Sick Hobbits, Quarrelsome Scientists - The Fossil Chronicles - page 149

along came a new list of 33 “major diagnostic criteria” for patients with
LS. The list, however, neglected to include six of the ten traditionally
cited features (protruding forehead, pug nose, irregular and crowded
permanent teeth, wide top of the skull, small hands and feet, and deli-
cate long bones) . 57 Of the 33 skeletal traits that newly characterize LS,
32 are straight out of the published description for LB1 and supposedly
demonstrated “morphological similarity between individuals with LS
and LB1.” 58 To wit, LB1 didn't represent a new species of hominin; rather,
she was a Homo sapiens who had been afflicted with Laron syndrome!
The paper suggesting that LB1 was a pathological human with LS
appeared during the summer of 2007, shortly before I flew to Yogya-
karta, Java, to present evidence that LB1 had not suffered from micro-
cephaly at the International Seminar on Southeast Asian Paleoanthro-
pology. With microcephaly losing credibility as an explanation for
LB1's unusual appearance, those who were skeptical of Homo floresiensis 's
legitimacy were ready to embrace LS as an alternative pathology. As I
said in my talk, even less evidence exists to support the assertion that
LB1 suffered from LS than there is for the microcephalic hypothesis. 59
Once again, we found ourselves distracted from our central interests
in regard to our research because of controversy over Homo floresiensis.
At this point, you might be asking, “Why not just get on with your own
research and leave the sick-Hobbit hypotheses alone?” The problem
with ignoring questionable evolutionary hypotheses is that doing so
increases their viability, because nonscientists, religious fundamental-
ists, and even some journalists are likely to take these hypotheses seri-
ously until they are evaluated scientifically and, if warranted, rejected. 60
In other words, debate moves science forward, so addressing controver-
sial ideas becomes part of the package if one wants to contribute to our
understanding of human evolution.
Charles, Kirk, Fred, and I joined with an international group of col-
leagues to assess from a scientific perspective the suggestion that LB1
had LS, although our analysis was not published until a year and a half
after the Indonesian seminar, partly because of a rocky (and paleo-