Four months after the announcement (of new species Homo Naledi), questions about H. naledi have crept up. Articles about the fossils were published too quickly, naysayers claim. They were published without “proper” peer review. Moreover, the fossils—and the entire Rising Star Expedition that found them—are simply a means of fueling the project’s media agenda.

If the history of paleoanthropology shows us anything, it’s that controversy over a new fossil hominin species is nothing new. In fact, most newly discovered hominin species have undergone periods of serious scrutiny, particularly because discoveries force scientists to rethink evolutionary relationships. For the past hundred years, paleoanthropologists have bandied about insults, in addition to hypotheses, as they discussed fossil hominins in academic and public circles.

The H. naledi brouhaha, however, offers a curiously new type of challenge for paleoanthropology. Instead of shaking up the hominin evolutionary tree, H. naledi has shaken up the way that paleoanthropology goes about the business of doing science.

Traditionally, fossils have been studied and published in a very top-down way, where small teams of senior experts spend years (even decades) studying fossil hominins before publishing their discoveries in prestigious peer-reviewed journals. This means the fossils are carefully scrutinized, measured, compared, and analyzed before they reach a public audience. The peer-review process of such top-tier journals—like Science or Nature—forms a well-established social system of checks and balances, ensuring that research credibility is attached to published discoveries.

The H. naledi project has championed an opposite view of how data should be collected and distributed. Berger’s team found, excavated, studied, and published the Rising Star Cave’s cache of more than 1,550 fossils in just two years. The project has relied on the expertise of many young, early career researchers. In addition, the project published scans of the fossils themselves in eLife in September 2015, an open-access journal with a shorter peer-review process.

It is the idea of sexual assault perpetrated upon German women by foreigners that has been the epicentre of the political explosion. Since 1 January, there have been calls to close the borders, end all German intake of refugees and asylum seekers, and immediately deport any non-German found guilty of sexual harassment. These calls have been echoed across the political spectrum. In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a politician who has not made some sort of public statement on ‘Cologne’, including the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose portfolio does not usually include sexual assault and petty theft on the streets of Cologne.

Not even the Paris terror attacks of November last year appear to have had such a destabilising effect on Germany’s so-called ‘open door’ policy on immigration and asylum – but perhaps that is because the mass killings in Paris didn’t involve questions of moral and cultural standards around sexuality and gender relations.

By now, it is well-known how ferociously the events have been seized upon by conservatives and radical right-wing groups opposed to immigration. The language of the public debate has been predictably filled with calls to defend ‘our women’ from the ‘uncivilised’ hordes of medieval barbarians from the Middle East. Vigilante groups have formed. One announced on Facebook that it would be organising ‘patrols’ around Cologne with the intention of ‘cleaning up’.

Dean, a longtime supporter of single-payer, seemed to be changing his tune, a point made by host Chris Hayes during the segment.

This evolution of Dean, known within many circles for his spirited critique of the Iraq War during the 2004 Democratic primary, comes as he has settled into a corporate lobbying career.

Dean, though he rarely discloses the title during his media appearances, now serves as senior advisor to the law firm Dentons, where he works with the firm’s Public Policy and Regulation practice, a euphemism for Dentons’ lobbying team. Dean is not a lawyer, but neither is Newt Gingrich, who is among the growing list of former government officials and politicians that work in the Public Policy and Regulation practice of Dentons.

The Dentons Public Policy and Regulation practice lobbies on behalf of a variety of corporate health care interests, including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a powerful trade group for drugmakers like Pfizer and Merck.

In 2009, Dean praised single-payer while speaking on Democracy Now, calling the idea “by far the most economically efficient system.”

American mass movements have been successful in mobilizing hundreds of thousands in opposition to Washington’s wars. Progressives have educated and organized millions to oppose Wall Street and the Democratic Party’s more recent bailout of banks.

Without fail, every time that mass movements and the electorate opted for independent social action outside of the Democratic Party, a ‘dissident’ politician has emerged from within the Party mouthing many of the criticisms and demands of the social movements.

These Democrat “dissidents” round up millions of votes and hundreds of delegates to the Democratic Convention and then they inevitably lose to the Party machine and meekly submit, reasserting their loyalty to the Party. The essential political consequence is that the “dissidents” channel mass social disaffection back into the Democratic Party thereby undermining any independent political initiative.

https://thepeoplespress.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/democratic-party-primaries-progressives-as-political-contraceptives/