It says only 5% had usable DNA to test. Maybe male DNA just holds up better over that kind of timespan so the bias is in how much of it is usable.
This is the relevant quote from the discussion section of the article: “ Perhaps the simplest explanation in the subfossil datasets is a taphonomic artifact, where male bones in sexually dimorphic species such as bison are larger or denser and more likely to be better preserved or identified as likely to contain DNA. If this was the case, male bias might be expected to correlate with factors associated with postmortem DNA preservation, such as sample age, average DNA fragment length, and cytosine deamination rate. Greater bone density might also be expected to inhibit microbial intrusion, and thus increase the proportion of endogenous DNA (host species vs. microbial DNA). However, no such trends were observed here (Table 2), and it is reasonable to conclude that DNA preservation is equal between the sexes.”
Like, how likely do you really think it is that the reason they haven't figured it out is because it simply never occurred to them to investigate your reason?
I've been in a tech meeting with 10 devs (about 150 years exp) trying to solve a problem for days. The founder of the company (a non dev, but smart guy) walked in at one point and said. What if we just did X instead. We all collectively slapped our heads and tada solved it.
In particular when the test population is so different from the expected living population and experts have no explanation, some kind of non-linear thinking is likely going to be needed.
I don’t get what you don’t get. Engaging one’s brain is the best way to understand the shape of a problem.
And yes, that involves asking “basic” questions.
This ciding you do here assumes bad faith from the person asking the question. Some people ask questions because they want to know the answer, not to demonstrate how much better they are than a whole field or whatever you are assuming here.
> Like, how likely do you really think it is that the reason they haven't figured it out
Who cares how likely is it? Are we only allowed to ask questions which have not been studied before?
If it has been studied before: great! It is much more likely one can just read answers in their paper.
The comment doesn't say that.
> never occurred to them to investigate your reason?
The comment doesn't say that.