Today’s entry comes from the “creatively nasty” file:
Lorentzen and Sieg (1991) have insisted that parsimony analysis should properly result in the display of all possible assignments of ancestral nodes (and thus all possible placements of changes of state) for each character. Their objective may find little support outside of the pulp and paper industry. –Joeseph Felsenstein Inferring Phylogenies (p70)
This isn’t so much a jab that their idea isn’t worth the paper that it is written on, but probably refers to the required output. Computers were going to decrease the paper shuffle. What do you think such printouts would look like for more than a few taxa in an analysis? How long would it take you to make anything out of the mess?
Not a big deal, but it’s actually:
Joseph Felsenstein
I’ve just recently discovered the Pandas Thumb website and what a refreshing site it is. I see from the site traffic meter that you get a lot of business. Being a retired community college biology teacher, I can only wish you well. The personnel in charge of the site have impressive credentials and hopefully will play a large role is stemming the ID blight on science education that is creeping across the country.
Update