Forwarded Cladistics Nonsense from...

[Phillip Bigelow <n8010095@henson.cc.wwu.edu>]

Jerry Harris wrote:
>   As a sysop in CompuServe's Dinosaur Forum, I occasionally <snip>. 
>Lately, two people have simulataneously popped up in our forum
>in a very, very strong anti-cladistic stance -- in fact, I think that they
>are against using the fossil record in _any_ form to try and determine
>interrelationships between organisms.  
  <stuff deleted> 
  and then "Ellen" joined in the fray..regarding cladistics by stating:
::"Until we start making some serious in-roads into gene-mapping, the only thing
::you'll convince me of is that your taking an educated guess.  And even the
::most educated and expereinced scientist guess wrong.  But if you guess
::wrong, what is the criteria for you hypotheses to fail?
::Ellen" 

  Wow...and these two people are biochemists?  Their skepticism is a little 
strange, considering that biochemistry and molecular biology are "taking" to 
cladistics with almost as much enthusiasm as is paleontology. 
  On UseNet, there is a molecular biology forum that occasionally talks
about the cladistics computer programs PAUP, MACCLADE, and PHYLYP.  In fact,
some of the cutting-edge stuff done in molecular biology these days is
related to how best interpret,and how best to feed gene-mapping data into a most
parsimonious cladistic tree.  You might want to point these two biochemists
in the direction of the UseNet group <bionet.molbio.evolution>, where they
will, hopefully, be "taken to the woodshed" by their mol.bio. peers.
Another good newsgroup for them to visit is <bionet.molbio.molluscs>. 
 Strange that two biochemists would be totally UN-aware of cladistics 
developments in their own field of work.  Oh well...stranger things do happen. 

Shall we award you the dinosaur@lepomis Purple Heart for bravely surviving
wounds suffered in battle?   :-) 

p.s. As much as I hate to think about it, Ellen was partly right about one
  point: Cladistics IS a science of making educated guesses.  One form of
  cladistics uses the principle of "parsimony", which is nothing more
  than predicting the most likely probabilities.  Hmmm...how could she know so 
  much about the statistical side of cladistics, yet be so unaware of everything
  else??  stranger things do happen.