Percy writes:
Well, yes, but as Linear pointed out, it isn't clear she understands the evidence derives from independent sources.
It is for anyone who read post 12.
Frankly, I disagree so I read post 12 again. In it you give a brief description of cladistic classification. You then say that a check of the determination of nodes could be done by making a comparison with the data in the rocks.
Then this statement:
Given that the cladograms under study are independent of stratigraphy, it is possible to compare the two to see how well they match.
Unless one understands how they are independent, this seems like a poorly supported assertion. Even the paper in the link you provided assumes that the reader knows the two are independently derived. Faith never acknowledges this statement. In fact, in post 46, she states:
In the end I'm not really sure you've proved anything more than is already inferred from the appearance of the fossil record itself -- that is, the appearance of a hierarchy of morphologies represented there, which is what suggested the idea of evolution in the first place. What the cladogram does is refine this basic inference
This one statement seems to show that she thinks the cladogram is just a diagram derived from the fossil data in the rocks and not a classification system independent of that data.
I'm sure you believe you showed that this is independent corroboration of evolutionary theory. However, it is not completely clear to me. One question I have is, how are the nodal points determined on the cladogram?
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