Re: Caudipteryx suffered from osteoarthritis

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

>  Rothschild is a respected osteo-pathologist and expert on diseases.
>  [...]
>
>  So it's not so much that _it_ got through review, as much as certain
>  comments made in the paper (I've not read it, so only dealing with
>  the remarks made so far from the summary) appear to defy the general
>  consensus. In which case, it's about having the critics of an idea
>  get their own fair shake, even if it tends to the more aggrieved or
>  aggravating in tone or structure, such as Olson's bellicose comments
>  in a review.

But... this is about science. Claims -- all claims, any claims -- must 
come with an assessment of the evidence, or they're a waste of dead 
trees. It's the unpaid job of reviewers to catch cases where the authors 
forgot to do that, and it's the unpaid job of authors to avoid such 
cases in the first place.

>  The authors have a theory, which has been in print since at least
>  2002 in Sylvia Czerkas' edited "journal" _Dinosaur Museum Journal_
>  (vol. 1 and none more so far forthcoming), that "birdy dinosaurs"
>  are, in fact, birds, but not dinosaurs, a controversial view leveled
>  in Czerkas & Xu (2002) -- in said "journal;" a theory Xu Xing does
>  not agree with -- where *Archaeovolans repatriatus* (formerly the
>  avian half of the faked "Archaeoraptor" specimen, which had been also
>  referred to *Yanornis yandica* and was actually commented upon by the
>  author(s)) is assessed in regards to the avian dromaeosaurids,
>  troodontids, and probably oviraptorosaurs.

Just for the record, this is one sentence.

Also, there is no *Yanornis yandica*. *yandica* is an alleged species of 
the alleged *Cathayornis*.