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Post by Dinotoyforum on Aug 24, 2008 22:55:52 GMT
[Moved from Ebay thread - Admin]Give poor Archaeoraptor some credit, it was able to fool Phil Currie, Stephen Czerkas, Xu Xing,and National Geographic after all ;D And I'm not even referring to the Microraptor gui fossil on eBay a few years ago, which looked exactly like the 'holotype' 'Microraptor gui' , except that the eBay specimen did not have four wings, or any feather impressions at all, curiously enough Now I'm not sure which of the two (or both) is fake ;D Archaeoraptor never fooled Phil Currie or anyone else as soon as they saw the specimens closely. They generally knew something wasn't right (in this case, two species of feathered dinosaurs, I believe). However, Czercas was counting on the specimen for his museum (and as support for his insane ideas) and fooling National Geographic isn't that hard--they are journalists, not researchers (plus, Czercas, may have withheld the information that the other researchers were giving him, specifically that the fossil was a fake). This is why the species was never described in any formal journal, only a popular magazine (that's all that NG is--just like how Prehistoric Times is a great magazine, but is no place for publishing 'research' >>cough<< David Peters >>cough<<) Please, when you want to make outrageous claims, make sure you have the facts straight. As for fossils not always having feathers--since Hesperornis doesn't always have feathers on its fossils (they are from this province, I've seen some of the fossils) does that mean that they didn't have feathers? That if a Hesperornis is found with feathers (unlikely) that it must be faked? Do you ever get tired of trotting out the same tired, indefensible lines on the same subject? I know I get tired feeling like I have to refute those same lines again and again (but I will until you perform the necessary research to support your claims.). Well, then why did Currie and Xu Xing agree to co-author the article erecting archaeoraptor, if they were so plagued by doubt in the first place? Is this not a case of success having many fathers, and failure being an orphan? And I like it how everything was dumped on the shoulders of Czerkas after the facts. Yeah, there we go, blame it all on the non-scientist! Oh, I did read many of the excuses trotted out by the 'paleontologists' after the fraud was exposed, on how they REALLY didn't have that much to do with the specimen anyway, blah blah blah. If you don't feel like answering my posts then don't. I have done the necessary research by the way, but since those articles were authored by Alan Feduccia and Theagarten Lingham Soliar and Storrs Olson and not by, say, Thomas Holtz or Mark Norell, citing those sources (which I have downloaded from the computer, so nobody can claim I am making them out of thin air) will only elicit the usual personal scorn and attacks very often coming from the dino-bird crowd. I knew a VERY long time ago, long before this recent hubbub about the 'tyrannosaur' proteins, that Mary Schweitzer's results on the 'blood vessels' and 'proteins' were indefensible and erroneous. That is because I do actual RESEARCH in SCIENTIFIC journals. Anybody on this forum can use Google as well as I can.
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Post by [][][]cordylus[][][] on Aug 24, 2008 22:57:11 GMT
About archaeoraptor- I thought it wasn't "entirely" fake, as it was a composite of a real feathered bird and a real feathered dinosaur.
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Post by Dinotoyforum on Aug 24, 2008 23:01:34 GMT
"why did Currie and Xu Xing agree to co-author the article erecting archaeoraptor, if they were so plagued by doubt in the first place?"
Wasn't it Sloan, not Currie et al, who authored the NG article informally erecting Archaeoraptor?
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Post by Dinotoyforum on Aug 24, 2008 23:02:11 GMT
About archaeoraptor- I thought it wasn't "entirely" fake, as it was a composite of a real feathered bird and a real feathered dinosaur. That's correct.
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Post by ziro on Aug 24, 2008 23:04:04 GMT
Currie and Xu Xing agreed to collaborate with the Czerkases to write the formal description for peer review (which was rejected several times, which should have let everyone know something was up, but did not); Christopher Sloan wrote the 'popularized' version for NG.
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Post by [][][]cordylus[][][] on Aug 24, 2008 23:04:59 GMT
About archaeoraptor- I thought it wasn't "entirely" fake, as it was a composite of a real feathered bird and a real feathered dinosaur. That's correct. Then why do people always say it is entirely a hoax and is fake? It doesn't make sense!
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Post by ziro on Aug 24, 2008 23:08:12 GMT
If one takes body parts from two (or more) different species and cuts and pastes them together and claim they are from one individual, then that is a fraud and a hoax. The individual pieces may be 'authentic', but the result is a chimera, and a deliberate one at that.
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Post by Dinotoyforum on Aug 24, 2008 23:22:48 GMT
Currie and Xu Xing agreed to collaborate with the Czerkases to write the formal description for peer review (which was rejected several times, which should have let everyone know something was up, but did not); Christopher Sloan wrote the 'popularized' version for NG. So Sloan wrote the popularized and only published article on Archaeoraptor. And to be fair to the scientists, according to Wikipedia (and references therein), their submitted papers "mentions in two places, and includes a figure illustrating the point that, one of the legs and the tail are counterparts that were composited into the main slab."
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Post by ziro on Aug 24, 2008 23:26:49 GMT
So, knowing full well the fossil was altered and fraudulent, they still persisted in trying to farm out the 'paper' for publication in Science or Nature. The implications for their ethical and scientific work standards are staggering.
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Post by ziro on Aug 24, 2008 23:29:39 GMT
They rewrote and revised the paper TWENTY times in their misguided effort to have it published. That shows that they were not as uninvolved as they now in hindsight claim to be.
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Post by Dinotoyforum on Aug 24, 2008 23:34:06 GMT
So, knowing full well the fossil was altered and fraudulent, they still persisted in trying to farm out the 'paper' for publication in Science or Nature. The implications for their ethical and scientific work standards are staggering. I don't have a problem with that. I know a genuine plesiosaur skull with the snout reconstructed with nostrils on the very tip. in platicene. As long as I point this out and no intentional deception is involved, of course it is OK to describe this skull. It appears that no intentional deception was involved in the Archaeoraptor case or else else why would they have mentioned the composite nature of the specimen? Do you not think it was an honest mistake filtered out by the peer review system?
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Post by ziro on Aug 24, 2008 23:36:00 GMT
And lest anyone think that NG and dinosaurology has learnt anything from the archaeoraptor episode, take Dakota the 'mummified' edmontosaurus. Books and videos have been released about the specimen (the video is by National Geographic, surprise ), but not a single scientific paper. Perhaps their conclusions are valid, but scientific protocol has been suspended yet again for a sensationalistic media campaign.
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Post by ziro on Aug 24, 2008 23:45:21 GMT
So, knowing full well the fossil was altered and fraudulent, they still persisted in trying to farm out the 'paper' for publication in Science or Nature. The implications for their ethical and scientific work standards are staggering. I don't have a problem with that. I know a genuine plesiosaur skull with the snout reconstructed with nostrils on the very tip. in platicene. As long as I point this out and no intentional deception is involved, of course it is OK to describe this skull. It appears that no intentional deception was involved in the Archaeoraptor case or else else why would they have mentioned the composite nature of the specimen? Do you not think it was an honest mistake filtered out by the peer review system? It was filtered out only when Storrs Olson, who definitely disbelieves the bird-dino link, very loudly protested to National Geographic and the SVP about the article. Had he not done so, today archaeoraptor would be joining sinosauropteryx, beipiaosaurus, etc. as the putative 'missing link' [sic] between dinosaurs and birds. And I'm not so concerned about the motivations and sincerity of people. My only concern is, is the finding genuine, or is it not? No amount of sincerity or handwringing or blame passing excuses the behaviour of the people involved in Archaeoraptor. I don't make the mistake of thinking scientists float above the motivations of 'lay' people. Czerkas, Currie et al wanted the media publicity sponsored by National Geographic just as any American Idol contestant on Fox does., or for that matter Richard Dawkins does when he uses Darwin's theory in interviews on BBC to spread his atheist beliefs.
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Post by crazycrowman on Aug 24, 2008 23:47:10 GMT
...As for anything written on dinosaur/bird evolution by Alan Feduccia, he has gotten nuttier then a macaw turd. Yes I have read his books. Some of his work regarding birds after the KT make some sense, but things like this... scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/06/early_birds_shake_up_avian_tre.phpKeep flipping everything, and how and what we know of birds, around. I spend alot of time being a bird brain. Feduccia does not have proof of most of his vitriolic claims. "The devil is in the detail" comment sounds right out of young earth creation when there is a mountain of evidence in the way he continues to choose to ignore. IMHO, he is an ornithologist first, paleo second. Alan Feduccia does not even have a decent theory of avian origins. He and some other flakes (*cough* Larry Martin and others) have slapped together an unknown basal archosaur/thingamadinger as a bird ancestor. Where is his proof ? Oh, thats right, I have a feeling it has all the authenticity of a rubber suit in a freezer chest. Where is his concrete peer reviewd supporting evidence ? Oh, thats right, he just deny and claims misidentification/forgery on everything with feathers that he can not dismiss as a "just a bird"! Just like the YECs, he is all about ignoring the evidence at hand. I am suppried these guys aren't claiming that the fossils are all only 10,000 years old, and drowned in the flood! (or would that be right up your alley ?) He doesn't even discount microraptor anymore, (he used to) now it is "just a bird" and he uses it to support his "trees down" evolution of flight. (which, I agree that makes a good bit of sense, when you look at other modern species who "glide")
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Post by crazycrowman on Aug 24, 2008 23:52:08 GMT
"Czerkas, Currie et al wanted the media publicity sponsored by National Geographic just as any American Idol contestant on Fox does"
Just like Feduccia does, right ?
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Post by Dinotoyforum on Aug 25, 2008 0:02:29 GMT
I don't have a problem with that. I know a genuine plesiosaur skull with the snout reconstructed with nostrils on the very tip. in platicene. As long as I point this out and no intentional deception is involved, of course it is OK to describe this skull. It appears that no intentional deception was involved in the Archaeoraptor case or else else why would they have mentioned the composite nature of the specimen? Do you not think it was an honest mistake filtered out by the peer review system? It was filtered out only when Storrs Olson, who definitely disbelieves the bird-dino link, very loudly protested to National Geographic and the SVP about the article. Had he not done so, today archaeoraptor would be joining sinosauropteryx, beipiaosaurus, etc. as the putative 'missing link' [sic] between dinosaurs and birds. And I'm not so concerned about the motivations and sincerity of people. My only concern is, is the finding genuine, or is it not? No amount of sincerity or handwringing or blame passing excuses the behaviour of the people involved in Archaeoraptor. I don't make the mistake of thinking scientists float above the motivations of 'lay' people. Czerkas, Currie et al wanted the media publicity sponsored by National Geographic just as any American Idol contestant on Fox does., or for that matter Richard Dawkins does when he uses Darwin's theory in interviews on BBC to spread his atheist beliefs. I agree, its only normal to want your research (or book, or paintings, or whatever) to find as high a profile outlet and as wide an audience as possible. But as you say, this sort of thing has no bearing on the merits of the message.
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Post by ziro on Aug 25, 2008 0:04:12 GMT
See? Just as I expected. Mention Feduccia or Larry Martin and a whole list of expletives--not refutations--come to the fore. Long live the scientific method! And I have read his papers--they are more substantiated than many of the dino-bird papers. The paper describing Beipiaosaurus for instance was so paltry there wasn't even a microscopic scan of the purported protofeathers, just an enlarged photograph.
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Post by richard on Aug 25, 2008 0:19:52 GMT
Then why do people always say it is entirely a hoax and is fake? It doesn't make sense! then what it is? a semi-hoax?
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Post by crazycrowman on Aug 25, 2008 0:22:07 GMT
"See? Just as I expected. Mention Feduccia or Larry Martin and a whole list of expletives--not refutations--come to the fore. Long live the scientific method!"
OK. Turd is an explative ? Anyway, Just like the people who believe in bigfoot and say I can't disprive the skookum cast, or the video, scientific method does not require me, or anyone to disprove Feduccias "claims"...mostly because he has proven nothing. As I said to the bigfoot people, SHOW ME THE PROOF.
"And I have read his papers--they are more substantiated than many of the dino-bird papers."
Which papers ? I have read both of his books (one was sort of required reading at the time) List them.
"The paper describing Beipiaosaurus for instance was so paltry there wasn't even a microscopic scan of the purported protofeathers, just an enlarged photograph."
If you have a link to that I'd like to read it as well.
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Post by richard on Aug 25, 2008 0:23:48 GMT
what are we discussing? if archaeoraptor was a hoax or something else?
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