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Comment by chromaton | Hacker News Reader

I hate to do this but... cherry trees only live about 15-40 years. They're cultivated and bred for their blossoms, among other things. How can we be sure that we haven't selected trees for earlier blooms?

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The author’s post is based on meticulously collected data, compiled with great care. It would have taken a lot of time and effort. This rebuttal is a half baked idea that likely took mere seconds to put together. Great example of the asymmetry of skeptics vs evidence gatherers. Evidence gathering takes a vast amount of work and effort. Whereas skeptics can throw out vaguely plausible hypotheses, to easily sow doubt.

You could at least support your argument by offering some explanation (and evidence) for why selective breeding could lead to that particular curve. Why is it not a straight line - did we only recently learn how to selectively breed? Why does it go up then down? Did fashions change? Did people originally lean towards breeding for late blossoms, but then change their mind?

Why does the curve fit with the changes in climate, is that pure coincidence? Are cherry trees not impacted by the climate, but only by selective breeding?

Etc.

You are objecting to the very concept of the scientific method, whereby a hypothesis is subjected to a barrage of dismissals and either emerges strengthened or is rejected based on one of those dismissals.

The scientific method is not based on proposing a hypothesis, and then having people on the internet offer half baked rebuttals or dismissive comments.

How can we be sure we have not selected them for later blooms and things are even worse than we thought?

: )

Yeah, I get that this article shows evidence, but it's not the slam dunk that the author is making it out to be.

Given the evidence slam dunks are not needed. The situation is so clear only delusional (or highly uninformed) people convince themselves there is still soubt about it

Being that it is a huge tourism driver in Japan I would assume if it was being done they would go both routes to get 2 separate bloomings. An alternate theory would be to choose tress that all bloom same time and this could if early bloomers have less variability lead to average early blooming. Then would that make up 1% of the increase in data or 10 or 90

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