Por encima de los intercambios en los espacios académicos entre los cladistas de parsimonia y entre los filogenéticos de verosimilitud hay una guerra de "infomerciales" en la arena social de los congresos, los cursos y por supuesto los blogs. Un ejemplo reciente es la versión mordaz publicada por S. Magruder en el blog "Dechronization" sobre el anuncio del taller de Cladística de la OSU+Hennig Society y los comentarios que ha sucitado.
Cladistics Workshop Announced
The Ohio State University and the Willi Hennig Society have just announced this summer's Workshop in Phylogenetics Indoctrination in Cladistics Workshop. Some twenty students will receive fellowships to attend this workshop from the Willi Hennig Society. With these fellowships, students will be able to receive four days of instruction on the proper use of outdated methodologies for only $600. On the fifth day, the workshop will make a foray into the 21st century with a lecture on model based phylogenetics and a laboratory on the use of RAxML, Garli and MrBayes. Instruction on model-based methods will be provided by Dr. Christopher Randle, whose only publications on Bayesian methods are critiques (1, 2) and whose recent publications rely either exclusively on parsimony (3) or give preference to parsimony over maximum likelihood when the two methods are largely congruent (4). I'm sure Dr. Randle is an excellent scientist, but his presence as the sole instructor of model-based methods suggests that this workshop is going to be about as balanced as Fox News.
Mi granito de arena: La decisión de proceder con epistemología A o B y consecuentemente aplicar método A o B, obviamente no deberia depender de lo persuasivo de los "infomerciales". Uds que creen?
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Actualización (22 Abril): La "entrada" original en "Dechronization" ha sido borrada con una nota y un comentario de M. Brandley, pidiendo disculpas "I also apologize to the Dechron blog organizers and its readers for not treating this as a public scientific forum with a high standard of ethics."
http://blindscientist.genedrift.org/2007/04/19/sciview-scientific-interviews-part-1/
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