By now some of you have heard of the family that walks on all fours. I got a tip on this story weeks ago from World Science, which has been tracking this for a while and has a new update from a researcher that says this is a "credible" empirical finding. I didn't really intend to post about this for the following reasons: 1) A high probability that it is a hoax. The British media was the first mainstream organ to really take off with this, and they aren't known for their scientific credibility (Nature, The Daily Telegraph is not). Additionally, the findings are coming out of the heart of Central Anatolia, and so are relatively hard to check for most Western scientists. Nevertheless, Carl Zimmer has many more details, including a comment from one of the scientists in question who have seen this family first hand, which suggests this is probably not a hoax to the first order. 2) The packaging of this as an "atavism" or "reverse evolution" is ridiculous. Evolution does not move along one highway, ascending the Great chain of Being (nor do I believe the canals are infinite, rather, there are a wide range of stable states I suspect). Bipedalism is probably not a trait that emerged fully formed from the head of Zeus. This family, if they are not the Tasaday of our day, are likely a pathology of some sort. One can get to the same phenotype (non-bipedalism) in a variety of ways. It seems that there are a host of deleterious correlated traits associated with this family (Carl mentions retardation), if this non-bipedalism was highly adaptive one assumes that over time modifier genes would crop up that would mask the deleterious side effects of the allele of large effect. 3)
The appeal of this story, and its legs, suggest what people really find important
. And, I think it shows why saltationism will always have staying power as a hypothesis, there is public demand for it!
