [52] [53] [54]
• Marc Verhaegen, Stephen Munro, Pierre-François Puech [55] [56] [57]
• Leigh Broadhurst, Michael Crawford [58] [59] [60] [61]
• Michel Odent [62] [63]
• Mario Vaneechoutte [64] [65]
• Algis Kuliukus [66]
• Richard Ellis [67]

For some new arguments (e.g. color vision, kidney) not listed here, they still require independant sources to prove their significance, but for the above researchers (some are experts worked for more than 20 years on the relevant topic), we can always cite their published RS to support a certain argument in the article. So in response to Dominus's 2 requirements, it's not the e-book itself, but the specific arguments (e.g. diving responses, underwater vision, shore-based diet, fossil interpretations) that underwent rigorous peer-review and have been extensively discussed in depth within the relevant fields.

The value of the e-book is to confirm that all these people/arguments are explicitly supporting the AAH. That said, I still believe we should cite those related RS, rather than the e-book as questioned by most editors here.

(But then, I ask, why was not the blog posts and personal website being questioned and removed by the experienced editors? I don't think the view point of anyone here should affect our judgement of what is a RS and what is not.)

Declare of interest: I wrote one chapter in the e-book, but I turn out to be the least notable person there with no previous publication. Thus I consider myself an outsider and try to maintain my neutrality here. previously unsigned by Chakazul (talk) 15:31, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Blog posts and personal websites

I will discuss those questionable sources separately here.

IRWolfie's "Bentham is more unreliable than ScienceBlogs" is perhaps correct regarding to the organizations, but it doesn't mean the individual blog posts are reliable. Blogging is essentially self-publishing, because each post is not reviewed by the site owners nor peer scientists. ScienceBlog has no control on what he write in his own blog, no matter it's scientific stuff or total rubbish. Although Greg Laden, John Hawks and PZ Myers are scientists, that doesn't make their blog posts RS. This is similar to the fact that Philip Tobias's reputation doesn't automatically make all his writings RS.

Jim Moore's personal website, as have been identified conclusively as non-RS, is not quotable here. It's OK as a further reading, though.

One thing I appreciate WLU is that he questioned the reliability of Bentham Publication and seek confirmation from others, which is raising the quality of sources. But a different standard is applied to the sources that he personally wish to be include in the article, with funny reasons like WP:PARITY or quoting a non-RS from other non-RS. I think this double standard is not acceptable in WP. Either we consider WP:SELFPUBLISH and accept both kinds of self-published sources (re blog posts and Bentham e-Book) written by experts, or we raise the standard to reject both. (Moore's website is still not acceptable in regard to the reliability of contents and the author). Chakazul (talk) 17:05, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

PARITY is a content guideline, not a funny reason. It explicitly encourages a double-standard on fringe topics, which the AAH is. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 20:35, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Self publishing by a RS is fine. It's discouraged when 2ary RS's can be found, but in cases of fringe science such things may not be available, and we need to rely on self publishing. That's true for both the pro and the con. All we currently have on Moore is a self-published RS recommending him, which is fine. — kwami (talk) 00:24, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, double standard on verifiablility is never encouraged in WP. All sources must be reliable, be they used as support or criticism for a certain point.

WP:PARITY states that if the pro side has only non-RS, then the con side can use non-RS, but this is not true for the AAH because there exist numerous supporting RS. Chakazul (talk) 00:56, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

No, I don't think we can ever use non-RS's, unless it's a point no-one would challenge anyway and so doesn't need a ref. But there are better and not-as-good RS's, and only when the better ones are not available do we go with the not-as-good ones. This commonly happens in fringe science and junk science, because few scholars are going to publish on it. — kwami (talk) 04:03, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

We have excellent RS's for criticism, e.g. Langdon's paper, many chapters from "Aquatic Ape: Fact or Fiction". What I've read from Moore's website is that he often cite those sources. To avoid the original research from Mr Moore, we should cite those good RS instead.

After re-reading John Hawks's blog post, I think he has some reasonable points that could (as he claimed) represent the view of many anthropologists, and himself being a famous expert on human evolution. His blog post sound to be a good source (be it RS or not). Chakazul (talk) 16:39, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

The "conspiracy" claim is unsourced gossip. It should not be part of this page. It's ironic that the page gets blocked when people merely want to update the page with the latest scholarly book on the subject (by all the main proponents of the idea) on the grounds that it's not "peer reviewed" and/or self-published, and yet Hawks self-published, self-reviewed blog is cited in order to peddle what can best be described as nasty gossip. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 15:14, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

This is what Hawks writes "Proponents of the theory tend to argue that this is more than blindness on the part of the paleoanthropological establishment. Instead, they argue, professional paleoanthropologists are engaged in a more or less deliberate conspiracy to exert their hegemonic control over the field by a marginalizing alternative viewpoints." (here, not where the page ref pointed to.) Notice there is no citation to back the claim. It's standard Jim Moore-style gossip. "Proponents tend to say x about y". Really, is this what the WP rules suggest we should put on our pages? Algis Kuliukas (talk) 15:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so I'm here on the talk page. Let's see if we can get consensus about posting unsourced gossip on WP. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 15:51, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree, the blogs and websites cited on this article are unnecessary (we already have reliable sources critiquing the AAT) and unworthy of an Encyclopedia entry. They clearly go against the WP guidelines which state that "Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." I'm not aware of any publication of Hawks, Laden or Myers on the AAT. If they exist then we should refer to them. If they don't, then they will need to have their web writings converted to academic papers and have them published by reliable sources before they are acceptable for a Wikipedia article on the AAT. Moore is no expert as far as I know.Yloopx (talk) 23:39, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Moore's "qualification" is that he was the partner of Nancy Tanner. Apparently he once helped proof read one of her books. Despite no formal qualifications in evolutionary science whatsoever (according to his own repeated statements on the web) he has somehow become anthropology's "special representative" on this subject. Birx asked him to write pieces on the "AAH" and Elaine Morgan in The Sage Encyclopedia of Anthropology. I guess this kind of endorsement is all aquaskeptics need. Science by nepotism and rumour.

Why haven't the editors, who insisted on including Hawks' unsourced gossip on the page, threatened to block me if I persisted in removing it, and urged that I discuss it here, joined in with this discussion? Note that despite all this none of us is claiming that there is a conspiracy going on. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 02:27, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

The references to the blog posts and personal website have been removed. They are non-RS in nature, and the authors are either amateur or haven't published anything related to AAH. Chakazul (talk) 16:42, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

WLU's repeated re-insertion of non-RS's has been reverted. He is required to state his reason why those non-RS's should be kept, in the context that other non-RS (e.g. e-book from Benthem) have been proactively removed by the same person. Note that Wikipedia:Verifiability is a core policy that I assume WLU understand well. Chakazul (talk) 02:44, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

My removal of the contents in question is reverted and is said to be "disruptive", so let me state the reasons once again:

• Blog posts and personal websites are non-RS in nature, thus cannot be cited in principle.
• The professional bloggers (John Hawks, Greg Laden, PZ Myers) have no previous publication related to the topic (AAH). The webmaster Jim Moore is an amateur.
• A non-RS (personal website) mentioned in other non-RS, though make it notable, doesn't make it reliable.
• Given the non-RS nature, John Hawks's blog post still enjoys a disproportional large coverage in the article.

(Although I personally admire John Hawks, and think he presented some good points -- as well as some bad ones, I think we should treat those material similarly.) Chakazul (talk)

Suggestions for future editing

Glad that the page is no longer locked, but to avoid more editing wars (can it be avoided?), I think we should agree on some points. Here is a summary of what discussed:

1. The e-book (Vaneechoutte et al. 2011) should not be cited due to the questionable reliability of Bentham. Previously published RS by the same authors can be cited instead.

2. The blog posts (e.g. by John Hawks, Greg Laden) should not be cited due to their non-RS nature.

Alternative: We may allow both of the above, because they can be considered self-published sources written by relevant experts (WP:SELFPUBLISH). Premise: No double standard.

3. Jim Moore's personal website should not be cited because it is a non-RS written by a non-expert.

4. The AAH is a fringe theory, but some people place it in the pseudoscience end while some place it near protoscience. Therefore we should judge it not by the diverse opinions but by the verifiable facts:

• It is a non-mainstream view of human evolution.
• Some RS consider it pseudoscience/unscientific, some consider it part of legitimate science.
• It is largely criticized and dismissed in (paleo)anthropology, while received moderate support in other relevant fields.
• Receptions of individual arguments vary -- some are discredited by experts (e.g. hair, fat), some gained supports (e.g. nutrition, diving responses), some become one of the available alternatives (e.g. bipedalism).

Chakazul (talk) 08:39, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I welcome this input, but there is an even more fundamental point here: What IS this thing that has been labelled "the aquatic ape hypothesis"? It seems to me that there is a huge amount of ignorance about this with skeptics (and proponents) alike, who seem to just interpret "it" in whatever way they feel best suits their cause. Skeptics, certainly, want to exaggerate the claims as much as possible. One of the main points of our recent book, in my opinion, was that one chapter (at least) finally addressed this issue. "It" is not one idea but several. A better label for them (plural) is "waterside hypotheses of human evolution" since none of them really propose a full-on "aquatic" ancestor in any meaningful sense, and none of them would argue that the 'more aquatic' selection happened before the evolution of the genus Homo, exclusively. The label was originally meant in an ironic sense, but amazingly the irony seems to have flown over everyone's heads.

I think there should be a section about the label and how some proponents, at least, see it as a misnomer which has been part of the reason for the bizarrely hostile reaction to it.

Algis Kuliukas (talk) 12:48, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

We give it the name that reliable sources give it as per WP:COMMONNAME. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that the page be renamed, just that a topic about its label be introduced. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 15:35, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is the title of one of the books by Elaine Morgan, and The Aquatic Ape of another. It may be that these are now seen to be misleading titles, but the phrase has been accepted by the hypothesis's opponents, so it would be difficult to justify a change. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 14:16, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Difficult, perhaps, but not impossible and long overdue in my opinion. Elaine Morgan and I wrote a chapter in our book which offered an alternative name and definition. It ends...

"Waterside hypotheses of human evolution assert that selection from wading, swimming and diving and procurement of food from aquatic habitats have significantly affected the evolution of the lineage leading to Homo sapiens as distinct from that leading to Pan." (p 118)

Kuliukas, A., Morgan, E. (2011). Aquatic scenarios in the thinking on human evolution: What are they and how do they compare?. In: Vaneechoutte, M., Verhaegen, M., Kuliukas, A. (eds.), (2011). Was Man More Aquatic in the Past? (eBook). Blackwell Science (Basel) Algis Kuliukas (talk) 15:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the suggestions made by Chakazul. The article needs a major cleanup to make it more neutral. Now large parts of it read like an anti-AAH pamphlet. In the section titled "The hypothesis", one gets no idea of what the hypothesis itself is, because every brief statement of a character that AAH purports to explain is immediately followed by "However," and a much longer explanation of why the hypothesis is incorrect. Several of these critical points lack references. The section "Theoretical considerations" needs to be trimmed down to what has actually been said in reliable sources. As far as I can see, the only RS cited here are Langdon's paper and (possibly) Bridgeman's phychology book. White's paper was published in Totem, which is a journal whose purpose is to offer anthropology students a forum where they can practice writing and peer reviewing papers (see http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/totem/). Indeed, White's paper makes statements that should have been weeded out in a proper peer review process (e.g. it concludes that there is no evidence of peer review bias against AAH, and cites the acceptance of Langdon's critical paper as proof of this -- with no mention of the fact that if peer review bias does exist, the pattern one would expect to see is that critical papers get published but supporting ones do not). The "Theoretical considerations" section is an embarrassing read also because it is logically contorted and demonstrates a lack of theoretical understanding of the evolutionary process. The section "Habitat" seems to argue that since AAH was originally proposed as an alternative to the then-dominant savanna theory, it has become irrelevant now that paleoanthropologists have abandoned the savanna theory. The section "Reception" carefully avoids mentioning any of the scientists that have expressed support for AAH, and instead emphasizes that the hypothesis mainly appeals to feminists and laymen for whom mainstream science is too difficult to understand. This section is also heavily relying on blogs and other non-RS material. A lot of editing is needed here to reach an encyclopedic quality level. Cricetus (talk) 18:09, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Playing the man not the ball

I am neither particularly pro nor anti AAH, but I do have concerns about the section on Reception, which in my opinion moves well beyond a neutral point of view discussion of how the theory of AAH has been received. The explanation of the appeal of AAH seems to be highly generic theorising on the appeal of non-mainstream theories in general, which has no provable relevance to AAH or relevance to the reception of AAH based on its merits; it seems to be inserted merely to discredit AAH by implication, e.g. no one could possibly believe in AAH on its merits so there must be another explanation. Similarly the suggestion that proponents of AAH are nutjob conspiracy theorists seems intended purely to discredit and does not contribute intelligently to the consideration of AAH as a theory, which certainly has proponents who are not conspiracy theorists. I am fully prepared to accept that some proponents of AAH have attempted to edit the article in ways which go well beyond Wikipedia editorial policy, but this sort of snide and patronising sneering does critics of AAH no credit, and serves only to lend a more sympathetic hearing to its proponents than perhaps they deserve. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Timothy Hugh Smith (talk • contribs) 20:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

It's sourced, it's explicitly about the AAH, and it lays out why the AAH, which lacks credibility among actual paleoanthropologists, isn't accepted as an explanation for human evolution. It seems quite appropriate. It's not inserted merely to discredit the AAH - it's inserted to indicate why scholars don't accept it. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 22:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The sections I questioned, explaining the appeal of AAH and referenceing the supposed conspiracy theory, in no way attemtpt to explain why AAH is not accepted as an explanation for human evolution, they simply cast aspersions on those who do accept this as an explanation. Perhaps we should have an entirely seperate article on the controversy, and leave this article for a dispassionate assessment of the theory and of criticisms of the theory, rather than including here criticisms of the theories proponents and opponents, which is hardly like to lead to an end of the warring which caused the article to be locked.Timothy Hugh Smith (talk) 14:25, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Timothy Hugh Smith's assessment. The source for the allegation that proponents of the AAT claim that there is a conspiracy against the idea is a blog which is unreferenced, unacademic in its style, and obviously not peer reviewed or even subject to editorial control. The ebook, which was considered an unreliable source by some here, at least is referenced, is academic, was subject to review and editorial control. I think all non-referenced and non-academic sources (such as the web blogs in this section) should be removed. How, for example, are proponents of the AAT meant to respond to allegations made on unreferenced and unacademic web sites (for example where does this claim of conspiracy originate from, with no reference we simply don't know)? And besides, it's not as if we don't have reliable sources critiquing the AAT already available (Langdon's paper for example).Yloopx (talk) 23:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

I think we should get rid of the section "Reception" altogether. Most of the text is based on non-reliable sources such as a student journal, a book review and personal blogs. The text is also written almost like a personal attack on Morgan, and it gives the impression that no one else (especially no scientist) has written anything positive about AAH. Giving the impression that "scholars don't accept it" is simply misleading, because there are plenty of scholars who have stated that AAH is worth considering, and several who openly support it, in spite of the fact that it is being ridiculed by some outspoken paleoanthropologists. I started moving some of the encyclopedia-worthy information to the section "History" with the intention of deleting "Reception" afterwards, but it looks like WLU would just revert any edits to that effect, so I'm waiting for some discussion about this first. Cricetus (talk) 23:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Cricetus, your edit to move information into the history section had several problems. Your representation of the symposium completely left out the actual response to the discussion - the editor saying the conference didn't support there being an aquatic period of development and the anthropological press reporting the idea as rejecting the hypothesis. In addition, the statement that supporters come from X field based on the profession or professional affiliation of the author is original research. I've adjusted the former and deleted the latter. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:55, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

WLU, I see you repeatedly remove points with RS citations added by others, but inserted a lot of quotes and points come from non-RS, especially John Hawks's blog post. Can you explain your rationale here?

Instead of removing the whole setences, modifying it will be more suitable (e.g. "some experts from other fields e.g. X-ist A and Y-ist B, have given support to the idea.")

I understand John Hawks has made some good points, but such a large coverage is not justified. He haven't published anything related to AAH. Compare it to other prominent anthropologists e.g. Phillip Tobias and Colin Groves, even they have published opinions and analysis on AAH, they have no place in the article. Is this what we call due/undue weight? Is it what we call neutural point of view? Chakazul (talk) 05:32, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

WLU, if there is a problem with the style of the text, please correct the style instead of deleting the substance. I have now put back the RS references that explicitly support AAH, but I changed the wording. If you want less emphasis on what fields the authors of these papers represent, that's fine with me; just lump them all under "other fields" if you like, or simply mention that some scientists find AAH convincing whereas others don't. But a "History" section is incomplete and biased if it leaves the reader under the impression that there has been no RS support at all for AAH, which is what your version did. I also corrected the reference to Reynold's chapter -- he was not the chief editor of the proceedings, but the fourth editor. To avoid arguments about what Reynolds actually said, I copied over the last sentence from his own chapter summary (leaving out the last words "in the ancestral African habitat"; if you think these words are necessary, please feel free to add them). Since the "anthropological press" in reality means Langdon's paper, I've changed the text to say so. Cricetus (talk) 08:51, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Hawks' unsourced "conspiracy theorist" slur

As my attempt to discuss this insertion has been ignored, I thought I'd start a new section on it. The sentences towards the end of the page currently amount to journalistic gossip.

"John D. Hawks has stated that proponents of the AAH claim there is an active conspiracy to marginalize alternative viewpoints, a claim which he compares to the activity of creationists. Hawks also states he is unaware of any such conspiracy, noting instead that numerous unusual ideas have become part of the scientific mainstream, which rewards innovation rather than marginalizing it.[56]"

He has stated that, true, but on what basis?

These are his actual words on this...

"Proponents of the theory tend to argue that this is more than blindness on the part of the paleoanthropological establishment. Instead, they argue, professional paleoanthropologists are engaged in a more or less deliberate conspiracy to exert their hegemonic control over the field by a marginalizing alternative viewpoints. In this, some proponents of the Aquatic Ape Theory take the same position as creationists, arguing that it is the dominant culture of science rather than the intrinsic value of current scientific ideas that excludes them from debate."

This is nothing more than an unsourced slur. Who are "they"? Where do they "argue" it? He doesn't say. The creationist link is a further slur. The reason many authorities in anthropology have managed to convince themselves that this idea is as crazy as Von Daniken, Big Foot, Intelligent Design etc, is a peculiar phenomenon, probably due to a combination of ignorance, fear of sneer pressure and academic enculturation as predicted by Khun, but it would be crazy to imagine that there is a deliberate conspiracy going on - even considering what we have seen being played out here, on these pages. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 02:51, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

We aren't going to remove content with due weight based on your Original Research. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:51, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The wording is perhaps misleading. Perhaps an improvement might be "John D. Hawks, having run out of sensible arguments, resorts to personal attacks and comparison of AAH supporters with creationists and Lysenkoists". The point is, Hawks's attack makes him look stupid and desperate. That's his problem. Repeating it in the article makes wikipedia look stupid and desperate. I intend to make that my problem. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 21:17, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Suggesting we insert personal attacks against individuals will not solve problems. Again, basing your arguments on your own opinion is a worthless argument on wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IRWolfie- (talk • contribs)

Don't remove material unless you have a policy/guideline based reason for doing so. Get consensus for any removal or change here first. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:11, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I stated the reasons in section "Blog Post and Personal Websites" before removal of the non-RS's. I thought the reason is obvious (non-RS should not be cited, especially if the author has no previous RS publication on the topic), and I assumed no response means no objection. Should we continue the discussion there? Chakazul (talk) 14:54, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Do so in a new section if you wish. But remember to get consensus first as per WP:BRD. IRWolfie- (talk) 15:41, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Consensus amongst whom? Controversial topics such as this, where half the people who have set themselves up as gatekeepers of the truth do not even understand what it is they are arguing for/against, are never going to engender consensus. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 01:15, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Assessment details

I've noticed a flurry of activity on this page recently, and though I don't have time to do a thorough review, there are a few issues that I thought I'd bring up based on the lead and a few excerpts I read. First, the lead is a poor summary of the article, as is required per WP:LEAD. It reads more like it is trying to make a point, which makes me suspect WP:POV issues from the outset. For example, "It appears uncontroversial that both H. neanderthalensis and early H. sapiens were better suited to aquatic environments than other great apes.^[3][4]" I can only access Stringer et al. 2008, and I do not see anything it suggesting Neanderthals were better suited for aquatic environments. It merely says that there is "clear evidence for the exploitation of marine mollusks by Neanderthals". In other words, this seems to be a violation of WP:SYNTH, especially given that it is not mentioned in the body and seems to deliberately precede a "review" of the criticism. Furthermore, the first paragraph of the lead doesn't even mention that it's not a scientifically accepted hypothesis... which seems a little odd and biased. Therefore, for reasons of potential bias and for failing criteria 3 for B-class ranking (poorly structured lead), I'm bumping this article down to C-class. – Maky ^« talk » 20:26, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I've long thought that particular sentence looked odd, and would support its removal. Those sources aren't used anywhere else in the page. It might be worth asking the person who added it why they did; I vaguely recall it being someone I recognized and whose work was normally unproblematic. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 18:59, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Comments by User:Mvaneech

Regarding the allegation that Bentham is vanity press, an allegation used to block this page.

I have contacted Dr. Beall, asking him about Bentham and Bentham Open, because the remarks regarding the purportedly doubtable reputation of Bentham Books, by WLU, were (at least partially) based on Dr. Beall's website: http://metadata.posterous.com

This is the prompt reply of Dr. Beall: On 3/10/2012 8:03 PM, Beall, Jeffrey wrote: ""Dear Dr. Vaneechoutte: My analysis covered only Bentham Open, so I cannot really judge their book publishing division. I think that Bentham Open is a separate division of the company, separate from its book publishing division. I do find Bentham Open to be essentially a vanity press. Bentham Open is not a reputable business in my opinion.""

I suppose that someone who turns to this AAH page is interested to know what the proponents of this hypothesis think and what their latest evidence is to support their claims. Well, you can find that in our recent Bentham e-book. So, why are we prohibited to refer to it, even in case (which it is not) of a poor reputaton of the publisher?

Moreover: Even if this publisher would be unreliable (which he is not), does the reputation of the publisher matter for a hypothesis that itself has no scientific validity anyway? At least according to the people who want to censor this idea by jeopardizing the reputation of the publisher.

In conclusion, the argument of WLU to block our contribution to this page seems to be unsubstantiated. Even if the publisher had been unreliable, this is never a valid argument to block our contribution - pointing the reader to the most recent information on the matter - to this page.

Would it please be possible to re-open this Wiki Page, and leave this raid behind us?

Mario Vaneechoutte — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mvaneech (talk • contribs) 20:03, 12 March 2012

I've moved your comment to the bottom of the page per Wiki convention for new talk comments - that's where other users will look for new discussion. The page is currently protected because edit warring resumed shortly after the last protection expired, I saw a request for protection and acted on it. Now, you need to use caution and refrain from accusations of censorship, there is a difference of opinion. When that happens we resolve it through discussion to establish consensus among editors. Also I would advise caution when it comes to arguing for inclusion of your work, consider a possible conflict of interest. We don't use Wikipedia to promote our own work. The protection of the page will expire again in due time, there is no "raid", if consensus among involved editors arises the protection may be lifted early. Vsmith (talk) 22:53, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I think we need to be clear what this page is for. It is not about promoting the thing that has been labelled "the aquatic ape hypothesis". It is also not about distorting it to make it look worse than it is either, is it? It is simply about informing the public, clearly, about what the thing is. If the very proponents of that idea are not allowed to even cite the latest book that they have worked hard to publish in order to inform the public better about it, then it seems to contradict the whole purpose of WP.

I understand the skeptic view, and desire, to depict the undisputed fact that the majority of palaeontologists still do not take the idea very seriously yet, and that WP should reflect the overall balance of the orthodox view on such matters. But this is entirely compatible with the page citing the latest and most scholarly books on the subject. Just because it is the authors of that book who are trying update the page it should not be seen necessarily as self-promotion. We are after all, the people who are most qualified to write about it. Skeptics, quite rightly, should keep an eye on the page to make sure that it does not become one promoting the idea and I certainly would feel uncomfortable if it ever did so. All I (and I believe the other authors of the book) expect is some balance and fairness.

The reply from Dr Beall to Mario makes it clear that the problem was with Bentham Open, not the publishing division. The material point is that the book is scholarly and scientifically written. Of the 16 authors, four are professors (including Philip Tobias), and all but one of the rest are either professional scientists, medical practitioners or students at reputable universities. The one exception, as far I am aware, is Elaine Morgan. I will not repeat that "C" word again but impartial readers of this will wonder why some WP editors are using slurs and innuendos as excuses to justify not informing the public about the latest book on the subject on the very WP page about it. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 01:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

@Messrs. Vaneechoutte and Kuliukas: It has been ABUNDANTLY explained to you in GREAT detail why your ebook is unsuitable for mention in this article. The reputation of Bentham is irrelevant at this point, as you would have figured out had you taken the time to read the LONG discussion above. Bentham's reputation would have to do with the quality of peer review they conduct, and now we know that they perform no review at all for e-books, according to their published policies. Screaming "censorship" over and over again (even under your breath) is a waste of time, as are accusations of "slurs and innuendos". The fact remains that the ebook is self-published, has not been peer reviewed, and has not been discussed by reliable independent sources. We therefore have no way to assess what role it plays in the scientific discourse on the topic, if any. Furthermore, you have rather fanciful notions about what Wikipedia is and how it operates, because you have still never taken the time to read our policies and guidelines. This is the wrong place to promote yourselves and your e-book. Please find another venue for that. You're barking up the wrong tree here. In fact, you're not even in the right forest. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 07:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The book was not "self-published". How many scientific books like this are "peer reviewed" in the full sense that a journal paper is peer reviewed? It was reviewed by at least one eminent scientist. Dominus, why do you keep repeating slurs like this, whilst pretending that they are "facts"? Algis Kuliukas (talk) 12:42, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Algis, the problem is that the article is full of original research, such as the example I pointed out above, where either attempts to weaken criticism are made by drawing your own conclusions from the literature you are citing, or where the academic critics are criticized for not seriously considering the hypothesis, despite your references for such claims showing the contrary. An example of the latter is where it says, "...and it has never been seriously scrutinized and discussed within the field of paleoanthropology" and cites both a blog (not a reliable source, and hence needs to be removed) and a good article by Langdon where they actually address the problems of the AAH. The way this article should be structured is by providing the history without bias, Morgan's hypothesis succinctly and without bias (i.e. not providing lengthy justification for it), and an unbiased review of why it has received little attention from mainstream science... again, using reliable sources. The Langdon article is an excellent source. This article is not for disputing the AAH's merits or for vilifying mainstream science. It is for presenting what the hypothesis is while clearly noting it is not mainstream... regardless of how you feel about that.

If you want to persuade people to consider the AAH as a serious subject, then I suggest trying to publish your thoughts in a peer reviewed journal. But I do want to note that I know how hard that can be. I, personally, am trying to publish what may become a controversial hypothesis regarding human evolution, and like Morgan, I'm not an official "academic" (meaning I lack a PhD). But unlike Morgan, I have been communicating frequently with experts in many related fields, studied the latest literature extensively, tactfully and successfully argued every counterpoint that has come my way, and have composed an argument that is very hard to dismiss. Consequently, a very well-respected academic journal has just accepted an essay proposal I submitted on the topic—a paper that will precede my actual research article. From what I can tell, Morgan did not do the necessary research and ignored material and objections that contradicted the hypothesis. Yes, submitting papers to peer reviewed journals is frustrating, and often provides no feedback... unless you get accepted for peer review. However, had anyone (Morgan or anyone else) been able to construct a strong argument based on sound principles that addressed all the issues (acknowledging and addressing all the latest relevant research), then it could have been published. Failure to do these things strongly suggests the hypothesis is untenable. As such, it this article should only present what the hypothesis predicts, but also clearly and unequivocally express that the hypothesis is not scientifically accepted. – Maky ^« talk » 15:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Some comments on the above:

• There is one paper in a paleoanthropological journal that addresses AAH. This does not qualify as being "seriously scrutinized and discussed" in a scientific field.
• I sure hope to see the history of AAH presented without bias, i.e. including also those RS that have supported it. Up to now, all attempts to add such RS have been reverted, so the history section now gives the false impression that Morgan is the only person since Hardy to have written about AAH favourably. For example, the article fails to mention that the chapters in the Valkenburg proceedings were evenly divided between pro and con, as it only cites the con opinion of the last of four editors (who is referred to as "the chief editor"). There also used to be references to several pro-AAH RS by scientists representing other fields than paleoanthropology, but these were removed on the pretext that stating what fields the authors represent is unacceptable original research.
• Now the article fails to give a succinct description of AAH, because it is structured so that every proposal made by AAH is followed by a much longer rebuttal, and many of these are very argumentative in tone.
• I would be interested in seeing an unbiased review of why AAH has received little attention from mainstream paleoanthropology. Has one been published? Langdon's paper is already 15 years old, so it can hardly account for the current situation, unless it is assumed that the entire field has got stagnated to where it was at that time.
• "From what I can tell, Morgan did not do the necessary research and ignored material and objections that contradicted the hypothesis." Have you actually ever read her books? They demonstrate an amazing knowledge of the relevant literature. In her later books, she also publicly declared that in the light of recent evidence, some of her early speculations seem to have been incorrect.
• Just like professional evolutionary biologists, Morgan has based her arguments on comparative physiology, comparative anatomy, the fossil record, the concepts of adaptation and convergent evolution, and the principle of natural selection. On the basis of her observations, she wrote already in 1972 that elephants have traits that suggest their ancestors to have been aquatic. She was sneered at for a long time for this statement, but nowadays zoologists generally agree with her.
• The fact that Morgan has preferred to publish her work in books rather than journal articles has been repeatedly used against AAH, although the forum of publication is not a scientifically valid criterion for discarding a hypothesis.
• I think everyone here agrees that AAH has not been accepted by mainstream paleoanthropology, and no one has tried to conceal this in the article. However, "not accepted by mainstream paleoanthropology" is not the same thing as "not scientifically accepted". The latter statement is demonstrably false, as several scientists have published their support for AAH. Cricetus (talk) 18:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

My replies:

• A rebuttal to a hypothesis that has never been published in a peer reviewed journal is more than most unpublished hypotheses get. Furthermore, that is all that is needed until new evidence is published to counter that rebuttal in a peer reviewed journal. Langdon's critique went through a peer review process. The counterarguments on the side of AAH have been published in books, on websites, and on blogs. (If I'm wrong, then cite those peer reviewed sources.) Mainstream science undergoes a rigorous review process for a reason, and if scientific ideas bypass this process, then they do not merit much attention.
• I have not followed the edit war, and to be honest, I don't have time to review it. I am simply looking at the state of the article. As it stands, there is bias and original research, solely in an effort to strengthen or lend support to the AAH. I have already requested more help at WP:PRIMATES. Hopefully more people with enough spare time can help mediate.
• In terms of point/counter-point, maybe we should compare structure to that of Creationism. Although AAH at least tries to take a scientific approach, until it can rise to the challenge of presenting and defending itself in the peer-reviewed literature, it should be treated similar to other non-mainstream "pseudo-science".
• "The fact that Morgan has preferred to publish her work in books rather than journal articles has been repeatedly used against AAH, although the forum of publication is not a scientifically valid criterion for discarding a hypothesis." Yes, it is. Science works on checks and balances. I'll admit that it's not perfect, and just like any other human endeavor, cliques and self-interest find places to hide even among the most respected research circles. However, hard work, determination, collaboration, thorough research, coherent arguments, civil discourse, and (most importantly) adherence to the scientific method will ultimately result in publication. Bypassing the peer review process seriously undermines credibility. Generally, good science gets published in peer reviewed journals. When it comes to books, publishers will print anything that will make a profit. An analogy would be having civil discourse requiring proper procedures for waiting your turn to speak, but having that contend with spectators in the stands who can shout whatever they want, whenever they want.
• And no, I have not read Morgan's books. If she publishes a peer reviewed paper, I will certain take a look. I have heard about most of her ideas through school, though, where the ideas were critiqued in an anthropology class. Like Groves, I think some of her ideas merit consideration, even if only briefly. As an umbrella hypothesis, no.
• "...several scientists have published their support for AAH." Again, I'm not familiar with the literature. Which scientists and which peer-reviewed journals were they published in? If this is true, this merits discussion in the article.

Anyway, back to my own research... – Maky ^« talk » 19:21, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

There are fields of science that routinely publish their findings in books rather than journal articles. Do you classify all of those as pseudo-science as well? It is very sad to see a biologically reasonable hypothesis being rejected just because people don't like its publication forum. It's like seeing a hungry man refuse to even look at a meal served on a plastic tray, because he is convinced that only food served on a silver tray can be worth eating. That is called prejudice. The scientific approach is to evaluate hypotheses on the basis of their scientific merits (such as explanatory power and parsimony), not on the basis of what kind of tray they are served on. I also find it interesting that AAH is criticized of being an umbrella hypothesis, when in other cases the ability to explain many facts with only a few ad hoc assumptions is a trait that is highly valued and sought after in a scientific hypothesis. But your comments are rather typical of those who criticize AAH, as you admit not having read the relevant literature. If you insist on only reading peer reviewed texts, you can start from some of the papers that are already cited in the AAH article (e.g. those at the moment numbered 17, 18, 19, 49 and 51). And if you (or anyone else, for that matter) start to edit the article to rid it of original research that favors AAH, be careful not to remove points that have already been made in Morgan's writings and hence are not original. Now I need to get back to my own research as well. Cricetus (talk) 21:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of these discussion pages is not to argue the merits of the topic, but to discuss how to improve Wikipedia based on its own guidelines. (I was merely trying to explain where these guidelines come from.) We must hold to WP:OR, WP:RS, and WP:NPOV, among others. I will only remove material that draws its own independent conclusions from the cited sources. Otherwise I have suggested what I feel is a neutral approach for structuring the article, given it's standing in the scientific circle. The topic is noteworthy, but again, Wiki is neither the place to promote nor attack the hypothesis. – Maky ^« talk » 21:55, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Maky, can't you see that the arguments in opposition to citing the latest scholarly work on this subject appear a little ad hoc, at best? One says it can't be cited because it's not peer reviewed (when it was to the extent that most scientific books are - by at least one eminent scientist). Another says that can't be cited because it's self-published (when it wasn't). Another is because it hasn't been discussed much yet in the scientific community (how much would be required? and by what time?) The only valid argument has been that it should not be people like me who edit the page to cite the book because of a potential conflict of interest. But even here, there have been several others, without any such conflicts, trying to do so. Most of these arguments are simply unsourced slurs, as is your insinuation that some of us are in favour of "vilifying mainstream science". That is also simply not true and is actually very offensive. Some of us have been doing "mainstream" science on this idea for years. This is why I have published peer reviewed papers on the wading hypothesis. This is why I have tried to actually define what the idea is and label it accurately. This is why I wrote the first critique of the one published attempted refutation of the so-called "AAH" in 15 years.

Langdon's article is not good at all. Have you even read it? It is unscholarly (it all but ignores Roede et al), it is based on straw man comparisons with true aquatics whilst hypocritically accusing Morgan of inventing the "savannah theory" as a straw man herself and makes facile, ignorant comparisons with creationism and Von Daniken. Morgan's attempt to reply to JHE was rejected. The eBook that has just been published contains a critique of Langdon's paper that anyone who is interested in this idea should read. Please understand that I absolutely do not expect this page to promote the hypothesis, or even to deny that it has not received much attention. I merely expect it to give a fair portrayal of what the idea is. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 22:01, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Maky, you say, regarding the article, "there is bias and original research, solely in an effort to strengthen or lend support to the AAH." This is not the case as far as I can see. For example, you say a blog is not a reliable source and hence needs to be removed (and I agree), but all the blogs cited in this article are critical of the AAT, and were not placed there to demonstrate the AAH in a favourable light, but a negative one, by the same people blocking the inclusion of a recently published ebook that includes contributions from genuine and acknowledged experts on the subject, including Philip Tobias, described by Wikipedia as one of the leading authorities on the evolution of humankind! You say you haven't read the talk pages, but if you took the time you might realise that there are a number of double standards being used in this article, but it is not those who have an open mind or are neutral to the idea that are trying to include unreliable and unsourced comments from web sites, it is those who see the hypothesis as not credible.

As for peer reviewed articles favourable to the AAH you could start with these:

• Broadhurst, C.L. et al. (1998) Rift Valley lake fish and shellfish provided brain-specific nutrition for early Homo. British Journal of Nutrition 79: 3-21.

• Verhaegen, M. et al. (2002) Aquarboreal ancestors? Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 17: 212-217.

• Gislen, A. et al. (2003) Superior Underwater Vision in a Human Population of Sea Gypsies. Current Biology 13: 833-836.

• Kuliukas, A.V. et al. The relative cost of bent-hip bent-knee walking is reduced in water (2009) HOMO—Journal of Comparative Human Biology 60: 479–488.

• Verhaegen, M. & Munro, S. (2011) Pachyosteosclerosis suggests archaic Homo frequently collected sessile littoral foods. HOMO—Journal of Comparative Human Biology 62: 237-247.

You will note that these have all been published in well-respected, peer-review journals since Langdon's 'Umbrella Hypothesis' paper (1997) critical of the AAT, and you'll also note when reading these that the so called 'aquatic ape hypothesis' is much broader than the writings of Elaine Morgan, substantial though her research has been.Yloopx (talk) 23:09, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

If the AAH is evolving into something else that is getting academic consideration, and if it has another name (the Wading Hypothesis?), it may merit splitting into another article. But I don't know... and I don't care. I only commented because I saw three disturbing trends when I read the lead and the first section of the article and glanced at the edit history: 1) The lead starts off making it sound like accepted science, then launches into a harsh rebuttal, prefaced by an "original research" sentence to soften the blow—a great indicator of NPOV issues. 2) I found another piece of OR critical of the critical reception in the first section ("...and it has never been seriously scrutinized and discussed...")—another NPOV red flag. 3) There are three single-purpose accounts expanding the article—which could possibly mean promotion or advocacy. Again, I have not read the whole article, nor do I have time. It would not surprise me if the "against" crowd were also using unreliable reference (a symptom of our time and culture) and violating OR as well as NPOV. I am simply pointing out the issues I see and I hope someone can come and and restore the neutrality. At the very least, I want the admins aware of these issues. With that said, I'm bowing out of this debate and going back to more important issues. – Maky ^« talk » 03:25, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Maky, for at least being a little critical of the "against" crowd too. All I expect here is a little balance. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 12:22, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Yloopx I dont think all of those articles you listed discuss the AAH in specific there more about diet hypotheses. Interestingly this book does the same (I have not read it yet)Source & Algis there does not need to be a balance on every single wikipedia article, the AAH is crackpot to 99% of scientists, articles go with what the sources say not one fringe book. GreenUniverse (talk) 01:02, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Anyone who thinks the idea is "crackpot" does not know what it is. The more "crackpot" you imagine it to be, the more you have misunderstood it. Waterside Hypotheses of Human evolution simply propose that the remarkable differences between humans and chimps/gorillas (despite us being genetically closer to chimps than they are to gorillas) are the result of a differential (and possibly only a very slight differential) in selection from wading, swimming and diving. It's absolutely Darwinian, very mild, very plausible, supported by a lot of evidence and contradicted by nothing. The article doesn't even accurately convey what the idea is today and the latest book where its proponents try to make this clear is deemed unacceptable. Most of the sentences in the article are effectively propaganda pieces, written to discourage any open-minded readers from taking the idea seriously. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 03:50, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

It isn't Wikipedia's job to encourage or discourage readers from 'taking ideas seriously' - instead, we show them what ideas are already taken seriously in the relevant field: and the aquatic ape hypothesis (or whatever its proponents choose to call it now) isn't. As someone who has studied a little palaeoanthropology, I can see the attractions of the idea - but I can see nothing to indicate that it is either accepted as a plausible hypothesis by the scientific mainstream, or indeed deserves to be at the present time. If you are trying to use Wikipedia to advance a scientific theory, you are in the wrong place. Do the research, present the evidence, and convince the scientific community. Unless and until you do, we can do nothing other than present the hypothesis as a fringe theory, given little credence by those we have to use as sources. Convince them first... AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:12, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree. It's not WP's job to discourage (or encourage) - so why does this page do so? I am not trying to use WP to advance anything. I am trying to update the page that is about a specific subject with the latest information about that subject. Why are you defending not including the latest information about a subject here? Algis Kuliukas (talk) 09:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I have just read the website River Apes and in the proponents section basically only 4 or 5 people are listed. Now think about how many scientists there are in every country around the globe... I noticed you have Crawford the author of The Driving Force on your site. But 4 scientists is a fringe view, if the idea was notable then why are not more scientists advocating the hypothesis? Where are the papers and reports on the topic? There are some fringe scientists who believe angels are real, Dr. Doreen Virtue does for example -yet 99% of other scientists disagree with her. Do you want to defend the fringe view on every single wikipedia article? GreenUniverse (talk) 11:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

My web site is out of date. I have hardly updated it for years. As Chazakul and others have pointed out here, paradoxically, there is more in the scientific, peer-reviewed literature that is for, or at least open to waterside hypotheses of human evolution than there is against. The fact that you seem unable to discriminate between the idea that our lineage might have been exposed to (slightly) more selection from wading, swimming and diving than the chimps' and "angels" does not bode well. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 09:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi GreenUniverse and AndyTheGrump, you both talk about the AAH being a fringe idea and not scientifically accepted. I contend that there are no universally accepted theories on human evolution and haven't been for more than a decade since the savanna theory was dumped. We should, therefore, stop acting as if the AAH is in opposition to some universally accepted theory of human evolution. If, of course, either of you are aware of a theory of human evolution that is accepted by the majority of the world's scientists, please articulate it here or point to the Wikipedia article that outlines it. My opinion is that this article should reflect what has been written about it in reliable sources (both pro and con), not what people believe the idea is because they've visited a few websites.Yloopx (talk) 22:07, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

None of that would matter, even if it was true. We aren't going to present a fringe theory with no significant support from the relevant scientific community as anything other than what it is. That is Wikipedia policy. It is non-negotiable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:23, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

How do you know it has no significant support from the relevant scientific community?Yloopx (talk) 01:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

If it had any, you'd cite it. You don't... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, just last year there was an ebook supporting the idea published with contributions from 16 scientists from well-respected universities and museums from all over the world. Should we cite that?Yloopx (talk) 03:27, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

One could probably find '16 scientists from well-respected universities and museums from all over the world' to support almost any hypothesis - that is what is known as cherry-picking the data to get the result you are after, and while it is a frequent-enough technique, it doesn't really conform with the ideals of the scientific method. Like I said, you've not demonstrated significant support from the relevant scientific community. Do it... AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

{{request close}} This proposal seems dangerous and pointless. The danger is that the "uninvolved Experienced Editor or Administrator" will take action which one side or the other strongly disagees with. In that case he or she will simply have become involved. If on the other hand there is some wise editor out there who can bring about consensus, that is better done by being persuasive, without the use of admin powers. There is no good reason why consensus should not be achieved in this article. What is required is that all editors should seek it, starting with a determination to assume good faith. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 13:56, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree to close and archive the above threads because they're inactive and became too long (that hurts my mobile browser). Chakazul (talk) (list of RS for/against AAH) 12:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Draft

Possible draft for the list of claims:

---

• Bipedalism offers numerous advantages in water, including permitting deeper wading, improved balance and reduced strain on the back, hips and knees as well as improved blood circulation.(Niemitz, 2002; Verhaegen, 1987; Niemitz, 2010) However, the disadvantages cited for bipedalism within the AAH are often the result of comparing humans to medium, terrestrial quadrupeds, but the evolution of humans from ape ancestors never included a period of quadrupedal locomotion. Instead, human evolution features mainly brachiation, suspension and climbing as the primary method of transportation, with a gradual increase in bipedal locomotion over time. In addition, the elongated lower limbs of humans, which is explained as improving swimming speeds, appears only after the evolution of the Homo genus(Langdon, 1997) and biomechanical analysis indicates humans are far to poor swimmers to have derived from an ape ancestor that swam.(Preuschoft & Preuschoft, 1991)
• Morgan claimed the relatively hairless skin of humans was due to comparable adaptations in aquatic mammals and land-dwelling mammals that have aquatic ancestors as well as those that currently spend much of their time in wet conditions and what body hair humans do have follows the flow of water over the body.(Morgan, 1982; Morgan, 1997) However, humans vary strongly in the amount and distribution of body hair(Laden, 2009) and comparably-sized mammals adapted to semi-aquatic lifestyles actually have dense, insulating fur.(Vanstrum, 2003) Hairlessness is only an advantage for aquatic mammals that dive, swim quickly or migrate long distances such as whales and dolphins, who show considerable skeletal and cardiovascular adaptations over millions of years to an aquatic lifestyle.(Jablonski, 2008; Langdon, 1997) MAINSTREAM EXPLANATION FOR REDUCED HAIR
• The human larynx is situated in the throat rather than the nasal cavity, a feature shared by some aquatic animals who use it to close off the trachea while diving and facilitates taking large breaths of air upon surfacing.(Morgan, 1997) Humans also have a considerable amount of control over their breathing, which is an involuntary reflex for most terrestrial mammals.(Niemitz, 2002; Morgan, 1997) However, a descended larnyx is seen in numerous nonaquatic animals, and breath control was thought to be preceded by bipedalism, which frees up the muscles of the upper torso from locomotion and allows breathing independent of limb position. Both of these adaptations are though to derive from improvements in vocalization and the evolution of the ability to speak(Langdon, 1997; MacLarnon & Hewitt, 1999) and the human larynx is shaped differently from that of aquatic animals, predisposing humans to choking.(Langdon, 1997)
• Morgan (1997) and several more recent authors (REFERENCES) have suggested that the encephalization of the human brain was a response to increased consumption of fatty acids found in fish. Critics have pointed out that landlocked humans without access to fish develop normal brains(Langdon, 1997) and these nutritional requirements are easily met with a land-based diet.(Carlson & Kingston 2007)

---

It's still long and has an ugly back-and-forth to it (not to mention many specific and detailed criticisms have been removed) but at least it's not 24,000 characters long. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 18:54, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I've copied it unchanged to the suggested subpage. Let's see what people think of it, and invite updates. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 19:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

• I've made some additions: 1. other terrestrial mammals have descended Larynx - i.e. the Red Deer and Fallow deer. 2. Bipedalism developed with the early Australopithecines (ca. 4 mya) several million years before encephalization began after homo habilis (2.33 to 1.4 mya). Homo habilis was bipedal just like the australopithecines but had a cranial capacity of only ca. 600 cc (basically within the Gorilla range) - cranial capacity didn't rise considerably untill Homo Erectus. That means that hominins should have been in the water for four million years if water should explain both developments. That is of course what scientists mean when they say that the theory is not supported by the fossil record. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:06, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

tag again

Remove? --WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd support removal. I think the main points of the hypothesis are covered and the mainstream pov is represented. Looks like an example of good collaboration to me.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:19, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Vaneechoutte M, Kuliukas AV, Verhaegen M 2010

It makes no sense to remove this because of the publisher. Many of the authors (and one of the editors) are well respected scholars with many serious publications behind them - they are part of the scholarly dialogue already. The fact that no responses have been published yet only means that we shouldn't go into details in presenting their arguments. The book should be mentioned because it shows that there is some recent scholarly interest in exploring the hypothesis. There is no rule against mentioning the existence of self published publications (nor against citing them if they are written by notable authors).·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:22, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. A book or article by even an eminent scientist is not worth much unless it has been peer reviewed, or unless it has been proven to be part of the scientific discourse. As of now, we have no idea how much weight to assign to the various viewpoints in the book. Messers. Vaneechoutte, Kuliukas and Verhaegen, and the individual authors, had every opportunity to get their work published by a real scientific publisher that conducts real peer review. They didn't, and thus have to wait until their peers evaluate it. Right now, it carries as much weight as an e-book self-published by you, me or any other memeber of the general public. The value of a scientific paper does not depend on the reputation or notability of its author(s).

There is no value in mentioning the book to our readership because we have no way of knowing weather it contains any information of any value, as it has not undergone peer review. It also cannot be accessed without actually personally purchasing it, and for a steep price. Our readers cannot go to a library and read it, for example.

Messers. Vaneechoutte, Kuliukas and Verhaegen by-passed the normal scientific publishing process in order to promote themselves and their product. The source thus fails the self-serving clause of WP:SPS. Both Dr. Vaneechoutte and Mr. Kuliukas have turned up here on WP to promote the book themselves, though, to his credit, Dr. Vaneechoutte ceased when advised of the problems with the source. I've advised Dr. Vaneechoutte to recover the manuscript from Bentham and publish it properly. Once they do so, we can mention the book. Or we can wait until it gets substantial attention from the mainstream scientific community so that we can determine what weight it should be assigned.

Until then, it's anyone's guess what part this book plays (if any) in scholarly discourse on this topic, and considering the way it was published, it is unlikely that it will ever play a significant role. :Also, there is essentially no difference between a self-published e-book and a self-published blog, except that you have to pay to view the e-book. Anyone can publish an e-book with Bentham about any nonsense whatsoever, as long as Bentham believes they can make money off of it. Bentham's interest in this book is purely financial and they take no editorial responsibility for, or interest in, its content. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

You can take this to RSN if you disagree. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:22, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

The part of WP:SPS that you link to says that: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications". The self serving argument is nonsensical since it is obviously their arguments and not themselves they are trying to promote - there is nothing in the policy that prohibuits mentioning this e-book.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

That is nonsense we quote blogs all the time and lots of other non-peer reviewed sources. The only think the lack of peerreview means is that we can't take the book as proof of acceptance by others than the authors. It is perfectly valid to cite it as the opinion of those scholars - and since some of the scholars are notable so are their opinions. The paywakll argument is also not valid as most books have to be purchased whether it exists in any specific libraries is irrelevant. Your argument is simply not supported by policy. RS is also irrelevant since it is not used to support any claims but is only mentioned - the only question at issue is notability. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:23, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. The book is not notable because nobody qualified to do so has ever substantially commented on it. Yet, at least. Notability within a walled garden does not count for much, either in the real world, or here on WP. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:38, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

That is not how notability works and you know it. Several of the authors are respected experts who are fully qualified to be able to form and communicate their opinions.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Maunus is correct. If a researcher is unknown and untested, then peer-review is the primary way to demonstrate reliability. However, once a researcher is established as reliable, they stand on their own, at least in their field. An established researcher published in a peer-reviewed journal is better, and the actual reviews better still, but we're not limited to that. — kwami (talk) 20:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Bullshit. That's not how science works. A scientist's reputation counts for jack shit when it comes to evaluating their work (peer-reviewers don't even know the identity of the authors in question). Peer-review is only a preliminary step to establishing relevance and reliablility, a bare minimum. The work still has to be replicated and confirmed by other scientists. We are setting the bar low enough by asking for peer-review. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:38, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

We are not doing science here - we are summarising other peoples opinions about a scientific topic. Also your faith in how science works seems a little naive. Anyway we are not evaluating their work we are merely reporting that it exists.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I've been involved in scientific publishing for thirty years, including as an editor, so I doubt that my view is "a little naive". If the book does not exist in mainstream scholarly discourse on the topic, it doesn't exist as far as WP is concerned. Take it to the noticeboards if you want, but concensus over the last three months has been pretty solidly against including this source. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:46, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I am fully prepared to await the formation of consensus before inserting the mention of the book. Your statement of what exists for wikipedia is erroneous as a cursory glance on either our policies or our actual practices will show. I am very happy to know that there is apparently one branch of academia where nothing is ever evaluated or published with greater regard to the academic standing of the author than to the value of the scholarship. I'd like to know what branch of science you are in, I might consider changing my discipline.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:54, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

We can always use more microbiologists! (Just make sure to mention me when you sign up so I get my recruitment bonus). As for consensus, look through the talk page archives for the past three months. You can ignore the opinions of User:Mvaneech, User:AlgisKuliukas and User:Chakazul because they have stated conflicts of interest that preclude them from acting as WP editors in matters concerning this book. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

One more comment here: WP:COI does not preclude people with conflicts of interest in participating as editors. Their arguments will be weighed as everyone else's. Also AlgisKuliukas and Mvaneech do have a COI as editors of the book - what is the other editor's COI? Being a proponent of the hypothesis does not constitute a COI any more than being a detractor of it does. We all have POVs. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

The other editor, User:Chakazul, volunteered that they are the author of one of the articles in the book. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 16:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Consensus has been against using it for the opinions of unknown authors, because there is no peer review to establish their opinions as notable. But the known authors stand on their own. — kwami (talk) 20:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Not to belittle their accomplishments in their own right, Mr. Kuliukas is a grad student, and Dr. Vaneechoutte is a veterinarian microbiologist/biochemist, and Dr. Verhaegen is a medical doctor (general practioner). I doubt that any of them is seriously considered a notable figure in the anthropological community. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Verhaegen has published peer reviewed papers- but particularly Philip V. Tobias is in fact a renowned expert. It surprises me that he would associate with the hypothesis, but all the more notable fopr doing so.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:52, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

That's all irrelvent because we're talking about the papers in the e-book in question, not about their previous publications. If Prof. Tobias valued his paper so much, why did he not have it published in a real scientific journal? His reputation and previous publication history adds exactly zero to the scientific value of this paper. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 23:03, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

This stress on the precise status of the book is misplaced. That would be vital if we were relying on some statement of fact contained within it. But we're not; we're just telling the reader that the book exists and using it to justify a brief statement about the current thinking of its contributors. As such it can scarcely be doubted. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:10, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree it doesn't matter if it were a blog post or a newspaper article or an op-ed we don't cite it because of its scientific merits, and we don't endorse it by doing so. We simply show that it exists. And there is no policy on wikipedia that prohibits that.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:32, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

First of all, it's not exactly a book. It's an e-book. The difference is that, with a real book, someone besides you (the publisher, at least) thinks it's important enough to warrant spending time editing and preparing, and killing trees for. Benham spent no time editing this book, and extremely little time preparing it for publication, if any. Like I said, Bentham clearly states that it has no interest in nor takes any responsibility for the contents of the e-books they put on their website. Their interest is strictly monetary.

So what, exactly, is the encyclopedic value of informing our readers of the existence of an e-book whose relevance and reliablility are unknown, and unknowable, to us? What possible good does it serve our readers? The fact that the e-book exists is hardly noteworthy in itself. Prove to me that the e-book is IMPORTANT enough to warrant mention, based on what mainstream anthropologists have to say about it. Right now, the significance of the e-book is questionable, at best. It seems to have been noticed only among a small circle of fringe proponents (a classic walled garden or mutual adoration society). Has it been repeatedly cited in genuine peer-reviewed scientific papers, or been the subject of an independent scholarly review? In short, why do you want to mention this e-book at all? "Because it's there" only works for mountains. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:32, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Or put it this way: If the authors of the papers in the e-book thought that their articles were relevant, significant and good science, why did they choose to publish with a grad student, a veterinarian and a GP who apparently had zero competence as far a scientific publishing is concerned instead of with a real scientific publisher? Is it because the papers were rejected by real scientific publishers, or would have been if they had been submitted? Rejected because they were of little scientific value, if any? They certainly were aware that they were bypassing peer review. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:40, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Ugh, I can see both sides. I would argue strongly against using the book to cite matters of substance, but pretending it doesn't exist doesn't seem to help. What would really be useful would be some sort of external commentary on the book itself, but that's unlikely right now as it's still quite new, and about a very questionable theory. Normally I'd suggest pointing out that it's an e-book, by a dubiously reliable publisher - but this just draws more attention to it.

If we're just saying "there's a more littoral theory", Niemitz 2010 does this already, making the book somewhat redundant. What is important is the development of a modified, more diluted (ahahahaha) theory - not that there is a book about it. If we agree that the book shouldn't be used for matters of substance, mentioning it also seems dubious. Gah, tough one. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:55, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Actually, independent commentary not only would be nice, it is essential. Otherwise, we have no way of knowing whether the e-book is a siginificant element of scholarly discourse on the topic or not. As to your second point, you hit the nail on the head. If the source is not reliable enough for our purposes as WP editors, why should we assume that it will be useful to our readers? Like you said, if we do mention it, we would have to clearly state that it is a self-published, non-peer-reveiwed e-book of dubious relevance and reliability. What encyclopedic goal is attained by informing our readers that a elf-published, non-peer-reviewed e-book of dubious relevance and reliability exists? Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 15:38, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

It is not essential because it is irrelevant whether the e-book is a significant element of scholarly discourse. We are fully at liberty to mention books and websites that are not a significant part of scholarly discourse. AAH theory is basically an internet meme - if an e-book about lolcats waas published with contributions by respected zoologists we would of course also link to it even if the zoological community had not commented on the publication. I think we are going to need an RfC on this issue - specifically because every argument you make is a misrepresentation of our basic policies. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:43, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

There is no fossil evidence to support the AAH.

I'm no paleantologist or whatever they are called, but seriously, no s**t sherlock. There is no fossil evidence to support 90% of homosap's evolution from shrew-like creatures, the glimpses we have are intermittent at best. Just because it's referenced doesn't mean it's notable, or worthy of inclusion. Greglocock (talk) 01:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

It is not an argument from absence of evidence. The problem is rather that the extant fossil record doesn't support the theory - i.e. put more sharply it contradicts it.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:11, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Maunus. The fossil evidence that we have does not support the AHH, and generally contadicts it. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 01:29, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

But what do you think "it" is? "It" is not even an "it". There are several waterside hypotheses of human evolution (plural) - as described in the latest book on the subject. Some (e.g. my own River Apes... Coastal People model) are relatively mild and have been constructed specifically to agree with the fossil record. As usual, "experienced editors" here show their ignorance and continue to misrepresent what the ideas are, in order to maintain their belief that they must be wrong. The fossil record does NOT contradict most WHHE. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 04:07, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I read the article once, fairly carefully. Why not state that the fossil record contradicts the thoery, rather than just "There is no fossil evidence to support the AAH."? Greglocock (talk) 01:53, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that that should probably come through clearer.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:58, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Meh, I see it as a limitation of sources - I don't recall seeing anything reliable that says, explicitly, that skeletal evidence contradicts the AAH. There are sources that say there is no supporting skeletal evidence (i.e. nothing to support aquatic adaptations) and that hairless aquatic animals show strong skeletal adaptations to water, but to say the fossils contradict the AAH is WP:OR in my mind. The "no evidence to support" is the kind of careful science-speak used by scholars who are somewhere between being polite and damning it to the vilest pits of unproven theory hell. For a scientist, a lack of supporting evidence means the theory is little more than idle speculation - a fact that should be pointed out in the page at least once (and is, though perhaps unclearly - for instance, failure to explain divergence from chimp common ancestor; that it's more comparative anatomy than scientific theory). Perhaps the distinction should be sharpened, but I'm not comfortable saying "contradicted" without an explicit source. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't recall seeing that either. No fossils in the expected environment, no obvious aquatic adaptions in the fossil record, but that's lack of evidence, not contradiction. — kwami (talk) 16:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Contradiction is for example the fact that bipedality appears two million years earlier than encephalization yet AAH explains both with the same environmental feature. But yes we shouldn't write "contradict" because that implies that the fossil record is unequivocal - it depends on whether it is interpreted as supporting or not. The evidence is not currently considered supportive of AAH. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:35, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Even back in the 70s Morgan wrote of two episodes of aquatic adaptation, perhaps associated with the emergence of Australopithecus and Homo. — kwami (talk) 17:04, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

That would nmean that the hypothesis would have to describe everything not twice as Hawks says but four times over!·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:14, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Lack of evidence is the correct conclusion given the lack of human fossils anyway and the great uncertainty of how they relate to one another. And as for this business in particular if the sea level is higher than most of the time during our evolution evidence if any for something like this would be mostly under the sea anyway. Dmcq (talk) 12:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

There are other lines of evidence apart from just fossils. The first time I heard the AAH my reaction was that it was a heeellll of a lot of evolution, including physiological adaptation, to fit into a couple of megayears. Let's hear the evidence to overcome that objection. Anyone panting to convert me would need some really compelling fossils! Luckily I am no palaeontologist nor anthropologist, so my opinion doesn't matter. JonRichfield (talk) 13:53, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

What we should be doing is giving a reasonable summary of what is in reliable sources. It is not about convincing anybody of the reasonableness or not of the hypothesis, that side is covered by summarizing reports of how the hypothesis has been received by the scientific community and the public. Dmcq (talk) 18:27, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Sexual dimorphism of hair

Without any sources, the initial request and subsequent discussion is going nowhere

Humans are quite sexually dimorphic when it comes to body and facial hair patterns. I looked for a bit on google but couldn't find a reference for it. If anyone recalls seeing a discussion of this, and can track down a source, I think it'd be helpful for the page. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 13:28, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Some races are. But what would that have to do with the AAH? — kwami (talk) 16:02, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I tried looking this up a while ago, but came up blank. In college when an instructor brought up the AAH as an example of an umbrella hypothesis, he mentioned that the AAH claimed that people had long cephalic hair so that the babies would have something to cling to when the mother was in water. Whether or not that's accurate, I'm pretty certain the AAH would have addressed more than just the apparent "hairlessness" of the rest of the body and not discussed cephalic hair (or underarm and pubic hair). – Maky ^« talk » 16:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's what Morgan said. I think the idea was either that the head was the part of the body exposed above water, and so retained its hair, or that hair was retained because babies needed some hair to cling to (or both). But women don't actually have longer hair than men, do they? — kwami (talk) 16:12, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Langdon makes the point that head hair is styled on a very much culture-determined basis, thus any role hair length might have in human evolution is suspect.

I originally brought it up because if body hair was an indication of an evolutionary drive towards aquatic adaptation, you'd expect it to be relatively uniform across genetic groups and genders (those things selected for evolutionarily tend to be uniform, at least within the genders of the species. "Optional" traits are much more variable. Think femur shape versus nose shape in humans). I should have been clearer, the reason I brought it up was because I thought I had read in some source somewhere that the gender dimorphism in body hair was one of the points used to argue against the AAH. I was wondering if anyone else'd read the same thing and recalled the source. If I can track down the source, I can integrate it - but no source, no text :) WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:30, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I've seen other criticisms of AAH with a similar lack of logic. It seems that since the AAH is not supported by direct evidence, we don't need any evidence for counterarguments. This one is equivalent to saying the ancestors of the ostrich must have been flightless because ostriches can't fly. Assuming the AAH is correct, there have since been millions of years of readaptation to a terrestrial environment. There's no reason to think gender dimorphism in body hair dates from the divergence of hominids, especially since it isn't universal within our own species. Also, pubic lice are not original to humans: they come from gorillas. So we lost pubic/body lice at one point, which suggests that we went through a stage of true body hairlessness and have reacquired body hair. — kwami (talk) 17:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I believe it is lice in general that came from the apes, just humans have developed three different types for different separate environments whereas the apes only have one each. Not that that's relevant here, it would be nice to know when hairlessness even evolved never mind any of the current minor dimorphism there is in it for sexual differentiation. Dmcq (talk) 12:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, no. That's what people expected: by dating the origin of body lice, you'd get the date of clothing, and by dating the origin of pubic lice, you'd get the date of body-hair loss. But while that worked for body lice, something odd turned up for pubic lice: they do not descend from the ancestral human louse, but from the ancestor of the gorilla louse. So they post-date the loss of body hair, but we can't say by how much. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

That is very interesting thanks, the article crab louse says they diverged from the gorilla ones 3.3 about million years ago so hairlessness evolved before that point. So if the hypothesis was to have any traction at all it should target a short time (half a million years?) before then. It certainly narrows down much of the wriggle room. Dmcq (talk) 08:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I should be a bit more cautious. Lice are specific to a particular kind of hair. So the pubic louse means we had evolved pubic hair by c. 3.3Ma. (Chimps and gorillas do not have pubic hair, just normal body hair.) It is presumed that we evolved pubic hair after (or while) we lost body hair, but I don't think we actually know that. — kwami (talk) 21:51, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

• I've certainly read that the gender dimorphism in hairlessness suggests a role of sexual selection, rather than environmental selection. Another issue is neoteny. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:34, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Neoteny is a mechanism, not an adaptation.

Morgan discusses this: that sexual selection might work on hairlessness after it appeared, but wouldn't be a likely mechanism for its origin. Beginning hairlessness would look like mange, not a sexy feature. Even today, men are not attracted to a woman with thinning hair, and hairy men are an acquired taste for women. Also, hair dimorphism varies between the races, to practically zero in some cases, which suggests that it might be quite recent: Either that, or it's been recently lost despite sexual selection. — kwami (talk) 17:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter that neoteny is not an adaptation - the fact is that increased neoteny is a basic process in human evolution and that it is a process that might (partly) explain the decreased hairyness. Not everything that changes in evolution is an adaptation (unless you're Dawkins or Dennett)·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't explain anything, unless neoteny were an adaptation and hairlessness was a side effect. You don't lose something as valuable as hair without selective pressure, either selection against hair or a cessation of selection for hair. Non-adaptive change only affects things which do not impair fitness. And if hair were lost for no reason, you'd expect it to happen to other mammals. — kwami (talk) 17:33, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Adaptations are not the only explanation unless you're an adaptationist. There are many reasons why neoteny may have been a side effect (spandrel) of other selective pressures. But this is degenerating into discussion, I'll leave it at this unles I find an actual source that suggests so.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:37, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd count that as an adaptation. That's what I meant by side effect. — kwami (talk) 17:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Meh, it's all idle speculation until a source shows up; the current section on hairlessness is already long enough anyway. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:57, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

It is not idle speculation. There is good evidence from passive push off trials in male swimmers that body hair removal significantly reduces drag in water. Sharp, Rick L; Costill, David L (1989). Influence of body hair removal on physiological responses during breastroke swimming. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise Vol:21 Pages:576-580. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 04:11, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

That wasn't what he was referring to but the question of neoteny, In any case the improved swimming doesn't explain the sexual dimorphism - nor is it particularly useful in a wading-brachiating scenario (an example of the theory moving on to a more reasonable form but retaining arguments that only make sense in the now abandoned strong version).·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, as women are more likely to be swimming with their infants than men, sexual dimorphism in body hair patterns is entirely consistent with the drag reduction hypothesis, actually. You are misconstruing the argument again (what a big surprise!). There are several waterside hypotheses of human evolution. One is the wading hypothesis of bipedal origins. Another is the drag reduction hypothesis of the human body hair pattern. Both are reasonable. Both are supported by a lot of evidence. Neither are contradicted by any evidence. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 01:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

That's great for you then. You'll be a big man in Paleoanthropology when you manage to find a way to explain it so that it makes sense to other people. (For example I don't understand how multiple different waterside hypotheses that require different degrees of aquaticness can all be resonable and supported by evidence?)·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:23, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

If I'd have written anything like that I'd have been accused of being uncivil. Of course, it's fine to be sarcastic if you're an "experienced editor". Maybe if "experienced editors" read the latest literature on the subject (instead of pretending that it does not exist) they might understand it better. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 01:35, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You are right that I was sarcastic and that it was uncivil. I do apologize. (I will say that it is not really the way to sell your point to say that "it is supported by evidence and not contradicted" when the majority who have read the books say that it is not. That is not the way to turn the opinion in science - the right way would be by amassing evidence untill it can no longer be ignored - not just by contradicting those who are not convinced)·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:09, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Since when did science work by majority rule? The material point here is that the drag reduction hypothesis of the human body hair pattern is a better fit than any other. The part of the body (of a pre-adolescent individual, so to ignore the effects of sexual signalling) that is most likely to be covered with hair is that part most likely to be above the surface of the water whilst swimming using the breast stroke. What alternative hypothesis fits better? Sweat cooling? Sexual selection? Pest detection? No, none of them do. You are merely clinging to misconceptions from positions derived from group think and academic enculturation. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 03:59, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Science has always worked by majority rule. The drag hypothesis reduction is nonsense and your are merely asserting that your just-so story is better with no evidence. Provide the evidence and w'll talk thats how science work - if you hav evidence thats not just speculation the majority will listen.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:33, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Really? I thought it worked by evidence and the peer review process. On that point perhaps you could cite the paper in the literature that discusses (let alone refutes) the wading hypothesis of bipedal origins, the drag reduction hypothesis of the human body hair pattern or, any other waterside hypothesis of human evolution. (I won't hold my breath!) I did provide some evidence - the Sharp & Costil paper shows that shaving body hair off already relatively hairless men reduces drag in passive push off trials by up to 9%. I provided the evidence, you pretended I didn't. The usual response, then. While we're talking about "just so stories" - what's yours? How do you explain the human body hair pattern? When you have decided which one you like best, don't forget to provide evidence for it. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 03:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a horse in this race except keeping with wikipedia policies which clearly states that views should be presented in accordance with the degree of acceptance in scholarship. When I said provide evidence i did not mean on the talkpage because that is not what the talkpage is for - but I mean in a peerreviewed journal. IF you can get it published in a peer reviewed journal that means that a majority of scholars think it makes sense enough to be considered. This is not the place for you to argue your case or present arguments that do not already have presence in the peerreviewed literature on the subject.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:53, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Therein lies the rub. It's a catch 22. Nobody takes the idea seriously enough to study it because no-one has taken the idea seriously enough to study it. My wading paper was rejected from 5 journals for very weak excuses before it was published by the journal HOMO. This is the place to be arguing about the page. This threadlet is about the body hair pattern waterside hypothesis. People like you claim there is no evidence for it, when there is actually some very good evidence. Aquaskeptics always have to distort the ideas to discredit them. It's not a very rational approach. If the ideas are so very bad, why not just tell us why? Please point me to the literature that even discusses some of these ideas, let alone refutes them. Langdon (1997) - the only paper on the subject in a proper anthro journal - is a straw man portrayal of an exaggerated caricature of the idea. I destroyed it in our latest ebook. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 00:06, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Comparing with how quick you were to react to my sarcastic tone it surprises me that you don't mind stooping to generalizing about "people like me" and what we would do. I am not interested in talking more to you - but I am happy to known that indeed it sounds like the peer review system is working. Have a good day.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:35, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Notice how a request to point to the scientific literature which discusses (let alone rejects) the mislabelled "aquatic ape" is met with "I'm not interested in talking to you". I am not surprised. I've been getting the same kind of response from aquaskeptics for over 15 years. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 08:27, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Could you both cut out the sniping please. The only assertion I can see is 'Well, as women are more likely to be swimming with their infants than men, sexual dimorphism in body hair patterns is entirely consistent with the drag reduction hypothesis'. I've seen absolutely nothing to back up that women might swim with their infants or why that would make a difference if they did. As to clinging to the hair even nowadays the only real difference between hair lengths in young men and women is because men cut their hair shorter. I asked where the business of infants clinging to hair came from but got no indication of what it was based on. Personally I'd be interested in when afro type hair evolved, was it before or after or about the same time as the pubic louse? but it definitely doesn't look like it was for clinging to. We have zilch reliable sources. We don't really have a basis about even wondering about it on the talk page and perhaps developing something so I don't think we can go further with it. Dmcq (talk) 15:12, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Are people really using the current distribution of hair as anything except a very very rough guide to how the various types of humans looked like a couple of million tears ago? It is something that can change very rapidly and it varies greatly even now. If hairiness had a big advantage humans would be hairy again within tens of thousands of years never mind millions. Dmcq (talk) 12:28, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

It needn't have be a couple of million years ago. Some waterside hypotheses argue for (slightly) more selection from wading, swimming and diving having an effect up until the fully modern human diaspora ca 80Ka. The material point is that the human body hair pattern is very different from that of chimps and gorillas, so how do we explain it? Unless we opt for the shoulder shrug, or the random genetic drift default, there are relatively few ideas to choose from. The drag reduction hypothesis is at least as reasonable, and evidence based, as any other and yet it continues to be sneered at simply because paleoanthropologists have been unable to get beyond the label "aquatic ape" and see the irony of it. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 03:59, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

From the bit about different lice for different areas it looks like hairlessness probably evolved long before that. Anyway I don't see all that much difference from apes, anyway look at the difference between bonobos and chimpanzees and who can say why their hair is different?, and I can easily think of other things which might explain any differences like having to cool down when running in the sun as in the endurance running hypothesis. You're talking about some other waterside hypothesis rather than this topic if you're talking about less than a million years ago. Dmcq (talk) 09:40, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

The lice evidence is interesting but it's hardly a show stopper. The body hair pattern of chimps and bonobos is hardly of the order of that between humans and Pan. If you favour the ER hypothesis, why is it that the one place we retained thick hair was on the scalp? I thought the whole point was to keep the brain cool because we lacked the carotid rete that many savannah mammals have. That's the very opposite of what the ER hypothesis would predict. Meanwhile, the forehead has very dense follicles but is practically glabrous. The human body hair pattern obviously best fits surface swimming. The part of the body most likely to be covered with hair just happens to be that part most likely to be above the surface of water whilst swimming. As a co-editor of the latest book on this subject I think I know what I'm talking about. It is unfortunate that so many people who have learned the popular "group think" gossip technique to sneer at such ideas have never taken the trouble to really think about what "it is" (should be - they are). Algis Kuliukas (talk) 03:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I am quite happy with the idea of more than one hypothesis being true. As to the endurance running the reason hair would stay on the head is because the top of the head is the major place you get radiant heat from the sun and it is more important to protect from that there than to lose heat by sweating whilst running. The same reason people wear hats but don't cover up their whole bodies in summer. I see nothing about the hair pattern which obviously suits swimming better. Humans would have used their brains, eyes, and hands to catch food and avoid any predators in the water just like they do nowadays. Swimming and diving for shellfish is believable but for fish you use intelligence and patience. Speed just doesn't come into it. If both hypothesis were true I'd place the aquatic one much further in the past than endurance running which sounds to me like a much more recent business. Dmcq (talk) 12:03, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

By the way I don't think having a rete would help with endurance running for humans. The brain generates so much heat and has such a big blood flow we really need to keep the whole body cool. The best option would be if we also panted like dogs but that would be just a bit of extra help over sweating. This consideration makes me think that the endurance running hypothesis should also be targeted a bit further in the past before brains got so big that they were a problem even though I know people do it today, just like they do diving for shellfish or tickling fish. Dmcq (talk) 17:28, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not arguing for exclusivity either. If we had explanations like the one you have articulated above we'd be accused of making up just so stories. So the scalp is there to protect the brain from solar radiation, and yet the forehead is glabrous. mmm, I see(?) We don't need a rete because we need to keep the whole body cool, and yet there is no hair atop the shoulders to protect that from the same solar radiation that the scalp protects the brain from, is that it? Why not just ask - in what scenario does the body hair pattern fit best? Answer - in water, whilst swimming face down (perhaps looking for shellfish in coastal shallows). Why not? Because it would make Hardy and Morgan right all along and the field of paleoanthropology look rather silly for sneering at a perfectly good idea (and doing no science whatsoever on it) for over fifty years. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 23:54, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

At this point I think it is relevant to point to the talk page guidelines.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:39, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Well I'd like a better idea of what Algis Kuliukas thinks is the hypothesis. There's 'Well, as women are more likely to be swimming with their infants than men', swimming with infants, where on earth did that come from? Plus 'Some waterside hypotheses argue for (slightly) more selection from wading, swimming and diving having an effect up until the fully modern human diaspora ca 80Ka', would that really be relevant to this article even if it were true? My understanding was the hypothesis was supposed to explain some of the major differences between chimps and humans that arose millions of years ago. And I didn't think anyone supposed we swam around with infants. Neither Hardy nor Elaine Morgan seem to have said anything like what is being said here, are they things Algis Kuliukas supposes might be reasonable or where do they come from? Since 'As a co-editor of the latest book on this subject I think I know what I'm talking about' hopefully I can get some answers to these straightforward questions. Dmcq (talk) 18:28, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

If you want to discuss these topics with me, you could always join the forum I've set up @ www.waterside-hypotheses.com or go to my talk page. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 23:54, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Such a discussion ought to take place in a different forum. Why not use email? What Algis Kuliukas thinks is not really that relevant - just like it isn't relevant what I think. What's relevant is what has been published and how to present it in the article.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:34, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

He is a major contributor to this talkpage. It is relevant to know what on earth he thinks if there is to be any sort of sensible discussion of topics here. What he said above seems to be in contradiction to a lot of AAH and yet he says he is an expert. I would like to resolve what the topic is about if I am misunderstanding it. No I do not wish to go to email thank you. Dmcq (talk) 20:28, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

My main contribution has been to look at what the idea(s) is(are). Unfortunately Hardy and Morgan were not very precise about what they were proposing. Hardy asked "Was Man More Aquatic in the Past?" so I've tried to add "... and if so, how MUCH more?" A basic understanding of population genetics leads one to the simple conclusion that even a slight shift in selection could account for all the phenotypic changes proposed so I have tried to scale back the scenarios from what most people perceive the idea to be - usually an exaggerated caricature, something like "Marine Boy" - to the minimum required to cause the change that is still compatible with the evidence. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 23:54, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Well that's very unspecific and I thought they were fairly specific. What you have said is you consider anything that is less general than the most exaggerated popular version which includes humans swimming around like seals. Since you are not one of the major writers on it I think in the Wikipedia context you should confine yourself to what has been written by people like Morgan and Hardy. You may have edited an eBook on it but until you can show some peer review of your work I think we should only consider writers in that book who are already recognized authorities in the field when considering the scope of the article. Do any of them talk about the aquatic ape hypothesis in the context of less than a million years or of infants swimming? Even seals have their babies on shore and feed them there. Dmcq (talk) 00:42, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Well I guess you can claim IAR. But it would not surprise me if someone shortly decides to close this section since it is not obviously relevant to improvement of the article. If you don't like email User talkpages are also good for this kind of basic exchange of viewpoints and credentials.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:49, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I have no intention of using email except for something which really needs to use it. I see no reason to start issuing my email to the world now can you just keep quiet about it please as I have already said no. You have already been reprimanded above about civility. Dmcq (talk) 21:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing uncivil about requesting others to follow the talkpage guidelines.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:33, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I have explained why I believe the discussion is relevant, you simply ignored that and went on about stopping discussion. What's so all important to you that you try to stop a discussion about the scope of the article? Dmcq (talk) 01:01, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

This section started as a request for sources. None were provided, so the issue is moot. Wikipedia is not a web forum and it is not a place to promote a theory. So let's just stop using it as both, shall we? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:24, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

RfC: Should we include mention of the E-book by Vaneechoutte, Kuliukas and Verhaegen?

The purpose of this RfC is to establish a consensus about whether to mention the selfpublished e-book "Vaneechoutte, M; Kuliukas AV; Verhaegen M (2011). Was Man More Aquatic In The Past? Fifty Years After Alister Hardy - Waterside Hypothesis Of Human Evolution. Bentham Science Publishers." The situation is complicated by the fact that one of the editors of the book is a wikipedia editor who has argued for inclusion of the book, by the fact that it is not-peer reviewed and has not been reviewed in professional publications, and by the fact that it is one of only two edited volumes on the topic of the article, by the fact that at least one of the authors are respected authorities in the field of paleoanthropology (Philip V. Tobias). The question then is whether the book, while obviously not the preferred kind of reference for supporting facts, is notable enough to merit mention. Whether it can be used to source the opinions of the authors. Or whether the fact that it has an undetermined standing within the scientific community is grounds for excluding it all together from mention.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:52, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

At least two of the "facts" listed above here, are simply not facts.

1. "not peer reviewed" - the book was reviewed by at least one authority before publication.

2. "not been reviewed in professional publications" - John Langdon has just published as review in Homo, Journal of Comparative Human Biology. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 08:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

We can not take your word for it having been reviewed (by at least one authority). The fact is that the publisher is not an academic press, but a vanity press, and that there is no reason to consider it to have undergone a rigorous review. 2. It had not been reviewed 4 months ago when I wrote this. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:02, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

• "Do not include": As you mentioned, the source in question is a self-published, non-peer-reviewed e-book that has not received any attention or commentary at all from the relevant scientific community. It clearly fails our policy tests as a reliable source. We have no way of determining its significance, or the significance of the opinions of its authors. As such, we cannot say that the e-bbok and the opinions contained therein have any encyclopedic value for our readers whatsoever. As for some of the authors being recognized scientists, that is a bogus argument. If they valued their own work and opinions, they would have published them in genuine peer-reviewed scientific journals and books with a reputable scientific publisher that carries out real peer-review. The notability or reputation of a scientist is completely irrelevant as far as the value and validity of their research is concerned. Outside of peer-reviewed publications, their opinions on scientific theories are worth as little as yours, mine or any other schmuck, especially with a fringe topic such as this. Their work stands or falls solely on its own merits. Since the papers in the present source have not been peer-reviewed or commented on by independent sources, we have no way of knowing whether they have any merit at all, regardless of who may have written them. Especially when they deliberately skirted the accepted scientific publishing process to publicise tehmselves, their research and their theories. It has been established that the source in question is not a significant element of scholarly discourse on the topic of this article. Mentioning even that the e-book exists would imply otherwise, and would grossly violate WP:WEIGHT. It would also be tantamount to promotion and advocacy. I cannot see what encyclopedic goal is attained by informing our readers that a self-published, non-peer-reviewed e-book of dubious significance, relevance and reliability exists, especially when we souldn't use it as a source ourselves. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 16:13, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• a self published book is definitely a reliable source on the thoughts of the author, even though it is not a reliable source for more substantial facts. Since AAH is so terribly vague in its claims, it would be wonderful if we could briefly spell out in the article "this major proponent of AAH now claim that AAH is defined specifically and narrowly as X, which he calls the watershed hypoth". On the other hand, the parity rule means that once we've included such sources we may go on to cite equally nonprominent sources (such as a website privately endorsed by a couple other scientists) refuting their claims. (Then, at the end of the day, the principles of fringe and of undue weight should guide the overall tone, length, and slant of the article. Eventually it will be necessary to overrule most of the suggestions by fans of fringe views, perhaps dismissing them with a FAQ above the talk page, since WP is not the forum for advocacy.) Cesiumfrog (talk) 16:14, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• If it is a major statement on the hypothesis by proponent(s) and we have decided this is a notable hypothesis (so we have an article on it), then it should be mentioned as the proponents statement but not given added weight by explicating it in detail. Self-published authoritative responses can be treated the same: 'So and so, has detailed his arguments in ________. Such and such has responded at __________.' Just be sparing in coverage but also let the reader know. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:39, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Probably omit or only a small mention Per WP:ABOUTSELF, self-published works may be used in articles about themselves. However, if something is truly worth including in Wikipedia, it probably would been covered in secondary sources. It should probably be omitted or only contain a small mention. As it currently stands, there's one sentence in the article using this source.[68] This does not seem outrageous, however, it's up to the editors here to reach concensus on whether to include or omit this. IOW, this is kind of a borderline case. The article won't be terrible if it contains this sentence, nor will it be terrible if it's omitted. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:45, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• I'd say the minor reference use is ok. It is being used to illustrate that there is still discussion on the subject, without giving undue weight to it, or implying that there is mainstream scientific support. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Probably omit or only a small mention User:A Quest For Knowledge has crystallized my thoughts nicely. Dbrodbeck (talk) 20:32, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Do not include per DominusVobisdu. This source pretty blatantly fails RS guidelines, and even a small mention of it would be giving undue weight. With no peer review, no reputable publisher, and no secondary coverage, it's pretty much as sketchy as it gets. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 21:39, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

It pretty blatantly does not fail RS guidelines actually - since RS status is entirely dependent on what it is used to source. Dominus Vobisdu is simply wrong in his interpretation of that policy's applicability here.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:13, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Include mention, as we now have it, but not as a source for claims of fact, unless the source is Tobias or another author who is independently acceptable as a RS. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• Include At least one of the authors is some sort of recognised authority on this silliness, we can VERIFY that he put his name to the publication in question, and unlike some of the pimply faced editors I have no great faith that peer review is any great accolade of quality. Greglocock (talk) 01:50, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

"pimply faced editors"? Be civil please. --PnakoticInquisitor^talk 00:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• Include (albeit with COI accepted) Mention of the book should obviously be included on this page because it is the latest scholarly book on the subject by the very proponents of that subject. No-one is arguing that the page should be arguing even slightly more in favour of the subject because of the book, simply that anyone interested in reading this page is likely to want to know what the latest book on the subject is. The fact that even this tiny amount of objective reporting has been denied on this page for months is quite shocking. The editor here who goes by the name of Dominus Vobisdu has repeatedly been misrepresenting the book here. It is NOT self-published. Bentham approached Vaneechoutte, not the other way around. It WAS peer reviewed (to the extent that most multi-authored scientific books are) as at least one eminent authority reviewed it. The way this this "experienced editor" (and others) seems able to repeat groundless slurs like this with impunity is very worrying. Even the editor who goes by the name of WLU (the most prolific editor here - twice as many edits as the next most), who is also clearly an aquaskeptic, has voiced concerns about Dominus Vobisdu's dogmatic position. Outrageous! Algis Kuliukas (talk) 07:18, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

What or what kind of peer review was done?, sorry if you've gone through all that already. Or was that a review of the book? Some sort of thing like that could help establish its general credibility other than just for any already recognized experts in it. Dmcq (talk) 09:18, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I know for a fact that the book was reviewed, before publication, by an emeritus professor. I am not at liberty to disclose who. It is simply a groundless slur - peddled repeatedly by Dominus and others - that it is not peer reviewed and that it is self-published. Bentham approached Vaneechoutte not the other way around. Algis Kuliukas (talk) 03:43, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd really need something I could look at which demonstrated that it was peer reviewed. The name of the reviewer is not necessary but some reputable third party attesting in some way that it was peer reviewed is, otherwise it can only be used under the restrictions in WP:SPS. The only other way I know around that is is if a number of other works reference it. Dmcq (talk) 08:59, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

• Do not include unless it has has been mentioned by multiple reliable sources. Then, a brief mention of its existence would be acceptable. --PnakoticInquisitor^talk 00:41, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
• Do not include unless independent sources mention it, to establish WP:WEIGHT. The mere existence of the source is not enough. Yobol (talk) 03:40, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
• Include The book is about the AAH and gives the views of various proponents, including Elaine Morgan, who the article states is the main proponent today, and Phillip Tobias, one of the world’s leading authorities on the evolution of humans (according to Wikipedia).Yloopx (talk) 06:11, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
• Include but only for those authors who satisfy the criterion of recognized expert in a relevant field as per standard verifiability policy in WP:SPS. Dmcq (talk) 09:12, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
• Do Not Include Hard cases make bad law. There is a declared conflict of interest. As such, good faith has to be assumed. If that should alter, Horse Whipping will be required. P^) Having looked the source, and context in which it is quoted, it seems unnecessary to contain the citation. WP:OVERCITE The issue of Littoral Feeding etc is addressed in the second "Niemitz" source. Therefore both subject and criticism are addressed in a single source. There is no apparent or logical reason for the citation of the the E-book by Vaneechoutte, Kuliakas and Verhaegen. Reading the entry and the sources shows that it is redundant. Don't include. Media-hound- thethird (talk) 23:14, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

• Do not Include It is not indicated that this self published book is representative of the AAT position therefore it would be undue to include it. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:38, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

• Include. It contains recent contributions from all the main living advocates of the AAT and is therefore certainly representative of that position. Less reliable sources for anti-AAH positions are being accepted in the article. A deliberate decision not even to mention this ebook would be to apply a complete double standard, clearly influenced by a dislike of its contents (otherwise known as POV-pushing). SamuelTheGhost (talk) 16:35, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
• Comment I have read neither the ebook nor the article (at the time of typing this; I am not much interested in the hypothesis anyway, and am sceptical. I might get round to it, but...) but the RFC question is curious, and the arguments about referable material even more so. One incorporates refs for verifiability, not necessarily for authority. A ref should have a clear role in an article, and the role might be as an authority (a dictionary, an entry in a maths table or Handbook of Chem and Phys, etc, none of which need be peer reviewed, mind you! This peer review worship as she is spoke is a bad joke.) Alternatively, it could simply be that one draws attention to accounts of observations or travels. These too are not generally peer reviewed, but a reference to Herodotus, Marco Polo, Burton, Galton, Darwin, etc needs no justification, even though not one of those was was peer reviewed. Even today, one might quote text or views from from contemporary biographers, philosophers, naturalists etc without apology or peer review. What matters is not whether it is correct, but that it is correctly and relevantly cited in context. Conversely, if I cite work by Charles Fort or von Daeniken, I might be doing it in context to exhibit its untenability, whereas neither passed peer review AFAIK. In contrast (speaking as an admirer) I might cite work by Fred Hoyle both peer reviewed and unreviewed, to demonstrate untenability of material, some of which he had abandoned, and some of which still was supporting when he died. Furthermore, even informal works can be validly referred to in thoroughly technical connections as long as they are not represented as authorities. (And would you believe, some peer reviewed material diametrically and uncompromisingly opposes much other peer reviewed material? So much for authority! Which of those may we quote? BTW, those with strong stomachs might like to wade thorough the WP articles and Talk pages on Heat and related topics. Plenty of PR stuff there!)

Now, therefore : The reason one cites is to exhibit accessible sources one refers to in such a way that the reader can see what you were basing the text on. It is not for us to sneer at the reader's capacity to evaluate the material that you cite. If the ebook includes thoughtful material worthy of attention, that may be cited appropriately, with or without support or contradiction, according to its usefulness to the article, the context and the reader. These are the functions one must bear in mind in selecting material to cite; peer review and consensual approval certainly are relevant, but they are not the justification for citation. Such considerations are the sort of thing one should be thinking of in proposing to cite or exclude this ebook. If one cannot evaluate those appropriately, don't edit in WP. And if in doubt, cite appropriately. Simple, no? JonRichfield (talk) 07:30, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem with what you say is that Wikipedia editors are not well qualified to assess the material, that is why secondary sources are so important. We need external guidance. One of those is peer review. Another is that the person is a recognized authority as shown by reliable sources citing them. There are a number of ways that a source can be seen to be a WP:reliable source in a context. Unfortunately for the ebook it was not peer reviewed in any demonstrable way, as far as people here can make out it had zero oversight. However particular contents can still become okay to cite if some reliable sources cite them or if they were written by a recognized authority in the area. Darwin for instance easily satisfies the criterion of a recognized authority on evolution. Dmcq (talk) 07:48, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Why are you linking to the WP:RS guideline?? If you read it, you would have noticed the section WP:SELFSOURCE is quite explicit in its agreement with WP:SELFPUB policy. You're wrong about Darwin: he is not an authority on the modern theory of evolution (for example, he would utterly mislead you about issues Mandel figured out subsequently). And you're wrong to think authority of the source is the issue in dispute here. A self-published work by the main living proponents of AAH is, beyond question, a reliable source for the current views of the main living proponents of AAH. This RFC is just to decide whether the AAH article should tell the reader a summary of the current views of those present-day AAH proponents, or whether instead the article should only be about what AAH was in the past. Cesiumfrog (talk) 10:26, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

The topic is AAH. AAH cannot publish anything. The previous section WP:SPS is the relevant bit of policy not WP:SELFPUB. If the article was to detail anything about authorities in the field we'd need some evidence that they are authorities in the field as evidenced by citations or references in works which are reliable sources. Being published in the ebook is no evidence of that. So we're back to what I said above. Dmcq (talk) 11:34, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Who said anything about us treating them as authorities in that sense? What I think you are arguing against, I heard nobody proposing.

Sigh. Morgan's comment in the foreword does not describe a state-of-affairs I'd wish to perpetuate: "supporters and opponents of the aquatic ape hypothesis are still 'talking past one another'."[69] Cesiumfrog (talk) 13:17, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

• Let's try to reach a concensus here OK. So let's look at the sentence to which the disputed source aims to verify. "Weaker versions of the hypothesis suggesting littoral feeding and wading rather than strong aquatic adaptation have since been proposed." The sentence says that a weak hypothesis have been proposed. Now, does the reference back up this fact? Yes. I argue that by the very existence of the the source proves the point it is making, as par WP:SELFPUB (which I know some of you found irrelevant). I believe the argument should not be focused on whether the source should be included, but whether the statement "Weaker versions of the hypothesis suggesting littoral feeding and wading rather than strong aquatic adaptation have since been proposed." should be included. Keeping in mind this is not a very broad field, notability should be viewed in relative terms (can be relative because the statement is not central to the argument)
  
  As to the problem of 'weight', the next sentence "These weaker versions of the hypothesis have not yet been scientifically explored." have implied the disputed source have not been scientifically verified, thus not, I would argue, placed by undue weight on the statement. I am not an expert in the field, but this proves to me (at least) that the article will not be harmed from its mention, because the theory seems to have come from a collaboration of authors, from quite well-known institutes. Remembering that this discussion is not about the scientific validity of the source, but whether it is notable for inclusion. I believe it borderline-is. If no consensus can be reached, I think it will not benefit anyone to carry this discussion any longer, especially for a source that does not contribute a large part to the article, I do not think it will be healthy for editors to devote so much time into this discussion. Kinkreet^{~♥moshi moshi♥~} 23:51, 16 May 2012 (UTC)