Kami

No, what I’ve said is well thought and my hate against pseudoscience is motivated.

This article is still full of unscientific bullshit, no matter if you were triggered or not by that.

If you disagree or don’t understand where the problem is that’s ok, but your “reaction” doesn’t change the facts I’ve stated and that I would loudly state again.

Do not tell others to be objective if you can’t see objectively.

I feel like any answer I can give you by now it is going to be something I already explained and my use of English has its limits too.

Let’s just agree to disagree. To each their own and no hard feelings.

Have a nice day.

I just did, basically.

And you know what, you could even be scientifically accurate while also doing some less dangerous clickbait just by calling it a self destruction mechanism or something like that, same goes for the cells. It would still be useless fluff added to the topic, but at least it isn’t completely nonsensical.

But no, they decided to go for the romantic route of the self sacrifice for the greater good.

I’m sorry but it is repulsive to me.

Figurative speech is not equal to what we have here, my dear.

And if you can’t even imagine how to explain yourself without avoiding those embarrassing sentences in the article then we have here a tangible example of why this is dangerous and feeds ignorance.

And you are also in bad faith now, because you said in your very first comment that this is just to make science “accessible”. Now it turns out you think it is not possible to communicate in a scientifically accurate way?

Nice try, but you have to put more effort here if you want to defend such a shitshow.

Just analyzing this mechanism as it is, a biological response for both the pupae and the adult ants, would be already enough to be accurate and clear.

Saying pupae are making an “altruistic act” is laughable and it’s like assuming the target audience is made of mentally challenged people. Which we are not, I think.

LOL ok, let’s do this, I have time to waste:

• “Young Ants Beg For Death” No, they don’t and saying it is just projecting human behavior on them.

• “queens do not seem to commit this act of self-sacrifice” There is no self-sacrifice since they don’t know what will happen to them, until proven otherwise.

• “similar to how infected cells in our bodies send out a “find-me and eat-me”” Again, until proven otherwise, cells don’t have such knowledge, it is just a biological mechanism.

• "the scientists wanted to figure out whether the pupae “were actively saying: ‘hey, come and kill me’” They don’t, we are just projecting human reasoning to ant pupae, two very different animals.

• “Altruistic act” LMAO, I won’t elaborate further.

• “While it is a sacrifice – an altruistic act – it’s also in their own interest, because it means that their genes are going to survive and be passed on to the next generation” Sacrifice, altruism, interest, have nothing to do with what is happening here, which is just a biological mechanism, as far as we can tell, naturally selected without the ants even remotely knowing about it, until proven otherwise.

• “Are they cheating the system?” Huh… No? They are fucking pupae, they just exist and don’t even know what is this supposed system.

• “queen pupae have much better immune systems than the worker pupae, and so they were able to fight off the infection – and that’s why we think that they weren’t signalling” Or… Being a different kind of pupae they also differ in not having that self-destruction mechanism.

This is MOST (I decided to be kind and ignore some things pretending they were just “funnily phrased”) of the unscientific bullshit added to make it more appealing (I guess?) to the average human reader, while also creating a lot of specist misconceptions regarding ants (and animals in general in my opinion) and the already mentioned substrate for pseudoscience and all those funny things we have to endure in today’s internet.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

mic drop

The article, as it is, is unscientific bullshit. Period.

The words of Dr. Watson, as reported in the article, are unscientific bullshit. Period.

You don’t have to “entertain” when talking about science, you have to inform, because when you make science accessible to everyone in this way, you are spreading ignorance and creating the substratum of pseudoscience, since common people won’t read the paper, or even click on the link. Maybe not even go past the title (which IS clickbait).

“Sure, I understood what you mean and you are totally right! From now on I’ll make sure I won’t format your HDD”

Proceeds to format HDD again

This article is so badly written that is basically unscientific shit and Dr. Dawson (assuming the quotes are her exact words) is a joke of a scientist.

There is ZERO proof (obviously) that the pupae know a remote fuck of their condition and what’s going to happen to them, let alone caring about “their genes”.

Unbelievable…

Because after trying it wasn’t even remotely clear if I was doing it correctly and if any recipient was actually selected, so I decided to ask since it’s a pretty important thing that I must not fuck up and I can’t go for trial and error.

So after opening the link I can select my concerns, insert my name and then send, right?