• Re: How Harshman Derailed a Discussion of Paleontology

    From *Hemidactylus*@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Wed Aug 10 01:00:01 2022
    Peter Nyikos <peter2nyikos@gmail.com> wrote:
    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.

    Don't you think *you* can recognize a double-pulleyed astragalus?
    I think so, though I may be wrong.

    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.

    Of what relevance to current thought are really old books?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Tue Aug 9 18:07:27 2022
    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.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Tue Aug 9 17:31:37 2022
    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.

    Don't you think *you* can recognize a double-pulleyed astragalus?
    I think so, though I may be wrong.

    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.


    Peter Nyikos
    Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
    University of South Carolina
    http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Glenn@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Wed Aug 10 00:48:44 2022
    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 bats
    Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology?
    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?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From *Hemidactylus*@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Wed Aug 10 13:57:37 2022
    John Harshman <jharshman@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 bats
    Seriously? 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.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Glenn on Wed Aug 10 06:30:03 2022
    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 bats
    Seriously? 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.

    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.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From erik simpson@21:1/5 to All on Wed Aug 10 08:34:44 2022
    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 bats
    Seriously? 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.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Glenn@21:1/5 to erik simpson on Wed Aug 10 14:26:04 2022
    On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 8:34:45 AM UTC-7, erik simpson wrote:
    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 bats
    Seriously? 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.

    Savor the sweet flavor of evolution.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Wed Aug 10 18:46:05 2022
    On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 8:31:39 PM UTC-4, 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:
    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:

    Nobody who has responded on this thread has shown the slightest evidence
    of having read even the first six lines documented in it, but I appreciate
    the fact that neither Hemidactylus nor Glenn could realize their significance even if they had read them:

    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.

    As Harshman knows, but is loath to let others know about it, 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:

    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."

    I wonder how easily his "coverage" can be translated into a modern character analysis.
    It might require a whole new study of the specimen.

    Harshman responded:

    Not if it's a proper description accompanied by clear photos and/or drawings.

    The key point, though, is that no study of any sort has been undertaken, hence the use of "enigma" in the title.

    <snip for focus>

    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.

    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."


    Peter Nyikos
    Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
    Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
    http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Wed Aug 10 18:59:35 2022
    On 8/10/22 6:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

    Oh, look: some paleontology.

    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.

    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.

    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:

    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?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Thu Aug 11 07:53:22 2022
    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?


    Remainder deleted, to be replied to later today.


    Peter Nyikos
    Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
    Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
    http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Thu Aug 11 09:06:16 2022
    On 8/11/22 7:53 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    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.

    I don't think you know that history.

    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.

    I say again: the astragalus was neither the key player nor a key player
    in the revolutionary hypothesis. It was only subsequent confirmation.

    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?

    It was not. Why does that matter?

    And when did the SINE insertions come to play
    the key role in the molecular phylogeny?

    SINE insertions were the strongest data for that hypothesis, further
    confirmed by more work, both molecular and fossil. But I see that the
    SINEs were not quite the first, being preceded slightly by a bit of
    protein and DNA sequence. The first publication putting whales within artiodactyls was in 1994, and the first SINE publication was 1997. (Incidentally, Thewissen was first author on that; imagine, a
    paleontologist using molecular data!)

    I don't happen to have the initial publication on me, but this (which
    predates the fossil publications, you will note) will provide the
    references:

    Shedlock A.M., Milinkovitch M.C., Okada N. SINE evolution, missing data,
    and the origin of whales. Systematic Biology 2000; 49:808-817.

    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.

    If that's true, which isn't at all in evidence, doesn't it show an
    unfortunate bias on the part of these paleontologists regarding the
    nature of evidence?

    HOWEVER, the molecular tree said nothing about whale ancestry,
    since it was confined to extant animals. It was paleontology
    that provided all the details.

    Of course it said something about whale ancestry; it showed that whales
    were descended from land-living artiodactyls. It showed, prior to the
    fossil discoveries, that early whales must have had double-pulley
    astragali. Mapping the morphology of extant species onto a phylogenetic
    tree can show us much about the nature of the ancestors at internal
    nodes. Are you claiming that comparisons of extant species can tell us
    nothing about past species?

    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.

    No, it's only because the characters possessed by these various fossils
    show, through phylogenetic analysis, where they fit on a tree of
    mammals. I'm not clear on what you're trying to say there, but it seems odd.

    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?

    I have no clear basis for arguing about the opinions of some amorphous consensus of paleontologists. And neither do you. Can you cite some
    publication for your contention?

    And again, if paleontologists can be convinced only by fossil data,
    isn't that a sad comment on paleontologists? Now, I have met
    paleontologists who think that way (not specifically regarding whales,
    but regarding molecular data in general), but I have met others who
    don't. I'd be interested in your source of information on this.

    It was the SINE data.

    Which wasn't needed to convince the molecular biologists. Correct?

    Of course it was. Or at least it was the first data I and many others
    would consider conclusive regarding the question, and it was conclusive
    enough on its own if you understand what SINE insertions are. Read the
    Shedlock et al. paper.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Thu Aug 11 09:24:32 2022
    On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 9:07:34 PM UTC-4, 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 bats

    Seriously? A whole new thread that has nothing to do with paleontology?

    It has everything to do with paleontology and with your tactics in impeding progress in discussing it. The first six lines of text in the OP beyond my preamble [1]
    show the first fact; the second becomes apparent soon thereafter.

    Did you snip everything past the first two lines (preserved above)
    in order to make your loaded question look like the answer is "yes"
    rather than a resounding NO?

    [1]
    [John:]
    If you want to present evidence that mesonychids, like whales,
    are nested within Artiodactyla, I would be interested.
    [Peter:]
    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.
    [end of quotes]

    For the benefit of non-regulars of s.b.p., I add that mesonychids are long-extinct mammals
    known only from fossils, which are the defining feature of paleontology.
    And that Artiodactyla is widely considered to be the sole taxon that has members
    with a double-pulleyed astragalus.


    Your obsession with my sins is not helping.

    You consistently seem satisfied with your "sins", like a sinner who lived during the Renaissance
    and bragged about having committed every sin in the Roman Catholic canon except suicide.


    What is at stake here, though, is the counterproductive behavior of others that your "sins" [your word, not mine]
    engender year after year. You've got Hemidactylus swallowing your hypocritical deceptions hook, line, and sinker
    right on this thread and Erik rewriting sci.bio.paleontology history [in the Orwellian sense] in response to him.

    All of which has everything to do with impeding discussion of paleontology.


    Peter Nyikos

    *********** QUOTE OF THE WEEK *********

    If you don't own up to your own elemental truth, falsehood will ultimately end up owning you.

    -- https://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/12-things-people-regret-the-most-before-they-die.html

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to All on Thu Aug 11 17:53:17 2022
    On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 at 9:58:59 AM UTC-4, *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 bats
    Seriously? 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.

    The ship was sunk in 2018 by Erik Simpson, who destroyed an agreement
    which he and Harshman and I made back in 2015 to make that ship watertight.

    Harshman and Oxyaena helped to make the sinking of the ship complete,
    siding with Erik when I tried to enforce our 2015 agreement.

    Since then, worse things than this thread have erupted from time to time.
    Erik is trying to pull the wool over your eyes about that in response to this post of yours.


    So good luck with that Herculean task given
    recent developments.

    You and Erik are only impeding that task with your behavior here
    and on another thread, as is plain from what I documented in the
    following post today:

    https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/MCqmGt3_BAAJ Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
    [Excerpt with me addressing Erik:]
    I think Hemi feels satisfaction now. After all, you've responded favorably
    to his whining about me not giving any paleontology that is "useful" for *him* while not lifting a finger to provide any, useful or otherwise.
    [end of excerpt]

    By the way, that last clause applies equally to Erik and yourself on this thread.
    With his 2018 sabotage of our agreement, he and Harshman
    have made s.b.p. more hospitable to the likes of you.


    You and Harshman continue below to put obstacles in the way
    of the Herculean task to which you've paid lip service:


    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.

    Harshman is flaunting his hypocrisy here. The OP shows how he repeatedly ducked my
    questions on an issue of pivotal importance to a discussion of paleontology.


    How often does that happen? Sowing chaos using links from Uncommon Descent and Evolution News seems more likely.

    Here in sci.bio.paleontology, the chaos was sown by Harshman making
    intensely derogatory accusations about Glenn while refusing to either
    support them or retract them.

    The following two posts, taken together, show that you have no
    problems with chaos of that sort, when it comes from him:


    https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/vhurnx7HBAAJ Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
    Aug 10, 2022, 7:18:37 PM

    https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/WP7JtxgJIio/m/3VYaSePMBAAJ Re: Man closer kin to naked mole rats than bats
    Aug 10, 2022, 9:04:19 PM


    Take a gander at many futile threads
    on talk.origins to see how that turns out. This place may be doomed.

    Stop weeping crocodile tears. Your own behavior has doomed
    many a thread.


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Thu Aug 11 18:16:49 2022
    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]?

    Or are you simply trolling?


    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,
    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?


    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.

    So you allege. But you will remember very well when I jog your memory.

    However, that will have to wait. Duty calls.


    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.

    Got to go now.


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Thu Aug 11 19:38:13 2022
    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:

    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]?

    No. True, it's possible that the original description did talk about the
    state of the astragalus.

    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,
    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.

    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?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Fri Aug 19 16:35:59 2022
    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.


    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.

    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.


    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

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From erik simpson@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Fri Aug 19 21:25:36 2022
    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.
    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.
    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 then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to erik simpson on Tue Aug 23 08:12:28 2022
    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.
    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.
    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 then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w



    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?


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From erik simpson@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Tue Aug 23 08:50:37 2022
    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.
    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.
    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 then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
    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?


    Peter Nyikos

    I've no idea. I've never published in either journal.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Glenn@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Tue Aug 23 13:06:20 2022
    On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 12:25:54 PM UTC-7, 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.
    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.
    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 then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
    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?


    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.

    Depends on what is meant by "impressed". Certainly the respectability of journals can be inferred by laymen to some degree of "I have some idea" rather than "I have no idea", and not only by those who have published in other journals.
    So his logic does leave me with an impression. Just because.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to erik simpson on Tue Aug 23 12:25:53 2022
    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.
    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.
    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 then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
    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?


    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

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From erik simpson@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Tue Aug 23 15:05:14 2022
    On Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 12:25:54 PM UTC-7, 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.
    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.
    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 then https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w
    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?


    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

    I answered because you asked me. What "logic" are you talking about? It's a statement of fact.
    And Glenn's opinion is irrelevant.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From *Hemidactylus*@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Wed Aug 24 16:31:26 2022
    Peter Nyikos <peter2nyikos@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.
    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.
    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 then
    https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w

    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?


    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”???…to quote someone here:

    https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/rf3zA9qi93A/m/SCeGazhCEAAJ

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to All on Fri Aug 26 12:45:18 2022
    On Wednesday, August 24, 2022 at 12:32:38 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
    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.

    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.
    I got sidetracked, so this is a week late.

    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 then
    https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w

    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?


    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”???

    You are shackling yourself to Erik here.

    [I was going to only talk about solidarity, but your use of the quote here goes well beyond that.]

    You are also displaying (feigned?) inability to distinguish between logic and discussion of
    theism and atheism in talk.origins.

    …to quote someone here:


    https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/rf3zA9qi93A/m/SCeGazhCEAAJ

    Flagrantly off topic for sci.bio.paleontology. Also, based on apparent inability to understand the issues on the thread you've linked.

    You at least were on topic when you posted this flamebait to talk.origins,
    but that's ALL that can be said for it. See here:

    https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/uMOdTD1NL8A/m/WbpfjD3HAgAJ
    Re: Bad Form, Peter

    There, I've suggested a first step for you on a journey to becoming a responsible adult,
    and I'm curious to see whether you are man enough to take that step.


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Popping Mad@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Mon Aug 29 00:59:58 2022
    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.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to Popping Mad on Mon Aug 29 06:17:09 2022
    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?

    If you can't recall, I could jog your memory with an example.

    On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 1:00:44 AM UTC-4, Popping Mad wrote:
    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.

    There is a surplus, and Harshman had been contributing to it
    on other threads, especially against Glenn. The thread we are
    on now wasn't about hatred, though; it was about Harshman's counterproductive [to put it euphemistically] behavior that stalled an on-topic discussion.

    The post to which you are replying eventually had the desired effect:
    Harshman has been much more reasonable after first compounding
    -- to put it euphemistically --
    his failure to communicate on this thread.


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Mon Aug 29 08:27:25 2022
    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 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.

    <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 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?

    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?


    Peter Nyikos
    Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
    Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
    http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

    PS The very name "Peerj.com" sounds like what I wrote in brackets about "real paleontologist."

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Mon Aug 29 13:28:13 2022
    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 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.

    <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 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?

    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?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Glenn@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Mon Aug 29 14:28:08 2022
    On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 1:28:18 PM UTC-7, 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 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.

    <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 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?

    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.

    I haven't been able to verify that claim. Have you published that result?

    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.

    Can you support that by citing a journal article? Above you claim that a paleontologist is simply one who publishes, or has published.
    You are aware that s.b.p. is not a journal?

    Why are we talking about this? Did you explain that in your reply?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Tue Aug 30 14:34:41 2022
    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 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.

    <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 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?

    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?


    Peter Nyikos
    Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
    Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia
    http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

    PS Be careful: Glenn may be highly interested in your answers to the questions I pose.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Tue Aug 30 20:00:00 2022
    On 8/30/22 2:34 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    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?

    Nope. Is this in fact what you consider an explanation?:

    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.

    I see no explanation here. What abuses are in danger of creeping into
    s.b.p, and when or where did that even come up?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Tue Aug 30 19:55:45 2022
    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 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.

    <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 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?

    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.

    Do you know that Mickey is otherwise unpublished? 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.

    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.

    Don't know about that one either. What I do know is that the one paper
    I've looked at seems quite good.

    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.

    Is there a need for such active contempt as "even you know"? Wikipedia
    varies in quality, certainly. But I have no reason to doubt any of the statements of fact in the article in question. Do you have a reason to
    doubt?

    No interest in even looking at that thread, sorry.

    > 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?

    No, but it doesn't apply here. I suspected that the journal was
    predatory, and I found on a list of predatory journals. I have zero
    reason to assume that the current journal in question is predatory, so I
    have no reason to check that list.

    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?

    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

    I looked but didn't find anything I would consider an answer. Could you
    perhaps quote the answer itself?

    [end of copy]

    And you still haven't replied. Do you have any intention of replying?

    I don't, but I'll look again in case it changes my mind.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Popping Mad@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Tue Aug 30 23:48:12 2022
    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.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to Popping Mad on Thu Sep 1 15:00:33 2022
    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.


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From erik simpson@21:1/5 to All on Thu Sep 1 15:55:52 2022
    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:

    "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
    single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"

    Good luck, indeed. (Don't try this at home, kids.) Sounds like our man.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From *Hemidactylus*@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Thu Sep 1 22:26:42 2022
    Peter Nyikos <peter2nyikos@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

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Thu Sep 1 15:17:05 2022
    On 9/1/22 3:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    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.

    And none of that screed could be called "venting". No doubt.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Thu Sep 1 17:42:35 2022
    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:
    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.

    <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 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?

    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.


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to erik simpson on Thu Sep 1 18:16:59 2022
    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


    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
    single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"

    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

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  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Thu Sep 1 18:16:07 2022
    On 9/1/22 5:42 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    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:
    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. >>>>>
    <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 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?

    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.

    You seem to be accusing me of something, but I can't tell what. For the
    record, I am not a paleontologist, the PNAS paper wasn't about
    paleontology, and I have published many other papers in various places,
    none of which was paleontology. How is any of this relevant?

    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?

    You still seem to be accusing me of something. Still not sure what.

    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:

    I didn't imply. I said it explicitly. I am not a paleontologist and have
    never, ever in my life, claimed to be a paleontologist. Whatever is this
    about?

    ________________________ 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:

    What about face???

    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.

    Why are we bringing up either of these people?

    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.

    What above? What are you talking about?

    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.

    Again, I'm not a paleontologist, though I have in fact taken lots of
    geology courses and quite a few paleontology courses. Why, I'm only 3
    credits short of an undergraduate biology major. So your "surely" bit is
    wrong.

    A related fact is that you are OK with *vertebrate* paleontology
    being classed by universities as a branch of geology.

    I don't really have a vote in the matter. But I will say that the
    vertebrate paleontologists at the University of Chicago are in the
    Anatomy Department, not Geology. Not that anyone would or should care.

    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.

    No, you are bizarrely misinformed. I never, and it's odd that I should
    have to say this, claimed to be a paleontologist. But I now see what you
    meant about me being self-serving, if that was your mistaken belief.

    Continued tomorrow where I left off here, with some earlier context added.

    Try, when you're continuing, to remember that I have explicitly and consistently claimed not to be a paleontologist. (Though again, I have
    taken both undergraduate and graduate, vertebrate and invertebrate, paleontology courses. But, to clear up any remaining confusion, that
    doesn't make me a paleontologist, which I am not.)

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  • From erik simpson@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Thu Sep 1 20:34:58 2022
    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


    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
    single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"

    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

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  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to erik simpson on Fri Sep 2 05:56:42 2022
    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


    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
    single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"

    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

    Erik, what did I write above to provoke the tirade to which you posted this link?
    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

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  • From Popping Mad@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Fri Sep 2 09:45:26 2022
    On 9/1/22 18:00, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    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 don't even remember any longer, but if I ever wrote a multiple page
    personal assualt against anyone on the internet, I have to humbly admit
    that I was wrong to do so, and I beg forgiveness of the internet world
    and all of usenet. It was wrong of me.

    I might had said my peice in a line or two and then just /dev/nulled him.

    I come to the internet looking for friends, and occasional intelectual
    sparing partners, and occasionally to vent over a political issue.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Popping Mad@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Fri Sep 2 09:48:17 2022
    On 9/1/22 18:00, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    That really scared me,


    this is usenet. Nothing happens here that should scare anyone.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj8n4MfhjUc

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From erik simpson@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Fri Sep 2 08:16:25 2022
    On Friday, September 2, 2022 at 5:56:43 AM UTC-7, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
    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


    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 single malt scotch whisky. Good luck with that!"

    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
    Erik, what did I write above to provoke the tirade to which you posted this link?
    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

    With respect to this post I will say just this: You are an absurd person, and you are obviously incapable
    of recognizing absurdity when you see it.

    With respect to the link, it's hard to believe you don't understand it. it says: "I don't want to engage you in ANY
    protracted exchanges of the sort containing the elements I mentioned." You may change your behavior, but
    history suggests that's unlikely. I won't be watching closely.

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  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Mon Sep 5 12:23:07 2022
    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 pettiness
    from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.

    Was that not an example of pettiness in itself?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to Popping Mad on Mon Sep 5 12:20:58 2022
    Hi, Ruben. Before I address what you wrote below,
    I want to let you know about a new thread I began
    less than an hour ago, where I mention you at the beginning.
    I hope I did a good job of talking about you there. Its title:
    "The False Dichotomy of Cladistics and Phenetics."
    I hope to see you there some time this week (the sooner, the better).

    On Friday, September 2, 2022 at 9:49:03 AM UTC-4, Popping Mad wrote:
    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.

    You don't seem to understand how much sci.bio.paleontology means to me.
    When I returned to it in December of 2010, I was horrified to see that
    the Usenet forum I had enjoyed the most when I left it about a decade earlier was on the verge of extinction.

    The last exchange on it had been a month earlier, and it wasn't a particularly pleasant one.
    It was hard to find, too, because the forum was almost taken over by spammers advertising one solutions manual after another, dozens at a time, all with new OPs.

    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.
    We were joined in about two years by Richard Norman and Erik Simpson, and
    by early 2015 the spamming, both the kind I described just now and that by Thrinaxodon
    (later going by the byline Oxyaena), was over. Soon thereafter began the
    "oasis of civilization" about which I wrote to you in the post to which you are replying.

    The fear I was describing in the two lines at the beginning was that all that good work
    would go down the drain. By keeping silent, I put off anything like that for many months.


    Peter Nyikos

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  • From Glenn@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Mon Sep 5 12:29:09 2022
    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 pettiness
    from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
    Was that not an example of pettiness in itself?

    Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Glenn on Mon Sep 5 14:45:35 2022
    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 pettiness
    from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
    Was that not an example of pettiness in itself?

    Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?

    I smell an infinite regress.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Glenn@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Tue Sep 6 08:11:53 2022
    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 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.
    Was that not an example of pettiness in itself?

    Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
    I smell an infinite regress.

    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?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Glenn on Tue Sep 6 09:05:22 2022
    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 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.
    Was that not an example of pettiness in itself?

    Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
    I smell an infinite regress.

    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?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Glenn@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Tue Sep 6 11:07:14 2022
    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:
    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 pettiness
    from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
    Was that not an example of pettiness in itself?

    Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
    I smell an infinite regress.

    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?

    Why do you think these false claims have relevance to whether certain questions should be answered? Think twice.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Glenn on Tue Sep 6 20:49:19 2022
    On 9/6/22 11:07 AM, Glenn wrote:
    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:
    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 pettiness
    from him because he did contribute a good amount of information.
    Was that not an example of pettiness in itself?

    Is that question itself not an example of pettiness?
    I smell an infinite regress.

    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?

    Why do you think these false claims have relevance to whether certain questions should be answered? Think twice.

    There's an improve game in which two people try to carry on a
    conversation solely by answering a question with a question. You seem to
    be playing that game. But I'm stopping.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Thu Sep 8 06:59:51 2022
    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,
    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
    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
    requires 12 more steps though, so is unlikely. While Pedopenna emerges as a scansoriopterygid in the MPTs, one step moves the fragmentary specimen to Archaeopterygidae instead. The juvenile Zhongornis branches next, with alternative positions in
    Scansoriopterygidae or Confuciusornithiformes being four and five steps longer respectively."

    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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  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Thu Sep 8 07:51:55 2022
    On Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 9:59:52 AM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    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:

    I realized just now that the url for the article co-authored by "Mickey Mortimer"
    was missing from my earlier reply this morning. Here it is:

    https://peerj.com/articles/7247/?td=bl&fbclid=IwAR09VFddJNY8v0rvmEh9HmtINsJLScQj0B98UsoKEbTjMMNZLTdxZyA4h4w

    I had to scroll up pretty far to find it, too.


    Peter Nyikos

    PS I left everything below intact; it's all about the linked article.

    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,
    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
    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
    requires 12 more steps though, so is unlikely. While Pedopenna emerges as a scansoriopterygid in the MPTs, one step moves the fragmentary specimen to Archaeopterygidae instead. The juvenile Zhongornis branches next, with alternative positions in
    Scansoriopterygidae or Confuciusornithiformes being four and five steps longer respectively."

    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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