Talk:US scientists find evidence for group selection of spider colonies in the wild

Unlikely
Group selection is like sea monsters, alien abduction, and denial that human activities have any effect on global climate change: claims to be treated with extreme skepticism. We shouldn't be presenting such claims as fact. (I got a lot of flak for the article about an AI passing the Turing test, even though that's my field and the precise sense in which it "passed" was specified promptly in the article.) --Pi zero (talk) 11:27, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * To elaborate (on further study): it's certainly quite interesting research.  Group selection is one of those things that's prone to wildly exaggerated claims in the press; not unlike animal intelligence, whose over-hyped press overage  likes to debunk.  It'd be a great public service to offer good, careful coverage that makes clear what such research does and doesn't mean.  At the very least, as a reviewer, I want to see we don't publish something misleading; hopefully, we can publish something valuable, without going outside reviewer's purview and requiring revision by the reporter.  --Pi zero (talk) 12:04, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * On a less somber note. This is a great article, but geez-loweez that 2nd paragraph is awfully science-y! --Bddpaux (talk) 14:09, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I did some work on the article (including its headline) toward neutrality by not asserting the controversial conclusion &mdash; without being dismissive of the claims either.


 * It seems at the heart of this work is a very interesting result, and we would be doing a great favor to our readers and to the researchers if we could explain, simply and clearly, just what that interesting result really is. But as you say, it's coming out... yeah, I'll go with "science-y".  Explaining subtle scientific results so they can be understood by mere mortals, without dumbing them down, is a major challenge.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)