[setrofim_]

You are right, the authors of the paper only claim that their results demonstrate a); they are, however, assuming b) based on previous studies.

What the Professor is arguing, as I understand it, is that those previous studies do not necessarily warrant the assumption of b), and thus the paper's title "A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics" is misleading -- there has been a confirmation of "female", but not of "warrior". Something like "Skeleton, that some evidence points to being that of a warrior, was confirmed to be female"; but that's not as pithy or sensationalist.

Those not reading the paper sufficiently carefully (or at all -- only limiting themselves to the title and the abstract) will end up drawing conclusions unjustified by the paper. Which, given the political implications, may be undesirable.

[edit: grammar]

[phaemon]

In that case, surely the professor should be commenting on the original assessment, not any paper that accepts the published literature? I still reckon it's a misunderstanding.

I don't know what the "political implications" means. I think I've missed something. Did Trump tweet about it or something? I don't know why this would have any political implications at all.

[setrofim_]

> In that case, surely the professor should be commenting on the original assessment, not any paper that accepts the published literature?

She does. Most of the criticism in the blog post is directed towards the findings in the previous studies. The professor explicitly disqualifies herself from discussing the findings of the current study, as they are outside her area of expertise. The criticism of this paper is that it fails to distinguish sufficiently clearly its a priori assumptions from the conclusions drawn from the present findings.

> I don't know what the "political implications" means. I think I've missed something. Did Trump tweet about it or something? I don't know why this would have any political implications at all.

I meant gender politics, rather than the US national politics.