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Richard Wells said:
Just thought I'd share the following (modified) email that I recently received:

When you occasionally have a bad day trying to classify something and you just need to take it out on someone, don't take if out on someone you know, take it out on someone you don't know...

I was sitting at my desk at the museum when I remembered a phone call I'd forgotten to make. I found the number and dialled it. A man answered, saying "Hello."

I politely said, "This is Richard. Could I please speak with Charles Darwin?"

Suddenly the phone was slammed down on me. I couldn't believe that anyone could be so rude.

I tracked down Charlie's correct number and called him. I had inadvertantly transposed the last two digits of his phone number. After hanging up I decided to call the wrong number again. When the same guy (a molecular biologist) answered the phone, I yelled, "You're an idiot," and hung up.

I wrote the number down with the word "idiot" next to it and put it in my desk drawer.

Every couple of weeks, when I was doing a long series of scale-counts or had a really bad day with the microscope, I'd call him up and yell "You're an idiot," and it always cheered me up.

When Caller ID came to our area, I thought my therapeutic "idiot" calling would have to stop. So, I called his number and said, "Hi, this is Gareth Nelson from the Telephone Company. I'm calling to see if you're familiar with our Caller ID Program? The molecular biologist yelled "NO" and slammed down the phone.

I quickly called him back and said "That's because you are an idiot."

One day I was at the local university getting ready to pull into a parking spot.

Some guy in a black BMW cut me off and pulled into the spot I had patiently waited for. I hit the horn and yelled that I'd been waiting for the spot. The idiot ignored me. I noticed a FOR SALE sign in his car window, so I wrote down his number at the Institute for Molecular Biology - Yes it was ANOTHER molecular biologist! A couple of days later, right after calling the first idiot (I had his number on speed dial) I thought that I'd better call the BMW idiot too.

I said, "Is the man with the black BMW for sale?" "Yes, it is." "Can you tell me where I can see it?" "Yes, I work at the University Molecular Biology Lab. It's the high tech building, with unlimited staff and funding, and the car's parked right out in front."

"What's your name?" I asked. "My name is Dr Will Hennigian," he said. "When's a good time to catch you, Will ?" "I'm still at work every evening after five trying to reinvent the theory of natural selection."

"Listen, Will, can I tell you something?" "Yes". "Will, you're an idiot." Then I hung up, and added his number to my speed dial, too. Now, when I had a problem, I had two idiots to call.

But after several months of calling them, it wasn't as enjoyable as it used to be. So I came up with an idea. I called Idiot #1."Hello" "You're an idiot: (But I didn't hang up.)

"Are you still there?" he asked. "Yeah," I said.

"Stop calling me," he screamed. "Make me," I said.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"My name is Will Hennigian."

"Yeah? Where do you work?"

"Idiot, I work at the University Molecular Biology Lab. It's the high tech building, with unlimited staff and funding, with my black Beamer parked in front."

He said, "I'm coming over right now, Will. And you had better start saying your prayers."

I said, "Yeah, like I'm really scared, idiot."

Then I called Idiot #2.

"Hello," he said.

"Hello idiot," I said.

He yelled, "If I ever find out who you are."

"You'll what" I said.

"I'll kick your butt," he said.

I answered, "Well, idiot, here's your chance. I'm coming over right now."

Then I hung up and immediately called the police, saying that I worked at the University Molecular Biology Lab - the high tech building, with unlimited staff and funding - and that someone had arrived to beat up a scientist for stealing research data.

Then I called Channel 13 news about a gang of scientists punching out one another in the car park at the University Molecular Biology Lab.

I quickly got into my car and headed over to the University.

There I saw two idiots beating the crap out of each other in front of six squad cars, a police helicopter and a news crew.

NOW I feel much better. Anger Management really works...

Hi Richard,

*smile* well, nice story, but if professional scientists act like that, I'm almost glad not to be one! *big smile*

Cheers,
Wulf
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http://www.leiopython.de - the white-lipped python site -
http://www.herpers-digest.com - herp related eBooks search -

>>Hi Richard,
>>
>>*smile* well, nice story, but if professional scientists act like that, I'm almost glad not to be one! *big smile*

I think you will find that this is the way WOULD-BE scientists act...

Cheers,

WW
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WW Home

Hi Wolfgang,

not to get you wrong.
Do you mean "professional trained" people or what do you mean be "WOULD-BE" ? :-D

Cheers,
Wulf
-----
http://www.leiopython.de - the white-lipped python site -
http://www.herpers-digest.com - herp related eBooks search -

>>Hi Wolfgang,
>>
>>not to get you wrong.
>>Do you mean "professional trained" people or what do you mean be "WOULD-BE" ? :-D

would-be or wannabe = Möchtegern

I'm sure we can all think of at least one of these who could do with some serious anger management training...

Cheers,

Wolfgang
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WW Home

Hi Wolfgang,

ok, thanks
Well, I knew "wannabe" but I actually have never heard of would- be, that's why I asked.
And yes, I can think of at least one

Cheers,
Wulf
-----
http://www.leiopython.de - the white-lipped python site -
http://www.herpers-digest.com - herp related eBooks search -

Are you guys talking about Richard Wells? I don't know if he is considered a professional or not but he seems to be pretty angry because I refuted his claim that molecular systematics is a theory and thus not reliable. I guess different people manage their anger differently. Wells is telling a fictional story to vent his anger apparently.

Not too long ago, a pharmacologist who apparently has little training in evolutionary biology got pretty upset because I cited references to show that he was using a pharmacological, but not a biological definition of venom. I also showed that his claim that "venom" evolved in the ancestor of the Colubroidea makes absolutely no sense because it would require massive numbers of independent losses of an adaptive feature in the colubroid snakes.

I imagine too that WW is at least slightly angry because I demonstrated that his adherence to cladistic classificatory philosophy is, in the words of Ernst Mayr and Peter Ashlock, "impractical, destructive and scientifically untenable." By recognizing only holophyletic taxa and disqualifying paraphyletic taxa, WW has embraced a taxonomic practice that will result in either excessive splitting or excessive lumping. It is no accident that he has supported both of these practices. For example, he supports Utiger et al.'s excessive splitting of the genus Elaphe and at the same time he also supported Kluge's excessive lumping of Morelia and Chondropython. WW has no defense for his own taxonomic philosophy. It is certainly fashionable to be a cladist and to be part of the crusade to disqualify paraphyletic taxa. Even though following trends blindly may be what many scientists do in real life, but it is not what a scientist is expected to do if he/she is an independent thinker. There is safety in numbers being part of a flock of starlings. The truly outstanding scientists, like Galileo, fly alone, like eagles.

I believe that good philosophers, like eagles, fly alone, not in flocks like starlings.--Galileo

Hi,

Are you guys talking about Richard Wells? I don't know if he is considered a professional or not but he seems to be pretty angry because I refuted his claim that molecular systematics is a theory and thus not reliable. I guess different people manage their anger differently. Wells is telling a fictional story to vent his anger apparently.

well, I primarily didn't think of Richard in this case. I guess Richard can handle different opinions, as he is more or less a "victim" of other peoples anger himself. But Richard can very well speak for his own...

I imagine too that WW is at least slightly angry because I demonstrated that his adherence to cladistic classificatory philosophy is, in the words of Ernst Mayr and Peter Ashlock, "impractical, destructive and scientifically untenable." By recognizing only holophyletic taxa and disqualifying paraphyletic taxa, WW has embraced a taxonomic practice that will result in either excessive splitting or excessive lumping. It is no accident that he has supported both of these practices. For example, he supports Utiger et al.'s excessive splitting of the genus Elaphe and at the same time he also supported Kluge's excessive lumping of Morelia and Chondropython. WW has no defense for his own taxonomic philosophy. It is certainly fashionable to be a cladist and to be part of the crusade to disqualify paraphyletic taxa. Even though following trends blindly may be what many scientists do in real life, but it is not what a scientist is expected to do if he/she is an independent thinker. There is safety in numbers being part of a flock of starlings.

Well, I'm not a professional nor am I a calist. I didn't yet read enough about cladistic to know for sure why they perhaps do not accept paraphyletic taxa, but like many other ideologies it is a matter of personal taste what you decide to choose as practical methods for analysis. There are so much concepts out there and you can just pick up the one that is best suitible for you.
Nevertheless, I have learnd that a taxonomic paper is a proposal, not more or less. Accept it or refute it

[quote]
The truly outstanding scientists, like Galileo, fly alone, like eagles.

I believe that good philosophers, like eagles, fly alone, not in flocks like starlings.--Galileo

Well, if one would fly alone, nobody else would accept any proposals so why do the work then? Systematics are based on general conventions. Defying those would not be the right way. Would you drive your car over a red traffic light, just because you don't want to stick to some conventions? If so, you will be a free thinking, but nevertheless dead eagle!

Cheers,
Wulf
-----
http://www.leiopython.de - the white-lipped python site -
http://www.herpers-digest.com - herp related eBooks search -

>>If so, you will be a free thinking, but nevertheless dead eagle!

LOL! Nicely put, although the word "dodo" springs to mind more easily than "eagle" in this context.

For clairification, the target of the "anger management training" comment was not Richard Wells but a mutual "friend" of Wulf and myself, whose inability to participate in civilised discourse or to take any form of criticism have become legendary throughout the herpetological community.

Cheers,

Wolfgang
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WW Home

>>If so, you will be a free thinking, but nevertheless dead eagle!

WW:
LOL! Nicely put, although the word "dodo" springs to mind more easily than "eagle" in this context.

Me:
WW may think that evolutionary systematics is endangered or even extinct. Far from it. WW's classifictory practice may be more in line with fashion, but that does not make him a very good systematist.

Wulf wrote:
"Well, I'm not a professional nor am I a calist."

Me:
Not sure what a "calist" is. Perhaps it is an arrow aimed at my direction? Am I a "victim" of Wulf's "anger?"

Wulf:
"I didn't yet read enough about cladistic to know for sure why they perhaps do not accept paraphyletic taxa, but like many other ideologies it is a matter of personal taste what you decide to choose as practical methods for analysis."

Me:
The cladists' dislike of paraphyletic taxa is not a method for phylogenetic analysis. Their disqualification of paraphyletic taxa is method for classification. The cladists' dislike of paraphyly is indeed a matter of personal taste because it is not based on anything that science has discovered about evolutionary process. In fact, the cladists' disqualification of paraphyletic taxa from classifications is contradictory to what we know about evolution. Budding evolution, in which a species (or higher taxon) continues to exist while a new species (or new higher taxon) evolves, is according to scientific research the most frequent way species or higher taxa originate. Even the cladists admit that. As R. L. Carroll pointed out, paraphyletic groups are the inevitable result of the process of evolution. Therefore it is, as Mayr and Ashlock pointed out, scientifically untenable to disqualify paraphyletic groups. Biologists are classifying biological organisms, which in turn are the products of billions of years of evolution. Throughout these billions of years, new organisms have most often evolved while their ancestors continue to persist. Paraphyletic groups therefore are very common. Therefore the cladists' decision to disqualify paraphyletic groups really makes no sense scientifically. Further, their disqualification of paraphyletic taxa, as I painstakingly pointed out with real world examples, result in either excessive splitting (in which closely related lineages are placed in different taxa that are morphologically indistinguishable from one another) or excessive lumping (in which heterogeneous taxa are lumped indiscriminantly in the same taxon). Kluge's lumping of Morelia and Chondropython is an exammple of excessive lumping that WW supports. Utiger et al.'s splintering of Elaphe is a good example of excessive splitting, since none of the genera they recognize can be distinguished from each other. Even WW cannot tell us the difference between, say, Pantherophis and Elaphe.

Even though the disqualification of paraphyletic taxa is scientifically untenable, even though it results in both excessive splitting and excessive lumping, and even though it results in taxonomic chaos, the cladists continue to treat paraphyletic groups as something unnatural, when in fact paraphyletic groups are the natural products of evolution.

Wulf:
Well, if one would fly alone, nobody else would accept any proposals so why do the work then?

Me:
Good scientists, like eagles, fly alone. But that does not mean that good scientists disagree. In fact, when two scientists who think independently but they converge on the same conclusion (as did Darwin and Wallace on evolution), that can only mean that it is more likely to be the correct answer than if one scientist simply blindly accepts the conclusion of another. No matter how many cladists blindly follow Hennig's principle of holophyly, it does not make Hennig's (and his followers') disqualification of paraphyletic taxa any more scientifically tenable.

As Galileo also pointed out, "It is true that because eagles are rare birds they are little seen and less heard, while birds that fly like starlings fill the sky with shrieks and cries, and wherever they settle befoul the earth beneath them..."

Much of the taxonomic literature of the past 20 years have been befouled by cladists who attempt to disqualify paraphyletic taxa by blindly applying Hennig's principle of holophyly.

quote ------------

Wulf wrote:
"Well, I'm not a professional nor am I a calist."

Me:
Not sure what a "calist" is. Perhaps it is an arrow aimed at my direction? Am I a "victim" of Wulf's "anger?"

/quote -----------

Upps, sorry, I wanted to write cladist

quote ------------

Wulf:
Well, if one would fly alone, nobody else would accept any proposals so why do the work then?

Me:
Good scientists, like eagles, fly alone. But that does not mean that good scientists disagree. In fact, when two scientists who think independently but they converge on the same conclusion (as did Darwin and Wallace on evolution), ...

/quote ------------

Well, if more than two independently thinking scientists "converge on the same conclusion" (as you obviously also converge on Darwin's and Wallace's conclusions) you will soon have a quite large group of scientists that agree to the same things. That's what conventions are made of, aren't they?
And that's what methods and models are made of, also.

quote -------------

...that can only mean that it is more likely to be the correct answer ...

/quote ------------

So, aren't cladists a group of independently thinking people (they all have their own mind, and are thinking their thoughts)? This would actually mean they are close to the right answer, too? If so, the eagles will become a bunch of starlings anyway.
Something like: "People eat sh*t, millions of flies can't be wrong!"

quote -------------
...than if one scientist simply blindly accepts the conclusion of another. No matter how many cladists blindly follow Hennig's principle of holophyly, it does not make Hennig's (and his followers') disqualification of paraphyletic taxa any more scientifically tenable.
/quote -------------

As I said already, I haven't read enough about cladistic to argue with you on Henning. I am actually awaiting Mayr & Ashlock and Henning from my order two month ago...

Cheers,
Wulf
-----
http://www.leiopython.de - the white-lipped python site -
http://www.herpers-digest.com - herp related eBooks search -

Wulf:
So, aren't cladists a group of independently thinking people (they all have their own mind, and are thinking their thoughts)? This would actually mean they are close to the right answer, too? If so, the eagles will become a bunch of starlings anyway.
Something like: "People eat sh*t, millions of flies can't be wrong!"

Me:
There are indeed some independent thinkers among the cladists on the question of classification. And indeed some of these independent thinkers tolerated paraphyletic taxa. These cladists, however, are viewed with suspicion by other, more orthodox cladists. That is what distinguishes ideology from science. Scientists can think independently but cladists are bound by their ideology to reject paraphyletic taxa, although the cladistic religion does show some softening of their hard line stance against paraphyletic taxa. You need to go no further than to ask your good friend WW to see what type of independent thinking process he went through to arrive at the conclusion that paraphyletic groups are unacceptable, despite the fact that they are the inevitable result of the process of evolution. Chances are that you won't get an answer, or you will get a dishonest one. WW is merely following Hennig's principle of holophyly, just like a faithful cladist is supposed to do. The cladists are not eagles, they are starlings who follow Hennig because it is fashionable to do so.

Wulf wrote:
"Systematics are based on general conventions. Defying those would not be the right way. Would you drive your car over a red traffic light, just because you don't want to stick to some
conventions? If so, you will be a free thinking, but nevertheless dead eagle"

Me:
You misunderstand. It is not me who drove past a red light. It is the cladists who ignore scientific facts. They ignore, for example, the fact that evolutionary process results in paraphyletic groups. Therefore it is not scientifically tenable to disqualify paraphyletic groups from biological classifications. It is therefore the cladists who are ignoring the red lights. As Mayr and Ashlock pointed out, biologists have known since Darwin and Haeckel that Reptilia is paraphyletic sensu Hennig, but that has not resulted in a proposal to disqualify Reptilia as a taxon until cladistics became popular in the past 20 years or so. It is a cladist (J. Gauthier) who proposes to reclassify Reptilia so that it includes birds so as to eliminate paraphyly. Few scientists adhere to Gauthier's nonsensical reclassification of Reptilia, and even some cladists have said that they don't like Gauthier's definition. There is also some evidence that cladists are softening their hard line stance on the acceptance of paraphyletic taxa. Even such hard line cladists as Frost and Etheridge have accepted the family Agamidae, which is in their view paraphyletic. It seems that the softening stance on the cladists' irrational distaste for paraphyly have not reached the neck of woods in which some cladists reside. And these cladists continue to disqualify paraphyletic groups as though their research fund depend on their adherence to such irrational doctrines as the principle of holophyly. In all likelihood it does. So, don't take the stance some cladists take too seriously, they may only be doing it because of carrots and sticks, not because they really think that paraphyletic taxa are untenable.

CKing wrote:

"Are you guys talking about Richard Wells? I don't know if he is considered a professional or not but he seems to be pretty angry because I refuted his claim that molecular systematics is a theory and thus not reliable. I guess different people manage their anger differently. Wells is telling a fictional story to vent his anger apparently."

Richard Wells wrote:

I am CRUSHED, absolutely CRUSHED that someone would think that I am angry. (yes, I AM being sarcastic). And don't suggest therapy, because my wife is a psychologist, and she gave up long ago...When I first met her, she thought that my interest in biology "was the most obscene over-reaction to a deprived childhood" that she had ever experienced. (well, at least she can cook).

Now on this anger business, you of all people should not confuse a desire for a fight, with mere "anger"...Please, do not flatter yourself in thinking that you are capable of inciting me to anger CKing, because better eagles than you have tried that. If my humble Scottish/Irish/Welsh ancestry has given me anything it is the good humour and eternal patience to accept the dictates of others until I am ready to strike back. My opinion on some issues should not necessarily be taken to be all that I have to say...it could also be seen as peaceful contemplation, to explore the depths of another's understanding...while I slowly sharpen my axe. I have found that it is generally a mistake to underestimate someone with a sense of humour, red hair, and beady eyes under black bushy eyebrows. Unless this description fits you, I would kindly suggest that you tread carefully when judging me...

I must go now. I have to pick a fight with my neighbour Mr Norman Bastard whose family have long been feuding with mine...otherwise the day will have been a total waste...

Richard Wells

For an account by a professional scientist of how the cladists acted in the debate on the origin of birds, please read the last chapter of "The Origin and Evolution of Birds, 2nd Ed." by Dr. Alan Feduccia. One wonders how some cladists can call themselves scientists.

Sounds like fun--I want to try, but can't think of any good idiots locally.

Patrick Alexander

Yes, I can just imagine how much fun you would have with my phone number Peter! But too bad...it's a SILENT NUMBER. But in case you have an overwhelming desire to fly off a quick bit of mischief, I can also be reached at the North Pole - at least until the 25th.

Richard Wells (Ho Ho Ho)