Re: repetition and redundancy
Paul Crowley (Paul@crowleyp.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 15 Nov 95 20:51:07 GMT
In article <48aaom$s5m@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> Alex Duncan writes:
> Paul@crowleyp.demon.co.uk writes:
>
> >> like the answers? Let me summarize something for you: secondary
> >> altriciality and "not climbing trees at night" were not issues for the
> >> earliest bipeds, and thus not issues that we need to deal with when we're
> >> thinking about the origin of bipedalism. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> >You make my point for me, Alex. Good science does not come from
> >shutting your eyes to inconvenient problems.
>
> There is also abundant evidence that australopithecines were capable
> tree-climbers. I've been over it before, and am not going to trouble
> myself to do it again.
It's your neurons that are disfunctional, Alex. You lost that argument.
Remember? Here's an extract from your last post on the matter when you
were replying to James Oman of John Hopkins Univ.
JO> Patently false. Please refer to Latimer and Lovejoy (1990, AJPA
JO> 82:125-134). This work has never been refuted. And your unpublished
JO> work that you mentioned in an earlier post does not count since it has
JO> never been peer-reviewed. Therefore Australopithecus afarensis must be
JO> viewed as NOT possessing a grasping foot.
<snips>
JO> Clarke and Tobias (1995, Science 269:529-541) claim "grasping" ability
JO> for the hallux in Stw 573. The did NOT, however, directly compare these
JO> specimens to either the work of Latimer and Lovejoy, nor even the
JO> specimens from Hadar. The have also not yet made Stw 573, nor even casts
JO> of Stw 573, available for comparison. Therefore, the jury remains out on
JO> Stw 573. However, the the small amount of divergence pictured in Clarke
JO> and Tobias' figure is clearly NOT ape-like, and they conveniently did NOT
JO> illustrate an ape in this figure.
AD> I agree that we all need to see casts, etc. My initial impression from
AD> the pictures is that it sure looks like a abductable hallux. I guess we
AD> all have our biases.
> Altriciality and absence of tree-climbing ability are not "inconvenient
> problems." These are issues that have been studied intensively. They do
> not impact our ideas about the adaptations of the earliest hominids for
> the reasons I stated above. Good science does not come from shutting
> your eyes to inconvenient evidence. It is unfortunate that your ideas
> are contradicted by what we know about early hominids from the fossil
> record, but they are. Repeating baseless statements over and over again
> won't make them any more relevant.
Condemned with your own words - again.
Paul.
|