Re: Sinosauropteryx filament melanosomes challenged

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

>  Look, I accept that the evidence for the dinosaur-bird link is strong
>  and that some of those who feel otherwise may not be objective on the
>  issue. However, the assumption I am getting is that because
>  Feduccia, Olson et al are almost certainly wrong on this one their
>  entire careers are suspect.

What? Why?

>  I happen to be an ornithologist, not a dino person, by training, and
>  I know Storrs Olson personally (though we do not meet often), and I
>  would like to point out that Storrs is a distinguished ornithologist
>  with a career of valuable research behind him, including important
>  work on avian taxonomy and island avifaunas that may be as unfamiliar
>  to dinosaur biologists as some dinosaur work is to ornithologists.

Indeed it is. I am hardly interested in that kind of thing, so I don't 
know anything about it.

The difference is I don't make grandiose claims about it that 
obliviously contradict the data or the principle of parsimony.

>  Calling him and others like him "unmentionables"

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was trying to allude to section 8h of 
the DML rules: we are not to discuss creationism, so I called the 
creationists "Unmentionables".

>  hinting that they have compromised their degrees by taking an
>  unpopular stand (and, I admit, defending it less well than they
>  might) is in my view unfair and unhelpful (and I will admit that
>  Feduccia in particular has himself crossed that line in the other
>  direction, but that doesn't make this sort of ad hominem stuff
>  acceptable).

Not by taking any particular stand, but by failing to learn about the 
existing data.

"Argumentum ad hominem" means "argument at the person" as opposed to "at 
their argument". "X is a BANDit, so whatever they say is most likely 
wrong" would be an ad-hominem argument; that's not what I've done. 
"Insult" is orthogonal to "ad-hominem argument".

I, for one, haven't even said that Lingham-Soliar's new paper is wrong. 
I haven't read it yet, and the discussion here hasn't been so detailed 
that I'd have been able to really form an opinion. I've said the paper 
really should have cited Li et al. (2010), and I implied it should have 
dealt with the arguments in that latter paper. I'm not talking about 
conclusions, I'm talking about methods.

>  If the papers we are discussing do not make their case it should be
>  (and may well be) because their science is wrong, not a priori
>  because their views are unacceptable or because they can be tagged
>  with a pejorative label.

Their views are by no means unacceptable. The way they (currently) reach 
them is. Science is a method, not the results of that method.

Concerning pejoratives, I have no problem calling myself a BAD guy.

>  And I should add that this particular rant is not aimed at anyone in
>  particular, least of all Dr, Marjanovic

Yeah, right. That must be why it's addressed to me _and_ the DML instead 
of to the DML alone, and why it references things such as what a degree 
means in Austria that only I have brought up. <sigh>

Don't apologize or anything. Just don't be afraid of being honest next 
time. :-)