Creation Moment 5/30/2014 - Media going "ape" over evolution

"We had to lose muscle to grow bigger brains, some evolutionists said, and the media went ape.
“It is a very simple explanation, and it could be completely wrong,” a scientist said. “In evolution, however, simple

explanations often work well.”  Maybe “simplistic” should be substituted for “simple.”  Old newspaper codger H. L. Mencken once said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”  Is that what is happening in a new PLoS paper?  (“Exceptional Evolutionary Divergence of Human Muscle and Brain Metabolomes Parallels Human Cognitive and Physical Uniqueness”).  Humans use more of their metabolism to support their brains than mice or monkeys do.  Does that mean we evolved from them?  Reporters loved the idea.  They gulped it down, and regurgitated it uncritically with dashing headlines:

• Humans Evolved Weak Muscles to Feed Brain’s Growth, Study Suggests; Weak muscles evolved even faster than smart brains in people. (National Geographic)
• Did Big Brains Sap Our Strength? (Michael Balter in Science Magazine)
• Humans Sacrificed Brawn for Brains, Study Suggests (Charles Q. Choi in Live Science)
• Intertwined evolution of human brain and brawn (Science Daily)
• Jocks vs. Geeks: The Downside of Genius?  (Roland G. Roberts in PLoS Biology)

In an effort to make their study look scientific, the team in China compared mice, macaques, chimpanzees and human athletes several ways.  They compared energy use profiles from 5 kinds of tissues.  They gave the subjects strength tests.  And they tested some of the macaques after giving half of them a fatty, sugary diet, to ensure that diet alone did not affect the readings.  In short, the experiments showed that non-human mammals use more of their metabolism for muscle, so pound for pounds, were stronger than the humans.
None of this should be surprising; it’s well known that apes are strong, and that humans are smart.  It’s also well known that the human brain is a costly organ in terms of energy requirements.  Why, then, is this making such a splash in the media?  It’s because it can be used to support an evolutionary story." CreationEvolutionHeadlines

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Romans 1:22