[Taxacom] more science nonsense

[Stephen Thorpe]

 John,I'd like to know what other Taxacomers think about this, as it is crucial to the proper understanding of science itself. You seem to be trying to undermine scientific inferences on the basis that there are other possible explanations of the same facts. That might be a sensible approach to certain kinds of cases, but not ones of this kind, I suggest. You seem to be conflating certainty with empirical support (for a hypothesis). Science isn't about determining the truth, it is about being led by evidence. If the oldest and most primitive member of a group is discovered as a fossil in the S Hemisphere, then that evidence suggests a S Hemisphere origin for the group. Sure, there are other, more convoluted possibilities which could be wheeled in ad hoc, but that's not science! The authors are not claiming any certainty of a S Hemisphere origin for the group, merely that such an origin is suggested by the available evidence. I see no particular problem with this, except perhaps the overly heavy weight that science puts on working with mere inconclusive suggestions from empirical evidence. For applied science, at the end of the day, somethinbg either works or it doesn't, but, for pure science, the inconclusive suggestions just lead to inconclusive theories with which scientists occupy their time and resources, but for what???Stephen
    On Wednesday, 2 October 2019, 02:11:13 pm UTC, John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 Stephen - the assertion that a southern hemisphere origin "is suggested by the new evidence" is indeed nonsense. The fossil can only suggest that a clade was present at a particular place and time. Empirically it says nothing about the origin of the taxon with respect to younger fossils elsewhere. Its quite possible that the group had its origin from a widespread ancestor that was in both the northern and southern hemisphere and the (current) oldest fossil happens to be located in the south. It does not matter that the fossil may represent the basal lineage as this may just represent an initial vicariance. So dreaming up a local (southern) origin is not science at all, just nonsense.

John Grehan
On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 11:21 PM Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:

 Hold on there one minute John!On the scale of "science nonsense", this might not even qualify! The key word is "suggests". The fossil does demonstrate that the oldest and most primitive *known* member of the group is from the Southern Hemisphere, so that it *evidence* that the group evolved there. It is the simplest explanation of the known facts, that's all. Otherwise, you have to posit the existence of unknown like fossils in the Northern Hemisphere, for which there is currently no evidence, and consider it chance that the first such fossil just happened to be found in the Southern Hemisphere. Sure, that it *possible*, but nobody seems to be saying that a Southern Hemisphere origin it is 100% certain, just that it is suggested by the new evidence.Stephen
    On Wednesday, 2 October 2019, 03:04:40 am UTC, John Grehan via Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:  
 
 Never ceases to amaze me. In a recent paper the following assertion:

"All previously known Paleocene records of pelagornithids stem from the
Northern Hemisphere, but as the oldest and phylogenetically most basal
representative,
Protodontopteryx suggests that these birds actually evolved in the Southern
Hemisphere."

Apart from the  center of origin illusion, there never has been any
empirical demonstration that the location of the oldest fossil corresponds
to the oldest occupied area for a taxon. But still they keep saying it as
if it were real.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335873378_Oldest_smallest_and_phylogenetically_most_basal_pelagornithid_from_the_early_Paleocene_of_New_Zealand_sheds_light_on_the_evolutionary_history_of_the_largest_flying_birds


John Grehan
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