This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
His modus operandi is to make evasive statements that impede
discussion of a very important paleontological issue. At first,
the communication-derailing nature of the first evasion is apparent to an attentive reader.
The "At first" is not redundant, because the first evasion is
essentially repeated far, far down, near the end of this post,
where almost no one could tell what is evaded -- or even that something IS being evaded!
In between, there come several evasions whose "payoff" in
derailment only becomes apparent further down, after the
evasion has exited the top of most readers' screens.
These evasions are examples of what I call polemical opportunism:
making baseless statements which sound reasonable, because the
things that show their baselessness are not in view.
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Monday, July 11, 2022 at 4:54:33 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/11/22 11:52 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 7, 2022 at 10:11:54 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 7/7/22 6:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Tuesday, July 5, 2022 at 11:54:14 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
If you want to present evidence that mesonychids, like whales, >>>>>>>> are nested within Artiodactyla, I would be interested.
In my 1945 second edition of Romer's _Vertebrate_Paleontology_, p. >>>>>>> 367, Fig. 277, on the left, there are
detailed drawings of the manus and pes of a mesonychid. Its astragalus looks
quite a lot like that of the Entelodont *Dinohyus,* shown on p.
452, Fig. 342 and that of the Camelid
*Poebrotherium,* p. 461, Fig. 348. All three astraguli look double-pulleyed to me.
Starting out sounding reasonable, Harshman nevertheless establishes a pattern of
never meaningfully engaging the scientific issue.
I'm suspicious of this conclusion, which has never been mentioned in any >>>>>> phylogenetic analysis I know about.
The phylogenetic analyses with which Harshman is familiar were made long after 1966,
which is why I introduced the following reason:
There are good reasons, some mentioned below, and also the fact that Romer's 1945 book
had been superseded by the 1966 edition, and might not have kept the drawing of
*Synoplotherium,* but you've stubbornly resisted cracking that edition open:
Harshman suffers instant amnesia (or a lapse of reasoning ability)
about this newly introduced reason ("might not have kept...") below.
What kept you from opening your 1966 edition and looking up the drawings in there?
<crickets>
Because there wouldn't be much point to it.
So much for Harshman's alleged "suspicion." Once the 1966 edition came out, active researchers would have naturally used it rather than the 1945 edition.
The index should have made it child's play.I think so, though I may be wrong.
Don't you think *you* can recognize a double-pulleyed astragalus?
Aren't you in touch with professional anatomists who could verify any guesses you make?
Harshman ducks this question, but his reply strongly suggests his answer is negative.
The sabotage involved comes far below.
Well of course Pandora could do it, if she's paying attention to any of
this stuff.
Harshman's "of course" is not evident from anything I've seen from Pandora.
<snip to get to the derailment payoff, beginning with a higly insulting false dichotomy>
Either you are wrong about this or
mammal paleontologists who have done the work are all incompetent.
If these are the only alternatives you could think of, then you must be suffering from
a long lack of meaningful discussions with research biologists *qua* >>>>> research biologists.
When I remided you of this comment yesterday, you thumbed your nose at it.
And rightly so.
On the contrary, the evasive reply above suggests that I made
an on-target guess, even *without* the opening "If" clause.
But the "If" clause is devastating, and Harshman thumbs his nose at
the consequences below:
But you ignored what I had subsequently written:
I thought of two others right off the bat:
1. *Synoplotherium* was found to have been mis-classified after Romer's 1945 edition.
2. The reconstruction to which I referred was inaccurate. [The
reconstruction of the skull
of Archaeopteryx in the same edition was criticized in a peer-reviewed paper comparing
it with modern reconstructions of the Eichstatt specimen and the London specimen.]
Both possible.
And neither possibility occurred to you? Such incompetence!
Harshman ignores the conclusion:
You win some, you lose some.
Harshman has lost a big chance to show competence at scientific reasoning.
Harshman has won at derailing discussion of alternatives of the present view of *Synoplotherium*, one of which is that is a mesonychid closer to cetacean ancestry
than heretofore suspected.
He continues with this "victory" below. <snip for focus>
Can we at least agree that, based on the failure of
paleontologists to note it (and the excitement of paleontologists upon >>>> discovering whale astragali), that no mesonychid is known to have a
double-pulley astragalus, despite anything you may have found in Romer 1045?
We have no business agreeing on such a thing until you take a look
at your 1966 edition and tell us your opinion of what you see.
Again derailing the issue with an implicit refusal to look, and worse:
Not relevant. What Romer said in 1966 is not relevant to what
paleontologists notice thirty or more years later.
Completely illogical, because the issue is what Romer might NOT have
included in the edition. Harshman is taking advantage of the way
this fact is only evident far above, where I wrote:
"Romer's 1945 book had been superseded by the 1966 edition,
[which] might not have kept the drawing of *Synoplotherium,*..."
What keeps you from looking at it? Afraid it might cramp your style?
Notice how you keep accusing me of being afraid of this or that?
Notice how Harshman perversely equates a lighthearted question with a nasty accusation, thereby diverting attention from his evasion of the first question.
Harshman capitalizes on his chicanery with a baseless insult,
further diverting attention:
Bad habit, which you should strive to restrain.
The analysis of the rest of Harshman's post will be
continued in my next post to this thread. It will include
parts that I snipped for the sake of focus, so
a third post may be necessary.
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Monday, July 11, 2022 at 4:54:33 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/11/22 11:52 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 7, 2022 at 10:11:54 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/7/22 6:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Tuesday, July 5, 2022 at 11:54:14 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
If you want to present evidence that mesonychids, like whales,
are nested within Artiodactyla, I would be interested.
In my 1945 second edition of Romer's _Vertebrate_Paleontology_, p. 367, Fig. 277, on the left, there are
detailed drawings of the manus and pes of a mesonychid. Its astragalus looks
quite a lot like that of the Entelodont *Dinohyus,* shown on p. 452, Fig. 342 and that of the Camelid
*Poebrotherium,* p. 461, Fig. 348. All three astraguli look double-pulleyed to me.
I'm suspicious of this conclusion, which has never been mentioned in any >>>> phylogenetic analysis I know about.
There are good reasons, some mentioned below, and also the fact that Romer's 1945 book
had been superseded by the 1966 edition, and might not have kept the drawing of
*Synoplotherium,* but you've stubbornly resisted cracking that edition open:
What kept you from opening your 1966 edition and looking up the drawings in there?
<crickets>
Because there wouldn't be much point to it.
The index should have made it child's play.I think so, though I may be wrong.
Don't you think *you* can recognize a double-pulleyed astragalus?
Aren't you in touch with professional anatomists who could verify any guesses you make?
Well of course Pandora could do it, if she's paying attention to any of
this stuff.
Either you are wrong about this or
mammal paleontologists who have done the work are all incompetent.
If these are the only alternatives you could think of, then you must be suffering from
a long lack of meaningful discussions with research biologists *qua* research biologists.
When I remided you of this comment yesterday, you thumbed your nose at it.
And rightly so.
But you ignored what I had subsequently written:
I thought of two others right off the bat:
1. *Synoplotherium* was found to have been mis-classified after Romer's 1945 edition.
2. The reconstruction to which I referred was inaccurate. [The reconstruction of the skull
of Archaeopteryx in the same edition was criticized in a peer-reviewed paper comparing
it with modern reconstructions of the Eichstatt specimen and the London specimen.]
Both possible.
And neither possibility occurred to you? Such incompetence!
You win some, you lose some.
Can we at least agree that, based on the failure of
paleontologists to note it (and the excitement of paleontologists upon
discovering whale astragali), that no mesonychid is known to have a
double-pulley astragalus, despite anything you may have found in Romer 1045?
We have no business agreeing on such a thing until you take a look
at your 1966 edition and tell us your opinion of what you see.
Not relevant. What Romer said in 1966 is not relevant to what
paleontologists notice thirty or more years later.
What keeps you from looking at it? Afraid it might cramp your style?
Notice how you keep accusing me of being afraid of this or that?
Bad habit, which you should strive to restrain.
On 8/9/22 5:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology?
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
Your obsession with my sins is not helping.
On 8/10/22 12:48 AM, Glenn wrote:
On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 6:07:34 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/9/22 5:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology?
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
Your obsession with my sins is not helping.
I will answer your questions even though you never answer mine.
Looks that it has something to do with paleontology, John.
But what do you mean by "helping"? Helping what?
Helping make sci.bio.paleontology a working news group focused on paleontology.
What is the point of your claims here?
Different claims, different points. If you refer to my claim above, that Peter's obsession is not helping, the point was to try to get him to
look at himself and try to change his future actions. I think that
should have been clear enough.
See how that works? Now you try answering questions when people ask.
On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 6:07:34 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/9/22 5:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology?
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
Your obsession with my sins is not helping.
Looks that it has something to do with paleontology, John.
But what do you mean by "helping"? Helping what?
What is the point of your claims here?
John Harshman <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
On 8/10/22 12:48 AM, Glenn wrote:
On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 6:07:34 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/9/22 5:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology? >>> Your obsession with my sins is not helping.
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
I will answer your questions even though you never answer mine.
Looks that it has something to do with paleontology, John.
But what do you mean by "helping"? Helping what?
Helping make sci.bio.paleontology a working news group focused on paleontology.
That ship has now done sailed. So good luck with that Herculean task given recent developments.
What is the point of your claims here?
Different claims, different points. If you refer to my claim above, that Peter's obsession is not helping, the point was to try to get him to
look at himself and try to change his future actions. I think that
should have been clear enough.
See how that works? Now you try answering questions when people ask.
How often does that happen? Sowing chaos using links from Uncommon Descent and Evolution News seems more likely. Take a gander at many futile threads
on talk.origins to see how that turns out. This place may be doomed.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 6:58:59 AM UTC-7, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
John Harshman <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
On 8/10/22 12:48 AM, Glenn wrote:
On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 6:07:34 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/9/22 5:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread, >>>> Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than batsSeriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology? >>> Your obsession with my sins is not helping.
I will answer your questions even though you never answer mine.
Looks that it has something to do with paleontology, John.
But what do you mean by "helping"? Helping what?
Helping make sci.bio.paleontology a working news group focused on paleontology.
That ship has now done sailed. So good luck with that Herculean task given recent developments.
What is the point of your claims here?
Different claims, different points. If you refer to my claim above, that Peter's obsession is not helping, the point was to try to get him to
look at himself and try to change his future actions. I think that
should have been clear enough.
See how that works? Now you try answering questions when people ask.
How often does that happen? Sowing chaos using links from Uncommon Descent and Evolution News seems more likely. Take a gander at many futile threads on talk.origins to see how that turns out. This place may be doomed.Unfortunately, interesting traffic here has gradually declined for a long time. Very few
new visitors, or posts about interesting new findings. Clearly we can't look for salvation
from Glenn, who's never showed any interest, or Peter, who can't avoid being distracted
back to his personal animosities. Too bad.
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Monday, July 11, 2022 at 4:54:33 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 7/11/22 11:52 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 7, 2022 at 10:11:54 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 7/7/22 6:51 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Tuesday, July 5, 2022 at 11:54:14 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
If you want to present evidence that mesonychids, like whales, >>>>>> are nested within Artiodactyla, I would be interested.
In my 1945 second edition of Romer's _Vertebrate_Paleontology_, p. 367, Fig. 277, on the left, there are
detailed drawings of the manus and pes of a mesonychid. Its astragalus looks
quite a lot like that of the Entelodont *Dinohyus,* shown on p. 452, Fig. 342 and that of the Camelid
*Poebrotherium,* p. 461, Fig. 348. All three astraguli look double-pulleyed to me.
detecting a few surprises along the way."3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained of its tail,
I wonder how easily his "coverage" can be translated into a modern character analysis.
It might require a whole new study of the specimen.
Not if it's a proper description accompanied by clear photos and/or drawings.
Isn't the lack of a double-pulleyed astragalus the item that convinced most vertebrate paleontologists
to eliminate mesonychids from cetacean ancestry? AFAIK we have never found any mesonychid DNA,
so disqualification would have to use fossil morphology.
It's not the lack of a double-pulleyed astragalus alone, but the
combined verdict of the many characters used in the phylogenetic
analyses of the past 30 or so years.
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be different from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
Could be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
the ankle bone known as
the astragulus was a key player in the revolutionary hypothesis, now universally accepted, that whales are
descended from the even-toed hoofed mammals known as artiodactyls. The closest
living animal to them is believed to be the hippopotamus.
The revolution in our understanding came when a fossil of a primitive whale was shown to have a double-pulleyed astragulus. Until that point, whales
were believed to have descended from an extinct group of carnivorous
hoofed animals known as mesonychids.
But all the mesonychids whose
characters had been scored by cladists were scored as being single-pulleyed.
The mesonychid referred to in my four lines above is the one I wrote about
in the part just after I left off in my first reply:
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
This is a radical change from four years ago: for a while he even
supported the claim of Oxyaena that she was a paleontologist.
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront about being "an amateur paleontologist."
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Oh, look: some paleontology.
the ankle bone known as
the astragalus was a key player in the revolutionary hypothesis, now universally accepted, that whales are
descended from the even-toed hoofed mammals known as artiodactyls. The closest
living animal to them is believed to be the hippopotamus.
That's not true.
The key in that hypothesis was the molecular data,
notably SINE insertions.
The astragali (two of them, found almost at the
same time by separate paleontologists) were paleontological confirmation
of the molecular tree.
The revolution in our understanding came when a fossil of a primitive whale was shown to have a double-pulleyed astragulus. Until that point, whales were believed to have descended from an extinct group of carnivorous
hoofed animals known as mesonychids.
Again, not true.
It was the SINE data.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Oh, look: some paleontology.
Yes, by me, both above [snipped by you] and below.
Your main contribution is about the molecular biology of living animals, while ignoring the history of a decades-long controversy.
the ankle bone known as
the astragalus was a key player in the revolutionary hypothesis, now universally accepted, that whales are
descended from the even-toed hoofed mammals known as artiodactyls. The closest
living animal to them is believed to be the hippopotamus.
That's not true.
Every bit of it is true. You play a cheap polemical trick of equating "a key" with "the key" just as you equated a lighthearted question with
an accusation that I documented in the OP.
The key in that hypothesis was the molecular data,
notably SINE insertions.
If you tried to document this, you would be hard pressed to find
a reputable account as lopsided as the one you are giving here.
Also, it would reveal some key dates. Just when did molecular
biologists decide on the phylogeny that nested Cetacea inside
Artiodactyla? was it before the end of the cladist wars?
And when did the SINE insertions come to play
the key role in the molecular phylogeny?
The astragali (two of them, found almost at the
same time by separate paleontologists) were paleontological confirmation
of the molecular tree.
Actually, this (2001) was when paleontologists came to accept the nesting that is given by the molecular tree. This is what I meant as "a key,"
and this is why my use of it was completely correct.
HOWEVER, the molecular tree said nothing about whale ancestry,
since it was confined to extant animals. It was paleontology
that provided all the details.
It is only because paleontologists had long [no later than Carroll's 1988 unexcelled book on vertebrate paleontology] considered *Pakicetus*
to be a cetacean on morphological grounds that the 2001 discovery
has led to it and numerous other whale relatives (Ambulocetus, etc.)
to be referred to as "cetaceans" to this day.
The revolution in our understanding came when a fossil of a primitive whale >>> was shown to have a double-pulleyed astragulus. Until that point, whales >>> were believed to have descended from an extinct group of carnivorous
hoofed animals known as mesonychids.
Again, not true.
True where paleontologists were concerned. Care to argue otherwise?
It was the SINE data.
Which wasn't needed to convince the molecular biologists. Correct?
On 8/9/22 5:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology?
Your obsession with my sins is not helping.
John Harshman <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
On 8/10/22 12:48 AM, Glenn wrote:
On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 6:07:34 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/9/22 5:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology? >>> Your obsession with my sins is not helping.
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
I will answer your questions even though you never answer mine.
Looks that it has something to do with paleontology, John.
But what do you mean by "helping"? Helping what?
Helping make sci.bio.paleontology a working news group focused on paleontology.
That ship has now done sailed.
So good luck with that Herculean task given
recent developments.
What is the point of your claims here?
Different claims, different points. If you refer to my claim above, that Peter's obsession is not helping, the point was to try to get him to
look at himself and try to change his future actions. I think that
should have been clear enough.
See how that works? Now you try answering questions when people ask.
How often does that happen? Sowing chaos using links from Uncommon Descent and Evolution News seems more likely.
Take a gander at many futile threads
on talk.origins to see how that turns out. This place may be doomed.
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
But all the mesonychids whose
characters had been scored by cladists were scored as being single-pulleyed.
Or described by anyone, cladist or otherwise.
The mesonychid referred to in my four lines above is the one I wrote about in the part just after I left off in my first reply:
detecting a few surprises along the way."3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained of its tail,
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
This is a radical change from four years ago: for a while he even supported the claim of Oxyaena that she was a paleontologist.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here?
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
But all the mesonychids whose
characters had been scored by cladists were scored as being single-pulleyed.
Or described by anyone, cladist or otherwise.
Are you claiming to have read the 1902 article to which I referred to in the OP [information
reposted below]?
detecting a few surprises along the way."The mesonychid referred to in my four lines above is the one I wrote about >>> in the part just after I left off in my first reply:
[unmarked snip by Harshman here, depriving readers of the name of the mesonychid, reposted:]
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained of its tail,
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this
question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront >>> about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:tail, detecting a few surprises along the way."
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained of its
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this
question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront >>> about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:tail, detecting a few surprises along the way."
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained of its
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this >> question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.Thanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed to
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o.
came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional.
So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can
justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_, who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably
object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was
an actual coelacanth.
Whatever are you trying to say here?
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if
he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his
methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 4:36:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:its tail, detecting a few surprises along the way."
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained of
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this >> question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.Thanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed to
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o. came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional.
So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can
justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_,
who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was an actual coelacanth.
Whatever are you trying to say here?
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" ifMickey is for real then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology
in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:25:37 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:its tail, detecting a few surprises along the way."
On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 4:36:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained of
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this
question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.Thanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed to
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o. came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey >>> Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional. So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can
justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_,
who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds
that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal
long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was
an actual coelacanth.
Whatever are you trying to say here?
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respectedI would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" ifMickey is for real then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology
in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned
that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
Peter Nyikos
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 11:50:38 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:of its tail, detecting a few surprises along the way."
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 8:12:29 AM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:25:37 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 4:36:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this
question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.Thanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed to
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o.
came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional.
So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_,
who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds
that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal
long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was
an actual coelacanth.
Whatever are you trying to say here?
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learnedI would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" ifMickey is for real then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology
in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
Peter Nyikos
I've no idea.Why didn't you wait for John to answer, then?
I've never published in either journal.Glenn will be impressed by your logic. Not.
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 8:12:29 AM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:of its tail, detecting a few surprises along the way."
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:25:37 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 4:36:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this
question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.Thanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed to
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o. came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey >>> Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional.
So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can
justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_,
who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds
that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal
long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was
an actual coelacanth.
Whatever are you trying to say here?
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respectedI would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontologyMickey is for real then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned
that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
Peter Nyikos
I've no idea.
I've never published in either journal.
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 11:50:38 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:of its tail, detecting a few surprises along the way."
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 8:12:29 AM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:25:37 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 4:36:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what remained
[end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this
question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.
Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.Thanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed to
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o.
came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional.
So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_,
who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds
that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal
long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was
an actual coelacanth.
Whatever are you trying to say here?
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learnedI would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" ifMickey is for real then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology
in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer-- http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
Peter Nyikos
I've no idea.Why didn't you wait for John to answer, then?
I've never published in either journal.Glenn will be impressed by your logic. Not.
Peter Nyikos
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 11:50:38 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 8:12:29 AM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote: >>> On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:25:37 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 4:36:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote: >>>>> On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected
Mickey is for real thenThanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed toThis is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>>>> On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never >>>>>>>>>>> subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic >>>>>>>>>>> analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in
_Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago,
*Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on
Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene >>>>>>>>>>> mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He >>>>>>>>>>> covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what >>>>>>>>>>> remained of its tail, detecting a few surprises along the way." >>>>>>> [end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been >>>>>>>>> undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this >>>>>>>> question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist. >>>>>Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o. >>>>> came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey >>>>>>>>> Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional. >>>>> So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can
justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_,
who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably >>>>> object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds >>>>> that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal >>>>> long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was >>>>> an actual coelacanth.
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's aBecause there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p. >>>>>
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if >>>>> he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology
in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his >>>>> methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned
that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
Peter Nyikos
I've no idea.
Why didn't you wait for John to answer, then?
I've never published in either journal.
Glenn will be impressed by your logic. Not.
Peter Nyikos <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 11:50:38 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 8:12:29 AM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 12:25:37 AM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote: >>>> On Friday, August 19, 2022 at 4:36:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
3. The most complete skeleton of *Synoplotherium* was never >>>>>>>>>>> subjected to a modern character analysis,
and so, other mesonychids were used in all the phylogenetic >>>>>>>>>>> analyses that placed them outside Artiodactyla.
I conclude this from a 2016 account by Riley Black in >>>>>>>>>>> _Scientific American_, long after the all
the analyses of mesonychid affinities of which I know. >>>>>>>>>>>
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/yale-s-mysterious-fossil-beast/
Subtitle: Despite being discovered over a century ago, >>>>>>>>>>> *Synoplotherium* is still an enigma
The crucial excerpt:
"The first and last major source of information on
Synoplotherium is a section of a massive review of Eocene >>>>>>>>>>> mammals laid out by paleontologist Jacob Wortman in 1902. He >>>>>>>>>>> covered the whole animal from its oversized skull to what >>>>>>>>>>> remained of its tail, detecting a few surprises along the way." >>>>>>> [end of repost]
The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been >>>>>>>>> undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.
I would be interested in hearing from a mammal paleontologist on this
question. Pandora?
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist. >>>>>Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
Thanks for the candid answer. FTR, I never claimed to
be a paleontologist, not even an amateur paleontologist,
even though I have gone fossil hunting in a more serious way
than Oxyaena, who once claimed to be one. People both here and in t.o. >>>>> came down hard on me for being skeptical about it,
but the situation was clarified finally as I related earlier:
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey >>>>>>>>> Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too.
Mickey is a real constructer of phylogenies of extinct animals,
so on that basis, he could be called an amateur paleontologist.
But "real paleontologist" carries connotations of being a professional.
So does "paleontologist" itself.
There *are* amateurs who are so outstanding that they can
justifiably be called "real_______".
One such was J.L.B. Smith, discoverer of the living coelacanth _Latimeria_,
who may have been the best amateur ichthyologist there ever was
[his faculty position was in chemistry], and no one could reasonably >>>>> object to calling him "a real ichthyologist."
Calling Smith a "real paleontologist" is also justifiable, on the grounds
that he published a research article in a leading journal about an animal
long believed to be extinct, and this article made it clear that this was
an actual coelacanth.
I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if >>>>> he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology
in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his >>>>> methods meet acceptable standards.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
Mickey is for real thenI never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected >>> than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned
https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
Peter Nyikos
I've no idea.
Why didn't you wait for John to answer, then?
I've never published in either journal.
Glenn will be impressed by your logic. Not.
“I just farted”???
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/rf3zA9qi93A/m/SCeGazhCEAAJ
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
On 8/9/22 20:31, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is an analysis of a mendacious post by Harshman on the thread,
Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
why do this. is there not enough hatred in the world.
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be different
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for. >>>>> Could be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront >>> about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be differentCould be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
<snip for focus>
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's aBut this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront >>>>> about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
Since then, my criteria have been refined a bit. Here is where they now stand:
To call myself an amateur paleontologist, I would have to either
(1) construct numerous phylogenetic trees using accepted standards, something I have never done or (2) participate in at least one serious
fossil hunt in each of ten years (so far, I'm only up to three).
To call myself a "real paleontologist" I would ALSO have to
contribute significantly to a research article on paleontology
in a respected peer-reviewed journal. And to call myself a "paleontologist"
without qualification. I would have to be paid for this kind of work on a regular basis.
The upshot is that I do not qualify as any of the above.
[Yes, "real paleontologist" is weakened by the word "real," since no professional of any stature
would use that expression about him/herself in conversations with other professionals.]
In the reply to you that I linked, I wrote the following about Mickey Mortimer:
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Erik did reply to that post, but only responded to that last paragraph, writing:
"Mickey is for real then"
and cited: https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
My response was:
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
John, that incident may have long faded from your memory. So I ask instead: is that journal in Peerj.com any more respected than the one in which Dr. Dr. Kleinman
published a paper which had been rejected by a highly respected journal on statistics
in medicine? You ran an investigation on it, and found that it is essentially a
"vanity press" journal. Remember?
On 8/29/22 8:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be differentCould be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
<snip for focus>
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's aBut this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
Since then, my criteria have been refined a bit. Here is where they now stand:
To call myself an amateur paleontologist, I would have to eitherPoor definitions all. A paleontologist is a person who does
(1) construct numerous phylogenetic trees using accepted standards, something I have never done or (2) participate in at least one serious fossil hunt in each of ten years (so far, I'm only up to three).
To call myself a "real paleontologist" I would ALSO have to
contribute significantly to a research article on paleontology
in a respected peer-reviewed journal. And to call myself a "paleontologist" without qualification. I would have to be paid for this kind of work on a regular basis.
paleontology. That's all. You aren't doing paleontology unless you
publish your results. Getting paid is not relevant.
The upshot is that I do not qualify as any of the above.
[Yes, "real paleontologist" is weakened by the word "real," since no professional of any stature
would use that expression about him/herself in conversations with other professionals.]
In the reply to you that I linked, I wrote the following about Mickey Mortimer:
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Erik did reply to that post, but only responded to that last paragraph, writing:
"Mickey is for real then"
and cited: https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
My response was:
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
John, that incident may have long faded from your memory. So I ask instead: is that journal in Peerj.com any more respected than the one in which Dr. Dr. KleinmanI have no idea about Peerj.com. Never heard of it before that reference. Based on its Wikipedia entry, which you could have looked up yourself,
published a paper which had been rejected by a highly respected journal on statistics
in medicine? You ran an investigation on it, and found that it is essentially a
"vanity press" journal. Remember?
it seems entirely legitimate. But there's no real way to look up "highly respected". More importantly, the article in question is a legitimate contribution to the paleontology literature, while none of Kleinman's articles, even in legitimate journals, is a legitimate contribution to anything.
Why are we talking about this? Did you explain that in your reply?
On 8/29/22 8:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be differentCould be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
<snip for focus>
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist.Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's aBut this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey
Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here?
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
Since then, my criteria have been refined a bit. Here is where they now stand:
To call myself an amateur paleontologist, I would have to either
(1) construct numerous phylogenetic trees using accepted standards, something I have never done or (2) participate in at least one serious fossil hunt in each of ten years (so far, I'm only up to three).
To call myself a "real paleontologist" I would ALSO have to
contribute significantly to a research article on paleontology
in a respected peer-reviewed journal. And to call myself a "paleontologist" without qualification. I would have to be paid for this kind of work on a regular basis.
Poor definitions all. A paleontologist is a person who does
paleontology. That's all. You aren't doing paleontology unless you
publish your results. Getting paid is not relevant.
The upshot is that I do not qualify as any of the above.
[Yes, "real paleontologist" is weakened by the word "real," since no professional of any stature
would use that expression about him/herself in conversations with other professionals.]
In the reply to you that I linked, I wrote the following about Mickey Mortimer:
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Erik did reply to that post, but only responded to that last paragraph, writing:
"Mickey is for real then"
and cited: https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
My response was:
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
John, that incident may have long faded from your memory. So I ask instead: is that journal in Peerj.com any more respected than the one in which Dr. Dr. Kleinman
published a paper which had been rejected by a highly respected journal on statistics
in medicine? You ran an investigation on it, and found that it is essentially a
"vanity press" journal. Remember?
I have no idea about Peerj.com. Never heard of it before that reference.
Based on its Wikipedia entry, which you could have looked up yourself,
it seems entirely legitimate.
But there's no real way to look up "highly respected".
More importantly, the article in question is a legitimate
contribution to the paleontology literature,
while none of Kleinman's
articles, even in legitimate journals, is a legitimate contribution to anything.
Why are we talking about this? Did you explain that in your reply?
[end of copy]I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
Why are we talking about this? Did you explain that in your reply?[repeated from above]
[end of copy]I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
And you still haven't replied. Do you have any intention of replying?
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
Because there is no certification of paleontologists as there is of geologists.
So it is up to us to keep all kinds of abuses from creeping into s.b.p.
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if
he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his
methods meet acceptable standards.
On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 4:28:18 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/29/22 8:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be differentCould be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
<snip for focus>
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist. >>>>>> Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's aI said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey >>>>>>> Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here? >>>>>
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
Since then, my criteria have been refined a bit. Here is where they now stand:
To call myself an amateur paleontologist, I would have to either
(1) construct numerous phylogenetic trees using accepted standards,
something I have never done or (2) participate in at least one serious
fossil hunt in each of ten years (so far, I'm only up to three).
To call myself a "real paleontologist" I would ALSO have to
contribute significantly to a research article on paleontology
in a respected peer-reviewed journal. And to call myself a "paleontologist" >>> without qualification. I would have to be paid for this kind of work on a regular basis.
Poor definitions all. A paleontologist is a person who does
paleontology. That's all. You aren't doing paleontology unless you
publish your results. Getting paid is not relevant.
This is a classic case of polemical opportunism. You claimed Mickey
Mortimer was a "real paleontologist" back in 2018, before he became
a co-author in the paper Erik tried to use.
I even talked about that earlier on the thread, but didn't see
any point in talking about when you made that claim.
Now I do.
Now you are making a supposedly authoritative comment
that contradicts what you wrote back then, with no further
authority for it than your highly unreliable say-so.
It also ignores something I wrote earlier, which is that,
in contrast to licensed geologists, there is no such
thing as a licensed paleontologist.
The upshot is that I do not qualify as any of the above.
[Yes, "real paleontologist" is weakened by the word "real," since no professional of any stature
would use that expression about him/herself in conversations with other professionals.]
In the reply to you that I linked, I wrote the following about Mickey Mortimer:
I would be willing to call Mickey Mortimer a "real paleontologist" if he were to publish a research paper that is clearly related to paleontology in a respected scientific journal. Only then can we tell whether his methods meet acceptable standards.
Erik did reply to that post, but only responded to that last paragraph, writing:
"Mickey is for real then"
and cited: https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
My response was:
I never heard of PeerJ.com before. Is this journal any more respected than the Ukrainian journal that Harshman sneered at when he learned that Richard Zander had published a paper in it?
John, that incident may have long faded from your memory. So I ask instead: >>> is that journal in Peerj.com any more respected than the one in which Dr. Dr. Kleinman
published a paper which had been rejected by a highly respected journal on statistics
in medicine? You ran an investigation on it, and found that it is essentially a
"vanity press" journal. Remember?
I have no idea about Peerj.com. Never heard of it before that reference.
I was asking specifically about the journal,
PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE
(note the caps, as though the journal doth protest too much)
since the quality of their
journals could greatly vary with their subject matter.
Based on its Wikipedia entry, which you could have looked up yourself,
it seems entirely legitimate.
Wikipedia is highly unreliable, as even you know. In fact, there is a thread in talk.origins, "Larry and Wikipedia go at it again" and I'd like to
see you take a more active role in trying to see who is right about
the point of dispute between them. I've already made my position clear.
> But there's no real way to look up "highly respected".
You seem to have done a highly effective job in the incident I
described above. Have you suffered amnesia on how you went about it?
More importantly, the article in question is a legitimate
contribution to the paleontology literature,
How do you know? Did you investigate the matrix (or matrices?) that Mortimer and co.
used to generate their phylogenetic trees in Fig. 17 and Fig. 18?
while none of Kleinman's
articles, even in legitimate journals, is a legitimate contribution to
anything.
Why are we talking about this? Did you explain that in your reply?
[repeated from above]
I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
[end of copy]
And you still haven't replied. Do you have any intention of replying?
Nice to see you posting again, Ruben. Do I recall correctly that
you adopted the "Popping Mad' nym because Harshman was being
gratuitously obnoxious to you ca. 2017?
On 8/29/22 09:17, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Nice to see you posting again, Ruben. Do I recall correctly that
you adopted the "Popping Mad' nym because Harshman was being
gratuitously obnoxious to you ca. 2017?
No - just usenet in the general and the internet all around from
facebook to slashdot to mailings lists to usenet. It is a universal sufferage. I would NEVER make a tirade like this pointed at someone. I
might argue a point and call someone an idiot, but to put this much into purely emotional venting.... never.
Peter Nyikos <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
[1] Richard disappeared without a trace early in 2017.
Didn’t someone here trace Richard to his Quora posting after he left usenet?
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/oSYc37f0510/m/ctHBIWU_AgAJ
[1] Richard disappeared without a trace early in 2017.
On Tuesday, August 30, 2022 at 11:48:58 PM UTC-4, Popping Mad wrote:
On 8/29/22 09:17, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Nice to see you posting again, Ruben. Do I recall correctly that
you adopted the "Popping Mad' nym because Harshman was being
gratuitously obnoxious to you ca. 2017?
No - just usenet in the general and the internet all around from
facebook to slashdot to mailings lists to usenet. It is a universal
sufferage. I would NEVER make a tirade like this pointed at someone. I
might argue a point and call someone an idiot, but to put this much into
purely emotional venting.... never.
That's your choice, which I respect. But I have a deep commitment to meaningful
communication in sci.bio.paleontology, and Harshman was being
highly counterproductive. And I deny that I indulged in emotional venting, let alone "purely".
Did you even bother to read what I wrote in the OP? If you did, could you please
find an paragraph which you think fits the description?
I think you may have forgotten an incident in 2016 or 2017,
which I hope it won't be too painful for you to recall.
John Harshman accused you of being ignorant of a couple of scientific things, and you demonstrated that he was wrong, and you showed your resentment
over his baseless accusation.
I invited you to join in the agreement that John and I and Erik and Richard Norman
had made less than halfway into 2015, to treat sci.bio.evolution like an embassy,
with us behaving like the best of ambassadors.
I wrote that if you had joined, Harshman would not have accused you like that.
Harshman replied saying that it would have made no difference, he would have acted the same way.
That really scared me, because I feared that our agreement could be ended then and there.
But I decided to ignore the comment ("Let sleeping dogs lie.") because Harshman hadn't
treated any of us who had made the commitment anything like he did you. I took a
chance that this had been a momentary impulse, soon to be forgotten.
And I was right: nothing like that happened between the four, then three [1] of us
until Spring 2018.Then the agreement was permanently shattered,
and we have been living with the consequences ever since.
[1] Richard disappeared without a trace early in 2017.
On 8/30/22 2:34 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 4:28:18 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/29/22 8:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be differentCould be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
<snip for focus>
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist. >>>>>> Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey >>>>>>> Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here? >>>>>
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
Since then, my criteria have been refined a bit. Here is where they now stand:
To call myself an amateur paleontologist, I would have to either
(1) construct numerous phylogenetic trees using accepted standards,
something I have never done or (2) participate in at least one serious >>> fossil hunt in each of ten years (so far, I'm only up to three).
To call myself a "real paleontologist" I would ALSO have to
contribute significantly to a research article on paleontology
in a respected peer-reviewed journal. And to call myself a "paleontologist"
without qualification. I would have to be paid for this kind of work on a regular basis.
Poor definitions all.
A paleontologist is a person who does
paleontology. That's all. You aren't doing paleontology unless you
publish your results.
Getting paid is not relevant.
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be different from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
This is a classic case of polemical opportunism. You claimed Mickey Mortimer was a "real paleontologist" back in 2018, before he became
a co-author in the paper Erik tried to use.
I even talked about that earlier on the thread, but didn't see
any point in talking about [it] when you made that claim.
Now I do.
Now you are making a supposedly authoritative comment
that contradicts what you wrote back then, with no further
authority for it than your highly unreliable say-so.
It also ignores something I wrote earlier, which is that,
in contrast to licensed geologists, there is no such
thing as a licensed paleontologist.
I had no idea there
was such a thing as a licensed geologist,
but why, even if so, is it
relevant? I still don't understand why we're talking about this.
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 3:26:46 PM UTC-7, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
Peter Nyikos <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
[1] Richard disappeared without a trace early in 2017.
Didn’t someone here trace Richard to his Quora posting after he left usenet?
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/oSYc37f0510/m/ctHBIWU_AgAJ
At least of quora he's alive and kicking. Here's one of his contributions from today:single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"
"What would happen if we added 70% isopropyl alcohol to 90% isopedyl alcohol? Would it just dilute into 80% or something?
"Actually if you were able to get hold of isopedyl alcohol you would find it has miraculous properties. Adding 70% isopropyl alcohol to it converts it into very drinkable ethyl alcohol plus some byproducts that completely imitate the flavor of aged
Good luck, indeed. (Don't try this at home, kids.) Sounds like our man.
On Tuesday, August 30, 2022 at 10:55:52 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/30/22 2:34 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 4:28:18 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/29/22 8:27 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 10:38:19 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 8/11/22 6:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
<snip for focus>This is my second and final reply to this post of Harshman, picking up where I left
off in the first reply.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:59:41 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>>>> On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:00:55 PM UTC-4,
on https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/siEAL7dvAwAJ
John Harshman wrote:
On 7/14/22 4:45 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be differentCould be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included. >>>>>
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
Note the implicit admission that Harshman is not a paleontologist. >>>>>>>> Admission? When have I ever claimed to be?
Why don't you answer that question yourself?
Because I don't know the answer.
I said what I wanted to say at that point; deal with it. I will say more tomorrow.But this game came to a crashing end when Harshman called Mickey >>>>>>>>> Mortimer "a real paleontologist." Unfortunately, Mickey is quite upfront
about being "an amateur paleontologist."
Amateur, perhaps. But real too. Whatever are you trying to say here? >>>>>>>
But what did it all mean? Why all this belaboring of who's a
paleontologist, or who I think is a paleontologist, and who isn't?
I answered these questions in considerable detail, in a post to which you never replied:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/lwIJ-7O_ecE/m/KRV2EnEFAQAJ
Since then, my criteria have been refined a bit. Here is where they now stand:
To call myself an amateur paleontologist, I would have to either
(1) construct numerous phylogenetic trees using accepted standards,
something I have never done or (2) participate in at least one serious >>>>> fossil hunt in each of ten years (so far, I'm only up to three).
To call myself a "real paleontologist" I would ALSO have to
contribute significantly to a research article on paleontology
in a respected peer-reviewed journal. And to call myself a "paleontologist"
without qualification. I would have to be paid for this kind of work on a regular basis.
Poor definitions all.
This is a self-serving assertion, given what you wrote next:
> >> A paleontologist is a person who does
paleontology. That's all. You aren't doing paleontology unless you
publish your results.
You cherry-picked ONE feature from the criteria I posted above, secure
in the knowledge that you once co-authored a paper with umpteen other authors in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Getting paid is not relevant.
OF course you would claim that: you have been an "unemployed biologist"
for -- how long exactly? since your last postdoc?
I only mentioned these things because of the way you have done a complete reversal
from less than a month ago, when you implied that you were NOT a paleontologist:
________________________ excerpt from post____________________
Even if this is true, other characters of Synoplotherium may be different
from those of the mesonychids that had actually been used in the analyses that
put them outside Artirodactyla. Seems like a new analysis is called for.
Could be. You could ask a paleontologist why it wasn't included.
======================= end of excerpt =================
Your about-face clashes in the opposite direction with something
I reminded you the first time around:
This is a classic case of polemical opportunism. You claimed Mickey
Mortimer was a "real paleontologist" back in 2018, before he became
a co-author in the paper Erik tried to use.
I even talked about that earlier on the thread, but didn't see
any point in talking about [it] when you made that claim.
Now I do.
What's more, your support of Oxyaena's claim to be a "paleontologist,"
even though she did not give any sign of meeting *any* of the criteria
I listed, was much more dogged than your one-shot claim about Mickey.
Now you are making a supposedly authoritative comment
that contradicts what you wrote back then, with no further
authority for it than your highly unreliable say-so.
See above about the reliability of your say-so.
It also ignores something I wrote earlier, which is that,
in contrast to licensed geologists, there is no such
thing as a licensed paleontologist.
I had no idea there
was such a thing as a licensed geologist,
This seems to imply that you have not had any training as a paleontologist, because you would have had to take lots of geology courses,
and would surely have learned about such a thing.
A related fact is that you are OK with *vertebrate* paleontology
being classed by universities as a branch of geology.
but why, even if so, is it
relevant? I still don't understand why we're talking about this.
My, you are slow on the uptake, even after having made a
carefully tailored description of criteria that make you a paleontologist. And with no attempt whatsoever to justify them.
Continued tomorrow where I left off here, with some earlier context added.
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 6:55:53 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 3:26:46 PM UTC-7, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
Peter Nyikos <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
[1] Richard disappeared without a trace early in 2017.
Didn’t someone here trace Richard to his Quora posting after he left usenet?
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/oSYc37f0510/m/ctHBIWU_AgAJ
single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"At least of quora he's alive and kicking. Here's one of his contributions from today:
"What would happen if we added 70% isopropyl alcohol to 90% isopedyl alcohol? Would it just dilute into 80% or something?
"Actually if you were able to get hold of isopedyl alcohol you would find it has miraculous properties. Adding 70% isopropyl alcohol to it converts it into very drinkable ethyl alcohol plus some byproducts that completely imitate the flavor of aged
Good luck, indeed. (Don't try this at home, kids.) Sounds like our man.I don't recall ever seeing anything remotely like it from Richard while he was posting here or in talk.origins. Do you?
The "tracing" of which Hemi wrote happened almost four years ago, and no one has been able to
get in touch with him in all that time. So even though "without a trace" may not be literally true, "without a confirmed trace"
doesn't sound quite right, agreed?
Peter Nyikoshttps://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/26BZZ4NIrHw/m/q1YxRv3yAgAJ
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 6:17:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 6:55:53 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 3:26:46 PM UTC-7, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
Peter Nyikos <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
[1] Richard disappeared without a trace early in 2017.
Didn’t someone here trace Richard to his Quora posting after he left usenet?
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/oSYc37f0510/m/ctHBIWU_AgAJ
single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"At least of quora he's alive and kicking. Here's one of his contributions from today:
"What would happen if we added 70% isopropyl alcohol to 90% isopedyl alcohol? Would it just dilute into 80% or something?
"Actually if you were able to get hold of isopedyl alcohol you would find it has miraculous properties. Adding 70% isopropyl alcohol to it converts it into very drinkable ethyl alcohol plus some byproducts that completely imitate the flavor of aged
Good luck, indeed. (Don't try this at home, kids.) Sounds like our man.I don't recall ever seeing anything remotely like it from Richard while he was posting here or in talk.origins. Do you?
The "tracing" of which Hemi wrote happened almost four years ago, and no one has been able to
get in touch with him in all that time. So even though "without a trace" may not be literally true, "without a confirmed trace"
doesn't sound quite right, agreed?
Peter Nyikos
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/26BZZ4NIrHw/m/q1YxRv3yAgAJ
John Harshman accused you of being ignorant of a couple of scientific things, and you demonstrated that he was wrong, and you showed your resentment
over his baseless accusation.
That really scared me,
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 11:34:59 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 6:17:00 PM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 6:55:53 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
On Thursday, September 1, 2022 at 3:26:46 PM UTC-7, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
Peter Nyikos <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
[1] Richard disappeared without a trace early in 2017.
Didn’t someone here trace Richard to his Quora posting after he left
usenet?
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/oSYc37f0510/m/ctHBIWU_AgAJ
aged single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"At least of quora he's alive and kicking. Here's one of his contributions from today:
"What would happen if we added 70% isopropyl alcohol to 90% isopedyl alcohol? Would it just dilute into 80% or something?
"Actually if you were able to get hold of isopedyl alcohol you would find it has miraculous properties. Adding 70% isopropyl alcohol to it converts it into very drinkable ethyl alcohol plus some byproducts that completely imitate the flavor of
Good luck, indeed. (Don't try this at home, kids.) Sounds like our man.I don't recall ever seeing anything remotely like it from Richard while he was posting here or in talk.origins. Do you?
The "tracing" of which Hemi wrote happened almost four years ago, and no one has been able to
get in touch with him in all that time. So even though "without a trace" may not be literally true, "without a confirmed trace"
doesn't sound quite right, agreed?
Erik, what did I write above to provoke the tirade to which you posted this link?Peter Nyikos
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/26BZZ4NIrHw/m/q1YxRv3yAgAJ
The tirade reads:
"Last call: Reading your recent posts make my brain itch. Engaging you is like scratching; makes the itch worse.
What items of interest to me seem always to be accompanied by many more lines of boasting, insults,
irrelevant digressions and denunciations of third parties who may or may not be following the conversations.
As if it could be made even more unappealing, much of it is highly repetitive and in a word, boring. So just forget
it. I know the denunciations will continue, probably for years, and that bothers me not at all. After all, I don't itch
anymore."
Please stick to the comments in this post. I can't see the relevance of the tirade to them; please explain.
Thanks in advance.
Peter Nyikos
I was able to interest John Harshman in trying to revive s.b.p, and I put up with a lot of pettiness
from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
On 9/1/22 18:00, Peter Nyikos wrote:
That really scared me,
because I feared that our agreement could be ended then and there.
this is usenet. Nothing happens here that should scare anyone.
On 9/5/22 12:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
I was able to interest John Harshman in trying to revive s.b.p, and I put up with a lot of pettinessWas that not an example of pettiness in itself?
from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 12:23:12 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 9/5/22 12:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
I was able to interest John Harshman in trying to revive s.b.p, and I put up with a lot of pettinessWas that not an example of pettiness in itself?
from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
On 9/5/22 12:29 PM, Glenn wrote:
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 12:23:12 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 9/5/22 12:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
I was able to interest John Harshman in trying to revive s.b.p, and I put up with a lot of pettinessWas that not an example of pettiness in itself?
from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?I smell an infinite regress.
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 2:45:42 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 9/5/22 12:29 PM, Glenn wrote:
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 12:23:12 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 9/5/22 12:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:I smell an infinite regress.
I was able to interest John Harshman in trying to revive s.b.p, and I put up with a lot of pettinessWas that not an example of pettiness in itself?
from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
You didn't answer the question. Did you expect Peter to answer yours?
Do you mean that we could argue on endlessly about what constitutes pettiness and never arrive at a resolution?
On 9/6/22 8:11 AM, Glenn wrote:
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 2:45:42 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 9/5/22 12:29 PM, Glenn wrote:
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 12:23:12 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 9/5/22 12:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:I smell an infinite regress.
I was able to interest John Harshman in trying to revive s.b.p, and I put up with a lot of pettinessWas that not an example of pettiness in itself?
from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
You didn't answer the question. Did you expect Peter to answer yours?
Do you mean that we could argue on endlessly about what constitutes pettiness and never arrive at a resolution?You keep asking questions, but why would you expect an answer since you
never answer mine?
On Tuesday, September 6, 2022 at 9:05:28 AM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
On 9/6/22 8:11 AM, Glenn wrote:
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 2:45:42 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:You keep asking questions, but why would you expect an answer since you
On 9/5/22 12:29 PM, Glenn wrote:
On Monday, September 5, 2022 at 12:23:12 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 9/5/22 12:20 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:I smell an infinite regress.
I was able to interest John Harshman in trying to revive s.b.p, and I put up with a lot of pettinessWas that not an example of pettiness in itself?
from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
You didn't answer the question. Did you expect Peter to answer yours?
Do you mean that we could argue on endlessly about what constitutes pettiness and never arrive at a resolution?
never answer mine?
Why do you think these false claims have relevance to whether certain questions should be answered? Think twice.
On 8/30/22 2:34 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 4:28:18 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
More importantly, the article in question is a legitimate
contribution to the paleontology literature,
How do you know? Did you investigate the matrix (or matrices?) that Mortimer and co.
used to generate their phylogenetic trees in Fig. 17 and Fig. 18?
No. I just read the paper. Did you?
Do you disagree?
On Tuesday, August 30, 2022 at 10:55:52 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/30/22 2:34 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 4:28:18 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
More importantly, the article in question is a legitimate
contribution to the paleontology literature,
How do you know? Did you investigate the matrix (or matrices?) that Mortimer and co.
used to generate their phylogenetic trees in Fig. 17 and Fig. 18?
No. I just read the paper. Did you?I've read enough of it to see two deficiencies and several peculiar details.
Do you disagree?
Yes. To begin with, a simple scan shows that they nowhere mention which taxon
they used to root the tree. Very sloppy writing, refereeing, and editing is to blame, wouldn't you say?
Just above Fig. 17 is the following sentence:
"As *Ornitholestes* has never been recovered as a tyrannosauroid it is considered the most basal well supported member of Maniraptoromorpha here."
And yet, Ornitholestes appears neither in Fig. 17 nor Fig. 18. Their trees apparently don't
show the breadth of Maniraptoromorpha. More sloppiness.
Also, to a layman like me, it seems peculiar that they would use 700 characters,parsimonious at six more steps. Scansoriopterygids form the first branch of Avialae, matching their stratigraphic placement, and constraining them as basal paravians instead is only one step longer. Their other suggested position as oviraptorosaurs
and claim that their choice is better than that of Maryanska et. al.,
and yet it takes so little change to make some pretty big shifts.
"A Deinonychosauria including troodontids and dromaeosaurids was recovered as in many recent analyses. Positioning troodontids closer to Aves than dromaeosaurids only requires a single additional step, but non-eumaniraptoran troodontids are less
The placement of the enigmatic Scansoriopterygids has been highly varied. Check out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scansoriopterygidae
The only tree it shows puts them well outside Avialae, and above the tree there is a long
discussion of numerous other analyses.
I suggest you compare the Mortimer et.al. matrix with one or more of the ones
among the analyses listed.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
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