"Initial confusion". I like that. It gives us a specimen, a theory, and an opportunity to judge the commitment to reality of one thinking mind in an area where the evidence is equally available to all. I'm no authority on skulls but I am as much an authority on "initial confusion" as you or anybody.
More fully: ..."some initial confusion about how to classify it..."
So: does this bear the mark of “initial confusion”?
"Initial confusion" is when the discoverer and attendant experts see some stigmata they understand along with others they don't. They have to reconcile the signs and that takes time. So, one would think, they would delay any public characterization of the specimen until they had sorted it out. And then, since true science is so certain and self-correcting, when the experts have peer-reviewed each other and winnowed out the confusion, they announce to the hoi polloi what the darn skull is.
Everyone can judge here: does this specimen, not a skull but a sequence of events, bear the marks of "initial confusion", or does it bear the mark of multiple groups of people interpreting the same set of observations by differing sets of criteria? The latter.
Perhaps one group puts more weight on the occiput; the other thinks the brow ridges win the day. In other words, they have no one agreed on algorithm by which to classify the specimen.
Are the people who originally called it classification A now relieved of their confusion? Do they all now agree it is a B? If the confusion was "initial" is it now all gone? Have they had time to sort it out yet?
There's nothing wrong with the lack of a system of classification -- it must be a universal stage in every taxonomic enterprise. BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT THEY ARE SAYING.
So the deeper question: why the unwillingness to admit a specific level of uncertainty? Not only among the researchers, but among their defenders? This phraseology is an intentional minimization of an embarassing turn of events. All minimizations are for a reason; they indicate the speaker's hesitation to consider one or more implications of the observation being minimized. If truth is the goal, why don’t the anthropologists just say WE DON'T YET KNOW HOW TO CLASSIFY THE SKULL?
If truth is the goal, why don’t the anthropologist apologists just say HALF THE EXPERTS ARE WRONG.
One possible answer: because other skulls have already been classified (and, more importantly, presented to the public as enjoying a consensus) by the criteria now under debate.
So, at least in this one data point, the public face of anthropology bears the stigmata of Ego. Not analytical rigor, but ego. Perhaps it’s just an aberrance.
Of course, you can always just re-define your theory -- "initial confusion" -- to include this specimen and not only preserve your theory but know that it is now more verified than it was this morning.
Also, I see no reference to "Noah's Ark" in this conversation. I understand it is convenient shorthand for a body of opinion you disdain.
But, since, all the evolutionists in the world could be wrong and that would say nothing about whether creationism, defined however you like, is right or wrong – Noah’s Ark is a logical irrelevancy, introduced in a rhetorical rush to change the discussion into one you like better than the one you’re in. Your language is inaccurate because your thought is imprecise, because you're trying to win (an imaginary) argument by means of sarcasm, instead of by argument.
Here is the specific argument of this thread: Some scientists were publicly wrong. That error has been touted as evidence of scientists’ reliability, and, further, has been characterized as “initial confusion”. It is, rather, an indication of an underlying disagreement in the interpretive framework of the discipline.
You are embarrassed by it. You shouldn’t be. You are a lover of truth.