[nis0s]

> Testing this hypothesis requires (a) understanding human psychosocial adaptations to arctic environments, (b) showing that East Asians and Inuit possess these traits, and (c) making the case that the existence of these traits in modern East Asians is primarily the result of natural selection and/or gene–culture coevolution having acted in the Late Pleistocene on East Asians’ ancestors rather than other factors.

That’s the main part of the paper, and what follows is essentially a literature review, which is an inherently flawed way to prove a hypothesis.

A hypothesis is a testable claim, which can be independently verified if it is validated. There is no process in the paper, other than a review of other literature, to substantiate the paper’s new claims. So, this person is essentially doing science journalism, not science.

I think the two main problems are that they didn’t provide sufficient work for (b) or (c), but they’re laboring under the misconception that a background review of literature is enough. But instead a background review is used to justify the structure of measurements and analysis which usually follows in scientific papers. So, the claim is poorly substantiated.