Talk:Extended evolutionary synthesis

Inaccurate info on funding

There are some inaccurate statements in the "testing" section here that I'm about to fix, citing a web page that is many years old for funding info that is now out of date. The EES Front got a 7.5 million USD (not British pounds) grant from Templeton in 2016. You can look this up by searching "extended evolutionary synthesis" on the Templeton web site grants database (https://www.templeton.org/grants/grant-database). They do not fund any grants more than 5 years (https://www.templeton.org/grants/grant-faq). This originally funding is now gone and that is why Templeton came out with a final report on their project cited elsewhere in this article. Dabs (talk) 23:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I fixed this. It was only a small change. Dabs (talk) 00:32, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

TWE is a distraction and reflects mis-statements by Svensson (2023)

I'll try to explain the situation with EES, TWE and Svensson.

We can speak of an EES Front (a loosely organized research network) with a relatively consistent agenda to promote the research program they call the EES which is defined in entirely scientific terms. They draw diagrams to represent EES and how it differs from orthodoxy. Other scientists can point to those diagrams and argue about their scientific meaning. Whether one likes it or not, the EES emerged *within evolutionary biology* and is *an active research agenda* pursued in dozens of groups around the world.

None of this is true about TWE, which is stagnant, unorganized, culturally motivated, and without an identifiable scientific position. It's basically a website for malcontents with a "third-way" framing that is explicitly reference to a *culture war* (not a scientific war), and it has hardly changed in the past 5 years— I checked the WayBack machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20180309095754/https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people). Noble and Shapiro, who started the web site, attack orthodoxy but don't have an alternative system. Their web site is very direct about this: "The web site therefore intends to present a wide variety of novel views about evolution but does not necessarily endorse any of them. Our goal is simply to make new thinking about evolution available in one place on the web."

The majority of TWE signers are scientists or philosophers but *not evolutionary biologists*. I've been in the field since the 1980s and I would only tag 4 of these people as academic evolutionary biologists (Gilbert, Muller, Jablonka, Nevo). One person I respect took his name off in the past 5 years (Yogi Jaeger).

Finally, the current "TWE" section repeatedly (4 times) offers generalizations about TWE and its relationship to EES that are sourced to Svensson (2023). The problem is that Svensson is known to misrepresent positions that he dislikes (e.g., see https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/4705/), and he clearly dislikes both TWE and EES. When he goes after Noble and Shapiro again and again, he is attacking soft targets, and then lumping them together with others. He has used this tactic before, e.g., Svensson and Berger (2019) links work on mutation bias from Stoltzfus et al with Shapiro and Noble in order to undermine Stoltzfus, et al. Svensson (2023) may be leaving an impression that there is a scientific agenda of the TWE that overlaps with the EES, but the only overlap I can see is that Odling-Smee and Müller are persons associated with both. I am not aware of any sources that mention TWE in the scientific literature, other than Svensson (2023), because (again) it isn't a coherent scientific position.

I recommend to remove the TWE section as being not just (1) irrelevant, but (2) an extension of Svensson's disingenuous rhetorical tactics. However, I welcome any counter-arguments to the effect that TWE is actually relevant in an article about EES. Dabs (talk) 00:18, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Denis Noble has mentioned both the EES and TWE, he supports both. As noted by Svensson some like Müller are in both camps. Peter Corning and Eva Jablonka are also in both. Kenneth M. Weiss also supports the TWE. Others that support the TWE include Jan Sapp, Frank P. Ryan. Let's not pretend these are not academics.

I see you identify as Arlin Stoltzfus so you obviously have a personal connection on this. Svensson has criticized your work [1]. Just because Svensson has criticized your work does not mean he has made mis-statements or is using disingenuous tactics. It is not up to us to claim that. Maybe he has, maybe he hasn't. At the end of the day it is not up to us to correct references if we believe they are wrong. We just cite what the reliable sources say on Wikipedia, that's it. Svensson is a reliable source and his book chapter mentions both the EES and the TWE. I see you have personally responded to Svensson as he has criticized your work last year in another paper [2]. I would suggest Wikipedia talk-pages are not the place to continue your dispute with Svensson but if you have published a reply in a journal to him then we can include such a source on articles.

There are not many differences from the EES and TWE in regard to evolutionary mechanisms they both cite developmental bias, genetic assimilation, niche construction, non-genetic inheritance, phenotypic plasticity etc. It's basically just much of the same content but repackaged with controversial claims of replacing the modern synthesis rather than extending it. I do not buy into the idea that this content is off-topic but if you do have such an issue with it, another suggestion would be to move it to Shapiro's article, there is no reason to create a new article, it would just get merged sooner or later. Psychologist Guy (talk) 01:54, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

People aren't theories; theories aren't made of people. Your sentence "Denis Noble has mentioned both the EES and TWE" is not a meaningful statement in the realm of theories. This article is about EES and we must use reasoning appropriate for theories or research programs and rely on sources that are focused on theories or research programs, not arguments or sources that are focused on people. What is the precise evidentiary basis for the claim "There are not many differences from the EES and TWE in regard to evolutionary mechanisms"? EES is best understood as a research program, and TWE is clearly not that. As I have explained using the only existing TWE resource, which is the web site, TWE is not a coherent scientific position. The web site says that it doesn't endorse the positions of its members. QED. The current article says that TWE is "more extreme in its predictions" than EES. This is an invention, a fabrication of some editor. It does not come from Svensson (2023) or from a comparison of TWE and EES resources, because TWE isn't a theory and does not make predictions. Svensson has approximately 4 sentences that mention TWE on p. 176 and on p. 195 (where he refers to Noble and Shapiro as representatives of this "fringe movement"). You are correct that it is not up to wikipedia editors to raise novel questions about published sources, but someone has gone out of their way to represent a perspective from Svensson (2023) that is quite clearly hostile and one-sided (e.g., "fringe movement"), which was a poor editorial choice, and then some editor has embellished this further with invented claims, riffing off of Svennson's hostility. Dabs (talk) 15:11, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Denis Noble and Shapiro have both made predictions and they are part of the TWE. The "fringe movement" claim by Svensson I don't think anyone would deny. Noble and Shapiro formed the TWE and they have both admitted their claims have currently not reached mainstream acceptance. As I said an alternative would be to put content about the TWE on Noble or Shapiro's article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 18:05, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I have moved the content to Denis Noble's article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 18:15, 2 December 2023 (UTC)