Re: a lot of fog?

[NJPharris@aol.com]

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.