
Asian tree rings explain historical plague outbreaks in Europe - happyscrappy
http://www.wsl.ch/medien/news/jahrringe_und_Pest/index_EN
======
pertinhower
Yeah, I'm not buying it. I have two complains about this article in particular
and this kind of "science" in general.

1\. Their conclusion is unverifiable. Science is about hypothesis, experiment,
and falsification in a reproducible context. When someone says, "I can look at
these tree rings and tell you whether rats or marmots spread the plague," I
say, "Cool! Show me the results." And when they say, "What do you mean
results? I just mean that we infer from the rings to the marmots," then I say,
"Okay, well I just infer from planetary alignments to mood swings."
Speculation is part of science. Speculation is not science.

2\. An extremely strong inference is, by definition, acceptable without
further evidence. You don't have to show me an experimental result if you can
show me a strong logical case, with very strong causal or inferential links
from one piece of evidence to the next. Although you can't reproduce for me a
precise result showing that the Grand Canyon was the result of many, many
millennia of erosion, you can show me over observable spans of time the
general erosion rates in soil of that type with rainfall of that type and I'll
accept your inference that many millennia were involved in the Grand Canyon.
But tree rings in Asia to disease vectors in Europe? Give me a break.

~~~
hga
Err, that's explicitly covered in the last paragraph; I've included a bit more
for context:

 _[...] Moreover, their results challenge the long-standing, but poorly
substantiated view that_ Yersinia pestis _must have had a permanent wildlife
reservoir in Europe, such as the urban black rat. Instead, new strains of the
disease may have been frequently imported from Asia.

Nevertheless, an ultimate confirmation of this hypothesis depends on the
availability of appropriate genetic material of ancient plague victims not
only from different periods throughout time but also from different parts of
Eurasia. The advent of aDNA techniques and international research
collaboration across disciplinary boundaries will most likely be able to shed
new light on this fascinating topic at the interface of human history and
environmental variability._

We've already reconstructed _Yersinia pestis_ strains from victims of the
Black Death and the 6th Century Plague of Justinian....

