Direct answer:

Early on, many biologists treated sugars on proteins and lipids as “decorations” because they were hard to map, hard to sequence, and hard to connect to a clear function. The core problem was technical and conceptual: glycans are structurally diverse, branched, and not template-encoded as DNA and proteins are, so the field felt messy and slow-moving. (ACS Publications)

Acceptance rose when tools and use cases became unavoidable. Better mass spectrometry, chromatography, glycan-binding reagents, and shared databases made glycan structures and pathways testable at scale. At the same time, biomedicine kept bumping into glycosylation as a causal driver in immunity, infection, inflammation, cancer, and therapeutic protein design, which forced mainstream attention. (NCBI)

A final piece was “institution building.” Dedicated journals, societies, meetings, and training pipelines made glycobiology easier to learn and fund, reducing the old stigma. (PMC)

Audit notes (what’s embedded in the question):

The word “ridiculed” compresses a range of behavior. Some of it was open dismissal, but much of it was neglect driven by difficulty and a lack of tools. That distinction matters because it changes what “fixed it.” (ACS Publications)

2) When a new scientific theory challenges a long-held belief, what is the immediate psychological barrier most people face?

Direct answer:

The first barrier is cognitive dissonance, the discomfort that arises from holding a belief and facing evidence that contradicts it. People often reduce that discomfort by dismissing the new claim rather than updating the old belief. (PMC)

A close partner is identity-protective reasoning. When a belief is tied to group identity or status, people filter evidence to protect their sense of belonging and self-image. (SSRN)

A third, common blocker is status quo bias, the tendency to prefer the current view because changing it feels costly or risky. (Springer)

Audit notes:

This question is about psychology, not truth. A claim can be correct and still trigger dissonance. A claim can be wrong and still feel comforting. The barrier predicts reaction, not accuracy. (PMC)

3) How long does it actually take for evolution to catch up with changes like our modern sugar consumption?

Direct answer:

In human genetic evolution, the honest answer is that modern sugar changes occurred too quickly. Industrial-scale refined sugar and ultra-processed foods rose over roughly the last 100–150 years, which is about 4–6 human generations (using ~25 years per generation). That is usually too short for broad genetic “catch-up” across populations. (PMC)

When diet shifts do leave strong genetic signals, the time window is typically thousands of years, not a century. Lactase persistence shows strong selection over about 5,000–10,000 years in dairying populations. (PubMed)

Other diet-linked adaptations, such as differences in salivary amylase gene copy number associated with long-term starch diets, also reflect longer-run pressures, not last-century change. (PMC)

So, the “catch up” people notice today is mostly non-genetic: culture, behavior, medicine, and sometimes shifts in the microbiome. It is an adaptation in the everyday sense, not a genome-level redesign. (PubMed)

Audit notes:

“Catch up” mixes two ideas: physiological flexibility and population genetics. Humans can change habits fast. Allele frequencies usually do not shift fast unless selection is extreme and sustained. (PubMed)

4) Do you agree with the paper’s lead investigator that “the paper represents the encroachment of pseudoscience into the heart of biological research”?

Direct answer (with context):

That quote is from Ariel Novoplansky, who criticized a 2025 paper claiming that Norway spruce trees “anticipated” a solar eclipse through synchronized bioelectrical signaling. (EurekAlert!)

Do I agree with his core criticism? Largely, yes, in this sense: the critique argues that the original study relied on speculative interpretation while underweighting simpler environmental explanations (such as a thunderstorm and lightning) and employed limited replication and control. Those are classic pathways to over-claiming. (Cell)

Do I agree with the label “pseudoscience” as a final verdict? I treat it as a rhetorical alarm bell, not a technical diagnosis. A stronger, calmer statement is: the eclipse-anticipation claim is not well supported by the study design as described, and it needs tighter controls, replication, and falsifiable predictions before it deserves confidence. (Cell)

Audit notes:

This dispute is a good example of how hype enters science: an intriguing signal, a dramatic story, thin controls, fast media pickup, then a methods-focused rebuttal. The clean audit question is, “What alternative causes were ruled out, and how?” (PubMed)

5) Could the epicanthic fold have evolved due to a founder effect rather than environmental adaptation? How does that work?

Direct answer:

Yes, in principle. A founder effect is a form of genetic drift. A small group forms a new population, and whatever traits are common in that small group can become common in descendants, even without an advantage. Drift is strongest when the founding group is small and later gene flow is limited. (PMC)

Applied to epicanthic folds, the logic is simple. If a founding population had a higher frequency of alleles influencing eyelid anatomy, the trait can rise in frequency through drift during expansions and bottlenecks. Later, the trait can stay common simply because it is already common. (PMC)

What do experts think about the trait’s “why”? In medical and anatomical references, epicanthal folds are described as common in several populations and also common early in development, with folds receding in many children as facial structures grow. That pattern alone does not prove selection. (SBRMC)

Adaptive hypotheses (cold, wind, glare) exist in the literature, but the evidence is not decisive, and drift remains a viable population-genetics route when demographic history is strong. (PMC)

Audit notes:

This question is well-posed because it separates “selection story” from “demography story.” A clean test asks for correlations with the environment after controlling for ancestry and migration history. (PMC)

6) What do experts say about the possibility of an ark carrying millions of animals and keeping them alive for a year?

Direct answer:

Most relevant experts in biology, ecology, genetics, and geology reject the “millions of animals for a year” framing as infeasible, and they also reject a global flood model on broader evidence grounds. They point to basic constraints: animal numbers, food and water, waste and disease control, ventilation, and post-voyage ecological recovery. (National Center for Science Education)

Creationist researchers usually respond by saying the ark did not carry “millions of species.” They argue it carried fewer “kinds” (often mapped to a higher taxonomic level than species), plus many animals were juveniles, plus divine intervention is part of the account. You see estimates in the thousands of species, not millions, in creationist outlets and Ark-focused ministries. (Creation.com)

A key fault line is definitions and starting assumptions. If “kind” is broad and you grant rapid post-flood diversification, the onboard count drops. Critics then push on the downstream math: how fast diversification must run, how ecosystems rebuild, and how global distributions arise. (TalkOrigins)

Audit notes:

“Millions of animals” is often a straw number because most modern species are insects and marine life, and even many creationist models do not place them on the ark. The real audit question is which land- and air-breathing kinds are included, and what husbandry model is assumed for one year. (National Center for Science Education)