Re: Greg Paul is right (again); or "Archie's not a birdy"... but Jeholornis is (not!))

[Tim Williams <tijawi@gmail.com>]

<GSP1954@aol.com> wrote:


> Tim is way off the mark here. The neoflightless hypothesis which is
> actually based on logical analysis is readily scientifically testable via the
> fossil record without cladistics.


Except when cladistics agrees with you, as happened with the
Archie-is-a-deinonychosaur cladogram.  Then you'll take it - quite
happily.


> Kind of like how Charles D figured out humans are apes rather than say
> baboons without any cladograms. It's pretty obvious.


Or like when somebody else thought that therizinosaurs were
transitional to prosauropods+ornithischians without any cladograms.
How'd that work out?   ;-)


> If I had followed Tim's misunderstanding of scientific methodology and gone
> cladistic way back,


I think I understand scientific methodology pretty well - including
the bit about "testability".  I don't see any of that in your
methodology.  Just a lot of hand-waving, and cherry-picking of
cladograms - or  parts of cladograms.  When a cladogram puts
_Archaeopteryx_ in with the deinonychosaurs, then all is well in the
world.  But if the same cladogram fails to find a unique link between
_Sapeornis_ and oviraptorosaurs, or between _Jeholornis_ and
therizinosaurs... well, those parts of the cladogram get left for dead
- apparently.  Your approach is, shall we say, "eclectic".




Cheers
Tim