You blew it up, you damn dirty scientists!

An article was brought to my attention recently that piqued the argumentative centre of my brain. It spoke of the printing of a new claim by Jeffrey Schwartz and John Rehan in a scientific journal (Journal of Biogeography, DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02141.x if you care) that the current means in which we determine the relationship between us and our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom are wrong, and that taxonomic methods prove that orang-utans, not chimpanzees, are our nearest relatives.

Stay with me here. I’m sure that most people would respond with a resounding “who cares”, and so do I really. What got my attention wasn’t the subject of the article, but the response from the scientific community. Schwartz, Rehan and Robert Whittaker (editor of Journal of Biogeography) have all come under some pretty serious fire from the rest of the scientific community, because the claim declares that DNA sequencing is flawed. Many people are shocked that the journal published it at all. And I am shocked that scientists, of all people, would be so narrow-minded.

It makes me ask the question: whose opinion matters? And it’s not an easy question to answer.

Throughout history, general knowledge (that is, what we commonly take to be fact) has always been under attack by people with wild claims and differing opinions. Galileo was imprisoned for claiming many things that were thought to be wrong, that we now believe to be true. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace made some pretty tremendous claims about how we came to be here, and scientifically at least we now believe them to be true. Just because someone’s idea doesn’t swim with the proverbial school, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

So whose opinion matters more? If we were shown two leading theories of gravity for instance, are you more likely to listen to the professor who aced every test, or the man who failed maths in school? We still use general relativity today. Should someone’s notion be discounted because of who they are?

Does my opinion actually matter? I’m writing this article expressing it. If you’re reading it, surely I have some effect on you. Does your opinion matter? If a qualified journalist were to tell you that I am wrong, and they were right, who would you listen to?

Like I said, it’s a tricky question. We should at least respect the right of everyone to have their proposal properly interrogated. It may be a stupid idea, but there might be a small gem of genius embedded within. Schwartz and Rehan were brave enough to publish their theory, and the scientific community should have the respect to debate the point. Who knows, maybe something as simple as arguing about which is the more human monkey will shine light on the flaws of genome science and taxonomy, and force us to re-evaluate what we think to be true.

Or maybe I’m reading way too much into it, and this journal is full of shit. Time will tell.