‘Fundamentally flawed’

“Fundamentally flawed” is a phrase sometimes used 
to describe this ongoing ReptileEvolution.com experiment, featuring the large reptile tree (LRT) and chronicled daily in this PterosaurHeresies blog since 2011 (= 4700+ posts).

Unfortunately,
‘fundamentally flawed” is an insult with no evidence. Comments like this provide no avenue for improvement or editing. No competing evidence is presented for correction, review or testing. Comments like this verge on and cross over into ad hominem and blackwashing (= opposite of whitewashing). Specific problems are either not listed – or a few freshman problems are used to disparage and suppress an entire experiment or career.

I wonder if workers and readers perceive and try to avoid
facing unwanted paradigm shifts when they say, “Fundamentally flawed.” 

If you’re smart, you don’t use this phrase. Instead you present a competing hypothesis or observation in a professional manner = scientific method.

If you’re not smart, flinging vague insults helps you feel better, like any flinging primate trying to alleviate frustration. In a scientific forum vague insults are seen by others in the same light as the mocking laugh of Nelson Muntz on The Simpsons, a cartoon character others hold in low regard, but not lower than he holds himself.

That is why comments based on ‘feelings’ 
are rarely published in the PterosaurHeresies comments section. Instead a private reply is sent, encouraging the commenter to stay in the science lane, to honor their education and all that it stands for. If their years of training were going to lead them ultimately to a professorship, then they should practice the art of teaching along the way while in their present occupation of student, assistant, librarian, preparator, museum guide or field supervisor.

Frustration may be at the core.
In the post-Jurassic Park era there came to be a glut of young paleontologists. That over-supply means many PhDs will never be professors. That leads to frustration – especially so when outsiders without training get published in academic journals.

BTW. Outsiders don’t get work published anymore.

At a higher academic level
I worry about established workers like Michael Benton, Darren Naish and David Hone, all PhDs who should know better. Currently they are living well, enjoying the fruits of privilege: books, speaking engagements, broadcast assignments, interviews and the prestige that goes with those publications, assignments and honors. Fossils come to their door.

Unfortunately, everything they have done (and prevented) goes on their permanent record. The next generation might wonder why these three workers  – and others – suppressed discoveries made during their short time in Academia. And why they supported – or did not criticize – contemporary myths and readily falsified hypotheses published by colleagues. Perhaps they refrain from comment because those colleagues might someday referee their submitted manuscripts, as reported earlier.

Suppressing discovery IMHO should be considered ‘fundamentally flawed’. That’s a choice by those in charge, not a freshman mistake.

For evidence: use keyword ‘Benton‘, ‘Hone‘ or ‘Naish’ in the little white box above, or click on these names, which have been linked to an index of earlier posts.

Speaking for all pterosaur workers
S Christopher Bennett once said to me, “You will not be published and if you are published you will not be cited.” With this curse, Bennett was refereeing my papers before they were written. Somehow several of my papers were published over the years, without a degree or PhD. Links here.

Many of my published studies refuted Bennett’s studies. Links here. Those papers challenged his ideas and therefore his status. From his POV, that can’t be allowed. Amateurs can never be allowed to trump professionals in primate psychcology.

Case in point: There was a time when many professionals were seeking the origin of pterosaurs. An amateur solved that problem (Peters 2000) using taxa that had been examined by others. Later, these taxa were universally ignored. Not refuted. Not examined. Not modified. Ignored. I call that yet another ‘fundamental flaw’ = ignoring solutions based on the status of the author. Again, that’s a choice, not an error.

Bennett’s ‘curse’ comes closest to showing another ‘fundamental flaw’ in Academia: outsiders are not welcome. Those who have paid for their degree in time and treasure do not want freeloaders to have privileges traditionally reserved for academics alone. Again, this is basic primate psychology. These privileges include publishing papers that announce discoveries AND refereeing manuscripts that will announce discoveries – IF published.

Let’s now discuss the definition of the scientific method:
“a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”

Let’s open up an old can of worms…

National Geographic brings back pterosaurs: Nov. 2017

So, you want to be a paleontologist…