Cousin is a cultural delicacy

We Europeans are well aware that among many developing nations, it is common to marry relatives. So the idea is, "the cousinier, the juicier."

What remains unclear, however, is whether this has been the original behavior of humanity or a later cultural development, despite some indications suggesting an increase in consanguineous marriages among humans in recent times.

To get an answer, one must of course examine human groups that lived long ago. And it was precisely such a research report that I recently came across.

The study I read analyzed the last hunter-gatherers inhabiting Western Europe, who soon became displaced by the farming newcomers spreading from the southeast of the continent - or merged with them. The examined individuals had inhabited southern Brittany in France approximately seven or eight thousand years ago.

The analysis of ten individuals from three different locations revealed that spouses were not sought from within their own groups but from among different groups residing in different locations. As a result, consanguineous marriages were avoided, despite the very small population of each group - and consequently, also of the hunter-gatherers living in the area.

Somewhat surprisingly, researchers also found that the hunter-gatherers did not seek spouses from farming communities, even though such communities existed in the vicinity. Thus, the hunter-gatherer communities of the time remained quite separate for a long time, even though there was migration from them to the farming communities.

Returning to the question of cousin marriages that initiated this blogpost, based on the study I've discussed, it can be concluded that the original inhabitants of Europe did not practice such marriages.

In other words, they had an excellent understanding that marrying cousins was not sensible. This seems to be not clear to all contemporary human groups, those who, for one reason or another, have adopted consanguineous reproduction in their culture.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Violent demographic changes in Denmark
History of Finland I: How did Finland become culturally part of the West?
Long distance trade

Scientific community discriminates its youngsters

Recent research showed that scientific reports are more easily published if their authors are well known and respected scientists - e.g. Nobel laureates. The results reported by an Austrian group showed that only 23 percent of reviewer´s recommended rejection on manuscripts, when a prominent researcher was the only author shown, whereas 48 percent did so when authors were not known and 65 percent if the only author given was a little-known person. The evaluated manuscripts were the same for all three groups.

For me, as a well known and old scientist in my field, but also a supervisor of young talented students, the figures given above are just disgusting. That is because it shows the hurdles for success to be higher for young people. And even worse: the Austrian study seems to imply that old veterans might easily publish less important findings or even rubbish.

The scientific evaluation of manuscripts is basically simple. The peer reviewer of a scientific publication is another scientist in the same field, who is expected to check that the methodology is adequate to the problem and the evidence obtained is correctly interpreted. And that the findings add sufficiently to the scientific understanding of the topic addressed. 

The bias observed by Austrians obviously affect also funding organizations. If the applicant is well known and has a long record of scientific success, he probably gets funding much more likely to his applications than a young researcher with minor achievements. 

Therefore it was interesting to learn, that some funding organizations - such as the British Academy or the Swiss National Science Foundation - have taken advantage of a lottery in their funding decisions. That is, if several project proposals are very close to each others - but there is not enough money to fund all - a lottery will be used to select the ones getting funded.

That should be beneficial to the regeneration of scientific community, and provide young innovative researchers better chances to get funded. After saying that, even this kind of a lottery will not provide equal chances to youngsters, but at least it would reduce the gap to us - the veterans already going towards the sunset of our brilliance. 

All in all, I suggest that at least part of the European Union research funding would implement lottery in its research funding process. For example, in the Framework Programs for applied research - where application process often has two rounds of evaluation - the second round including only top applications rated by evaluators, could be replaced by a lottery. 

And nationally, I would be happy to see Academy of Finland funding to be partly replaced by a lottery. The principle could be simple: in the first step, all applications rated as "outstanding" by expert panels would be provided funding, and thereafter the lottery would be used - instead of the Research Councils - to pick up proposals to be funded from applications rated by the expert panels up to a level of "excellent". 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Scientific misconduct on prevailing theories is too attractive 
Should forbidden questions be answered or not?
Facts, US Supreme Court and the case of Roe v. Wade