Re: Gaia theropod follow-up: a "new" phylogeny

[Tompaleo@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/10/00 1:58:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
Dinogeorge@aol.com writes:

> 
>  << Do you think that historians and nuclear physicists and chemists and
>   astronomers and members of every other field of study that has to infer
>   about its subject without observing it directly are running a fools 
errand?
>   I've never seen a sample of methane gas from Jupiter, but I'm willing to
>   trust atronomer's means of inferring its presence indirectly. >>
>  

Ah! But many of our colleagues in the physics end of the spectrum must 
contend with Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle which in essence states that 
by simply measuring a phenomenon in a system, you've disturbed it, thereby 
inserting uncertainty in your measurements. Part of this is due to human 
error in the scale and accuracy of the measuring device. 
I contend that an Uncertainty principle underlies all branches of science and 
in fact pervades every aspect of our lives. 
WRT paleontology, sampling bias, and the very act of digging for something 
results in loss of information (accuracy) in reporting. A misplaced thrust of 
a hammer or missing an area that might have that last fossil needed to 
complete a specimen. Or, you might get the big beast but what about all the 
small stuff. How many of us have had to sacrifice "less important" fossils 
for the one we wanted? What about the stuff in the overburden? 
WRT preparation, I have heard many stories of artistic license and 
"preparation artifacts" that bias interpretations. All these must be taken 
into account 
WRT fossils. Many fossil specimens that have been in museum's collections for 
over a century are now showing the result of a century's handling by 
paleontologists. The result is modification, reduction or outright loss of 
characters and data that make testing old or new conclusions more 
problematic. This could lead in to my comments on cladistics but I digress...

These are just a few examples of paleontological uncertainty. I'm sure there 
are more.

Thomas R. Lipka
Paleontological/Geological Studies
Tompaleo@aol.com