Re: Bipedal Orrorin?

From: Jason Eshleman (jae_at_ucdavis.edu)
Date: 10/18/04 

Date: 17 Oct 2004 18:11:06 -0700

Pauline M Ross <pmross@ross-software.co.uk> wrote in message news:<6135n0l9hekqnlnd3rlbhcpqdsj0pl0ee9@4ax.com>...
> On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 14:00:55 GMT, "Bob Keeter" <rkeeter@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Let me point out just a couple of things that caught my eye. The word
> >"professional" can mean a great many things. One can be very "professional"
> >at just about any avocation or occupation, and one can be very
> >unprofessional in spite of all of the "wallpaper" that might be hanging on
> >the walls.
>
> Well, I think Algis was using the word in its basic sense of someone
> who is paid to do a job - in this case paleoanthropology - but OK.
> >
> >The label of "unprofessional" is easily achieved when in a technical debate
> >one "hangs on" to a point long after the hard logic demands that it be
> >abandoned (even if such act denounces ones own prior positions and papers!).
> >You can get that label when boxed into a corner by undeniable facts and then
> >reacting with non sequiteurs, ad hominem and insult instead of valid
> >counterpoint arguements. You can get that label by deliberately ignoring
> >facts, when selectively choosing favorable KNOWN evidence and ignoring the
> >KNOWN but unfavorable facts, in effect subverting science to stroke ones
> >own ego.
>
> You talk about "hard logic" and "undeniable facts", but most of PA is
> inference and interpretation from the very scanty data. I would assert
> that no one here is "deliberately ignoring facts", simply putting
> different weightings on the evidence and interpreting it accordingly.
> But we've had this same discussion before, so I won't labour the
> point.

Much of what I see here presented as wet ape "evidence" goes far
beyond simply weighing evidence differently. Whether or not something
is deliberate probably involves some degree of recognition and intent.
 I doubt Algis regularly realizes when he's misappropriating evidence,
falling into common pitfalls and falacies and making specious
comparisons, but it happens regularly. Weighing data against anecdote
(e.g. noting that humans walking efficiency varies over different
substrates and comparing this to Stanford's comment that he had
trouble keeping up with chimps on a hill and rejecting any notion that
efficiency over land had anything to do with the origins of
bipedalism); confounding qualitative and quantitative data (e.g. using
a study on the effects of hairlessness to explain the reduction--but
not elimination--of hair); allowing postulates drawn from
generalizations to serve as major underpinnings go without support
(e.g. saying that "wetlands" [without further defining this enormously
broad category of habitats] are "food rich" and thus assuming that
it's sufficiently advantageous for an ape to develop abilitie to "wade
better"); these things are not science. They are all failed attempts
to approximate science and they're all predictable failings when one
is set on bolstering a predrawn conclusion. There is inference and
interpretation on science. But what's been presented in this forum as
support for some AAX fall far, far short of science.
 
> [Snip]
> >Getting down off of the soapbox just a little bit. . . . . . . . Many people
> >have tried to take each little tid bit of the AAH and publicly pull it
> >apart, some have grappled with the total body of "arguements". I have
> >watched a gamut of different arguements offered up, and toss in a few of my
> >own. The end result is always some sort of descent into ad hominem when the
> >going gets too rough, a hiding behind non sequiteurs, a studied avoidance of
> >the subject being disassembled, or just plain closing of ones eyes to the
> >most probable solutions because of a unwillingness to abandon prior
> >positions.
>
> Or honestly holding a different view of the evidence.

When someone is wed to a particular idea (in this case, that there
must be some truth to some aquatic ape notion) and sets out to prove
it, one runs a real danger of searching for proof without a
sufficiently critical vantage. When someone uses falacies in place of
evidence, no matter how honest they are in holding their views, it's
still not science.

> >When one side of an arguement at least attempts to maintian (in
> >most cases anyway) some degree of decorum and scientific arguement and the
> >other side (in most cases anyway) simply dives into a childish tantrum of
> >insult and unwillingness to apply reason, it becomes very hard to see the
> >"professionalism" at work.
>
> And which side of the AAH argument do you think is maintaining a
> degree of decorum and scientific argument, and which is having
> childish tantrums and unwilling to apply reason? Which sap posters
> would you put into the 'unprofessional' category? Do you think the
> answer is clear-cut?

Well, there's Marc, who continues to engage in a level of antisocial
rudeness that all others combined cannot match. He's in a league by
himself. This is quite clear cut.

> I don't see things in such black-and-white terms as you appear to.
> There are no right or wrong answers in PA, just more or less fruitful
> lines of enquiry. There are no good guys and bad guys on sap, just
> real people who may be more or less coherent, logical, polite, witty
> or informative, and sometimes all of the above on the same day.

No, Marc is a bad guy. He's had ample opportunity to avoid calling
just about everyone an idiot, liar or imbecile. He's has every
opportunity to stop directing insults at people in subject lines.
However, he engages in these activities on a more or less daily basis
targeted at more or less everyone who doens't toe an AAX line. Now if
you want to toss him out of the equation, yes, there are people on
both sides of the AAX issue who at various times engage in various
degrees of polite and impolite behavior, but Marc's a special case.

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