It certainly is on-topic for s.b.p. and also, especially, for sci.anthropolgy.paleo. But if you want to
post about it there, I strongly recommend that you include the url to the webpage that you
gave this time around, right in your OP.
Harshman was being rather disingenuous. He was implicitly objecting to your
introducing a whole new topic, apparently unconnected to anything that went before,
without spelling that out. Be glad he didn't ride herd on you, like he often does to me,
by accusing you of hijacking the thread.
> As far as "subjects" are concerned, they are still part of the overall subject of paleontology. As you say, but not in any stretch of the imagination restricted to John or a selected group of people, does John stay "on-topic" of a specific "subject" thread, if ever. John himself strayed way off topic in that "thread" when he posted his advice that I am best ignored.
John is addicted to double standards. I'm sure you found that out long ago, perhaps even longer ago than I did.
> You can be seen to stray off-topic here by referring to another "thread" with a different "subject" header, but fossil "reconstructions" can also be seen as relevant to the current topic and discussion of cold_adapted dinosaurs or early Jurassic or turtles.
Not sure how. Did you have something specific in mind?
> > > And if you had some point to make, what was it?
> > I have no way of reading Glenn's mind, but the video suggests a forgery
> > of the same degree of seriousness as the Piltdown forgery.
John and Erik don't seem to be at all interested in this bombshell.
John can't bring himself to watch a 3:28 video even after I dropped it.
Erik hasn't shown any sign of having seen this reply of mine or John's reply to it.
But then, it becomes much less of a bombshell on reading what you write next.
> >
> > The video is only three and a half minutes long. I suggest you take a good look,
> > then try to find out whether it has been debunked and if so, where.
> >
> > Be careful to distinguish where it shows clips from a PBS "Nova" program and
> > where Dr. David Menton is editorializing.
> Seems a complicated issue. The "crushed" bones appear to have been claimed to have fossilized in a different shape. I'd be interested in finding a plain language explanation and science behind this reconstruction. For instance, how was this "re-fossilization" able to be identified, and assumedly removed by a power tool. Not a peer review article by any means,
>
https://northstatescience.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/correcting-creationists-redux-was-lucy%E2%80%99s-pelvis-reconstruction-a-fraud/
>
> Here an atheist activist ranting about creationists, seems to have no problem assuming there was nothing wrong with the reconstruction, using nothing that I can see in the article except the transcript of the PBS video.
In fact, he flat out says:
"Lovejoy simply cut the broken parts out and re-fit them into the position they occupied at the time Lucy was alive."
He gave a source in a professional journal which may or may not explain just how the reconstruction was determined to be accurate.
He probably didn't have the understanding of anatomy to be able to clarify this one way or another.
He didn't even have the decency to sign his name, but kept going by the username "cjobrien".
Erik and John would accuse him of being "unclear," were not cjobrien "One of Us" from their POV.
> Yet Lovejoy's "impossible position" doesn't fit with Johanson's "illusion":
There's no inconsistency here. The illusion is enough to fool someone who never looked
at the anatomy of pelvises.
> " OWEN LOVEJOY: This has caused the two bones in fact to fit together so well that they’re in an anatomically impossible position.
>
> DON JOHANSON: The perfect fit was an allusion that made Lucy’s hip bones seems to flair out like a chimps."
>
> Both these men are anthropologists. How is this " fused together in later fossilization" a "perfect fit"?
Because they were forced together to the point where it took a trained eye to realize that something was amiss.
> Is it perhaps an indication of bias, assumption and inference that this was an "illusion", or is there hard science behind it that no one wants to identify?
The hard science is in the way a professional anatomist could see that the pelvis seemed to be
of a shape that no known vertebrate ever came close to having.
>
> And how is it that "some of her bones lying in the mud MUST have been crushed or broken"? (Caps mine) Is that science?
No, it's an attempted explanation of how the anatomically incorrect shape was achieved.
There had to be first a break and then a re-fusing to the shape in which the fossil was found. Mere bending
or twisting would not have had that effect.
My opinion is that the reconstructor[s] did the best they could to be accurate.
There is no reason to suspect Piltdown-style fraud.
> > PS I dislike the way Glenn avoided answering your second question. Unfortunately,
> > evasiveness is all too common around here; I showed a striking example near the end
> > of my reply to Erik a bit less than an hour ago.
> Apparently you dislike my "avoidance" because you regard it as evasiveness.
> Most everyone else appears to dislike my "avoiding" such questioning because it is often said that I never give my opinion on anything. Do you agree with that?
No, you give your opinion often enough. What bothered me was that you
seemed to be sitting on a bombshell yet not giving any hint of what
it was all about.
> Have you considered what "a point" really means? And why these evolutionists often demand one?
It's a scam I've been subjected to by them, because unlike in this case of yours, I explain things as I go along.
They want to think that I have a hidden agenda behind it all, and they ask for a point when the
point is staring them in the face: I am a conveyer of interesting and sometimes paradoxical looking
facts and reasonings, all related to evolution and/or paleontology. Quality control, in many cases.
> And what do they do with one when they get it?
Like I suggested just now, they act as though they haven't gotten it.
Erik in particular was so blatant with this scam in talk.origins, that I finally caught on to what he was doing
after about a year of it, and accused him of scamming.
Then all hell broke loose. Robert Camp made a complete fool of himself by
the way he "defended" Erik in a traditional t.o. meaning of the word; two implacable foes of yourself
tried to do a more careful "defense" of Erik, but made lesser fools of themselves;
the more implacable of the two even ventured to "defend" Robert Camp.
As for Erik, he never showed any awareness of any of this, but simply left the thread for good.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics