Patrik Lindenfors
Evolutionary biologist who tested whether Dunbar's number can be derived the way it is said to be derived. It cannot.
Who they are
Lindenfors, with Andreas Wartel and Johan Lind, took the regression between relative neocortex size and primate group size and asked a narrow statistical question about extrapolating it to humans.
The paper is short and its finding is about precision, not existence.
Key papers
Lindenfors, P., Wartel, A., & Lind, J. (2021). Dunbar's number deconstructed. Biology Letters, 17(5), 20210158.
Key ideas
Bayesian methods produced average group sizes between sixty-nine and 109. Phylogenetic generalised least-squares methods produced between sixteen and forty-two.
The confidence intervals ran from four to 520 and from two to 336 respectively.
Their conclusion: specifying any one number is futile, and a cognitive limit on human group size cannot be derived in this manner.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1098/rsbl.2021.0158