Re: LUCY: ``Yes, we have no bananas!"

frank murray (fmurray@pobox,com)
Wed, 13 Nov 1996 07:33:44 GMT

On Wed, 13 Nov 1996 10:08:53 +1100, wilkins@wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins)
wrote:

>In article <3287553b.34560842@netnews.worldnet.att.net>, fmurray@pobox.com
>wrote:

>>|i suggest that if these worthies are to continue to post to sci.
>>|groups, they should take that "sci." seriously, drop the ad hominem
>>|attacks on ed, and post evidence refuting ed's claim..

>And it was refuted in talk.origins, with the usual amount of t.o ad homina,
>but citing sources. IIRC, Lucy was found within an area of 11 square feet.
>I suppose one could argue that on an astronomical scale it's within an
>order of magnitude of one square mile.
>
>Conrad has taken a real licking in t.o because there are too many people
>there familiar with the primary literature.

and yet despite this familiarity with the primary literature we find
that:

steve geller refuted ed by writing:
>A "square mile" should be more like 10 square meters or so.

graeme kennedy refuted ed by writing:
>The consensus is that this is a 40% complete skeleton, including symmetry.
>Johanson's "Lucy" describes the finding of the bones for this individual:
>the largest distance between pieces was about eleven feet.

socrates (presumably a late version) refuted ed by writing:
>ACtually 70% of the entire skeleton was found and all within a few
>hundered yards. Also since then several other examples of the same
>species have been found. We now have several examples with well over
>50% of the skeleton.

jim foley refuted ed by writing:
>Lucy was found within a small area. A knee joint found a year earlier
>and about 1.5 km away was a separate find and has never been claimed to
>be a part of Lucy, creationist claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

what i find interesting here is that the ratio of the largest
refuter's figure to the smallest refuter's figure is larger than the
ratio of ed's figure to the largest refuter's figure...this becomes
true if we take socrates "few hundred yards" to mean a figure above
approx. 132 feet...as we use a larger value for socrate's "few hundred
yards" (his phrase justifies using a larger value), the ratio between
the largest of the refuter's figure and the smallest of the refuter's
figures becomes a multiple of the ratio between ed's figure and the
largest of the refuter's figures....

perhaps something might be wrong with the refuter's figures??...

frank