Prum in latest Auk: Feduccia's arguments are "a rhethorical sham"

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

Greetings,

Developmental biologist Richard Prum has published a response to criticisms
of his earlier summary article in Auk by Alan Feduccia. The latest piece is:
Prum, R.O. 2003. ARE CURRENT CRITIQUES OF THE THEROPOD ORIGIN OF BIRDS
SCIENCE? REBUTTAL TO FEDUCCIA (2002). Auk 120: 550-561.
Online at:
http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=get-document&issn=0004-8038&volume=120
&issue=02&page=0550

Prum takes on Feduccia on:
* his understanding of the scientific method ("Essentially, Feduccia
concedes that he would rather not do science (i.e. formulate and test
alternative hypotheses with data) than to accept the theropod origin of
birds.")
* his recent decision that dromaeosaurs were flightless birds and that the
dromaeosaur-bird group evolved independantly of Dinosauria ("Feduccia's
(2002) entire discussions of teeth morphology and replacement, cranial
morphology, wrist bone homologies (plus three figures and a table) are
completely moot and irrelevant given his acceptance of pennaceous feathers
on dromaeosaurs with those serrate teeth, patterns of tooth replacement,
cranial morphology, and wrist bones.")
* his problems with the frameshift hypothesis ("In other words, the changes
in phalanx number which Feduccia finds so easy to imagine are
mechanistically identical to the homeotic shifts in digit identity which he
hypothesizes are so unlikely.")
* his hypotheses of feather origins ("Elongate scale theories of feather
evolution were falsified on the basis of developmental evidence more than a
century ago, and no proponent of the elongate scale theory has ever
countered Davies' (1889) fatal developmental observations (Prum 1999 , Prum
and Brush 2002 ).") and the relevance of _Longisquama_'s longscales
("Somehow, he made a complete and rapid conversion from thinking that
Longisquama was a ?bizarre and unique solution to the problem of gliding?
(Feduccia 1999b : 95) to thinking that Longisquama is the closest known
relative of birds (Jones et al. 2000 ).")

>From the conclusion:
"By offering no testable alternative to the theropod origin of birds and
maintaining that the origin of birds is potentially unsolvable, Feduccia and
other critics of the theropod hypothesis of avian origins reject science
itself. One-sided rejections of the theropod origin reflect not on the
hypothesis, but on intellectual weaknesses of the critiques.

"In my Perspectives essay, I wrote that, ?it is time to end debate on the
theropod origin of birds, and to proceed to investigate all aspects of the
biology of birds in light of their theropod origin.? In his response,
Feduccia documents that the scientific debate is indeed over because current
critics of the theropod origin of birds are not doing science. The
unrelenting progress and success of the theropod hypothesis in recent years
is not the result of an overzealous cladistic conspiracy, but the congruence
of multiple lines of evidence from many workers toward a coherent
understanding of the origins of birds, feathers, and now flight (Prum
2003 ). In future decades, historians of science will doubtless look back on
this episode in ornithological history as a classic example of the sociology
of science. Ornithologists should to let these unworthy and unscientific
arguments fade into scientific history, and dedicate themselves to the
fascinating new scientific frontier of establishing a thorough historical
understanding the origins of avian biology."

Quite so!!  Good stuff, and probably will be better received in the
ornithological community as being said by a non-paleontologist than by
members of the "overzealous cladistic conspiracy".

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796