Re: Refutations

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 08:14 PM 2/9/99 EST, George wrote:

>"Refute" is by no means an antonym of "support," despite above-mentioned
>popular usage. Just because there is no support available for a hypothesis
>does not mean that the hypothesis is thereby refuted. Refutation removes a
>hypothesis from competition; mere lack of support does not.

Okay, fair enough.  So, for everyone to see, here is the reworded sentence
which sparked the whole thing off:

]]Now, to be fair, none of these studies currently published directly test
what is
]]needed to *reject (provisionally)* Olshevsky's assertion: namely an
analysis where
]]prosauropods and/or ornithischians are also included among the ingroups, so
]]that (in terms of the search mechanics) recovery of a
]]prosauropod-therizinosauorid clade is at least possible.

Okay, everybody?

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:tholtz@geol.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661