Originally published at: A collection of very short scientific papers | Boing Boing
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SEE ALSO
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Counterpoint:
No.
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I read a report about Sloth Ambulation. It was a slow news day.
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Thank you for that link.
I enjoyed the Writer’s Block paper immensely - I think it’s the Reviewer comment that makes it so perfect.
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If you are interested, it’s that Matt Cartmill had been publishing a series of papers arguing that it was meaningless to talk about when the “first humans” existed because he believed that the only real entities were species and it is arbitrary which species other than Homo sapiens are human. Tattersall was annoyed by how often Cartmill repeated this one point (which he didn’t find very interesting or insightful) in multiple papers.
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To be fair, “the boundaries between species and the definitions of category words in general are only loosely defined” is not a very insightful point if you already know it. Which, all biologists should, but some still seem to get worked up about quite a bit.
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Some? SOME?
This might qualify to be the understatement of the month on my personal list.
There are plenty of papers each year written about species delineation, and I have yet to find anyone in my cohort of biologists who would not jump to the occasion discussing species, subspecies, and other taxonomic levels of a given group of organisms they feel they are familiar with.
I am under the strong and distinct impression that the vast majority of biologists give the concept what a species is less thought than how they brew their coffee (or tea). And while this might sound like my usual exaggeration, I would literally bet money that my impression would hold true if tested as a hypothesis. Try falsify this one!
Oh, and BTW: I looked at some Cartmill papers, and their style is rather on the opposite spectrum from Tattersall’s reply. Cool.
Aside: I wonder if there already is a paper providing a meme as graphical abstract.
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concision is not precision
Ok, I know it’s that fuckwit arsehole Scott Adams, but about 20 years ago he did nail it with this one:
(Something I’d pin up above my cube’s PC regularly when some fuckwit manager had edited my carefully crafted analysis of some thing or other, “because they won’t read it if it’s this long” - “ok - so either way they won’t know, but my way, my arse is covered - and so is yours, mate”)
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I was trying to be polite, so thank you for the confirmation 
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