Editorial Standards and Scientific Integrity Policy

Our purpose

Hominid Post publishes accessible, evidence-based writing about human evolution, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, cultural evolution, and related fields.

Our purpose is educational. We translate scientific research for readers who may not have formal academic training while preserving the uncertainty, complexity, and limitations of the underlying evidence.

Hominid Post may earn revenue through advertising, sponsorships, affiliate relationships, subscriptions, licensing, events, or commercial partnerships. Revenue may support the publication, but it does not determine our scientific conclusions.

Scientific accountability takes priority over traffic, commercial pressure, political convenience, or an attractive headline.

Our core editorial principles

Accuracy before certainty

We do not present a claim as established when the evidence remains preliminary, disputed, indirect, or incomplete.

Authors and editors must distinguish among:

·Evidence: What observations, data, experiments, or documented sources show.
·Interpretation: What researchers reasonably infer from that evidence.
·Speculation: What remains possible but has not been adequately demonstrated.

These labels may appear explicitly in articles when the distinction is important.

Multiple hypotheses

Human behavior rarely has one sufficient explanation. Articles addressing causation, adaptation, cooperation, mating, conflict, religion, status, parenting, or cultural change should consider credible competing hypotheses.

A strong article asks:

1.What are the leading biological, ecological, developmental, historical, and cultural explanations?
2.What predictions follow from each explanation?
3.What evidence supports or weakens each account?
4.What additional data could distinguish among them?

This approach reflects the normal practice of evolutionary anthropology, where the same behavior may be influenced by kinship, reciprocity, signaling, status, ecology, political alliances, cultural norms, and other incentives at the same time. John Q. Patton's analysis of meat sharing, for example, evaluates several overlapping explanations rather than assigning the behavior to a single universal motive.

Context before universals

Human behavior is conditional and variable. Subsistence systems, resource availability, population density, institutions, kinship, markets, technology, gender arrangements, and local history can change the costs and benefits of the same behavior.

We avoid treating any contemporary population, archaeological culture, hunter-gatherer society, or historical period as a simple stand-in for all humanity or for a uniform ancestral environment.

Explanation does not equal justification

An evolutionary explanation does not establish whether a behavior is ethical, desirable, healthy, inevitable, or appropriate today.

We do not use natural selection to excuse violence, domination, discrimination, infidelity, exploitation, or other harmful conduct. Describing how a behavior may have arisen does not provide a moral defense of it.

Human variation without determinism

Biology influences human development, but genes do not operate outside environments, culture, learning, institutions, and individual experience.

We reject claims that reduce people to fixed biological categories or treat statistical group differences as reliable descriptions of individuals. On subjects such as sex differences, intelligence, race, violence, reproduction, or mental health, we emphasize variation within groups, overlap between groups, measurement limitations, and environmental context.

Evidence and sourcing standards

Preferred sources

Articles should rely primarily on:

1.Peer-reviewed original research
2.Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
3.Scholarly books from established academic presses
4.Reputable archaeological, historical, or ethnographic syntheses
5.Government, university, museum, and scientific-institution data
6.Credible journalism when reporting recent events or public controversy

Popular books, documentaries, podcasts, social media posts, and news articles may provide context, but they should not serve as the sole basis for a scientific claim when stronger evidence is available.

Primary research

When practical, articles should cite the original study rather than relying only on a news story, press release, or secondary summary.

Authors must read enough of the underlying source to understand:

·The research question
·The sample or population studied
·The methods used
·What was actually measured
·The principal findings
·The limitations acknowledged by the researchers

Abstracts alone may omit qualifications needed to interpret a finding responsibly.

Citation requirements

Scientific, historical, archaeological, demographic, and statistical claims should be supported with in-text citations.

Hominid Post normally uses author-date citations, followed by a References and Further Reading section in American Psychological Association (APA) style.

Sources must be real, traceable, and accurately represented. We do not publish invented references, quotations, statistics, page numbers, authors, journals, or study findings.

Evidence quality

One study rarely settles a broad question about human nature.

Editors consider:

·Sample size and population
·Research design
·Replication
·Cross-cultural coverage
·Comparative evidence
·Measurement validity
·Effect size
·Uncertainty
·Potential confounding
·Alternative explanations
·Whether the evidence is correlational or causal
·Whether findings from animals can reasonably be applied to humans

Correlations must not be described as proof of causation.

Animal findings must be identified as animal evidence. Laboratory findings must not be presented as direct descriptions of everyday behavior without appropriate qualification.

Quantitative claims

When available and relevant, articles should report the sample size, direction of the result, uncertainty, and practical magnitude of an effect.

Relative changes should be accompanied by absolute numbers when the absolute values materially change the meaning.

We avoid presenting percentages without denominators, averages without distributions, or statistical significance as proof that an effect is large or important.

Standards for evolutionary explanations

Proximate and ultimate explanations

Articles should distinguish between:

·Proximate explanations: The immediate mechanisms involved, including hormones, cognition, development, emotion, learning, and social experience.
·Ultimate explanations: The possible evolutionary history or fitness consequences of a trait or behavior.

These levels may complement one another. One does not replace the other.

Adaptation claims

A behavior should not be called an adaptation merely because an evolutionary explanation sounds plausible.

Adaptation claims should consider:

·The proposed selection pressure
·The relevant ancestral or historical ecology
·Whether meaningful heritable variation could have existed
·How the behavior could have affected survival or reproduction
·Whether the proposed mechanism makes testable predictions
·Competing explanations such as cultural evolution, developmental plasticity, byproducts, drift, constraint, or measurement error

The ancestral environment

We do not treat the Pleistocene as one stable environment or assume that every human trait was designed for a single hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Human populations lived across varied climates, ecologies, social systems, technologies, and subsistence arrangements. Claims about ancestral environments must reflect that variation.

Group selection and multilevel selection

Claims involving group selection, kin selection, inclusive fitness, reciprocity, cultural group selection, or multilevel selection must identify the mechanism being proposed.

The article should not use "for the good of the group" as a complete explanation. It should specify how cooperative groups form, how they remain stable, how free riding is controlled, and how between-group advantages could outweigh within-group competition.

Major theoretical disagreements should be represented fairly. Scientific disputes should be described as disputes rather than resolved by editorial preference. The debate over inclusive fitness and multilevel approaches to eusociality is one example of an area where prominent researchers have reached different theoretical conclusions.

Cultural evolution

Culture is part of the causal explanation, not background noise.

Institutions, norms, technologies, languages, religions, markets, and systems of prestige can spread through social learning and change behavior much faster than genetic evolution. Articles should consider gene-culture coevolution when biological and cultural processes plausibly interact.

Epigenetics

Epigenetics must not be used as a vague explanation for inherited trauma, behavior, or social experience.

Articles discussing epigenetic effects should identify, where the evidence allows:

·The exposure
·The developmental timing
·The tissue or biological system studied
·The proposed mechanism
·Whether the evidence comes from humans or animals
·Whether the effect is developmental, intergenerational, or genuinely transgenerational

Claims about true transgenerational inheritance in humans require especially strong evidence.

Writing and presentation standards

Accessible language

Articles should be understandable to an educated general reader.

Technical terms should be defined when first introduced. When an abbreviation is needed, the full term should appear first, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses.

Accessibility does not mean removing uncertainty or simplifying a dispute until only one answer remains.

Headlines

Headlines must accurately reflect the article.

We avoid headlines that:

·Claim a study "proves" a complex behavior
·Present preliminary work as settled science
·Describe a small association as a universal human law
·Use "scientists discovered" when the finding is an interpretation
·Promise that evolution explains everything about a behavior
·Manufacture fear, certainty, or controversy to attract clicks

Questions may be used in headlines, but the article must answer them honestly rather than use the question to imply an unsupported claim.

Quotations

Direct quotations must be accurate, properly attributed, and used in context.

We do not alter quotations in a way that changes the speaker's meaning. Minor omissions should be marked, and substantive clarifications should be placed in brackets.

Images and reconstructions

Photographs, illustrations, maps, and archaeological reconstructions must not be presented in a misleading manner.

Artist reconstructions should be identified as reconstructions. AI-generated or substantially altered scientific imagery should be labeled when readers could otherwise interpret it as documentary evidence.

Images should not reinforce racial stereotypes, sexualize subjects unnecessarily, fabricate historical certainty, or present one modern population as an unchanged representation of prehistoric humans.

Sensitive subjects

Hominid Post may examine difficult subjects, including violence, warfare, sexuality, religion, race, inequality, intelligence, reproductive behavior, colonialism, and political conflict.

These subjects require additional care.

Articles should:

·Avoid dehumanizing categories
·Avoid assigning collective guilt or inherited moral worth
·Distinguish ancestry, ethnicity, race, citizenship, religion, and political identity
·Avoid implying that contemporary groups represent pure or unchanged ancient populations
·Separate empirical description from political or moral judgment
·Include historical and ecological context
·Recognize heterogeneity within populations
·State important limitations and uncertainties
·Avoid using evolutionary theory to legitimize eugenics or group hierarchy

We will not publish content that promotes racial supremacy, biological caste systems, forced reproduction, ethnic cleansing, dehumanization, or the denial of basic human dignity.

Author and contributor standards

Authorship

A named author must have made a meaningful contribution to the article and must accept responsibility for its contents.

Research assistance, fact-checking, translation, illustration, data analysis, or editorial support may be acknowledged when substantial.

Guest contributors must disclose relevant financial, professional, political, or organizational relationships.

Credentials

Credentials should be described accurately.

Hominid Post will not imply that a contributor is a practicing scientist, physician, archaeologist, anthropologist, or university researcher unless that description is current and supportable.

Personal experience may be valuable, but it is not a substitute for scientific evidence.

Conflicts of interest

Authors, editors, reviewers, and contributors must disclose relationships that could reasonably affect, or appear to affect, their judgment.

These may include:

·Employment
·Consulting arrangements
·Investments
·Board positions
·Grants
·Paid speaking
·Political affiliations relevant to the article
·Advocacy roles
·Commercial partnerships
·Personal relationships
·Ownership of a product or company discussed

A disclosed conflict does not automatically invalidate an article. Concealing a relevant conflict damages reader trust and may require correction, withdrawal, or retraction. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidance similarly treats financial and nonfinancial relationships as relevant to the credibility of professional judgment.

Editorial review

Every article should receive editorial review appropriate to its subject and level of risk.

Review may include:

·Source verification
·Citation checking
·Factual review
·Statistical review
·Sensitivity review
·Legal or compliance review
·Review by a qualified subject-matter expert

Hominid Post will use the term peer-reviewed only when a manuscript has undergone a defined scholarly peer-review process. Routine editorial review, fact-checking, or review by one expert will not be presented as academic peer review.

Articles may carry labels such as:

·Editorially reviewed
·Fact-checked
·Expert-reviewed
·Opinion
·Commentary
·Sponsored
·Partner content

The label must accurately describe the process used.

Artificial intelligence and editorial tools

Hominid Post may use artificial intelligence tools for research organization, transcription, editing, translation, outlining, image development, or production support.

Human editors remain accountable for the final publication.

Artificial intelligence output must not be treated as a source. Any factual claim, quotation, reference, or statistic produced with automated assistance must be independently verified.

We do not permit:

·Fabricated citations
·Invented quotations
·Synthetic data presented as observed data
·Automated paraphrasing that distorts a source
·Undisclosed manipulation of scientific images
·Publication without meaningful human review

The use of an automated tool does not reduce the author's or editor's responsibility for accuracy.

Commercial independence

Separation of editorial and commercial decisions

Advertisers, sponsors, donors, affiliates, and commercial partners may support Hominid Post, but they may not purchase favorable scientific conclusions.

Commercial partners do not receive authority to:

·Select the outcome of an analysis
·Suppress relevant evidence
·Rewrite an independent editorial conclusion
·Remove legitimate criticism
·Present advertising as independent reporting
·Require undisclosed links or endorsements

Editorial staff retain final authority over scientific and educational content.

Affiliate relationships

Hominid Post may receive compensation when readers purchase a product, register for a service, or follow certain commercial links.

A clear affiliate disclosure must appear near the relevant recommendation.

Commercial compensation must not determine:

·Which scientific conclusion is reached
·Whether material limitations are disclosed
·The ranking of a product presented as an independent evaluation
·Whether a negative finding is omitted

The Federal Trade Commission advises that material relationships connected to endorsements be disclosed and that disclosures needed to prevent deception be clear and conspicuous.

Advertising standards

Advertisements must be visually distinguishable from editorial content.

Hominid Post may reject advertising that:

·Makes deceptive scientific or medical claims
·Promotes pseudoscience as established research
·Exploits fear, disease, or vulnerable populations
·Promotes racial supremacy or dehumanization
·Misrepresents academic credentials
·Conflicts directly with the publication's educational mission
·Could materially damage reader trust

Acceptance of an advertisement does not constitute an editorial endorsement.

Paid links and search integrity

We do not sell undisclosed favorable coverage or disguise paid placements as independent articles.

Commercial arrangements must not compromise the accuracy of page titles, metadata, structured data, authorship information, citations, or editorial labels.

Search engine optimization must improve discoverability without distorting the evidence.

Corrections, updates, and retractions

Corrections

Readers should be able to report suspected errors through the Hominid Post contact page.

Verified factual errors will be corrected promptly and transparently.

A correction note should explain:

·What was wrong
·What was changed
·When the correction was made
·Whether the correction affects the article's conclusion

Minor spelling, formatting, or grammatical edits that do not affect meaning may be corrected without a formal notice.

Updates

Articles may be updated when new evidence becomes available.

The page should display both the original publication date and the date of a substantial update. Significant revisions should be described in an editor's note.

An evolving scientific debate is not itself an error. A correction addresses a mistake in the published article; an update reflects new evidence or a changed state of knowledge.

Retractions and withdrawals

An article may be retracted or withdrawn when:

·Its central evidence is fabricated
·Its references are materially false
·Serious plagiarism is confirmed
·Undisclosed conflicts compromise the work
·Major methodological errors invalidate the conclusion
·The article causes a substantial and uncorrectable misrepresentation of the evidence

Retraction is intended to protect the integrity of the published record rather than punish the author. This is consistent with Committee on Publication Ethics guidance on correcting the literature.

The original page should ordinarily remain accessible with a prominent retraction notice, except where legal, privacy, or safety considerations require removal.

Plagiarism and originality

Hominid Post publishes original work.

Writers must identify quotations, cite ideas derived from others, and avoid close paraphrasing that reproduces another author's structure or language without acknowledgment.

Previously published material must be disclosed. Republishing or adapting an article requires appropriate permission, attribution, and labeling.

Self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, and unattributed reuse of previous work may require correction or withdrawal.

Reader privacy and research ethics

Hominid Post does not conduct human-subject research merely by publishing educational articles.

When original surveys, interviews, observations, or data collection are used, the article should explain:

·How participants were recruited
·Whether participation was voluntary
·How consent was obtained
·How privacy was protected
·Whether institutional review or ethical oversight was required
·Whether compensation was provided
·How the data may be used

We do not expose the identity of vulnerable individuals without a compelling public-interest reason and appropriate consent.

Opinion and commentary

Hominid Post may publish essays, critiques, hypotheses, and informed commentary.

Opinion pieces must be labeled. They remain subject to standards for factual accuracy, sourcing, conflicts of interest, and respectful treatment.

A writer may argue for an interpretation. The article must still represent opposing evidence fairly and must not convert disagreement into allegations of dishonesty without evidence.

Political and religious neutrality

Hominid Post does not require contributors or readers to adopt a particular political, religious, or philosophical position.

Articles may examine political institutions, religious behavior, ritual, ideology, coalition formation, and moral systems as subjects of anthropological inquiry.

Editorial analysis should distinguish:

·Description from endorsement
·Religious belief from empirical scientific claims
·Political identity from ancestry
·Institutional criticism from hostility toward a population

No political party, religious institution, government, donor, or commercial partner may claim ownership of Hominid Post's scientific conclusions.

Our standard of accountability

Hominid Post does not promise perfect knowledge. Scientific understanding changes, evidence remains uneven, and reasonable researchers often disagree.

We do promise a consistent method:

·Use credible sources
·Represent findings accurately
·Consider competing explanations
·Disclose material conflicts
·Separate evidence from interpretation
·Identify uncertainty
·Correct mistakes
·Label commercial relationships
·Protect editorial independence
·Treat the people we write about as human beings rather than examples in an argument

Our credibility depends less on never being wrong than on being transparent about what we know, what we infer, what remains uncertain, and what we correct.

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