How is this a new finding? I remember learning about this in my undergraduate endocrinology class a quarter century ago!

As for faking- Haekel, Mendel, Ptolomy all "cleaned up" or added to their findings to make them more convincing and ensure their own personal influence (though as in the case of Mendel it doesn’t always work). Didn’t mean they were entirely wrong, just that they understood the nature of competition in the human world of ideas and "what it takes" to win. That’s a lot different from wholesale fabrication.

The problem in our society here is that showmanship and the loudest voice often win out over actual priority and careful analysis and scrupulous presentation. As Gilbert & Sullivan once observed (I don’t remember which operetta): "If you wish in the world to advance, your (?) you’re bound to enhance- You must stir it and strump it and blow your own trumpet, or trust me you haven’t a chance". I’m not sure about the second line particular, either.

Internalization of glands isn’t a new idea, please note. Its been long known that the lower pituitary gland, which is in higher vertebrates attached directly to the blood vessels, originated as an open pocket in the roof of the mouth of lower chordata. Similarly the thyroid was an open pocket in the bottom of the mouth, dumping its cargo of iodine-containing hormones directly into food as it passed to the gut. The entire history of all the in- and out-pocketings found in complex bodies has similar stories- teeth from scales, external genitalia from internal ones in cloacas, testes in scrotal sac dropping out from the old ovary position inside the body, and so on.

codemaniac