Re: No substitute for seeing a specimen: Hone blog

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

Back to the start of the thread:

>  I wrote back to Dr. Hone privately suggesting:
>
>  "[...] It has also been my experience (in fact it's something I'm
>  doing right now to a Dalla Vecchia find) that tracing a photograph
>  can provide a magnitude more data than a camera lucida can. Look at
>  any fish skeleton tracing. It's easy to get lost in the chaos of
>  similar-looking features unless you have a system of graphically
>  separating layers of crushed material and this is where the
>  photograph trumps the camera lucida, IMHO.

What Mark Pauline said -- photographs can contain fake data, and looking 
at photographs can create even more in your brain. Your point of 
graphically separating layers is well taken, but a camera lucida tracing 
isn't meant to let you discover features you didn't see in the specimen; 
first you see them in the specimen, and then you trace them.

>  Your position "No substitute for seeing a specimen" is the current
>  paradigm and it is widely accepted. My challenge to you is this: You
>  have the fossil. Send me a good picture of it. Later, when you're
>  ready we'll compare tracings. You say there's no substitute. Let's
>  test your hypothesis with a real scientific test. True to your word,
>  I trust you will not use a photograph to trace from, but a camera
>  lucida."

Now the really important point: if you discover something in a photo (or 
camera lucida tracing or whatever!), how do you test whether you've 
discovered something that actually exists?

_By looking for it in the specimen!!!_

How else! :-D

OK, photos from different angles with different lighting and _much 
higher_ resolution can help. That's how the face on Mars turned out to 
exist only in people's heads.

>  Having already helped several scientists identify cryptic features
>  they have overlooked first hand,

Did anyone ever go back to the specimen and look if the "cryptic 
features" really exist?

>  This is one of those put-up or shut-up moments. Dr. Hone has every
>  advantage, yet ignores this opportunity to put scientific evidence
>  behind his headline statement. Is there anyone out there who can
>  persuade him to do so?
>
>  Please, don't suggest making this into a paper.

You're naïve.

Untenured scientists don't have time for _anything_ more time-consuming 
than a blog post, other than writing papers and grant applications. They 
won't do anything that would use time they could have used to write 
papers or grant applications = increase their chances at tenure and/or a 
better job at another institution.

It's called "publish or perish" for a reason.

"Suggest"? Getting a paper out of it is a _requirement_. For better or 
worse, professional scientists aren't paid to argue with people who 
might as well be random cranks on the Internet. They're paid for 
increasing their impact factor.

I do it anyway, because I have SIWOTI syndrome http://xkcd.com/386/ -- 
not everyone has it.
(Mouse over the picture to make additional text appear.)

>  That would take more than a year or two and we already have several
>  examples of scientists who have held specimens in their hand, yet
>  could not decipher or interpret correctly certain details. Papers on
>  Tanystropheus, Cosesaurus, Longisquama, Archaeopteryx,
>  Helveticosaurus, Effigia, Vancleavea, turtle skulls, pterosaur
>  pteroids,  wing membranes and footprints all come to mind.

In each and every one of these examples, you simply assume that your 
interpretations of photos were correct and other people's 
interpretations of the specimens themselves were wrong.

That can only be tested by going back to the specimens and looking at 
them, _which you didn't_.

Your self-confidence is getting in the way of testing your hypotheses.

>  Let's do this before the China conference in mid August so I can
>  reward and commend Dr. Hone when he wins the competition (~IF he
>  wins).

That and 4 US$ will buy him a coffee at Starbucks.