In this 192nd in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.

In this episode we discuss how cattle got to the New World, and when and from where, and what that implies about the first cowboys. We discuss the fact that Nature published this compelling piece of research, and Science reported on it all wrong. We marvel that Nature admits that “scientists are under attack for someone else’s political gain”—but are not surprised to find they’ve got it backwards. Meanwhile, the pangolin vector hypothesis for SARS-CoV2 is being revived, and bats are hung out to dry (metaphorically), based on bad, debunked research that was done by researchers with perverse incentives.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Delsol et al 2023. Ancient DNA confirms diverse origins of early post-Columbian cattle in the Americas. Scientific reports 13(1): 12444. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39518-3

Sluyter 2015. How Africans and their descendants participated in establishing open-range cattle ranching in the Americas. Environment and History 21(1): 77-101.https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/eh/2015/00000021/00000001/art00005

Science goes full click-bait: https://www.science.org/content/article/america-s-first-cowboys-were-enslaved-africans-ancient-cow-dna-suggests

Peter Hotez in Nature: scientists are “under attack for someone else’s political gain”: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02981-z

Ralph Baric revives the pangolin vector of SARS-CoV2 hypothesis, but you weren’t supposed to notice: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01476-x

Scientific American stokes fear of bats: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-secret-weapon-in-preventing-the-next-pandemic-fruit-bats/

Merlin Tuttle’s defense of bats: https://www.merlintuttle.org/response-to-misleading-american-scientific-bat-story/

Bret on bats in UnHerd, June 2021: https://unherd.com/2021/06/why-we-should-welcome-the-lab-leak-theory/