

The Cost of Smarts  - edw519
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07wed4.html?ex=1367899200&en=a83981426a2a12be&ei=5124&partner=digg&exprod=digg

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Alex3917
Already debunked on news.yc here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183339>

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timr
So, a few people, speculating about what the paper _might_ say, constitutes a
debunking?

Scientists are not all idiots. Parsimony suggests that -- somewhere during the
months of planning and thought that goes into the average publication -- they
probably thought about the questions that one might raise, 30 seconds after
reading a newspaper summary of the work.

~~~
Alex3917
A) There is no way to control for side effects of single trait selection, so
it's impossible that they did.

B) If they really had solved one of the biggest problems in science then that
would have been the headline, not that learning reduces fitness. In fact they
probably would have been handed Nobels on the spot.

C) I read the scientific paper and they never even take the issue into
consideration. It's literally not even mentioned in the methodology or the
discussion, and there's no citations of prior research indicating that fruit
flies aren't susceptible to this problem in the introduction.

The fact is that this "research" is a joke and the NYT got snowed plain and
simple. If you don't believe me, just Google for Kawecki + quinine and read
the original paper.

EDIT: The claim made by the original research article is that selecting for
increased learning ability results in lower fitness. The claim being made by
the NYT is that increasing learning ability results in lower fitness. Those
are two completely different claims. The fact that people are still
downmodding me only shows that news.yc is slowly assimilating mainstream
culture, a culture that glorifies ignorance and scientific illiteracy.

~~~
timr
Dude...people are down-modding you because you're being a jerk, not because of
some misunderstood intricacy of your brilliant scientific argument.

First off, a quick search tells me that Kawecki has been publishing on this
topic for years:

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=kawecki%20quinine%20lear...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=kawecki%20quinine%20learning&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=ws)

He's had numerous publications in PNAS, Science, Evolution, and other top-tier
journals, building this hypothesis step-by-step. So perhaps you should back
off your rhetoric about the research being a "joke" just a tad, okay? (At the
least, perhaps you should go read one of his other papers before you decide
that the man is a fraud.)

Now, to directly address your argument: "intelligence" is not a single trait.
It's a complex, emergent phenomena, presumably involving many genes, in many
different genetic loci. It's therefore _highly unlikely_ that selection for
the abstract trait of "intelligence" is _also_ going to select for a decreased
lifespan (another complex trait).

Thus, even if you're right, and even if the whole result is attributable to
single-trait selection for "intelligence", _it's still an interesting result._
You've done nothing do "debunk" the interesting premise of the article --
_that selection for intelligence appears to decrease overall fitness in
flies._

Your obsession with single-trait selection seems to rest on the notion that if
the result could be attributable to linkage, then it doesn't count. That's
silly. We can debate the mechanism of action, but there appears to be a very
real trade-off between learning ability and survival in this particular
species. Arguing that it might only be a consequence of selection is to
completely miss the point.

(Aside: I think it's interesting that you've now latched on to a subtle
difference in wording between the NYT article and the claims made by the
researcher. The NYT may have (debatably) been exaggerating the claims of the
researchers, but your posts have all jumped to the conclusion that the
original research was a "joke". Bad form, man.)

~~~
Alex3917
Fair enough, I apologize for being a jerk. That said, if the NYT had really
said that "selection for intelligence appears to decrease overall fitness in
flies" then I would have had no issue with the article. However, what the
article actually said was that, "Learning also turns out to have dangerous
side effects that make its evolution even more puzzling." That's not a minor
error or a small exaggeration, it's outright fraud. And what's more, the
entirety of this new article is based off the false premise of the original.
That's why I'm upset.

Anyways, my apologies to the researcher. My issue is mainly with the NYT.

~~~
xlnt
don't back down or apologize because some jerk yelled at you "for being a
jerk". :(

you made good points, which does not constitute being a jerk. he made invalid
points about how the guy has a reputation and history that don't address
whether the particular ideas at issue are true; plus, he literally called you
a jerk, which is name calling.

~~~
Alex3917
No, he's right, I was being a jerk.

I still stand by my argument though.

~~~
xlnt
Did you delete text from your post, or is it all visible now?

