Comments on: Liberman on Uriagereka and FOXP2

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:36:43 +0000

Thanks for the extra info. It would be nice if they provided that same classification data on the online version, too; it's sort of puzzling, since my impression has been that Seed has generally been fairly Net-savvy.

By: manigen

manigen — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:30:31 +0000

Me and my copy are reunited now. The reason I remembered it as being marked as speculative is that it’s in the magazine in the “Big Idea” slot, which is usually quite out-there.

Having re-read it, I agree about the tone of the article; it does seem a little too sure of itself. Of course, I know less about FOXP2 and finches than I do about spoken dialects of 17th century Chinese.

Which is not a lot.

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:24:02 +0000

I didn’t see any specific markers on the online version (the print version may of course be different). It’s categorized under “Brain & Behavior,” nothing more.

I’m not as upset as I could be, since the essay does become more plainly speculative towards the end, but earlier pieces of it present ideas as factual when they, too, should be classified as speculative. (My limited knowledge of the field may, naturally, be leading me into error, but hey, blame Mark Liberman too!)

By: manigen

manigen — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:18:00 +0000

I’m about half an hours travel from my copy of Seed at the moment, but wasn’t the article in question clearly flagged as being speculative?