Re: Martin 2004 critique (somewhat lengthy)

[Martin Baeker <martin.baeker@tu-bs.de>]

> Example:
> In all of his papers on the subject, Martin (and Feduccia) has argued
> that birds are not dinosaurs (while deftly avoiding whether he is
> referring to cladistics or to the Linnaean system).  Cladistically, it is
> clearly a factual error, because the clade Dinosauria has been DEFINED to
> include birds (by Padian and May, 1994, I believe).   So in this case,
> Martin is clearly wrong.  There is no need for us to read Martin's
> opinion on the matter.  The Earth is round, not flat, gravity exists, and
> birds are dinosaurs.  If one wants these facts to be different, then one
> must teletransport one's self to a different (anti-) universe where a
> different set of scientific rules apply.  But back in our own universe,
> any further debate on the point is unnecessary.  Even future cladistic
> analyses cannot remove birds from the Dinosauria.
Aaargh. I cannot really believe that this has passed the list - so far - 
uncommented. That earth is round is a fact that can be observed more or 
less directly (if you are willing to pay 20million bucks to travel to 
orbit). Gravity can be inferred by induction from many experiments.

But the *cladistic definition* of birds as dinosaurs is surely not the 
issue here. No-one on this list (I presume) would be very happy if some 
ABSRDist had defined dinosauria cladistically in 1980 as:
Everything closer to Megalosaurus than to Passer domesticus (or 
Archaeopteryx). Then it would be, by your logic, an irrefutable fact that 
birds are not dinosaurs. (Neither would sauropods be, but that is not the 
issue here.)

Cladistic definitions are only useful if they 
agree at least broadly with common perception. (If hominidae has not yet 
cladistically defined - just to cook up an even more stupid example - I 
could cladistically define it as everything closer to rattus norvegicus 
than to megalosaurus, or whatever. Noone would use this definition, as it 
does not agree with any sensible concept of hominidae.)

The issue at hand is whether birds are dinosaurs *phylogenetically*. This 
cannot be resolved by definition, if it could, it were not a scientific 
question. Cladistics is meant to *reflect* the phylogeny, but as the 
current understanding of phylogeny may not be correct, this does not mean 
that every cladistic definition is sensible, after all. (As an example, 
consider how clade names change depending on whether pterosaurs are close 
or distant relatives of dinosaurs.) 

So please, don't confuse nomenclatural issues with scientific ones. They 
are not scientific.

Regards,

Martin.


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