On Sat, 11 Jun 1994, Mark Siddall wrote:
>> Bruce Rannala (rannala at minerva.cis.yale.edu) writes:
>> ... much interesting and cogent food for thought.
>> But...
> Unlike him I would not discourage posting re: cladistics. True, we
> cladists are not unknown for vitriol and venom, but perhaps through reasoned
> discussion, suggested here by Joe Felsenstein, I can help dispell the
> myth that we are all painted with the same brush.
>> Notwithstanding references to Buddhism, Christianity and near-condescending
> references to young cladists not hitching to trains (Bruce - I forgot
> how much I've missed your unique brand of discourse!) I would
> in fact suggest that one thoroughly investigate all lines, BUT do not
> be a fence-sitter. Not all approaches are philosophically reconcileable
> and one must have conviction.
>> On this thread, and more pertinent to this group perhaps, I am increasingly
> concerned with a tendency to crank off sequences, fire them into some
> phylogenetic software like PHYLIP, PAUP, MEGA or Hennig86 without
> full understanding of what's going on. The argument can be made that
> it is an awkward, if not dangerous, thing to simply pump out a
> parsimony tree, a Fitch-Margoliash distance tree, a UPGMA, and whatever
> and publish them all side by side. There appears to be in some arenas
> a fundemental ignoring of the issues, as though phylogenetic investigation
> was so-much recipe work. It is not. There are issues that need to be
> addressed by all practitioners in their analyses regarding multiple
> trees, assumptions, defensibility of a chosen approach, and so much
> more...
>> Just a thought.
>> Mark
>> --
> Mark E. Siddall "I don't mind a parasite...
>mes at vims.edu I object to a cut-rate one"
> Virginia Inst. Marine Sci. - Rick
> Gloucester Point, VA, 23062
>>
I think that a more dangerous thing is when people run all these programs
and then select for presentation the one that most pleases their
preconceptions. I rather have them show me all the options and allow me
to make my own judgement. Furthermore, I think that by analysing
differences in tree topologies generated with different sets of
assumptions one can learn more about the data set.
Juan Carlos Morales
