Publishing on human origins

[Richard.Zander at MOBOT.ORG]

Well, sometimes. Finding novel morphological hypotheses proposed to supplant
the older ones simply because they fit molecular results may be like
searching literature to find arguments that support your ideas while
ignoring all arguments in the literature that contradict them. It's kind of
a multiple tests problem, and may be more psychological conformance
rationalization than reciprocal illumination.

Morphological results can be presented testable, with probabilities that can
be entered into a Bayes' Formula with the molecular results as a prior, or
vice versa. I'll bet the orangutan article that was rejected had no real
statistical evaluation of which is better, the morphological or the
molecular results.



______________________
Richard H. Zander
Bryology Group
Missouri Botanical Garden
PO Box 299
St. Louis, MO 63166-0299
richard.zander at mobot.org <mailto:richard.zander at mobot.org>
Voice: 314-577-5180
Fax: 314-577-9595
Websites
Bryophyte Volumes of Flora of North America:
http://ridgwaydb.mobot.org/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
Res Botanica:
http://ridgwaydb.mobot.org/resbot/index.htm
Shipping address for UPS, etc.:
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4344 Shaw Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63110



-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Werner [mailto:pgwerner at SFSU.EDU]
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 12:37 AM
To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] Publishing on human origins

snip

Molecular phylogenies may very well conflict
with various morphological hypotheses, but one of the measures of
whether the molecular hypothesis is any good is whether it allows for
novel morphological hypotheses that are plausible alternatives to the
older morphological hypotheses. Eventually, some kind of congruence
should result.

Just my two cents,

Peter Werner
Graduate Student, Mycology
San Francisco State University