Taxacom: Censorship by a New Zealand museum

Tue Aug 9 17:54:01 CDT 2022

 PS: I don't know much about molecular divergence estimation, but I found an interesting summary here: 

The Molecular Clock and Estimating Species Divergence
By: Simon Ho, Ph.D. (Australia National University) © 2008 Nature Education Citation: Ho, S. (2008) The molecular clock and estimating species divergence. Nature Education 1(1):168

I had to laugh a little at "Subsequent research has shown that Kimura's assumption of a strict molecular clock is too simplistic, because rates of molecular evolution can vary significantly among organisms. However, there has been a general reluctance to abandon the molecular clock entirely, because it represents such a valuable tool in evolutionary studies. Instead, researchers have undertaken efforts to retain some aspects of the original clock hypothesis while "relaxing" the assumption of a strictly constant rate."
This sounds to me a bit like scientists saying "well we know it doesn't work, but it is so convenient and useful that we will use it anyway!"
Anyway, what I don't understand is "Thus, to calibrate the molecular clock, one must know the absolute age of some evolutionary divergence event, such as the split between mammals and birds. An estimate of the timing of this event can be gained by examining the fossil record, or by ..."
This seems odd. Does the divergence event used for calibration purposes have to be relevant to the particular case, or can it be the same one across the board? Either way, I don't understand how it helps. If A and B are 5% divergent, you don't know if it was 1 year of 5% divergence, or 5 years of 1% divergence, etc., etc. You could find that out if you knew the divergence date, of course, but that is exactly what you are trying to find out from the degree of divergence, so it seems circular! So, I suppose if you knew the divergence date of a pair of closely related species, then you could work out their divergence rate from their level of divergence, and assume the same rate for A and B. The problem, of course, it that this makes all sorts of assumptions, such as that divergence rates are lineage dependent more than environmentally dependent (local differences in background radiation levels, temperature, etc.)
Can anyone explain how it is supposed to work, in simple terms, so that even I can understand?
Stephen    On Wednesday, 10 August 2022 at 10:02:12 am NZST, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  

  John, This is just the way that the online world works. People or institutions put things up on the internet, with an open commenting facility, but they own and control the webpage, so they commonly "moderate" comments by allowing comments that they agree with and blocking comments that they disagree with. It is a universal strategy. At they end of the day, nobody really cares what Te Papa puts on its website. It can be a load of old rubbish. It might be frustrating to you if you think you know better, but you don't have to correct them on their own forum. You can either (1) just sit back and let them be wrong; or (2) find another forum on which to disagree with them. The problem with (2) is that another forum is unlikely to reach the same audience as the original forum. Hence, I suggest that we just have to learn to live in a world where all sorts of people and institutions are claiming all sorts of garbage in a variety of forums. Not much you can do about it, I'm afraid!Cheers, Stephen
    On Wednesday, 10 August 2022 at 05:24:34 am NZST, John Grehan via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  

 And don't forget, this comes on the heels of the Royal Society of New
Zealand endorsing suppression and censorship of panbiogeography. New
Zealand is a small and relatively homogenous society where there is a
strong pressure for conformity to the prevailing milieu - which shows up in
its science.

On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 1:16 PM John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry Andy, but you are not correct. It is censorship by Te Papa. Of
> course Taxacom does not engage in censorship of scientific arguments. But
> Te Papa evidently does. Cheers, John
>
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 12:53 PM Andy Mabbett via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 9 Aug 2022 at 17:33, John Grehan via Taxacom
>> <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > Te Papa has refused to post this comment.
>>
>> This is not censorship. You are able to post your views here - at
>> length - as you have demonstrated, and presumably there is nothing and
>> no one preventing you from publishing them on your own blog or
>> website.
>>
>> --
>> Andy Mabbett
>> @pigsonthewing
>>
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