http://toddcwood.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12 ... -homo.html (by a YEC, Todd Wood, but who is not part of Answers in Genesis - and dated 30 December 2016)
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2017/0 ... eview.html (by an ex YEC and Answers in Genesis supporter, David MacMillan - dated 6 January 2017; there are comments below)
Both posts refer to articles by Jean O'Micks who writes for the AiG website and also 'Answers Research Journal'. The posts refer to the following sequence of events; from my own investigation they have presented the sequence of events accurately.
Just to add that my next comments below were written BEFORE reading the whole of the Wood and MacMillan articles ie they are my original thoughts.
During 2016 both Wood and O'Micks separately concluded (see abstracts) in the Journal of Creation Theology and Science that Homo naledi (bones famously discovered in a South African cave as announced in 2015) should be considered as within the human holobaramin (a creationist attempted classification system)
http://www.coresci.org/jcts/index.php/j ... le/view/44http://www.coresci.org/jcts/index.php/j ... le/view/43 (this analysis was decribed as 'preliminary' and it focused on 'craniodental characteristics' only)
However, AiG have claimed all along on their website that Homo naledi was in fact some kind of 'ape' instead.
And by October 2016 O'Micks had decided, following completion of a postcranial analysis, that Homo naledi grouped 'away from the Homo genus'. He sought to suggest, though with tentative-sounding language, that it might be part of the Australopithecus genus instead.
On 28 December an article by Wood appeared on the AiG website, which disagreed with the O'Micks October article:
https://answersingenesis.org/creation-s ... to-omicks/From the abstract (the only part that I have read): "excluding Homo naledi from the human holobaramin is unwarranted conclusion from O'Micks' results".
Also on 28 December ie simultaneously another article by O'Micks appeared - responding to the Wood article (again I've only read the abstract):
https://answersingenesis.org/creation-s ... to-omicks/The abstract refers to morphological characteristics and also refers to 'small cranial volume'. It also seeks to make the somewhat unwarranted and bogus argument "another confounding factor in the study of H. naledi which must be addressed is that the 1,550 bones ... might come from mixed species". The original paper in elifesciences stated:
"Aside from these limited faunal materials, the Dinaledi collection is entirely composed of hominin skeletal and dental remains. The collection so far comprises 1550 fossil hominin specimens, this number includes 1413 bone specimens and 137 isolated dental specimens; an additional 53 teeth are present in mandibular or maxillary bone specimens...all morphologically informative bone specimens are clearly hominin. In all cases where elements are repeated in the sample, they are morphologically homogeneous, with variation consistent with body size and sex differences within a single population. These remains represent a minimum of 15 hominin individuals, as indicated by the repetition and presence of deciduous and adult dental elements.
The geological age of the fossils is not yet known. Excavations have thus far recovered hominin material from Unit 2 and Unit 3 in the chamber (Dirks et al., 2015). Surface-collected hominin material from the present top of Unit 3, which includes material derived from both Unit 2 and Unit 3, represents a minority of the assemblage, and is morphologically indistinguishable from material excavated from in situ within Unit 3. In addition to general morphological homogeneity including cranial shape, distinctive morphological configurations of all the recovered first metacarpals, femora, molars, lower premolars and lower canines, are identical in both surface-collected and excavated specimens (see Figure 14 later in the text). These include traits not found in any other hominin species yet described. These considerations strongly indicate that this material represents a single species, and not a commingled assemblage."
https://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560But AiG - worried about yet more evidence for evolution - still want their followers to conclude that it is "not such a clear-cut case" to put H. naledi into the Homo baramin ie it was probably just some sort of ape (and Lee Berger and co must be idiots blinded by their preconceptions).
Finally to those Wood and MacMillan articles, now read in full. Wood writes:
"So I wrote a response to O'Micks [that dated 28 December], which was published on Wednesday in ARJ. It basically says what I just said, but in more technical jargon (if you can imagine such a thing). O'Micks responded to my response, in which he repeats a few discredited claims about H. naledi. I've addressed some already (these are not the remains of two different species; the bones were not washed into the cave)."
MacMillan writes:
"Wood submitted an article to the Answers Research Journal pointing out that O’Micks reached this conclusion by excluding inconvenient data.
While I obviously disagree with Wood’s views on origins and the age of the Earth, this paper was nonetheless an excellent example of using sound research principles to identify poor scholarship. What’s most interesting, though, is how AiG responded.
AiG accepted Wood’s submission to ARJ, but only after O’Micks had an opportunity to write a rebuttal. Then, they posted the rebuttal on their website first, ahead of Wood’s article, as shown by this screengrab [or could they have appeared simultaneously but transposed so that people might read O'Micks first not Wood first]:
Now, I only have minimal experience publishing in scientific journals, but this is highly irregular. A reputable journal would either allow a letter to the editor in a later issue, or they would require a rebuttal to be submitted as a full peer-reviewed research project in a later issue. Posting a concurrent rebuttal demonstrates that ARJ’s claims of academic integrity and peer review are pure nonsense.
The rebuttal is obviously rushed and hacked-together, and repeats a litany of long-debunked claims about H. naledi: that the burial site might be a fossil graveyard flood deposit, that the bones might be a mixture of australopith and human remains, and that the location of the remains would have been too remote to be accessed for intentional burial. These have been roundly disproven. The cave itself is carved out of sedimentary rock, meaning it would have had to form after the creationist Flood; the bones were disarticulated in place, meaning they are neither a mixture of different species nor a water-borne deposit, and the cavern’s challenging accessibility is the result of additional sedimentation since the burial of these remains.
What was O’Micks response to Wood pointing out problems with his analysis? He simply argued that identifying the (nonexistent) break between humans and apes is a “holistic” undertaking and that he should be free to weight his analysis based on his intuition of what traits are more important. This, of course, is just special pleading."
Finally a quote of the week: "Creationism isn’t about science; it’s about control".