"Ornithologists at Rockefeller worked hard. For years, they worked to collect songbirds. They gave them a battery of tests to measure their problem solving abilities, and also measured their brain sizes as well.
This was fine; it’s legit scientific research. But then they ruined it all by using the e-word evolved as a cop-out for rigorous explanation.
The suspect this time is Erich Jarvis, leader of the Jarvis Lab at Rockefeller, who cranks up the perhapsimaybecouldness index as an excuse for laziness:
"Overall, the findings suggest that vocal learning, problem solving, and brain size may have evolved in tandem, perhaps as a way of increasing biological fitness. Based on these findings, as well as earlier work on the ability of vocal learners to dance to a rhythmic beat, Jarvis is now calling this collection of traits the “vocal learning cognitive complex”.
“Our findings help support a previously unproven notion: that the evolution of a complex behavior like spoken language, which depends on vocal learning, is associated with co-evolution of other complex behaviors,” Jarvis says.
Since Darwin’s mechanism equates to the Stuff Happens Law, this is equivalent to saying that traits “may have happened by coincidence” and that “the accidental happening of a complex behavior coincided with another accidental happening.”
Lazy!
Q: Since when do complex traits like vocal learning, problem solving and brain size happen by accident? Jarvis just indicted himself.
If his own brain happened that way, then nothing he says has any credibility." CEH
