[Taxacom] DNA only descriptions

[Stephen Thorpe]

>Why blather on about ill-conceived notions without contributing to the actual 
>enterprise?  Why is it that the people who actually do this work at a productive 
>and insightful level seem to be shouted down by the people who don't?

I don't think a critic has to be within the area they criticize (an art critic 
doesn't have to be an artist, for example, nor a movie critic a movie actor). 
Sometimes you can see things clearer from a distance.

The problem is that there is an infinite amount of data one might include to try 
to solve any problem, which would take infinite time and infinite resources...

just think of the data we may never get to see just because there aren't enough 
descriptive taxonomists to keep up with documenting taxa before they become 
extinct ... everybody was just too busy throwing more and more (perhaps 
contradictory) data at a few "sexy" problems ...



________________________________
From: "jwhitfie at life.illinois.edu" <jwhitfie at life.illinois.edu>
To: kfitzhug at nhm.org
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Fri, 20 August, 2010 9:33:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] DNA only descriptions

What exactly was being said below puts the lie to this "philosophical"
layer of crap that is being imposed on the actual scientific enterprise.
No one was talking about EXCLUDING data here... we all do it (in a sense)
when we don't HAVE additional data (a common problem!).

Traditional taxonomy can be just as (and very commonly vastly more so)
cook-book and knee-jerk as molecular phylogenetics. Nervertheless I think
both are still noble enterprises, despite their (sometime) ignorant
expressions and poor products from both.

Please let's just try to be integrative, and progress through accumulated
knowledge, and stop worshipping cookbook methodologies like cladistic (or
phenetic for that matter) "logic" and demonizing people who are actually
trying to find out things (even in different ways). Why blather on about
ill-conceived notions without contributing to the actual enterprise?  Why
is it that the people who actually do this work at a productive and
insightful level seem to be shouted down by the people who don't?

Jim

>  I tend to agree with this view, which prompts the rhetorical question,
> what is the benefit to knowingly excluding observations when inferring a
phylogenetic hypothesis? There seems to be an unspoken assumption that a
phylogeny is some sort of entity divorced from the very activities of
making observations of the properties of organisms, for which a
> phylogeny has it's only relevant basis. This reduces systematics to
little more than a cook book, knee-jerk reaction of following
> 'established' protocols, without understanding why it's really done. On
8/19/2010 1:26 PM, John Grehan wrote:
>> That perception is probably accurate. After all, if molecules are the
Holy Grail why bother with inferior morphology that will take so much
more time and effort anyway?
>> John Grehan
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Sergio Vargas
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 4:19 PM
>> To: jwhitfie at life.illinois.edu
>> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] DNA only descriptions
>> sure!
>> I think we all are in the same team, and that after years of molecular
vs morphology we are somewhat close to understand we need ALL possible
sources of information to describe organisms. I meant, "traditional"
taxonomists seem to be happy to have molecules but molecular guys
doesn't even try to include morphology in their analyses... just a
perception I guess...
>> sergio
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-- 
James B. Whitfield
Department of Entomology
320 Morrill Hall
505 S. Goodwin Avenue
University of Illinois
Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.life.illinois.edu/whitfield





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