Re: Feduccia's delusion

[ekaterina A <a_ekaterina@yahoo.com>]

> Someone please tell me I'm not the only person on
> the DML who feels
> uncomfortable with this sort of personal attack?  I
> freely admit that

There is no personal attack here. I have no personal
knowledge of Feduccia or his followers to have any
personal grudge against them. 

I clearly get the feeling that Feduccia or people like
him are being unnecessarily highlighted by being given
publishing space in these widely read magazines. Some
of the work he published, example the developmental
studies with Burke, are definitely worth publishing of
their own merit in high places. One may argue this was
mainly Burke's work as she showed similar skills in
some great studies on vertebral column development
before. Also some other work of his like the 1977
paper: "Hypothetical stages in the evolution of modern
ducks and flamingos" in JTB while basically flawed
were at least capable of stimulating scientific
hypothesis testing. So the issue is not an attack on
Feduccia because he is that- had he been D1ck or Harry
he would have deserved the same. The simple fact
remains that he does not seem to understand how
science work. You gather data-> build a model to
explain the data-> try to replace that model with a
better model so on. Feduccia instead seems to stick to
a model built with little data, without really
successfully countering all the falsifications being
heaped on it.
cheers
_EA

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