[Taxacom] Monophyly is testable?

[Jim Croft]

But it can be.  Find a bunch more characters or make a prediction on a
character distribution.  If they tell the same inferred story or the
prediction works, hypothesis is still good, no problem.

If they don't, amend the hypothesis to accommodate the additional
evidence...  or explain away the evidence to retain a comfortable or
elegant hypothesis...  or go and find some other evidence that  tells
the story you want...

yep, tough call...

jim

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Bob Mesibov <mesibov at southcom.com.au> wrote:
> Thanks to magnificent analytical efforts over the past few decades,
> systematics has been enriched by statistical inference of phylogenies.
> Terrific, it's given many systematists more confidence in their
> hypothesis-*building*, but they tend to forget that an hypothesis
> supported by a statistical criterion in its *building* has still not
> been *tested*.
-- 
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