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Re: a lot of fog?
In a message dated Thu, 14 Feb 2002 3:06:39 AM Eastern Standard Time,
Dinogeorge@aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 2/13/02 11:27:57 AM EST, rowe@psych.ucsb.edu writes:
>
> << Ken Kinman <kinman@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Instead of watching the Olympics last night, I was working on a list
> of
> > characters to help support my revised topology.
>
> This is a recipe on how *NOT* to do science. >>
>
> Since there is no empirical way to confirm or refute a cladogram by
> observation, cladistic analyses are not science but politics.
I don't have a problem with HP Kinman going looking for characters to support
his phylogeny, but he has to realize that the presence or absence of a
particular character or characters in one taxon will not prove his case. It is
the distribution of the characters across *all* the relevant taxa that is
important.
--Nick P.