About This Blog
This is the weblog of Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. We have collaborated for several years on several projects, mostly over the internet. We have found the blogworld to be important for our work and so decided to dip our toes into the water with this blog.
Harpending is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah: see this homepage.
Cochran is an adjunct Professor at the University of Utah but he lives in Albuquerque, NM. His formal academic background is in optical physics but he spends as much time as possible working on evolutionary biology, especially of humans. His work with Paul Ewald on pathogens and chronic disease is well known.
Several years ago we wrote a popular book titled The Ten Thousand Year Explosion in which we discuss aspects of human evolution over the last few tens of thousands of years. If you enjoy the book, you might like further snippets that our editors cut out available on the book website.
hi, you might want to state your full names here (I guess you don’t mind) and point to your university home pages. There you could link this blog stating that you own it, else a wordpress blog is technically anonymous.
Yes, and what does “West Hunter” mean?
I agree with the two comments above. Your blog is very welcome and long overdue but readers like myself who stumble upon it by accident really do need a little background information in order to put it into context.
Great posts so far by the way. It comes as a breath of fresh air to find authors who are prepared to stick with the evidence for human group variation, rather than succumbing to the shallow respectability of “we’re all the same under the skin”.
Clean presentation. Very readable.
In the U.S., witch doctors don’t require “licenses” but any effort to cause harm to another (as by sticking pins in a voodoo doll) is liable to criminal charges, including attempted murder–both against the voodoo doctor and anyone who might have engaged him with the intenrtion of causing harm. The voodoo doctor would have an easier “out” than someone who hired his service
( (he’d just have to explain, convincingly, that he, himself, had no belief in the efficacy of his “powers”).
There was a case of this type in Missouri about 20 years ago in which several people (including the voodoo doctor) went to prison for attempted murder.
Dr. Cochran,
While cruising blogs, somebody attributed the following saying to you, “Dumb people believe ‘x’, smart people believe ‘y’, really smart people believe ‘x’.” I burst out laughing that’s been my experience. The poster did not provide a link. Did you say this? Do you have a link to it?
Thanks,
Bruce Bowen
“Dumb people believe ‘x’, smart people believe ‘y’, really smart people believe ‘x’.”
LOL. I said it recently on another blog (i’m pretty sure i said: ‘Greg Cochran said something like: “seems to me Dumb people believe ‘x’, smart people believe ‘y’, really smart people believe ‘x’.” .
I’m pretty sure Greg said it…..maybe on gnxp.
Shades of Francis Bacon…
This blog is very sloppy and disappointing. It’s written like you’re chatting with your colleagues about stuff you all understand but can’t be bothered to explain to anyone else, complete with sarcastic in-jokes, obscure references and a condescending attitude toward anything you disagree with. There are careless spelling and formatting errors that could easily be avoided with a preview and some proofreading. You don’t always properly cite and link to the sources you reference. You don’t use categories and tags effectively to make posts easier to find and aggregate. You had to be told by a reader to identify yourselves and you still mostly go by your handles (“gcochran9″ and “harpend”) instead of your full names, often failing to log in when you reply to comments so we can’t be sure it’s really you. And still no explanation of what “West Hunter” means.
All in all, there’s very little evidence that this place is a public forum for two respected scientists and university professors, and that’s really a shame.
Steve, I am relatively new here, have learned a lot, and am not bothered by any of the things you mention. It sounds like you have an expectation – not necessarily well-thought-out or shared by others – that you expect others to conform to. Online discussion often takes the very form you are criticising.
The first three commenters on this page shared at least some of my concern about this blog’s lack of professionalism. I guess we just have higher “expectations” than you do.
We try to get the right answer. What could be less professional than that?
gcochran9: What is this exotic survival kit you mentioned a dozen postings back? I’d like to see the list. Or is it a joke that I missed the opening to?
Try typing “survival kit” into the search box.
That worked. I had typed “exotic survival kit” in the search box. Thank you.