Sascha Wolfer<p>New <a href="https://fediscience.org/tags/preprint" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>preprint</span></a> by Alex Koplenig and me:<br>"Statistical errors undermine claims about the evolution of polysynthetic languages". (<a href="https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/g72hw_v1" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/g72hw_</span><span class="invisible">v1</span></a>)</p><p>This is a comment on Bromham et al. (2025): "Macroevolutionary analysis of polysynthesis..." published in <a href="https://fediscience.org/tags/PNAS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PNAS</span></a> (<a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2504483122" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">doi.org/10.1073/pnas.250448312</span><span class="invisible">2</span></a>).</p><p>In a nutshell: Statistical models that fit the data better call almost all reported results into question.<br>- Most structure is due to phylogenetic and geographic clustering.<br>- Neither spatial nor phylogenetic isolation is significant.<br>- L1 population only partially significant, but effect direction is reversed.</p><p><a href="https://fediscience.org/tags/Linguistics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Linguistics</span></a></p>