Re: numerical taxonomy

[COLLINS@xxxxxxxxx]

This is a comment on the remarks by Ewan Fordyce and numerical taxonomy
in general:
  
   As Ewan states at the end of his note we can't let systematics
lose its identity. A great many taxonomic problems orginate from poor 
reporting of species in the first place and the proliferation of species
names. we have used the intraspecific intergradational series technique
very successfully with foraminifera and tried numerical taxonomy on the same
group afterwards and got results that were pretty meaningless. 
  I think the problem is that people assume when you do something numerical
it is automatically objective but they forget that the characters that are
chosen to do the numerical analysis are chosen subjectively by each
researcher which is why you can get wide divergent results with an "objective"
method-it is sort of the same as numerical modelling: it is often more important what you leave out of the model not what you put in.
   Ewan is also correct that molecular taxonomy is looking to replace
everything else but it cannot go back in time. Judging from what I have
seen at a couple of recent conferences however I think the molecular
taxonomists, at least in micropaleo, have a long way to go before they sort
out some of the probelms we have.
   Just a few observations.
   DBScott, Dalhousie University, Halifax NS Canada  e-mail DBSCOTT@ac.dal.ca