Age of ancient humans reassessed ...
 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4269299.stm

Gotta love the fluidity of truth.

Another article from one of my favorite newspapers ...
 

This really isn't a big deal. Early hominins date back at least 4 million years, so whether the first members of what we decide to call Homo sapiens lived 180,000 years ago or 195,000 doesn't matter one bit.

Also, the article, as they all do, mischaracterizes things completely. "Scientists" didn't "believe" that the first homo sapiens lived any amount of time ago, or if they did it was a private feeling. All "scientists" know is the age of the fossils that we have actually found.

The techniques used to accurately date fossils are constantly improving, and yet the age of the earth and the age of most fossils hasn't changed much. These particular specimens are interesting for that reason, but as far as actual knowledge we gain from them, the articles are typically sensationalist.

It should also be noted that one scientific paper doesn't dictate science. One paper, plus a bunch of responses and further studies constitutes science. I haven't looked at the fossils myself, and can't say whether this date will hold up at all.

So glad you made the switch to CougarGuard, Woot.

I also appreciate your contributions, tooblue. I still think you're dead wrong on science issues. :)

That whole "scientific method" crap just doesn't work for you, does it?

Just for the hell of it, I'd like to see woot and Sooner start lecturing TooBlue on artistic technique.

Tooblue isn't lecturing anyone. His POV is well known and he is posting links that he thinks are interesting. This sort of reaction is tantamount to protesters shouting down your favorite politician at a public speech. His point here seems to be that what is known changes. That is true. The conclusions we each may draw from this evidence, however, will likely be different, but so what?

Woot, while your assessment of the articles is accurate from your point of view, it is a bit picky to make a criticism such as this:

In fact, Tooblue's point is that "scientists" who claimed they "know" the age of fossils have in fact really engaged in a form of belief, relying on the accuracy of the methods available to them which can change and then the state of their "knowledge" changes. So for your average schmuck like me, it is just a belief. I think this position is well-supported by his posted links and by the reality of a pursuit for knowledge, even one rigorously based on the scientific method.

That's why I'm trying to educate schmucks like you. :)

But seriously, we do actually "know" a lot. We know that the earth is really, really old, and that life is the result of the natural selection of beneficial mutations in individual organisms. We know that the earth is an oblate spheroid (as opposed to flat or any other shape), and that continents move very slowly through the mechanisms described by plate tectonics. And on and on.

What we don't know is the exact time when humans split from chimps on the evolutionary tree (or more accurately, the evolutionary bush). We have various methods that all independently put it somewhere around 5-7 million years ago, but we don't know. Even if we did find an actual fossil from the first individual of the clade leading to Homo sapiens, there wouldn't be a good way to actually know that we did. We have specimens from that time period, so for all we know we found it already.

Here's the bottom line: When the anti-science crowd emphasizes such obviously trivial facts and uses them to try to discredit all of science, it's dishonest, intellectually bankrupt, and annoying.

Yes, there are scientists that are a little bit too willing to draw strong conclusions. They are in the minority, and do not discredit the mechanisms of science. A proper understanding of what the scientific method is, even in a vacuum, should be enough to conclude that if done right, science is the only way to truly learn anything.

The problem with the scientific method is it can't just decide on what's true and stop looking. It drives you nuts the way it comes up with new and different truths all the time, and it just snow balls.

That sounds like a reason to embrace religion. It finds it's version of the truth and stops looking.