Anybody remember me? I was a regular on this forum from 2004 until 2018, after which I mostly moved on to other things. I don't plan on becoming a regular here again, but I'm back for the time being to ask about a recent piece of evolutionary anthropology news.
According to this analysis, when the human and chimpanzee genomes are compared while including portions that hadn't previously been sequenced, their similarity drops from the commonly given 98% value to 84.7%. On the surface this seems valid, and the conclusion has been
accepted by Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist who is qualified to evaluate it. Jerry Coyne's post from yesterday is what brought this analysis to my attention.
But there is something odd about this conclusion: it's virtually identical to
an argument made in 2012 by Jerry Bergman and Jeffrey Tomkins in the Journal of Creation. Bergman and Tomkins' 2012 argument was that when human and chimpanzee genomes are compared using data typically omitted from these comparisons, the percentage similarity drops to somewhere in the 81-87 percent range. Either the recent analysis by "Origins Unveiled" is an example of a major creationist claim being vindicated by mainstream evolutionary anthropology, or it's a very clever false flag operation by a creationist or Intelligent Design proponent, which was convincing enough for even Jerry Coyne to be fooled.
Looking more closely, I've noticed a few other possible red flags. First, the argument made by "Origins Unveiled" (and accepted by Jerry Coyne) is based on a
paper published in Nature on April 9th. The exact same argument made by "Origins Unveiled"—that this paper shows the creationist figure of 81-87% to be correct—was previously
made six months ago by Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute's
Center for Science and Culture. And second, "Origins Unveiled" is a relatively new Twitter account (registered in 2024) without any identifying information, aside from that they were a were considering a Ph.D in evolutionary anthropology until they quit due to "the rampant political correctness I witnessed among professors and students in potential university programs". Some of the account's other posts include accurate summaries of evolutionary anthropology concepts, but a fair number of creationists have legitimate PhDs and have published mainstream biology or geoscience research, so the ability to accurately explain these concepts doesn't prove the account's provenance either way.
I would like some help evaluating whether the "Origins Unveiled" Twitter account is for real, and whether it's a coincidence that they've reached the same conclusion as Luskin (and also previously Bergman and Tomkins), or whether this Twitter account is being operated someone associated with the Discovery Institute who's posing as an evolutionary anthropologist. I suppose it's also possible that this account belongs to a creationist or ID proponent but that the substance of their argument is still correct. I'm aware of
one other case where a creationist objection (not to the theory evolution itself, but to the way it's been presented in textbooks) turned out to be valid.
www.dailywire.com
