I notice they’re still using that same artist’s impression of Homo floresiensis that’s been doing the rounds for years. I’ll have to get cracking and do a better one:

A furious international dispute has erupted over the publication of a paper that claims the hobbit man of Flores was a modern human who had Down’s syndrome. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this month, the research has been denounced by scientists around the world. The tiny Homo floresiensis, discovered on Flores, an island in Indonesia, is definitely a member of a distinct ancient species of hominins, they insist.

The dispute has its roots in an expedition by Australian and Indonesian researchers in 2003. The scientists were working in a limestone cavern called Liang Bua, on Flores, when one uncovered a small skull and lower jaw. Although tiny, the skull had adult teeth. “This was no child, but a tiny adult – one of the smallest adult hominins ever found,” the expedition leader, the late Mike Morwood, of Australia’s University of Wollongong, announced.

….Scientists have also attacked the editors of PNAS – the journal of the US National Academy of Sciences – for permitting the authors of the Down’s syndrome paper to avoid independent peer review because one is an academy member and so is allowed to select his own referees when submitting the paper.

Full report: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/16/flores-hobbit-human-downs-syndrome-claim-homo-floresiensis

Looks like PNAS has stuffed up big time:

“The article is a contributed submission from an academy member, Kenneth Hsu, an 89-year-old hydrologist who has absolutely no expertise in the subject and who selected referees that were also without expertise in fossil hominin skeletons,” said one of the key scientists involved in the discovery of Homo floresiensis, Professor Peter Brown, of the University of New England in Australia. “This is an outrageous abuse of the peer review process.”

……“They say Homo floresiensis is similar to a modern person with Down’s syndrome, but no one with that condition has a tiny cranium only 400cc in capacity as floresiensis does, nor do they have thick cranial bones as it does. This is shockingly bad science riddled with errors of fact and attribution.”

Bubblecar said:

Looks like PNAS has stuffed up big time:

“The article is a contributed submission from an academy member, Kenneth Hsu, an 89-year-old hydrologist who has absolutely no expertise in the subject and who selected referees that were also without expertise in fossil hominin skeletons,” said one of the key scientists involved in the discovery of Homo floresiensis, Professor Peter Brown, of the University of New England in Australia. “This is an outrageous abuse of the peer review process.”

……“They say Homo floresiensis is similar to a modern person with Down’s syndrome, but no one with that condition has a tiny cranium only 400cc in capacity as floresiensis does, nor do they have thick cranial bones as it does. This is shockingly bad science riddled with errors of fact and attribution.”

The_observer has struck again.