falsifying evolution

[Thomas Schlemmermeyer]

Your message is interesting and leads to the importance of the CI.

I, a morphologist, learnt that (as a rule of thumb) one should recheck the
characters and the way they were produced, if CI comes down to .4.

The same holds for molecular sets as well?



On (         Tue, 17 Aug 1999 09:09:55 -0400
),         Richard Zander <rzander at SCIENCEBUFF.ORG> wrote:


>A couple messages have mentioned random patterns. My understanding is that
>random number tables are massaged so that there are no obvious patterns even
>if - just through randomness - a pattern like "22222222222222222222222222"
>might turn up when generating a table.
>
>I generated five random data sets mimicking 800-bp molecular data sets with
>5 taxa each. All produced single, fully resolved trees. In most, there was
>at least one branch with Bremer support of 4, and in one, there was one
>branch with Bremer support of 10.
>The CI of all trees was around .4, similar to that of real data sets.
>Clearly, real molecular data in published trees usually do support
>morphological data sufficiently to have drowned out a "random pattern" that
>is quite distinct, but tests are needed to evaluate molecular data that do
>not.
>
>I have a MSDOS utility that will generate (psuedo-)random data sets. Anyone
>who wants a copy, let me know.
>
>R. Zander
>
>
>Richard H. Zander, Curator of Botany
>Buffalo Museum of Science
>1020 Humboldt Pkwy
>Buffalo, NY 14211 USA
>email: rzander at sciencebuff.org
>voice: 716-895-5200 x 351
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: John Grehan <jrg13 at PSU.EDU>
>To: <TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG>
>Sent: Sunday, August 15, 1999 10:40 PM
>Subject: falsifying evolution
>
>
>> Wolfgang W?ster wrote
>>
>> >We do not (normally) get "total incongruence of characters". Certainly
>> >there is incongruence. However, if you do a good morphological
>> >phylogenetic analysis with a large number of characters for a certain
>> >group, and then another one using, say, some DNA sequence, you will see
>> >a fair amount of congruence between the results. Perfect? No (unless you
>> >are very lucky), but a very long way INDEED from a random pattern, which
>> >you might expect from separately created "kinds".
>>
>> I agree its a long way from a random pattern. I was looking at
>incongruence
>> as total
>> for those groups of characters that are incongrunet. In many cases there
>is a
>> predominent grouping of characters, but there appear to be many cases
>where
>> the situation never seems to get any better. However, I do not understand
>> why a random pattern of characters would be necessarily be expected from
>> separately created kinds if they were created according to a heirarchical
>> design plan. I'm not saying that they were, just that if this were the
>view then
>> grouping characters would not be a problem for creationists.
>>
>> John Grehan
>


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Thomas Schlemmermeyer
Museu de Zoologia, Universidade de S?o Paulo
Caixa Postal 42694
CEP 04299-970
S?o Paulo, SP, Brasil

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Thomas Schlemmermeyer
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