On 21/05/2024 17:06, erik simpson wrote:
On 5/21/24 6:09 AM, Ernest Major wrote:
It's mentioned in passing in "Beyond Origins: Evolution and Extinction
of humans Unraveling the Remarkable Story of Life's Evolution from
Single-Celled Organisms to Modern Humans"
(https://www.xisdxjxsu.asia/V20I05-17.pdf). Several of the references
look dodgy*, so I wouldn't trust the attribution of this to Lovelock
without verification.
Scare quotes because I don't see why this was publishable even as a
review article.
* This paper came up in a Google Scholar Alert because a paper on the
origins of allotetraploid cotton was in the references, as a citation
for the statement "The study of the evolution of life on Earth is
essential in comprehending the origin of the diverse species that
inhabit our planet today". That's an odd place to cite that particular
claim; I wondered whether it had been stated as a platitude in the
abstract or introduction, but it doesn't appear to have been.
A weird paper, from a weird journal. I won't say weird authors, because I've never heard of them. (Not pejorative; most people have never heard
of me either.) The "directed panspermia" seems to be included for the
sake of presenting all suggested possibilities. "Dodgy" is a good description.
My list of possibilities for the origin of life is considerably longer,
with spontaneous abiogenesis at the top of the list, local panspermia in
a distant second place, and a collection of implausible also runs; if
they were attempting all possibilities they need more imagination.
Looking at the boilerplate immediately before the references I garnered
the impression that the authors are undergraduates at a university in
Pakistan. The subject would be a reasonable topic for an article in a
popular science magazine - I look askance at the anthropocentrism, but I
see how it fits the audience there - but for a scientific journal
there's supposed to be degree of novelty even if it's only the first
assemblage of an overview of results in a field. What gets me is the
failure of the editorial process - it appears to be the house journal of
a Chinese university, not an imprint of a predatory commercial
publisher, and I'd expect quality controls, especially on externally
submitted papers.
--
alias Ernest Major
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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