<story><title>First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed</title><url>https://www.mpg.de/17223684/0719-evan-lethal-attacks-by-chimpanzees-on-gorillas-observed-150495-x</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>YeGoblynQueenne</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a declaration, but a hypothesis that attempts to explain the observations according to prior knowledge. It &amp;quot;will now be investigated in more detail&amp;quot; to try and disprove it. That&amp;#x27;s bog standard scientific work.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s hasty is the easy dismissal of the opinion of experts on a subject most commenters here are probably unfamliar with (interspecies interactions between non-human primates) and the attemps to find an ulterior motive of some kind of political nature, in comments in this thread.&lt;p&gt;When did HN become so anti-science?</text></item><item><author>varenc</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest&amp;#x27;s productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty?&lt;p&gt;These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations.  Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>woofie11</author><text>Science is a process. HN isn&amp;#x27;t anti-science.&lt;p&gt;The scientific establishment is a group of people in various organizational structures and alliances. I&amp;#x27;m part of that establishment, and I can say that it lies, exaggerates, and has become increasingly untrustworthy in the past decade or two:&lt;p&gt;- The easiest way to get ahead in the scientific establishment is to fabricate politically-motivated results.&lt;p&gt;- Competition is intense, and the &amp;quot;hard&amp;quot; way is becoming impossible.&lt;p&gt;My general advice is to read source data -- even there with a large grain of salt -- but to definitely not trust &amp;quot;expert&amp;quot; conclusions. One of the easiest ways to have &amp;quot;impact&amp;quot; is to write newsworthy conclusions weakly supported by evidence. It&amp;#x27;s not technically academic fraud, and gives you the visibility you need for academic job offers.&lt;p&gt;Science isn&amp;#x27;t about authority or expertise. It&amp;#x27;s about evidence, critical thinking, and the scientific process. If you believe science is &amp;quot;opinion of experts,&amp;quot; you&amp;#x27;re doing it wrong.</text></comment>
<story><title>First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed</title><url>https://www.mpg.de/17223684/0719-evan-lethal-attacks-by-chimpanzees-on-gorillas-observed-150495-x</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>YeGoblynQueenne</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a declaration, but a hypothesis that attempts to explain the observations according to prior knowledge. It &amp;quot;will now be investigated in more detail&amp;quot; to try and disprove it. That&amp;#x27;s bog standard scientific work.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s hasty is the easy dismissal of the opinion of experts on a subject most commenters here are probably unfamliar with (interspecies interactions between non-human primates) and the attemps to find an ulterior motive of some kind of political nature, in comments in this thread.&lt;p&gt;When did HN become so anti-science?</text></item><item><author>varenc</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest&amp;#x27;s productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty?&lt;p&gt;These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations.  Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>z3c0</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve noticed a tendency towards pseudo-intellectual snark amidst the comments these days. It relies a lot on misused logic and eloquence to present itself as a knowledgeable opinion, but often never goes deeper than a semantic nitpick. This whole comment thread wouldn&amp;#x27;t exist if the author of the article had simply said &amp;quot;or something else.&amp;quot;</text></comment>