[Taxacom] RES: south-west Australia

[Robinwbruce at aol.com]

Hi John,
 
For what it is worth, I agree. 
 
For me the issue does not revolve around some trite or banal null  
hypothesis, but on the degrees of freedom of the system under  exploration.
 
Robin
 
 
 
In a message dated 6/22/2011 4:02:35 P.M. GMT Daylight Time,  
jgrehan at sciencebuff.org writes:
 
My point  is that "null hypotheses" are no more or less useful or
insightful than the  methodology and assumptions that are built into the
analysis in the first  place. One can have all the null hypotheses in the
world and yet have none  that are realistic if one is blind to relevant
information (such as  biogeographic patterns in biogeography).

John  Grehan

-----Original Message-----
From:  taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu]  On Behalf Of Curtis Clark
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2011 10:35 AM
To:  taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] RES: south-west  Australia

On 6/22/2011 5:09 AM, John Grehan wrote:
> This  discussion exemplifies what panbiogeography is all about. In my
opinion,  panbiogeography is not focused on hashing over theories and
definitions  about vicariance and dispersal based on some theoretical
proposition or  'null hypothesis (as in Darwinian center of
origin/dispersalist  biogeography), but begins with a serious look at the
facts of biogeography  as represented by looking at how phylogenetic
relationships and boundaries  are geographically located and spatially
related to each other.
Every  science uses null hypotheses. All biogeographers use the null 
hypothesis  "everything lives everywhere". If panbiogeographers haven't 
refined the  null hypotheses beyond that, more's the shame, but I suspect

they have.  Otherwise, they are comparing their data with nothing.

--  
--
Curtis Clark
Cal Poly  Pomona


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