opinion of taxonomy (was peer review)

[Curtis Clark]

At 02:01 PM 2/20/98 -0300, Thomas Schlemmermeyer wrote:
>        Different people have different opinions and judgements.
>        Taxonomy for me includes the horror of people who are merely
>        dealing with taxonomic branching (i.e. cladists) instead
>        of the whole organismic thing which includes molecules as well.

At the risk of starting another thread...

Merely? It seems to me that the pattern of evolutionary kinship is hardly
*mere*. Indeed, there are methodological problems with cladistics (as with
any science), but I can't imagine why we would *not* want to know kinship.
Yes, there are cladists that make trees based on single molecules and
unquestioned assumptions, and then draw sweeping generalizations from them.
But name a single area of science that *doesn't* have careless workers.


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