Many months ago, the fossil primate “Ida” was reported to the world with much fanfare, including an entire mass market book and a huge press conference, and everything else one can possibly do to announce a new fossil find. Science bloggers and others got rather upset at the Ida team’s over the top fanfare, though few bloggers ever explained why it was a bad thing to make everyone on the planet notice an important new scientific find (and no one made the claim that Ida was not very important). One of the things the Ida team did was to use the term “missing link” in connection with that fossil, which was entirely inappropriate in that case. But the science blogosphere reacted to the use of this term so strongly that a dozen or so bloggers made strong arguments that the term “missing link” is NEVER correct (which is not true).
Continue reading A challenge to my readers and fellow science bloggers! →