December 21, 2010

Big science news coming

I don't know what it is, but I've been alerted that there should be science news soon of a caliber comparable to the recent human-neanderthal inter-mating story.

By Steve Sailer on 12/21/2010

56 comments:

josh said...

Well, yeah, eventually.

Big political developments to arise!

12/21/10, 5:32 AM
dearieme said...

We're all descended from the ring-tailed lemur?

12/21/10, 7:29 AM
Peter Frost said...

The Neanderthal admixture finding was no big deal. Modern Eurasians have 1 to 4% Neanderthal admixture and Modern Africans probably have a higher level of admixture from local archaic hominims. The big question is whether this admixture is linked to anything useful.

Upcoming news this year:

- Population variation at the ASPM and microcephalin loci will be linked to a specific mental ability

- A Chinese research team will discover that the face recognition module in the human brain includes a hardwired capacity to recognize differences in skin tone (for both luminosity and coloration)

- It will be found that certain STDs modify the behavior of their human hosts.

- Certain sexual fetishes will be linked to behavioral manipulation by a variety of vaginal yeast.

- North Korea will deliver an ultimatum to South Korea. Renounce multiculturalism or else! No one will take the threat seriously.

- The stock market will reach record highs. People will think that a new bout of prosperity is just around the corner. Almost no one will notice the ominous rise in food prices.

12/21/10, 7:37 AM
Anonymous said...

Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if separate species we be—for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world. If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night.

12/21/10, 8:44 AM
Anonymous said...

I bet it's the finding of Homo erectus genes in modern humans.

12/21/10, 9:24 AM
Truth said...

Sorry Steve, I'm going to have to steal your thunder here, ready?

OK folks, it's been discovered today by a Finish scientist that water actually flows uphill.

12/21/10, 9:41 AM
Anonymous said...

Smoking is good for you!

12/21/10, 10:15 AM
Simon in London said...

Any bets? I've been seeing a lot of stories about (primitive) extra-terrestrial life recently, that might be one possibility.

12/21/10, 10:27 AM
Geoff Matthews said...

Is it that the arsenic-based life form isn't?

12/21/10, 10:32 AM
fbj said...

GC ranted a few years ago about "the coming storm" of HBD revelations. I hope it's finally here...

12/21/10, 10:35 AM
Anonymous said...

When will we be hearing about it specifically. Something new from Harpending, Cochrane, and/or Hawks, perhaps? Anyone?

12/21/10, 10:45 AM
Anonymous said...

Oh, come on. This is just ridiculous. At least give a teaser: the Beijing Genomics Institute IQ study Steve Hsu is participating in (and which has already found some IQ gene variants, he says) is going to release its results? Ashkenazi selection data? Nine times out of ten when you announce forthcoming SEKRIT SCIENCE it's by way of the Cochran-Harpending-Hawks clique, so it's safe to assume it's one of their pet projects.

12/21/10, 10:48 AM
Anonymous said...

human-neanderthal inter-mating

A little off-topic, but we need to hear Whiskey's commentary on this story [and especially this picture].

12/21/10, 10:53 AM
Anonymous said...

?

http://www.dailytech.com/Tunneling+Electrode+Junction+Device+Could+Sequence+Human+DNA+in+Minutes/article20449c.htm

12/21/10, 11:06 AM
Anonymous said...

How soon is soon. Hours? Weeks?

12/21/10, 12:23 PM
Anonymous said...

Anyone else feel giddy at the prospect of another HBD surprise?

I just LOVE how hard core egalitarians have to carefully quarantine information like Neanderthal admixture in (gasp) some populations but not others.

Their ever growing cognitive dissonance is pure heavenly nectar.

12/21/10, 12:54 PM
Fontchévade said...

Sounds like another caveman update! Is it that another non-human hominoid coexisted with us until relatively recent times?

12/21/10, 3:34 PM
Wes said...

Thanks for the update! I love all the new human science being developed. As I am sure most are aware, Jonathan Haidt wrote that there would be a lot of new evidence for behavioral differences between ethnic groups, that would be coming very soon.

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_4.html#haidt

12/21/10, 4:01 PM
Anonymous said...

The problem with the Neanderthal interbreeding issue is that everyone in the press seems to believe that it morally ascendant to lie and/or be obscure.

We learn that there are about 1 to 4 percent of our genes that come from Neanderthals. But since these are the same people who told us that we share 98%+ of our genes with chimpanzees, what does this mean? Was that base pairs not genes?

How does this kind of gene counting relate to haplotype distances?

There are only about 20K to 25K genes in humans. That's not very many genes - maybe a few as 200 are therefore from Neanderthals - or maybe as many as a thousand. Are these active protein coding genes? If so, 1000 would seem to be quite a lot.

It would be helpful if someone would express the differences between say sub-Saharan blacks with those Chinese who do so well on the tests in terms of gene differences. I'm guessing perhaps 100 to 300 genes or around half of the Neanderthal contribution to Europeans. I don't expect to see this kind of analysis in The New York Times.

Neanderthals had bigger brains than modern humans. This could have been a domestication phenomenon e.g. wolves have bigger brains than dogs. Or it might be something else. In any case I don't have much faith that brain gene discoveries will be reported candidly.

Now that the federal government has assumed the responsibility for policing the web, where will we go for this kind of information?

Albertosaurus

12/21/10, 4:03 PM
anony-mouse said...

Extremely advanced holo-suites?

12/21/10, 4:09 PM
Dutch Boy said...

The Neanderthals WERE human!

12/21/10, 5:14 PM
Anonymous said...

Let me guess: Kenyan-Hawaiian mating produces Chicago politician...

12/21/10, 5:34 PM
B322 said...

A listing of genes accounting for a total of 60% of human variance in IQ, and their varying frequencies among human populations.

I'm not trying to be funny, that is just my guess.

12/21/10, 8:42 PM
Anonymous said...

Is it related to this, from J. Hawk's blog?

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/

12/21/10, 8:44 PM
Anonymous said...

Is it that the arsenic-based life form isn't?

They're called Blue Meanies. And they have been around on Earth for 2000 years or maybe more.

12/21/10, 8:57 PM
Nanonymous said...

@Peter Frost:

That's a lot of news for this year :-) Behavioral manipulation yeasts sounds intriguing though.

12/21/10, 9:06 PM
Anonymous said...

Hey, Peter Frost's predictions are pretty intriguing.

Serious about any of those relating to STDs and fetishes, Peter?

I've been following your comments on facial luminosity and hue. Very interesting.

12/21/10, 9:13 PM
Mr. Anon said...

Dunkin' Donuts is People!

12/21/10, 9:18 PM
Steve Sailer said...

It's in the comments, but I won't say which comments.

12/21/10, 10:45 PM
Anonymous said...

Has to have something to do with genetics and intelligence--the poster who mentioned the Cochran, Harpending, Hawks connection is, IMO, on target.

12/21/10, 10:50 PM
TH said...

It's obviously about introgression with some other archaic Homo species.

12/22/10, 12:41 AM
Anonymous said...

Thank God for unethical Chinese scientists... although I don't know if this upcoming news is their doing.

12/22/10, 12:48 AM
Sideways said...

- Population variation at the ASPM and microcephalin loci will be linked to a specific mental ability

Given that Steve has said one of these is what he was thinking of, this seems most likely.

Also, for those here who don't know who Peter Frost is, he's a legitimate scientist (physical anthropologist)

12/22/10, 2:10 AM
Matt said...

"It's obviously about introgression with some other archaic Homo species."

http://preview.tinyurl.com/39noyjo

H/T Razib Khan

"The latest analysis of the nuclear genome of the (Denisova) hominid and morphology of a tooth from the same specimen suggests a different story...

On this basis, the Denisovanes seem to have been a group of hominids who shared a common origin with the ancient Neanderthals, but later had a different evolution. Unlike the Neanderthals, the Denisovans not contribute to all Eurasian genes today.

However, appear to be closely related to modern populations in Melanesia, a region of Oceania, which suggests that there was interbreeding with the antepsados of the Melanesians. In fact, the current Melanesians are between 4% and 6% of the genetic material Denisovanes extinguished. The discovery of Denisovanes south of Siberia suggests that this group occupied much of Asia during the late Pleistocene - about 50,000 years ago."

It would be interesting to know whether than 4%-6% works out in addition to the Neanderthal ancestry shared by all Out of Africa populations. If Melanesian groups have an uptick of ancestry which is relatively Neandertal similar then the "problem" of Neandertal admixture implausibly being uniform across Eurasia might be resolved.

12/22/10, 7:07 AM
TH said...

Is it related to this?

12/22/10, 8:04 AM
Peter Frost said...

Steve gets his science info from the usual suspects. I imagine they found an introgressed Neanderthal gene that does something useful.

"Serious about any of those relating to STDs and fetishes, Peter?"

There is already evidence that vaginal yeast modifies the sexual behavior of its female host. It seems to me logical that the same microbe would try to modify the behavior of the regular male partner. I'll elaborate on my reasoning in one of my posts ...

12/22/10, 8:51 AM
Anonymous said...

I want to know, how soon is soon?

12/22/10, 9:24 AM
TH said...

A Spanish newspaper accidentally (?) broke the news already.

12/22/10, 9:31 AM
TH said...

It's out now. There will probably be other similar findings in the future. "Out of Africa" is no longer tenable as such.

12/22/10, 10:15 AM
Anonymous said...

Also, for those here who don't know who Peter Frost is, he's a legitimate scientist (physical anthropologist)

He must have a bullet-proof guarantee of tenure if he's posting under his own name at this blog.

And even with tenure, that won't prevent the crazies from protesting outside his office [or slashing his tires in the parking lot].

12/22/10, 10:27 AM
Anonymous said...

I still think Steve’s chart with the PISA score of American Whites beating almost all Europeans is the biggest social science story of the year.

Most of my friends are HDB-believers with advanced degrees, and they were all shocked.

American schools are apparently among the best in the world. Wow! All we have been told is a lie.

/Guy Incognito

12/22/10, 10:48 AM
jody said...

it won't be big news, but it might be important in the HBD world. i mean, the majority of nobel science prize level work is not considered big news, so this won't be either. this will be less big than the discovery that one type of bacteria can metabolize arsenic.

"A Chinese research team will discover that the face recognition module in the human brain includes a hardwired capacity to recognize differences in skin tone"

haha wtf. i'll eat my own expensive running shoes if this happens. i need these shoes too, have to put on 20 miles a week at least, which sucks in the winter.

haven't seen an important contribution in that field from chinese researchers...ever, as far as i can tell.

i do think it was hilarious this year how the google PR team is trying to take credit for inventing "the self driving car" when it actually has been in development for a long time, a decade at least, before google contributed anything. i was there when sebastian thrun won the DARPA grand challenge.

also dumb: the US army's new XM25 grenade rifle. they wasted over 10 years developing that thing. was supposed to be connected to a rifle before they realized that was stupid. the french abandoned this project a long time ago when they figured out you needed a grenade of at least 30mm, and the US grenade is...25mm. it was actually 20mm when they started. i think only south korea has a similar weapon.

12/22/10, 11:05 AM
Anonymous said...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12059564

12/22/10, 11:28 AM
Anonymous said...

The BBC have jus issued a news story about 'Denisovans' - a name given to a 'primitive type of man' (named after a Siberian cave system apparently) and the fact that their DNA has been analysed.
Apparently 3 or 4 distinctive subspecies of man existed in those times (neaderthals, hobbits, denisovans) and Denisovan gene sequences are found in modern Papuans, but no one else.A full write up is in 'Nature' magazine - science's temple of high priests.
'Out of Africa' is seriously challenged.

12/22/10, 11:30 AM
Anonymous said...

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december202010/history-giants-ta.php

this is weird too, if true.

12/22/10, 11:43 AM
Nanonymous said...

Well, there it is, nuclear genome from Denisova cave hominid. Hawks comments on his blog. The paper is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7327/full/nature09710.html

And, sure enough, some modern humans carry some of these genes.
Now back to what Peter points out: what, if anything, is useful about genes from Neandertals and/or Denisovans? Sounds like Hawks is working on this very question.

12/22/10, 12:04 PM
Anonymous said...

I suppose it's this, which was (in a sense) mentioned in the comments: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/the-year-of-the-other-human/

In the same vein as the Neanderthals: another case of a different hominid group that has been admixed into the human population, with different regions/races having different admixture levels.

12/22/10, 12:26 PM
Hrabal said...

It must have been the one about the Denisovan DNA in New Guinea.

12/22/10, 12:42 PM
Anonymous said...

I'd guess it's today's article in Nature about the draft genome of a new Homo species ("Denisovans"); it's a previously unknown sibling to H. neanderthalis, and there's evidence of its having inbred with the ancestors of modern Melanesians.

12/22/10, 12:50 PM
Simon in London said...

So are these Denisovans ancestors of all Australoids? Are they the reason that deep-desert Aborigines look so different from all other humans? I posted on this blog wondering about that many years ago!

I think we may be starting to see the answer to my query back then: Why are the Khoi-San, the "world's oldest human race", so very different from the Australoids, who have been in Australia ca 60,000 years.

12/22/10, 3:51 PM
Anonymous said...

From Peter Frost: "There is already evidence that vaginal yeast modifies the sexual behavior of its female host. It seems to me logical that the same microbe would try to modify the behavior of the regular male partner"

Let me guess: increased sex drive?

In my teens I was prone to stubborn sinus infections which always led to treatment with antibiotics which frequently led to yeast infections which usually led to my not telling my mother at the first sign of it for fear I'd have to go to the doctor and have "that awful exam." After dilly dallying around, hoping against hope it would go away by itself (just sheer denial, I realized), I'd give in because the itching, burning, and other noxious effects of a yeast infection were worse than the pelvic exam itself.

So, let me guess: I do believe I felt an increased horniness in the throes of said infection, stupid as that sounds. I know the vulva were swollen from the infection, and I suppose the clitoris was as well so maybe this accounts for the increased tendency to arousal.


Perhaps sexual activity is increased by Miss Yeast Infection? Then, the infection is passed to the male who, in turn, is hornier as well?

I'll be watching for your post, Peter.

12/22/10, 5:34 PM
Anonymous said...

Last anon ...

Didn't anybody tell you about active-culture yogurt? Those bastards!

12/22/10, 6:24 PM
Anonymous said...

"Didn't anybody tell you about active-culture yogurt? Those bastards!"


Not in those days! LOL.

12/22/10, 8:35 PM
Anonymous said...

I can't help but laugh thinking about Jared Diamond's reaction to this. Poor Yali will not like this answer, and I can't blame him.

12/23/10, 4:45 AM
Anonymous said...

the vulva were swollen... and I suppose the clitoris was as well

And so iSteve heads into uncharted territory...

All hands on deck!

12/23/10, 8:32 AM
TGGP said...

"It will be found that certain STDs modify the behavior of their human hosts"
Don't we already know that syphilis does that?

From what I recall, Frost does not have tenure or a position at a university. He wrote some of his bio here, though it may be out of date.

12/24/10, 10:15 AM

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