Re: Transitionals, Evidence, and Sleight-of-hand

From: Cliff Lundberg (cliff@noe.com)
Date: Sat Jan 22 2000 - 16:45:47 EST

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    Wesley R. Elsberry wrote:

    >I also did not notice Mike disestablishing the transitional
    >character of the sequence discussed by Pearson et alia in the
    >cited reference. That sort of thing can't be accomplished by
    >artful rhetoric. It would take actual work. I'm not
    >expecting to see such anytime soon.

    I think it's asking too much in a mailing list discussion to demand
    that someone go to a university and find a certain journal article.
    The quote or summary given did not go into enough detail about
    the nature of the evidence. The time frame was not specified,
    and the admitted lack of understanding about the function(s) of
    the foramina makes claims about the effects of selection upon
    them dubious. Certainly there are other ways of interpreting
    evidence, but one can't get into them here without seeing the
    evidence.

    If evolutionary biology must go to such an obscure group of
    protozoans for a purported transitional sequence, that in itself
    is a point for the opposition. And even if this sequence is valid,
    it suffers from the same gross deficiency as purported metazoan
    sequences: distortion is all that's shown; an elaborative creative
    process is not illustrated at all, and that's what we really want to
    know about.

    --Cliff Lundberg  ~  San Francisco  ~  cliff@noe.com



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