Why ... (2)

[Loudmouth]

I was referring to scientific angles within the scientific arena.

And those are?

I see that you base almost your entire position on the nested hierarchy which with new discoveries put into question many of the phylogeny in the present nests.

Such as?

One of the problems facing the system is when considering horizontal transfer, is the evolution due to a common ancestry or is it the direct result of horizontal transfer? Right now there is no accurate way to determine that.

For single celled life that has participated in HGT for billions of years, it does mask deeper phylogenies. However, once you get to the base of the eukaryote tree these problems disappear. For all animal and plant life there are clear phylogenies, as clear as they can be with the spotiness of some lineages. We don't see species with teats and feathers. We don't see species with gills and fur. If these lineages had their roots in separately created kinds then there is no reason why we shouldn't see these combinations of features. The only reason we should see a nested hierarchy like this is if they share a common ancestor instead of being created separately.

 

[Loudmouth]

Why?

Because that is how those words are used. Why does hot mean having a higher temperature? Becuase that is what hot means. It's how languages work.

 

[Oncedeceived]

It's your claim, you tell me. I've never heard of that. Even were it true, there are archeologists in China, even famous ones, so...

Ornithologist and Evolutionary Biologist Alan Feduccia—Plucking Apart the Dino-Birds | DiscoverMagazine.com

So far, only one feathered dinosaur, Archaeoraptor, has been publicly acknowledged as a forgery. You think there are others?
Archaeoraptor is just the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of fake fossils out there, and they have cast a dark shadow over the whole field. When you go to these fossil shows, it's difficult to tell which ones are faked and which ones are not. I have heard that there is a fake-fossil factory in northeastern China, in Liaoning Province, near the deposits where many of these recent alleged feathered dinosaurs were found.

Journals like Nature don't require specimens to be authenticated, and the specimens immediately end up back in China, so nobody can examine them. They may be miraculous discoveries, they may be missing links as they are claimed, but there is no way to authenticate any of this stuff.

Why would anyone fake a fossil?
Money. The Chinese fossil trade has become a big business. These fossil forgeries have been sold on the black market for years now, for huge sums of money. Anyone who can produce a good fake stands to profit.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Because that is how those words are used. Why does hot mean having a higher temperature? Becuase that is what hot means. It's how languages work.

What are you talking about?

 

[Oncedeceived]

At any rate, we're getting somewhat off topic - the bottom line is that Feduccia isn't panned because of his conclusions, but the methods with what he's reaching these conclusions. They're unscientific. To take one example, his claim that birds just evolved dinosaur-like traits and only happen to look like dinosaurs by convergent evolution. That's completely unfalsifiable - there's no way to prove that argument wrong.

So you are claiming it couldn't be convergent evolution?

 

[Loudmouth]

What are you talking about?

Separately created species means that they don't share a common ancestor, by definition.

 

[Loudmouth]

So you are claiming it couldn't be convergent evolution?

No, because convergence produce analogous features, not homologous features.

 

[Loudmouth]

Ornithologist and Evolutionary Biologist Alan Feduccia—Plucking Apart the Dino-Birds | DiscoverMagazine.com

So far, only one feathered dinosaur, Archaeoraptor, has been publicly acknowledged as a forgery. You think there are others?
Archaeoraptor is just the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of fake fossils out there, and they have cast a dark shadow over the whole field. When you go to these fossil shows, it's difficult to tell which ones are faked and which ones are not. I have heard that there is a fake-fossil factory in northeastern China, in Liaoning Province, near the deposits where many of these recent alleged feathered dinosaurs were found.

Journals like Nature don't require specimens to be authenticated, and the specimens immediately end up back in China, so nobody can examine them. They may be miraculous discoveries, they may be missing links as they are claimed, but there is no way to authenticate any of this stuff.

Why would anyone fake a fossil?
Money. The Chinese fossil trade has become a big business. These fossil forgeries have been sold on the black market for years now, for huge sums of money. Anyone who can produce a good fake stands to profit.

Feduccia has to run away from the evidence. That should be a big tip off. When someone's only response to the fossil evidence is "all fossils are fakes" then they have lost the debate before it has even begun.

 

[Oncedeceived]

And those are?

Really? There are many angles to every facet of science.

Such as?

I gave one in my next sentence. See the following.

For single celled life that has participated in HGT for billions of years, it does mask deeper phylogenies. However, once you get to the base of the eukaryote tree these problems disappear.

Not the way I understand it. I could be wrong, you can point out where I am wrong if I am.

It is in this sense that I think that horizontal gene transfer, along with the consideration of development as an internal evolutionary force, as proposed by evo-devo (Gould 1977; Alberch 1982), epigenetic changes (Jablonka & Lamb 2005; Bird 2007) and other emerging concepts such as evolvability (Wagner 2008), needs to be integrated in a new synthesis or paradigm, which will explain both eukaryotic and prokaryotic evolution. This new synthesis (without denying the role of natural selection) needs to incorporate the emerging evolutionary knowledge (Dean & Thornton 2007; Pigliucci 2007; Carroll 2008; Koonin 2009), including mechanisms other than single-point mutations and gradual variability.
Only in this way will it be possible to come to a more robust evolutionary theory, which will be able to overcome the caveats of the neo-Darwinian theory or modern synthesis, especially those that derive from ‘ad hoc’ adaptationist explanations for the new knowledge.


http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1683/819.full

For all animal and plant life there are clear phylogenies, as clear as they can be with the spotiness of some lineages. We don't see species with teats and feathers. We don't see species with gills and fur. If these lineages had their roots in separately created kinds then there is no reason why we shouldn't see these combinations of features. The only reason we should see a nested hierarchy like this is if they share a common ancestor instead of being created separately.

That is simply a straw man.

 

[lasthero]

So you are claiming it couldn't be convergent evolution?

No, I'm claiming that his claim as such is not falsifiable.

 

[Oncedeceived]

By the very definition, separately created kinds do not share a common ancestor. If they share a common ancestor then they are not separately created kinds.

Were you reading the thread? I just went through a long discussion about theropods/birds and everyone agreed that a Theropod is always a Theropod and so forth. Are you claiming that is false now?

 

[lasthero]

Ornithologist and Evolutionary Biologist Alan Feduccia—Plucking Apart the Dino-Birds | DiscoverMagazine.com

So far, only one feathered dinosaur, Archaeoraptor, has been publicly acknowledged as a forgery. You think there are others?
Archaeoraptor is just the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of fake fossils out there, and they have cast a dark shadow over the whole field. When you go to these fossil shows, it's difficult to tell which ones are faked and which ones are not. I have heard that there is a fake-fossil factory in northeastern China, in Liaoning Province, near the deposits where many of these recent alleged feathered dinosaurs were found.

Journals like Nature don't require specimens to be authenticated, and the specimens immediately end up back in China, so nobody can examine them. They may be miraculous discoveries, they may be missing links as they are claimed, but there is no way to authenticate any of this stuff.

Why would anyone fake a fossil?
Money. The Chinese fossil trade has become a big business. These fossil forgeries have been sold on the black market for years now, for huge sums of money. Anyone who can produce a good fake stands to profit.

Notice how he does absolutely nothing to back up those statements.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Separately created species means that they don't share a common ancestor, by definition.

Where did I claim that there were separately created species?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Notice how he does absolutely nothing to back up those statements.

So is he lying?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Why?



What points are there to make? Archeoraptor was never widely taken in by the scientific community, there was skepticism about it from the beginning, and scientists were the one who exposed it for what it was in the end. What does that have to do with the evolution of birds on the whole? What does one fraud - and an unsuccessful fraud, at that - have to do with anything?

I think I was giving this as Dr. Fedducia's argument.

 

[Loudmouth]

Really? There are many angles to every facet of science.

And they are . . . ?

Not the way I understand it. I could be wrong, you can point out where I am wrong if I am.

It is in this sense that I think that horizontal gene transfer, along with the consideration of development as an internal evolutionary force, as proposed by evo-devo (Gould 1977; Alberch 1982), epigenetic changes (Jablonka & Lamb 2005; Bird 2007) and other emerging concepts such as evolvability (Wagner 2008), needs to be integrated in a new synthesis or paradigm, which will explain both eukaryotic and prokaryotic evolution. This new synthesis (without denying the role of natural selection) needs to incorporate the emerging evolutionary knowledge (Dean & Thornton 2007; Pigliucci 2007; Carroll 2008; Koonin 2009), including mechanisms other than single-point mutations and gradual variability.
Only in this way will it be possible to come to a more robust evolutionary theory, which will be able to overcome the caveats of the neo-Darwinian theory or modern synthesis, especially those that derive from ‘ad hoc’ adaptationist explanations for the new knowledge.

I mean this in the kindest way possible, but you are wrong. It's ok. You will notice that they are lumping eukaryotes and prokaryotes into the same basket. Just because there is HGT between bacteria does not negate the netsted hierarchies produced in metazoans that lack HGT.

That is simply a straw man.

How is it a straw man?

 

[Loudmouth]

Were you reading the thread? I just went through a long discussion about theropods/birds and everyone agreed that a Theropod is always a Theropod and so forth. Are you claiming that is false now?

Theropods are not a separately created kind because they share a common ancestor with other amniotes, us humans being one of them. You are confusing clades with separately created kinds. They are not the same thing. Separately created kinds do not share common ancestry with other separately created kinds.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Dr. Feduccia is slammed because he continues on with his conclusions even though the evidence has proven him wrong. There are scientists in every generation that make this mistake. Another example is Fred Hoyle who denied Big Bang theory his whole career, coming up with completely ludicrous theories to fill its place such as quasi-steady state cosmology that has matter just appearing continually everywhere in the universe in order to keep it from hitting entropy death. In every generation you will have scientists whose ego is more important than the science.

So Dr. Feduccia is egotistical and that is why he makes his claims?

Then you haven't studied up much on the history of science. Just a short list of those scientists who disagreed with the consensus:

1. Darwin
2. Einstein
3. Galileo
4. Lemaitre
5. Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren, went against the scientific consensus and showed that H. pylori was a causitive agent of ulcers

The first four are not contemporary and only one is in the evolutionary field
of evolution. Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren who are contemporary are not in the field either.

I could keep going. The most cherished scientists of all time are those that went against the consensus. The ones that have problems with their careers are the ones that insist on being wrong.

Oh, I would agree! However, I think that within the evolutionary field it is a different story. Then again, those who don't agree can be said to not have a 'good' alternative to what evolutionary pathways the process might have taken.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Theropods are not a separately created kind because they share a common ancestor with other amniotes, us humans being one of them. You are confusing clades with separately created kinds. They are not the same thing. Separately created kinds do not share common ancestry with other separately created kinds.

You base this conclusion on what? What we know is that there were some kind of kinds in which the kind came after, how do you then conclude that it is impossible for created kinds not sharing common ancestry?

 

[Loudmouth]

So Dr. Feduccia is egotistical and that is why he makes his claims?

In my experience, yes. There are some very interesting characters in science, and I have met a few that are driven more by ego than data.

The first four are not contemporary and only one is in the evolutionary field
of evolution. Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren who are contemporary are not in the field either.

All are scientists. You are claiming that scientists who go against the consensus are outcasts and never listened to when history shows that you are completely wrong. The scientists who are not listened to are the scientists who are wrong.

Oh, I would agree! However, I think that within the evolutionary field it is a different story. Then again, those who don't agree can be said to not have a 'good' alternative to what evolutionary pathways the process might have taken.

What are these alternatives, and why do YOU think they are good alternatives?