>>> Posting number 1543, dated 3 Jan 1997 22:53:20 Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 22:53:20 -0500 Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science Sender: Discussion of Fraud in Science Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Al Higgins Organization: Sociology Department UAlbany Subject: (Fwd) Re: (Fwd) Re: Re[4]: On Re-reading Freeman MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Fri, 03 Jan 1997 14:23:59 -0500 (EST) From: jmarks@REDACTED.ycc.yale.edu (Jon Marks) Subject: Re: (Fwd) Re: Re[4]: On Re-reading Freeman To: Discussion of Fraud in Science >> Nonhuman primates don't have marriage, but they certainly don't mate at >>random, either. > Jon, I'm enjoying the discourse on sexuality, but do have one >question concerning your posting. My impression is that the chimps engage in rather "loose" sexual >behavior. Have I missed something somewhere? > >Dewey McLean Actually chimpanzees appear to have a complex set of mate-choice strategies. Estrous females vary quite a bit in whom they will mate with, when, etc. Some will sometimes pair off with one male for quite a while; the opposite end of the spectrum is the famous Flo, Jane Goodall's original friend. As it turns out, Flo was pretty sexy (as chimps go) and pretty loose (as chimps go), and Goodall's wonderful descriptions of her mating with every male in succession from "In the Shadow of Man" aren't characteristic of all chimps. Chimps, having a prominent estrus, are quite different from humans, and indeed from other apes. They are more vigorously sexually active, but only at certain times. The bonobos ("pygmy chimps") are different even from their closest relatives, the "common" chimpanzees; females are almost always sexually active any time, and often with other females. Let me tie this in to fraud before anyone complains. As you old Scifrauders know, the classic genetic research in the 1980s purporting to show that chimps and humans are each other's closest relatives was falsified, and is hardly ever cited by molecular anthropologists any more (although the perps are still at large, because there has never been a formal investigation or adjudication; my web discussion is located at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jmarks/dnahyb.html). But an interesting outcome is that now, since there are a lot more chimps than gorillas around for study, and a lot more people studying them, the chimp behavior people like to be able to say they are studying "our closest relatives," especially when competing for funds with people studying gorillas. So they embrace the discredited work quite strongly. When I met Jane Goodall in England last year for a TV show, she was unaware of the problems with the work, and I did try and bring her up to speed. But in Richard Wrangham's recent book, "Demonic Males" there is a 5-page discussion of the very genetic work in question, with no indication of problems with it. In the end-notes he mentions that the conclusions were challenged by some, but fails to mention that the original authors admitted in 1990 that their data did not actually support that conclusion. --Jon Marks