RE: Kerberosaurus manakini

[Mike Milbocker <mmilbocker@psdllc.com>]

Ken Carpenter wrote:

> what I find disturbing this the "need" some people have of doing a
cladistic
> analysis of every new specimen/taxa when the material clearly too
fragmentary
> /incomplete to produce anything meaningful. The Kerberosaurus is a case in
point.

Jonathan R. Wagner wrote:

>Phylogenetics is a useful tool, but is not the sine quod non of systematic
paleontology. Unless a new specimen, or a redescribed specimen, suggests a
novel phylogenetic hypothesis that figures prominently in the paper, authors
should not be compelled produce a tree. There should be a place in this
science for a good old-fashioned comparison and discussion. Very often, an
informed, intelligent description and comparison says as much as, often more
than, a phylogenetic analysis. The latter rarely furnishes any insight the
former lacks.<

I agree experienced analysis using "good old-fashioned comparison" in many
cases should be the dominant message, however, performing the systematics
costs little and if it provides insight into why things are as they are
observed - why not include it, because it makes connection to a broader
plane of knowledge. The application of systematics goes astray, in my
opinion, when people use it to "prove" other competing theories, hypotheses
false. Bottom line, systematics is merely a data ordering tool made
quasi-scientific by the often misunderstood principle of parsimony.

>Cladistics forces the specialist to justify his conclusions in a
reproducible manner rather than relying on his authority; it does not
represent a means by which "any yokel off the street can do phylogenetics.<

I see no reason why a specialist should be forced to justify his conclusions
in light of a cladistic result. Further, no one way of ordering data can be
proven superior to another without empiricle evidence. Researchers who drop
characters (which they should note)to illustrate a way of viewing the data
consistent with their "good old-fashioned comparison" work may ultimately be
vindicated by the fossil record. Ultimately, the value of what's written in
a scientific paper depends more on the intellectual honesty of the authors
than any supposed objectivity imposed by cladistics. The relations among
taxa described in cladistics is not a scientific fact, only the states of
the characters are.

When I was a youth studying astrophysics at MIT we used to joke that the
value of the Hubble Constant could be plotted as a function of time, that's
how I feel about the validity of any one cladistic result.

Mike Milbocker