Sharp criticism of controversial ancient-human claims tests eLife’s revamped peer-review model
对有争议的古人类主张的尖锐批评考验了eLife改进的同行评审模式

Archaeologists in South Africa wowed viewers of a Netflix documentary — released last week — with stunning scenes of a cramped cave crammed with bone fossils that, they argue, are the remains of the earliest-known burial by humans or their extinct relatives.
南非的考古学家在上周发布的Netflix 纪录片中让观众惊叹不已，影片展示了一个狭窄的洞穴，里面挤满了骨化石，他们认为这些是人类或其已灭绝亲属最早已知的埋葬遗迹。

But days earlier, four scientists who peer-reviewed the paper making those claims called the supporting evidence “inadequate”, in an assessment that sits alongside the paper in the open-access journal eLife¹. The studies are a high-profile test of eLife’s new publishing model, in which it no longer formally accepts papers, but instead publishes them alongside peer reviewers’ reports.
但几天前，四位对该论文进行同行评审的科学家称其支持证据“不足”，这一评估与该论文一起发表在开放获取期刊eLife¹上。这些研究是对eLife的新出版模式的高调测试，该模式不再正式接受论文，而是将其与同行评审报告一起发表。

Vetted but not endorsed, neither accepted nor rejected, the headline-grabbing research on the quarter-of-a-million-year-old human relative Homo naledi occupies a liminal zone created by the collision of highly publicized science with changing models of publishing and peer review.
经过审查但未被认可，既未被接受也未被拒绝，这项引人注目的关于二十五万年前人类亲属纳莱迪人的研究处于一个由高度宣传的科学与不断变化的出版和同行评审模式碰撞所创造的边缘地带。

“I want to understand how the H. naledi fossils got there. They are very important fossils, and critical to understanding human evolution,” says Jamie Hodgkins, a palaeoarchaeologist at the University of Colorado Denver, who was one of the study’s four reviewers for eLife. However, “there just wasn’t any science in the paper ultimately”.
“我想了解H. naledi化石是如何到达那里的。它们是非常重要的化石，对于理解人类进化至关重要，”科罗拉多大学丹佛分校的古考古学家 Jamie Hodgkins 说，他是该研究在eLife的四位审稿人之一。然而，“最终论文中根本没有任何科学内容”。

Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist based at the National Geographic Society in Washington DC, who co-led the research, says that his team stands by its research claims. The authors plan to redraft the paper, taking the reviewers’ comments on board.
李·伯杰是位于华盛顿特区国家地理学会的古人类学家，他共同领导了这项研究，并表示他的团队坚持其研究主张。作者计划重新起草论文，采纳审稿人的意见。

Cave of bones 骨洞

The claimed burials are in the Rising Star cave system near Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2015, a team co-led by Berger reported the discovery of some 1,500 bones and teeth from at least 15 individuals belonging to a new hominin species that they named Homo naledi².
声称的埋葬地点位于南非约翰内斯堡附近的 Rising Star 洞穴系统中。2015 年，由 Berger 共同领导的一个团队报告发现了大约 1,500 块骨头和牙齿，来自至少 15 个属于他们命名为纳莱迪人的新型人族物种²。

Later dating showed that H. naledi lived relatively recently — between 335,000 and 241,000 years ago. This surprised researchers, given that many of its features, including its small brain, were more typically found in much earlier hominins³.
后来的测定显示，H. naledi 生活在相对较近的时期——大约在 33.5 万到 24.1 万年前。这让研究人员感到惊讶，因为它的许多特征，包括其小脑，通常在更早期的人类³中发现。

Berger’s team has previously hinted at the possibility that the Rising Star site represented a burial. They fleshed out those claims in a preprint last month¹, reporting further excavations of several individuals from two deep chambers.
伯杰的团队此前曾暗示，Rising Star 遗址可能是一个墓地。上个月，他们在一份预印本中详细阐述了这些主张¹，报告了从两个深层洞穴中进一步挖掘出的几具个体。

The researchers say that differences between the composition of the soil surrounding the remains and that in the rest of the cave are a sign of active digging. Some of the bones, including those comprising the right foot, ankle and lower leg bones of one individual, were in the correct anatomical orientation, or articulation, suggesting that they had decomposed in place, another potential sign of intentional burial.
研究人员表示，遗骸周围土壤的成分与洞穴其余部分的土壤成分之间的差异是主动挖掘的迹象。一些骨骼，包括一个个体的右脚、脚踝和小腿骨，处于正确的解剖方向或连接状态，表明它们是在原地分解的，这是有意埋葬的另一个潜在迹象。

Being at least 240,000 years old, the H. naledi remains pre-date the oldest-known Homo sapiens burials by at least 100,000 years. Berger and his team argued that such advanced behaviour by a small-brained hominin should force a rethink about the capacities of other ancient human relatives — and of what sets H. sapiens apart from them. A second preprint reported scratches on the walls of Rising Star, which the researchers interpreted as intentional engravings by H. naledi⁴. Convincing evidence of such symbolic behaviour has previously been found only in H. sapiens, and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalenis), another big-brained hominin.
至少有 24 万年历史的H. naledi遗骸比已知最古老的Homo sapiens墓葬早至少 10 万年。Berger 和他的团队认为，这种小脑容量的古人类表现出的先进行为应该促使人们重新思考其他古人类亲属的能力，以及是什么使H. sapiens与它们区别开来。第二篇预印本报告了在 Rising Star 墙壁上的划痕，研究人员将其解释为H. naledi⁴故意雕刻的证据。此前，只有在H. sapiens和尼安德特人（Homo neanderthalenis）中发现过这种象征性行为的有力证据，尼安德特人是另一种大脑容量较大的古人类。

Open reviews 公开评论

Berger’s team initially submitted its findings to a leading journal (which he declined to name), but they were ultimately rejected after a review process that dragged on for around six months. “That was a little bit frustrating for us,” says Berger.
伯杰的团队最初将其研究结果提交给一家知名期刊（他拒绝透露名称），但经过大约六个月的审查过程后，最终被拒绝发表。“这对我们来说有点令人沮丧，”伯杰说。

The authors had had a good experience publishing the initial descriptions and dating of H. naledi in eLife. So they decided to resubmit the results there under a publishing model that the journal rolled out earlier this year.
作者们在 H. naledi 的初步描述和年代测定方面在 eLife 上有过良好的发表经验。因此，他们决定在该期刊今年早些时候推出的出版模式下重新提交结果。

Papers submitted to eLife under this model must first be posted as preprints. Editors then decide whether to send them out for peer review (a large proportion of submissions are rejected). Studies that the journal agrees to consider are published online alongside the reviews and an ‘eLife assessment’ summarizing them. Authors can submit a paper for re-review to get a new assessment, or let the first — or any subsequent revision — stand as the version of record.
根据此模型提交给eLife的论文必须首先以预印本的形式发布。然后，编辑决定是否将其送出进行同行评审（大部分提交的论文被拒绝）。期刊同意考虑的研究将与评审意见和“eLife评估”一起在线发布，后者对其进行总结。作者可以提交论文进行重新评审以获得新的评估，或者让第一次或任何后续修订作为记录版本。

Berger’s team announced its discoveries at a press conference, coinciding with the release of the preprints on bioRxiv in early June. The team also mentioned that the findings were being reviewed at eLife. “We felt and feel these papers were very, very strong,” Berger says. “They meet and exceed what this community has published for burials of Homo sapiens.”
伯杰的团队在新闻发布会上宣布了他们的发现，这与六月初在 bioRxiv 上发布的预印本同时进行。团队还提到，这些发现正在 eLife 进行审查。伯杰说：“我们认为这些论文非常非常有力，它们符合并超越了该领域关于智人埋葬的已发表研究。”

‘Inadequate science’ ‘不充分的科学’

Many scientists were deeply sceptical of the evidence presented. The scattered bones bore little resemblance to those of more completely articulated skeletons from other archaeological sites in which intentional burial is clear, critics said. And the researchers did not make a convincing case that the wall scratchings were made by a hominin, and presented no evidence that they date to a period when H. naledi occupied the cave.
许多科学家对所提供的证据深表怀疑。批评者指出，这些散落的骨头与其他考古遗址中明确有意埋葬的完整骨骼几乎没有相似之处。而且，研究人员未能令人信服地证明墙上的划痕是由古人类制造的，也没有提供证据表明它们的年代与H. naledi占据洞穴的时期相符。

“I don’t see an anatomical connection, I don’t see a hole or a pit that has been intentionally dug,” says María Martinón-Torres, a palaeoanthropologist at the Spanish National Research Center for Human Evolution in Burgos, who co-authored an essay critiquing the H. naledi findings the day after their announcement. “These hypotheses have been sold with a very strong media campaign before the evidence was ready to support it.”
“我没有看到解剖学上的联系，我没有看到一个有意挖掘的洞或坑，”西班牙布尔戈斯国家人类进化研究中心的古人类学家 María Martinón-Torres 说，她是一篇批评H. naledi发现的文章的合著者，该文章在发现公布的第二天发表。“这些假设在证据尚未准备好支持之前，就已经通过非常强大的媒体宣传被推销出去。”

The papers’ peer reviews, posted on 12 July, come to much the same conclusion about the scientific evidence. After citing a litany of missing evidence, one reviewer wrote: “The manuscript in its current condition is deemed incomplete and inadequate, and should not be viewed as finalized scholarship.”
这些论文的同行评审于 7 月 12 日发布，对科学证据得出了大致相同的结论。在列举了一系列缺失的证据后，一位审稿人写道：“该手稿在目前的状态下被认为是不完整和不充分的，不应被视为最终的学术成果。”

Berger says that his team is still taking in the reviews, and that the group plans to address some — but maybe not all — of the concerns in future versions. “We haven’t published our final paper yet.” He says that the team will stop seeking further review “when we feel that we have come as close to meeting the valid criticisms as we could”.
伯杰表示，他的团队仍在研究这些评论，并计划在未来的版本中解决一些（但可能不是全部）问题。“我们还没有发表最终的论文。” 他说，团队将在“我们觉得已经尽可能接近满足合理批评”时停止寻求进一步的审查。

Hodgkins says that she agreed to review the burial paper because of the site’s importance. But now she’s not sure if the time spent reviewing was worth it — or whether she’ll volunteer to review any revisions. “They simply don’t care what our scientific questions are regarding their work.”
霍奇金斯说，她同意审查这篇关于埋葬的论文是因为该地点的重要性。但现在她不确定花时间审查是否值得——或者她是否会自愿审查任何修订。“他们根本不关心我们对他们工作的科学问题。”

Sven Ouzman, an archaeologist and rock-art specialist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, who reviewed the engravings paper for eLife⁵, says that “the possibility has been raised but the proof really isn’t there”. He worries that eLife’s publishing model has created a loophole that allows unsupported studies to stand. “It’s essentially up there and published, and they can say, ‘we have reviewed the reviewer’s comments, and we thank them for it. But we stand by our arguments,’” he says. “That’s sort of cheeky.”
斯文·奥兹曼是位于珀斯的西澳大学的考古学家和岩画专家，他为eLife⁵审阅了这篇关于雕刻的论文，他表示，“这个可能性已经被提出，但实际上并没有证据。”他担心eLife的出版模式创造了一个漏洞，使得没有支持的研究得以存在。“它基本上就在那里并已发表，他们可以说，‘我们已经审阅了审稿人的意见，并感谢他们。但我们坚持我们的论点，’”他说。“这有点狡猾。”

An eLife spokesperson says that the journal is holding conversations with its editors about lessons learnt from the H. naledi papers, but no changes to the model have been decided.
一位eLife发言人表示，该期刊正在与其编辑讨论从H. naledi论文中学到的经验，但尚未决定对模型进行任何更改。

eLife senior editor George Perry, who oversaw the assessment of the H. naledi papers, stands by the decision to send them out for review. “We needed input from expert reviewers to be able to assess whether those interpretations are warranted,” says Perry, who is a biological anthropologist at the Pennsylvania State University in State College.
eLife 高级编辑乔治·佩里负责评估H. naledi论文，他坚持将这些论文送审的决定。佩里是宾夕法尼亚州立大学州立学院的生物人类学家，他说：“我们需要专家评审的意见，以便评估这些解释是否合理。”

Perry would have preferred that Berger and his colleagues wait for those reviews before publicizing their work. But the discussions over what H. naledi did or didn’t do 250,000 years ago has underscored the value of peer review, he says, and served as a healthy reminder that science is an imperfect process. “Not every result is 100% correct.”
佩里本希望伯杰和他的同事们在公布他们的工作之前等待那些评审。但关于H. naledi在 25 万年前做了或没做的事情的讨论强调了同行评审的价值，他说，并作为一个健康的提醒，科学是一个不完美的过程。“并不是每个结果都是 100%正确的。”