Re: Bipedal Orrorin?
From: Algis Kuliukas (algis_at_RiverApes.com)
Date: 09/22/04
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Date: 22 Sep 2004 08:57:02 -0700
"J Moore" <anthrosciguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<QW%3d.484871$gE.476104@pd7tw3no>...
> Algis Kuliukas <algis@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> news:77a70442.0409210436.2c8ee792@posting.google.com...
> > "J Moore" <anthrosciguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<_TO3d.60887$%S.36352@pd7tw2no>...
> > > Algis Kuliukas <algis@RiverApes.com> wrote in message
> > > news:77a70442.0409190644.270e6785@posting.google.com...
> > > > "J Moore" <anthrosciguy@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > > news:<Ra83d.450459$M95.308235@pd7tw1no>...
[.. snipped all of the oh yes it is, oh no it isn't stuff..]
> > > > Moore False Facts:
> > > >
> > > > 1) "You won't find those problems here" Jim Moore (www.aquaticape.org)
> > > > complaining about AAHer techniques like not citing references ("they
> > > > often don't give a reference for a statement or quote at all; when
> > > > they do the reference is often incomplete (just a name with no clue as
> > > > to what publication or year the info is supposedly from; sometimes
> > > > even a wrong name)") - but then two pages later on the page
> > > > (http://www.aquaticape.org/leaflist.html)dedicated to the infamous
> > > > (but unattributed) AAH leaflet you only "assume was written by Elaine
> > > > Morgan" but have no citation to back it up (As if this leaflet
> > > > amounted to anything). And, of course, two pages further on from that
> > > > there's the 'AAT claims and facts' page
> > > > (http://www.aquaticape.org/aatclaims.html) where 23 AAH 'claims' are
> > > > touted out without a single reference so that anyone can check if any
> > > > AAH proponent actually did make such claims, or whether Jim Moore was
> > > > just making them up, exaggerating them or editing them, using them out
> > > > of context or otherwise twisting them.
> > >
> > > Speaking of taking things out of context, the bit you just quoted says
> this
> > > when in context:
> > >
> > > "Pro-AAT accounts also commonly use quotes which are altered to "say"
> > > something the quoted person didn't actually say; they leave out relevant
> > > material from the same source which contradicts the AAT position; or
> they
> > > simply claim the source says the opposite of what that source actually
> does
> > > say. You won't find those problems here."
> > >
> > > The "context" you so helpfully supplied is what's called (I may have
> coined
> > > this, but I doubt it :) "false context" wherein you take some other
> material
> > > and pretend that this is what the quoted material is talking about when
> the
> > > actual context shows otherwise.
> >
> > But hold on. The master twister did it again! Just before that
> > sentence he decided to cite was this sentence... "If you try to do the
> > same with most pro-AAT accounts, you'll find one of several problems:
> > they often don't give a reference for a statement or quote at all;
> > when they do the reference is often incomplete (just a name with no
> > clue as to what publication or year the info is supposedly from;
> > sometimes even a wrong name). On this site, I've tried to tie as many
> > of my statements to specific references as I can; at present this is
> > still incomplete and will be rectified during my updates."
> >
> > That was *also* part of the stuff you assured your readers "would not
> > find" on your web site. Notice how Jim is trying to imply that all he
> > was alluding to was actual misquotations. He was saying more than
> > that. He claimed we would not find "those problems" on his web site -
> > and he was wrong.
>
> So your complaint is that I clearly said on my opening page that I don't
> have my site referenced nearly as well as I'd like.
But this was one of your chief complaints about Morgan's work. But,
ok, tell you what, Jim. I'll give you that one. Ok so only six Moore
False Facts, insead of Seven. (See how easy it is to give a bit of
ground and admit an error? - one minor mea culpa issued, easy - can
you do that? ever?)
But then again, hold on. You said "at present this is still complete
and will be rectified during my updates." Now, if my reading of
www.aquaticape.org is corect (and I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm
wrong) that particular page was written, when, six years ago? more? It
was in the days before you updated(?) to the masquerading URL, in any
case, wasn't it? Since then you haven't actually made many updates but
you did some earlier this year (the Hardy page, the Rhino page etc.)
So... when you said that your citation omissions "will be rectified
during my updates" - was that a lie or just sloppyness?
Sorry Jim - we're back up to seven again.
> > The reason I didn't cite the whole lot was to try to keep this
> > conversation down to size a bit (some hope!).
>
> Yes, that was your reason, certainly; just as I'm sure you didn't bring all
> this up as a way to deflect attention from the fact that you made a
> completely false claim and figured shooting at the messenger would be better
> than a mea culpa.
You've succeeded in converting one error into another, that's all. I
just got the error wrong - there's still at least one Moore False Fact
in that section alone.
> > So, Jim, you made the statement "you won't find those problems here"
> > [meaning at your web site] but we *DO* find those problems there -
> > lot's of them. So, your statement is simply completely false and is
> > not out of context.
> >
> > Was it a lie or just sloppyness?
>
> Reading comprehension 101: if you look at the page, you see me mention
> several problems and then I say that in my opinion my site also suffers from
> one of these; then I cite several other problems and say in my opinion that
> my site doesn't suffer from those problems.
Ok but you said you'd fix the problems when your site is updated. Six
years and several updates later - no fix anywhere to be seen - the AAH
references are still as poorly referenced as ever - and far more
poorly referenced than anything Morgan wrote, for which you have the
nerve to attack her for. What a hypocrite!
[..]
> > > Your statement was not "apes are sometimes bipedal in water" or "ape
> > > behavior in water is sometimes bipedal" or anything like that. It was a
> > > flat statement that is simply wrong.
> >
> > No it isn't. Apes are more bipedal in any depth of water than they are
> > on land. In waist deep water they are pretty much 100% bipedal, in
> > thigh-deep water it's theoretical possible (but highly unlikely) that
> > they might knuckle-walk, In knee-deep water, it's more likely and in
> > very, very shallow (a few centimetres) then, if they're foraging for
> > food in stream beds, then yes, they're likely to move quadrupedally.
> > But even then, Jane Goodall in 1968 wrote this:
> >
> > "Chimpanzees frequently stand upright in order to look over long grass
> > or other vegetation. Sometimes a branch or tree trunkis held with one
> > hand, but often both arms hang down at the animal's sides. These apes
> > frequently walk bipedally for short distances: (i) whilst moving
> > through long grass when looking for an unusual object of searching for
> > a companion, (ii) when it is raining hard and the ground is wet and
> > (iii) when carrying food in one or both hands." Lawick-Goodall
> > (1968:177)
> >
> > See that? Her number TWO reason for bipedality in chimps was moving on
> > WET GROUND.
> >
> > Van Lawick-Goodall, J (1968). The Behaviour of Free-living Chimpanzees
> > in the Gombe Stream Reserve. Animal Behaviour Monographs Vol:1(3)
> > Pages:161-311
> >
> > So again - was it a lie or just sloppyness?
>
> You are really trying to insist that your statement was correct? Your
> statement was not "Apes are more bipedal in any depth of water than they are
> on land"; it was "extant ape behaviour in water is almost totally
> bipedal" -- those are extremely different statements. All I did was point
> out that your statement was incorrect; now you're trying to divert attention
> from this incorrect statement of yours by saying I was implying that apes
> don't use bipedality in water sometimes, which of course I don't do.
You misrepresented my often repeated view which is that apes are
almost totally predicatble in waist deep water by citing one example
where I failed to qualify it. You're like a sleazy journalist
recording an interview with a politician and then snipping out
sentences out of context to embarrass them.
> You
> really would have been better off to simply offer a mea culpa instead of
> this long-winded attempt to divert attention from your statement. A mea
> culpa would have taken the problem you're having and made it just go away,
> simple, like that (snap your fingers for full effect). Instead, you're
> prolonging and compounding your error in a very foolish way.
This is rich advice from the man who it took an age and about a dozen
attempts before he would admit that Hardy even wrote ten million years
in his 1960 paper after claiming otherwise. Still no hint of a
admission that you might have been wrong on that, or anything, for
that matter.
Some of the seven Moore False Facts I listed were simple little errors
where Jim had mistakenly written that I had actually "said" or
"insisted" something when I clearly hadn't. Moore can't even accept
that he'd been in error over such minor things as that!
> (I leave it to the audience to determine the error in using a percentage of
> time on land and in water in the AAT/H -- okay, here's a hint: apes spend
> many times more time on land than in water.)
And of course, that's another twist. No-one has ever claimed extant
apes spend very long in water. The point is that when they are,
they're much more likely to move bipedally that when they aren't.
[..]
> > > He sure did; then he changed his mind later -- should we ignore any
> things
> > > he said that you don't like?
> >
> > We should be fair minded, see the broad context of what people are
> > arguing and on those ocassions when errors are made see that they are
> > indeed errors, like scientists do, instead of obsessively storing them
> > up as rotten tomatoes to throw at opponents for cheap political
> > points, like political spin doctors do.
> >
> > But anyway... what news! AT LAST! THANK YOU, Jim. You've finally
> > admitted it. Hardy said ten million years in his New Scientist
> > article. So, when you said "you are not being accurate about what
> > Hardy said -- you should have read more than the title" (Meaning 'Was
> > Man More Aquatic in the Past?' the only title I've alluded to of his]-
> > was that a lie, or was it just sloppy?
>
> So you say we should sift through someone's work, find only the things that
> show them in a good light, and then pretend they didn't say any of the
> rest... I don't think so.
No, Jim. That is clearly not what I say. People make mistakes. I make
mistakes. Blimey, even you make mistakes. I read a paper by Francois
Marshal in JHE the other day. On page 349 there is a table of the
fossil he used in his morphometric study where STS 14, MLD 7 , 8 and
25 are all attributed to A. afarensis, instead of A. africanus. Does
this mean that we should dismiss his work as incompetent? No, of
course not. It's clearly just an error - and this was in JHE, not
Zenith, a student's journal at a single university.
Your determination to portray the AAH in the worst possible light
every time is as transparent as it could possibly be - what about one
of your famous mea cuplas there, Jim? I'd forgive you if you came
clean.
> And apparently neither do you, or you'd have a
> rave review of my site on yours, since you'd ignore anything that you didn't
> think was good.
Another Moore False Fact? (maybe not, you did use the conditonal) But
then, as you've never bothered to read it how would you know? I
actually do give you credit where I think it's due.
I wrote these comments about your web site:
"At best it acts as a source of counter-arguments to the idea of a
distinct post-LCA, pre H. sapiens aquatic phase and many of the more
marginal speculations in Elaine Morgan's work. Moore does make some
good points on predation too which is, in my view, the strongest case
against the AAH." http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/JMHome.htm
"This [http://www.aquaticape.org/predators.html] might be seen by many
as Moore's most convincing page to date. He makes a pretty good case
that the threat of predation of big game savannah predators is,
perhaps, not as bad as some might have argued and also compiles a
pretty awesome list of references which would scare any would be
wading hominid to death, even at the thought of dipping their toe in
the water. To cap it all, for the first time on his web site Moore
even goes to the trouble to provide actual references to the source of
his claims about what AAH proponents argue.
On this page I can find nothing that might be characterised as a
misrepresentation of the AAH argument, although he does rather
exaggerate the amount of time the wading origins hypothesis proposes
early bipeds would be in the water and the depth of water that would
require them to doing so bipedally.
Overall I think Moore makes a good case for the very serious predation
counter-argument to the AAH. It is an argument that certainly cannot
be dodged easily."
http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/JimMoore/Predators.htm
See? I try to give credit where it's due. In contrast you give not a
hint of credit to any pro-AAH argument. It reads like a Communist
Party Report on Capitalism.
A critique has to be balanced if it is to have any credability. That's
why your web site is so very bad in my opinion, Jim. You can't even
concede that Elaine Morgan's best selling book 'Descent of Woman' made
a contribution to femminism in the 1970s. The diatribe of hostility
shines through for everyone, who's got an ounce of objectivity, to
see.
> You don't do that, do you? Mind you, I don't think you
> should do that, but even more I also think you shouldn't have two different
> sets of criteria about what is acceptable like you're proposing.
No. I criticise Hardy and Morgan for not defining the hypothesis but I
praise them elsewhere. I criticise your web site most of the time but
I praise it when I think it deserves it. It is you who so clearly have
no interest in balance and fair mindedness, Jim. You're fooling
no-one.
> > On your web page 'Can AATer Research be Trusted?' you come up with
> > four (no, actually just one) error that Elaine Morgan was guilty of
> > making and you suggest that it is evidence of either sloppy work or,
> > as you slimily insinuate, fraudulent methods.
> >
> > Well I've got more than four similar errors just here, Jim. The big
> > difference is, considering your attempted defence of them, that
> > there's just no question that it's just sloppiness in your case.
> >
> > Algis Kuliukas
>
> You really should have simply issued a mea culpa and taken the wind out of
> my sails instead of doing this long-winded attempt to divert attention from
> your completely false statement. Instead of taking the wind out of my
> sails, you are now the wind beneath my wings, and I hate that song. I beg
> you to stop singing it.
Dream on, Jim. I've exposed your web site as a one-sided whitewash.
I've exposed the fact that your AAH 'False Facts' are, more often than
not, slight errors trumpetted up as mass deceptions and that you are
at least as guilty of making Moore False Facts as Morgan has ever
been.
It's you that needs to issue two huge mea culpas: one to Elaine Morgan
for your attempted character assasination and one to the web community
for trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Somehow, I don't see you
doing that any time soon.
Algis Kuliukas
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