Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: The Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:11] Speaker C: How do you separate the facts from the narrative? That can be challenging to do these days, and the realm of science is no exception. Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host Andrew McDermott. Today we're sharing the second half of a conversation with Dr. Casey Luskin that originally aired on the Come Let Us Reason Together podcast hosted by Lenny Esposito.
Casey discusses the growing controversy surrounding Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a fossil often described as one of the earliest human ancestors.
But what began as a celebrated evolutionary discovery has now sparked open disagreement among evolutionary scientists themselves.
In this concluding segment, Cayce will discuss the telling researcher to specimen imbalance and in the field of paleoanthropology, the nuance between error and deception in human origins narratives and the broader implications of the controversy around the Sahelanthropus fossil.
Let's jump back into the conversation as host Lenny Esposito comments on the mainstream media acknowledgment of the internal conflict around this fossil and asks Cayce for his thoughts on the causes of that internal conflict.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah, so for, for those of you who want to follow this up, this was an article that came out May 7, 2025. I May 27, I'm sorry, 2025 in the Guardian. This is now this is not some backwoods, you know, pro intelligent design website. This is a, this is one of the landmark news organizations in the uk.
The article is entitled the Curse of To my Ancient Skull a deputed A Disputed Femur and a Bitter Feud over Humanity's Origins. So even something with the prestige of the Guardian, which is a significant again, media source, is recognizing that there is a lot riding on this and there is grant money, fame, all of these kinds of things as well as, you know, just the general idea of helping to support the transitional stages and, and the development supposedly of modern humans from these more primitive ancestors. All of that is comes into play here and it's again, why the there's so much battle. And not to mention the fact and you pointed this out again several times, is what you find when you really dig into paleoanthropology is we don't have a ton of specimens at all. We have very, very few. We have a ton of people who are trying to pull on those very few resources to make their own name and to make their own mark it. It's so there's a, there's a ratio of like researchers or publishers to specimens that's really out of whack and they make this point, I think, in the Guardian article as well.
But you. You had mentioned that in your article also. Casey, can you kind of talk about that a little bit?
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's this great quote by Jerry Quine, who's an evolutionary biologist, where he says, paleoanthropology is a field in which the students far outnumber the objects of study. And I love that quote because it really does make you appreciate there are not a lot of bones to study in this field, and they're going off a very, very limited data set making grand claims about the origin of human beings. As you said, Lenny, there's a lot of fame and research prestige and also grant money at stake with whether or not your fossil really is that upright, walking bipedal species at the dawn of the human lineage. And so that brings the human element into the conversation. A lot of politics, a lot of opportunities for people to be not perfectly objective. And I'm not criticizing these scientists. I mean, they're human beings, all human beings. All of us are capable of being susceptible to these kinds of biases and confirmation biases and our preconceived notions and letting our emotions or our preferences influence our interpretations.
So it can happen to anybody, but we have to be very, very careful with it, especially in the field of paleoanthropology. And in fact, Scott Williams, that paleoanthropologist at New York University, who was one of the lead scientists on this paper that was just published, he had a quote in the most recent Guardian article about their paper where he says, I think it's a case of too few fossils and too many researchers. And when I read that at first, I was like, well, yeah, I mean, that's. That's fair. Like, we need more fossils. Like, everybody would agree with that.
And I think that that's absolutely true. But the question that I started to wonder my mind when I learned the backstory of this fossil is, could it also, that quote that he made lend itself to a sort of a darker interpretation, that there should be fewer researchers studying the specimen? Again, he said, I think it's a case of too few fossils and too many researchers. What does he mean by too many researchers? I don't know for sure, and I don't know that Williams intended it to be taken that way, that there are too many researchers, there's be fewer people researching this. But we do know that there have been rumors that the original discoverers of this fossil have made it difficult for other competing researchers, like Roberto Macchiarelli and his team to get access to the bones so they could do their own independent assessments. And that's been a very interesting story, that there has been some very intense politics. That's why I think Machiarelli in this Guardian article said that there is, quote, competition in politics in the field of paleoanthropology.
It's been very difficult. He actually talked about how he could not get access to the bones, and I think that led to a lot of, of bitter feelings here. So this is very, very interesting and I think that it tells a lot about the human side of this story that maybe some folks would prefer that certain researchers were not expressing their opinions on this fossil.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah, and again, we all recognize that what science is, is one puts forth a hypothesis and the scientific method by its nature is to say, can that hypothesis be broken? Can it be shown to be false? So the idea that you can put something up and have a critical push against it, that's part of the scientific process. The fact that you would be hesitant or reticent to do so, that then is a red flag. It kind of prompts a question, you know, why?
Because now we're not doing science anymore. We're doing something different. We're doing, we're having protectionism show up. And again, as we said, this was, it's not the first time that, and not all prior discoveries that maybe people had assumed were part of an evolutionary chain have been necessarily frauds. They were just sometimes they're mistaken. Right? There were mistaken discoveries that people hadn't either misidentified or had hoped would fit in this lineage and it turned out later to be wrong. And, and Neanderthal even, for example, there was that point in time where people thought Neanderthals were a direct, you know, previous version of humanity in that, that we came out of the Neanderthal and that that's just simply not true. They're a side, actually a side lineage. So, so these kinds of things happen and that's why we need to push back so we don't make the mistakes. So having this happen in this way and having kind of this clandestine, this cloak and dagger thing, this protectionism, especially when you're talking about the highest ranks in the archeological team that discovered, does raise certain concerns. And it's raising concerns, as you're saying, even within those who are staunch evolutionists. These are, these are other folks who, I mean, they've dedicated their life to paleoanthrop, not just some wacky intelligent design guys off to the side saying, hey, it's a Big fight within the paleoanthropological framework, right?
[00:08:57] Speaker B: No, 100%. These complaints about the politics and the competition in paleoanthropology are coming from mainstream researchers. They're not coming from folks in the ID camp or anything like that. And I think this is pretty widely accepted that this is a field with a lot of. Of infighting. A lot of the human element comes into play, perhaps more than other fields. Some of it has to do with the fact that the data set is so limited, as we mentioned, and some of it has to do, I think, with the fact that we're studying a topic that is of great momentous importance to human beings. Our very origins. Where did humanity originate from? How did we arise? So, absolutely, you've got this perfect storm for a lot of human element politics and competition to come in here. And I also want to backtrack to what you said a moment ago, Lenny. Of course, we're not saying that the vast majority or even very many of these fines have anything to do with fraud. I mean, people can interpret things in good faith in different ways. You can have two people witnessing a car accident and they come to very different conclusions about whether or not it was this person's fault or that person's fault. Look at politics today. We see an incident in a, with a shooting, a law enforcement shooting of a citizen who's trying to exercise their First Amendment rights. And everybody comes to a different conclusion about, okay, was the officer justified or was she in the wrong or was she in the right? You know, people see the same set of facts, come to very different conclusions, and that happens sometimes in science, too.
What's important, I think, is for the public to realize that scientists had different opinions. Because if you read some of the news headlines, you know, the Guardian did a great job of reporting on the controversy over this fossil. But a lot of times and most of the media stories, frankly, even here, did not do that. They just reported. Oh, a new paper in the journal Science Advances has shown that this was an upright, walking, bipedal species that is a human ancestor, and it stood at the dawn of the human lineage right after our supposed split with chimps. Okay, that is the standard line you'll see in most of the news coverage of this scientific paper. But you find a couple stories, though, in some other news sources. The Guardian again, has done a great job also, frankly, and kudos to these sources. The Washington Post cited Roberto Macchiarelli and his criticisms of the bipedal view. New scientists did a good job of citing a scientist named Zanoli and how he was critical of the bipedal view. Another actually scientific American talked about a scientist named Maureen Cazenave at the Max Planck Institute in Germany who was critical of the view that this femur shows bipedalism.
And then also, of course, the Guardian article covered it. So there were a few stories and there have been a lot of news stories on this paper. A few stories did acknowledge, you know, it may be buried way down at the bottom of the story, but at least they did it, that there are scientists who are skeptical, still skeptical even after this new paper, of the claims that this was a bipedal upright walking species.
However, if you have to dig to find that, okay.
Otherwise the view that you're going to receive if you just read the average news story in the mainstream media is you're going to think, oh, science, you know, as if science speaks monolithically. Science has shown that this is a new human ancestor and we can now go to bed at night sleeping well, knowing that this is the quote, unquote, missing link or whatever the media is calling it, right?
So this happens and you've got to be willing to dig into the literature and also the news to find some of the critics sometimes, but they're there. This is one of the reasons why at Science and Culture Today, which is our website scienceandculture.com, we work hard to try to help people see what's really going on in the scientific community that, and dig up this information that often does not made very easy to find for the public by most of the mainstream media.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: Okay, and the original, also in the original argument, the original kind of back and forth, we're talking about journals like Science Advances, the Journal of Human Evolution. These are actually top ranking journals. These aren't side journals. I mean, I know new scientists will publish an article, things like that, but that's a popularizing magazine. That's not for the individuals who are actually doing the work day in and day out. Those individuals who are actually doing the science and are checking one another. The actual peer review happens in journals like Science Advances or the Journal of Human Evolution. And this is where this discussion is going on. Now there may be folks who say, well, yeah, see, there's discussion going on in the, in the journals, therefore the science is working.
But our complaint isn't that the discussion is happening now. We're, we're all for that. I'm, I'm glad to see that's happening. The problem is it was delayed and it seems to be that it was intentionally delayed for much longer than it should have been, at least. And then it was initially generated because the femur was exposed to a person's eyes who shouldn't have seen it and those things that are coming out of the Guardian article. So it was almost like, yes, the discussion's going on, but it had to be forced into the mainstream in order for that discussion to even happen. And again, that's where you start to say this is almost more than just a blind bias. There's something else that's happening here.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah, but what you just described is kind of the message that that Guardian article from last year wants to communicate, that if this graduate student had not stumbled upon this femur and then she showed it to her, you know, this other faculty member, would we even be talking about this femur today? Would it ever have ever come to light? I don't know. But the message is that it was hidden for a long time, possibly because it didn't fit the narrative that this is a bipedal human ancestor.
So again, this is the, this is the political side of the issue and the media plays along with it. Sometimes the media will often, you know, they have an agenda to promote human evolution, to promote Darwin. And so a lot of times they, you know, I think in this case the human element was so interesting that they were willing to dig into it and talk about it because that was also very good for selling newspapers probably.
And I appreciate, I'm fine with that. I think the Guardian wrote a very couple very good stories about this, this study in this paper.
However, it doesn't usually happen, usually just gets a lightweight treatment, dumbing down the evidence to promote evolution of the public. So I'm glad this is brought to light here.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Well, yeah, it makes you wonder how many of the prior, you know, announcements have been colored and we just don't know all of the facts. And to be fair, I mean, I, I can hear some people say something like, you know, well, this is just a one off. This is, this doesn't happen a lot. Well, let's talk about the, the recent article that I had mentioned before from the New York Times, Moroccan Cafe also yields a possible missing link in human evolution. Right. That's the, that's the selling point. That's what's going to, you know, get clicks, sell papers and things like that. But when you look at the paper in nature, what did they actually find? So here's a, here's a completely separate case of paleoanthropology, something that's more recent, actually. It's happening, it's coming out right this year or last year.
And it's a 700,000-year-old ancestor or a 700,000-year-odd fossil, I guess. And the New York Times is labeling it a missing link. How are they, first of all, where are they getting that concept from? That it. There's some kind of intermediate. Where did, where did they draw that from?
And what is the actual find that we're looking at?
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, so, great, great questions, Lenny. So this, this other paper that just came out in the journal Nature reported a few bones that were found from a specimen in Morocco.
Specifically, they found three jawbones, one of which was very complete, another of which was a half jawbone, a half mandible, and the third of which was, was very, very fragmented. They found some teeth.
I would say it was more than a few, but less than a mouthful of teeth. And they also found eight vertebrae. Okay. There was also a chewed up femoral shaft that was found in the cave, but the stratigraphic relationship between the femoral shaft and the other bones was uncertain. Caves are sometimes described as being like washing machines. They can fill up with water and dirt and everything gets jumbled around. So it's not always clear what is related to what.
I don't know exactly where the femur was found in the cave, but it's not clear that it's related to these other bones. So what they found was interesting, but it's not a lot to go on.
A few jaw bones, a few vertebrae and a few teeth is not enough to put together a really clear picture of this being some momentous fossil find. Now, that being found, even based upon what they did find, they believed that this fossil was at the base of our species Homo sapiens. Okay, so basically it was the member of the genus or the species Homo sapiens. Even paleoanthropologist John Hawks, who's a very well known guy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, very good paleoanthropologist. He wrote on his website, he wasn't an author on the paper, but he said, quote, these fossils are Homo sapiens. Okay, so we're dealing with fossils here that are members of our own species.
It's not a very momentous find in that, you know. Yeah, they found some teeth, they found a couple jawbones, they found some vertebrae. Great, that's really cool. But does that justify the New York Times running the headline that this is a, quote, possible missing link in human evolution? I don't think so. I think they're Overstating things to get clickbait from the public and to promote Darwin as they have the right to do, but we also have the right to criticize them for overstating what was found. And I think that's absolutely what's going on here.
The media always looks for an opportunity to promote evolution of the public, to go on a little crusade to evangelize folks for Darwin. And that's exactly what is going on here. And I want to say that, you know, you talked about the Sahelanthropuschadensis paper not just being a one off and that there was another view and that there was some media spin going on that. You're absolutely right, Lenny. We see this same rhetorical dynamic in the news media over and over and over again, where a paper comes out, a fossil is first reported and the media goes, literally goes ape, you know, promoting evolution, promoting human evolution to the public.
And invariably if you then dig into the technical literature and you look at what was actually found and then you read what other scientists are saying, this is especially true with human origins, human evolution. You find that there are critics of the media narrative critics of the view that this is some missing link or some crucial, you know, human ancestor or whatever.
You find people who are taking a different view. And then usually if you wait another, you know, say six months, 12 months, whatever, you will then find papers coming out in the technical literature criticizing that original paper that claimed that this was some really important momentous fossil find that somehow links humans back to ape like ancestors. You'll find that they show up in both sort of the popular conversation, the critics, and also even in the technical literature eventually. And so eventually cooler and calmer heads will prevail and you will see that the original media hype around the first stories that came out when the fossil was first reported, that really was overblown, that was really overstated. And I think that's what's going on here.
I don't even think you need to probably publish much in the way of detailed technical criticism of this fossil find. There wasn't much found to begin with. And we know even if we just take everything the paper said at face value, it's probably a member of our own species or something very, very, very human, like at the very least.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean the, the authors really though seem to, to kind of push the narrative a little bit themselves. I mean the, the, the title of the Nature article is Early Hominins from Morocco, Basal to the Homo sapiens lineage. Now, basal means base, right? It means, and the abstract reads, paleogenetic evidence suggests that the last common ancestor of present day humans, Neanderthals and denisovians, lived around 765 to 550, 000 years ago.
However, both the geographical distribution and morphology of these ancestral humans remain uncertain. The Homo antecessor Fossils from the TD6 layer of Grandolina at Atapuruca, Spain, dated between 950 ka and 770 ka have been proposed as potential candidates for this ancestral population. So it seems like the authors themselves are kind of nudging this. They've been proposed as potential candidates, notice scientists always, they'll always use the wiggle words there, right? And then what happens is when the New York Times or Reuters picks up on this, they just drop the proposed and potential. That's all they do. And they, they rewrite it in language that you and I would understand as missing link, or maybe missing link, but, but it, it does feel like this first article is, is kind of again trying to say, could it be? Is it possible?
And then, you know, it's almost a Martin Bailey tactic where, where you make this grandiose claim and then when you get challenged and well, I never actually said it was this. I said, you know, we should consider it as one possibility, right? And, and so you get this kind of Martin Bailey moving back and forth. And again, I guess my what, what the big goal is in this discussion is to say it doesn't feel like this, you know, disassociated or disinterested science. I should say, it doesn't feel like you're detached, you're objective, you just want to find the answers to what's really out there. It feels like you're pushing a point of view, you're pushing a narrative. And that is when I start to see these things pile up. You, you know, it's a red flag for me. I, I told you before that I visited the Smithsonian Institute and when you get to the paleoanthropology system, the origin of it, it is the single most fascinating thing to see how often that section keeps being changed. I mean, they, they were covering plaques and they had stickers on. Some said this is no longer what we thought. And it's always under revision because nobody can seem to get the story straight.
So that's the kind of, the crux of the issue for me is how often, as you say, this seems to happen.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: No, I fully agree with you. And I just learned a new term. I didn't know the term Mott and Bailey tactic, but you're Absolutely right. Where they make this sort of bold claim initially, but then as soon as you challenge them, they retreat back to something that isn't quite so controversial but easier to defend. So, absolutely, I think that's what they do.
And yeah, I mean, I think that the Smithsonian exhibit is a classic example.
We're forever. How many times have we heard the phrase in the media that this new fossil find, quote, rewrites the story of human evolution? Oh, my gosh, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that claim, I'd probably have quite a few nickels. So, yeah, I mean, it's always being revised, it's always being rewritten. And of course, our friends in the evolutionary scientific community will say, oh, well, this is how science works. It's always progressing, finding new things.
That's true. But if the current paradigm is so easily overturned on a regular basis, why are you so confident that the latest find is like, the answer and that you actually are finally figured out what's really going on if it's just going to be overturned next week? And that's the question we really have
[00:25:17] Speaker A: to ask, you know, in the medieval period. And I'm going to be very careful here because somebody could think, think that I'm trying to over disparage the, an entire field of research, and I'm not, but I'm, I'm, I'm trying to draw some kind of an analogy. In the medieval period, there was an understanding that chemicals change material, that, that, that chemical changes would produce something new or different than what was before. They, for example, iron to steel, things of this nature. And one of the things that alchemists start to do, they were hoping to do, and it would make sense that they would try to do this because it would mean a lot of money, was they were trying to change lead to gold.
This is a very famous, you know, point of departure where all these guys were. And then you had a lot of charlatans who were going out there and claiming that they could do that just so they could make a buck. But there was a lot of actual real research. And when you'd go down one field and you'd find that, oh, no, that didn't work, and then you go down another field, you find, oh, no, that that doesn't work.
It would be easy for the medievalists to say, well, but we're learning so much. We know that this doesn't work and this doesn't work. The problem is none of it will ever work.
Gold is an element. Lead is an element. You have to change the atomic structure for that transference to happen. You'll never get led to gold. It just. We know that now, but back then you could hundreds of years of testing and saying, we're gaining in our knowledge because we're eliminating certain possibilities. And at one point you start to wonder how often or when is the point at which we start to say, you know, we're running out of ideas here as to showing how humans are just another mammal or just another organism that came from a common ancestor as every other organism on Earth. And I start to wonder if that's going to be a problem.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's always being revised. It's always changing. And you have to ask the question, you know, can I really trust the bold assertions that are being made right now? So I, I very much agree with what you're saying, Lenny.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Okay. Any other thoughts, last thoughts on this area before we. Before we say goodbye?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: No. Great. Great topic. I'm so glad we got to bring these things out. And you know, I actually, as you were talking just now, I was thinking about the phrase sheds light. Okay. We're always hearing this term in the news media talking about scientific discoveries. This sheds light on how that happened. Okay. You know, are they chasing down a rabbit that they can never catch? Maybe. So kind of like what you said, it's like the quest for alchemy. They're never going to actually solve that, that quest. But when you hear these buzzwords, you know, where that this sheds light on that or this rewrites the story of that. I think people should just be skeptical and be cautious. You know, how much do they.
How confident are they really in the grand, bold conclusions? And it is true that every find does bring us a little bit closer to the truth. I agree with that. But you have to ask the question if we're getting closer to the truth, that they want you to believe the paradigm of evolutionary biology, or are they getting closer to perhaps something else? And I think that's the big question.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: C.S. lewis famously said, I think in Mere Christianity that was.
He gave an analogy of, say, if you're walking on top of a mountain, you're trying to get to your town, right? And he wants to get into his cottage, his vacation cottage, so he can have his bath and have his tea and relax. And he says, I'm walking on the crest of the hill and I can see my cottage right below me, and I'm fairly close to my cottage, but actually I'm much farther than you would think because the, the way you get closer to I can't just fly. He goes the way you get closer to something, sometimes you have to turn around and go back.
By turning around and going back, you're actually making progress towards your ultimate goal because you have to then take the other fork in the road and move to the other side. And that's when you're actually closer to your bath and your tea. And I think Louis makes an interesting point there. And sometimes in science, I think that's true as well, where we may have to stop, we find ourselves going down a blind alley that has a dead end. And in order to make progress, you have to turn around, go back, and start rethinking some of our assumptions. Hopefully we can learn from these kinds of examples and then leverage them to make thoughtful decisions on what different discoveries actually do show.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Well, well said, Lenny. Thank you very much. Yeah.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: All right. Thanks, Casey, so much and I'm sure we'll talk soon.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Sounds good. Thanks a lot.
[00:30:17] Speaker C: That was Dr. Casey Luskin discussing the controversy surrounding the sahelanthropuschadensis fossil and the associated problems in the field of paleoanthropology.
If you haven't listened to the first half of the conversation in a separate episode, be sure to do so.
This exchange serves as a good reminder that when it comes to human origins, we should look past the bold claims and flashy media reports right to the facts, which often tell a very different story.
We're grateful to Lenny Esposito and Cumreason Ministries for allowing us to share this conversation here for ID the Future. I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for joining us.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Visit us at idthefuture. Com and intelligentdesign. Org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
