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Re: BGF - Get a grip on reality - truth is not fraud


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Posted by BGF on December 26, 2002 at 17:32:44:

In Reply to: BGF - Get a grip on reality - truth is not fraud posted by rayhoser on December 26, 2002 at 16:43:32:

:Mere placement of the corrrect names of the taxa, you erroneously called "praelongus" and the Ceram groenveldi, but had correctly placed in your tree as separate taxa is not fraud.


It is when you do not acknowledge that the additions were done by you and not part of the original figure as presented in the article.

:Also your statement above is not correct either.
:You used the Hoser 1998 names in your paper (at the start) and you then made it clear that due to your dislike of myself you would be pigheaded and not use them in the rest of the paper. Why not put the paper on the www and a link to it.

Actually it is on the web already (subsequent to its publication in an international peer reviewed journal).

: I suppose it's a bit of a pity you never sent myself

yeah right.

and other serious Acanthophis researchers a copy

Other researchers that I respect I readily send preprints to.

: and that in my case I obtained it via a circuitious route via a Museum Curator, who was himself passed it from elsewhere.

It would have been revealed long ago through any of the myriad of publically available search engines for scientific journals. I'm not entirely surprised that you are unaware of such 'modern technology'.

:BTW Before I named the Isa Adder in 1998 as woolfi, it was generally known as a form of antarcticus - not praelongus as you erroneously stated in your paper.

Its relationship to either one is unclear in the to-date publications. We however have some insights into it in our genetic paper.

:The error on your part is totally understandable as it comes from a johnny-come-lately in the field of herp,
: who misguidedly thinks that by scoring some venoms from a few private keepers (and without any knowledge of the snakes themselves) and then

Now you're making me smile. Sorry mate but childish insults like that don't have any impact.

:running them through a few simple tests gives you some sort of expertise on these snakes. Sorry, it doesn't, and it never will!

So, actually doing experiments will not produce further knowledge? A very insightful attitude.

:And that actually shows in your few published acanthophis papers.

papers published in peer reviewed journals as part of a multi-year study. There are five more papers on the genus in the pipeline.


:I'm sure you'd be aware of the basic fact that Dave Shumack and Merlin Howden at Macquarie University in Sydney did much the same sorts of tests on adder venoms I supplied them more than 20 years ago! long before you even considered an interest in these creatures - so you are hardly a pioneer as you may like to make out.

SDS-page gels or gel filtration runs do not provide much data. Did you even read the paper or did you just look at the pictures? The techniques used are hardly trivial and the evolutionary insights allowed by the data will go some distances in adding to the body of knowledge on the genus.

:Now BGF, the mere addition to a table of correct names and in different and identifiable font to the original of the proper names of taxa, your own tests identifies is not fraud. It is common sense!

It is fraud when you do not explicitely state that the additions are yours, not part of the origional article.

: Me thinks you should have done that in the first place!

Not if the divisions are not supported by available evidence. A list is not evidence.

:The placements of the taxa and all other things are your original table (minor errors and all) and so cannot possibly be fraudulent - me also thinks that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
:As it happens, you'd be better off cutting while your ahead and thanking your lucky stars that your tests with all their inherant limitations did in fact reveal the true taxonomic positions of the various taxa.

The venom placement was an interesting excercise. However, as we make clear in the text, the tree is not necessarily reflective of genetic relationships since it is based off of presense/absense of components and is not generated through sequence data. We have a followup based upon extensive sequencing and the results are very illuminating.

:However, I must say, I'd question the distance apart you placed woolfi and hawkei on your diagram, which myself and all others with hands-on experience with these snakes regard as being very closely related taxa.

You'll just have to wait and read the genetic paper won't you.

:I could go on in terms of other misplacements and minor errors in your paper,

I'd love to see you comment upon aspects of mass spectrometry or biochemistry.

but would rather not get involved in a nit-picking exercise, as like I said before, the general thrust of the paper by you and others is essentially correct as it vindicates my original division of the Australian and north of Australian Acanthophis into the dozen or more taxa formally named in my papers of 1998 and 2002.

Raymond, as we have patiently tried to explain to you over the years, noone disagrees that the Acanthophis genus is in need of work. However, none of of your 'revisions' has been supported by data other than the most superficial examination. We are doing what should have been done from the beginning, a long and very careful examination of the entire genus. Even the genetic paper is intended to be a pilot study.

BGF


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