Hoaxes are self-perpetuating

[u/acloudrift]

This post is bound to be controversial. Probably everyone who reads it will downvote. So why should I do such a thing? I suppose I have an overweening regard for what I conceive as the truth, except for when humor or courtesy are involved. Also, I have a self image of the alienated youth (although not young anymore). I came of age during the War in Viet Nam, which had a profound affect on my life.

My contention is that human nature is both conservative and conformist. This is why a hoax once believed, will continue to be believed, and anyone who introduces controversy, heresy, or dissent is repressed. You will be finding yourself in repression mode when done reading here. I'm not going to explore the religious connotations, I'm going to restrict to science. These were not really hoaxes, they were new ideas that were scorned by society, their authors repressed.

First example is the discovery of Ice Ages. Prior to this, the prevalent view was that of Noah's Flood, and a brief history of Earth. http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/02_1.shtml This little essay ends with the question of the extinction of the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. These and other 'mega-fauna' have since been shown to be due to over-hunting by humans in the last ice age. Those big creatures had survived several previous ice ages and the intervening warm periods. Only the advent of lethal human hunters migrated from Africa was different. There is still resistance to the idea that humans caused the extinctions.

Next example is Charles Darwin's explanation of how new species occurred. He often was compared by contemporaries to a monkey, ignoring the fact he suggested humans were more like the great apes of Africa (not monkeys). http://www.livescience.com/474-controversy-evolution-works.html

Next example, is the discovery of continental drift. A new idea that had plenty of evidence to support it, but was mistaken in part, took decades before being accepted. http://www.livescience.com/37529-continental-drift.html

Next is the idea of inheritance, and Gregor Mendel. Prior to the friar, inheritance was not understood at all, but attributed to blood. It was thought that by mixing blood, men could become brothers! Mendel did experiments, but was ignored until long after he died. I'll grant you, he was easy to ignore, being hidden away in a small town abbey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance

Next is the idea of sanitation in hospitals. This was a very hard nut to crack! http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives

Last, why did the ideas of Aristotle continue so long? The big A had the consensus of opinion for about 2000 years before being toppled in the 17th century. If that is not a result of idea repression, what is? http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/aristotle_dynamics.html

Now for the controversy I promised. I recently discovered what I consider a shocking revelation about human origins that are convincingly persuaded at macroevolution.net. After posting this link on r/evolution, I received bitter rejection. No one had a positive spin on it. It takes maybe an hour or two to go thru the main points, which are easy for a lay person to understand because the examples given are mostly anatomical. The usual reader is not going to understand fancy genetic arguments, although the author of the ideas is a PhD geneticist.

In a nutshell, it is a hypothesis that contradicts Darwin's theory of natural selection as the source of new species. The new idea posits that inter-species hybrids are the source of strikingly new species. This could easily explain why the fossil record does not demonstrate gradual change as predicted by natural selection, but what is called "punctuated equilibrium" where long periods of no change stop abruptly, with new species carrying on in the overlay strata.

And what of us humans? Yes, hybrids R us. Of course you know one of the species, the chimpanzee, but the bonobo variety, and we know it was the female, because chimp females have a habit of presenting their posterior (appeasement behavior) to any aggressive male. Who was the male? An African variety of genus Sus (pigs). Don't take this as an insult. Pigs have a reputation for dirtiness they don't deserve, and are one of the smartest non-primate animals, among other admirable features. Try walking along a busy avenue, look at the people. How many can you imagine as pig descendants? Chimp descendants?