because you don't listen to reason, randman.if its features indicate it hunted in the water, webbed feet are entirely plausible.

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Is pakicetus even mentioned prior to college level classes?Are students old enough to read National Geographic capable of understanding that an artist's depiction is only an artists depiction? I would have thought they were.Do you have actual examples of people being harmed by the depictions in National Geographic or in Science?

but if they are evidence that the presentations are NOT misleading, they are very important for discussion. you were originally talking about the nat'l geo. drawing, btw -- the original science painting is completely moot -- i think everyone here (and the author) said it was inaccurate, though not in the way you have a problem with.you have a problem with pakicetus beign semiaquatic -- the innaccuracy you percieve is in depicting him swimming. showing that he could indeed swim is therefore a valid rebuttal.

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i present randman as evidence that they, in fact, are not. hey randman, feel free to use that statement as evidence that national geographic is decieving its audience.

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Randman, can you explain why you consider the depictions to not be "right", given that they appear to be honest about the evidence on which they were based? What exactly is your standard for "right" when presenting tentative conclusions?To others, please hold off on further challenges since there are already plenty of unanswered challenges there.

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no, duh!

isn't that what we've been saying all along? that any person with common sense would realize this immediately when they read "known only from a skull?"see, it's not THAT hard to figure out! actually, we knew before. you see, we could tell from the skull that it was related of a few other transitional whales, and to mesonychid, which is an artiodactyl. get that? we knew it had hooves from the skull alone, long before we found the rest of it.so, what's the problem with a hoofed animal that likes the water? or (hypothetically) has webbing between its hooves?looking at it's feet, do you see a solid modern hoof, or separate toes? show me a textbook. please, since this is the education thread.and, uh, it's not a WILD guess, but it is a guess nonetheless -- all artistic interpretation involve guesswork. intelligent people know that. why don't you respond in that thread, then? keep that to your great debate, we're all tired of hearing you hæckle.

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it sure looks like a land mammal in the drawing, randman. i wonder how i could have ever accused you of conflating drawings with evidence. by looking at a SKELETON, not a DRAWING. it has skeletal properties that are whale-like, especially the skull.

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the problem here is that you think science is people sitting around a table making stuff up. the conclusion that it's an ancestral whale is not one that was jumped to. there is lots of anatomical evidence that supports it. you would know that if you had looked at the papers AT ALL.saying "the first whale" may be for effect, but it's not misleading. it is an ancestral whale, and in the opinion of very many scientists, it's the first one with enough distinct whale features to be classified in the line of whales (where as mesonychid was not, or rather, was removed by pakicetus because of the different lineage it presented) or that it looked like a dog, a rat, a goat, had hair, whiskers, how much body fat it may or may not have had, etc. from your statements, you rule out ALL artistic interpretation.who knows if it had webbed feet? who knows if it had hair? who knows what color it was? no, showing a picture with webbed feet is not a big deal because people generally understand that such drawings are subject to interpretation. the data supports its relation to whales -- but i'm not sure data about the kind of feet it had will ever be found.unfortunately, i'm unaware of any pakicetus footprints. until one is found, any claim either way should be taken with a huge grain of salt. and the way we see is that you lack the facility to distinguish scientific fact from artistic rendering, and that you think a draw or two constitutes a hueg evo conspiracy to indoctrinate people with something that's obviously and plainly noted to be a guess.

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First, I think the claims being based only on a skull are oversatements. You can't do a good job of recreating what the creature may have looked like with the skull alone.I've got no problem with adding in artistic license if you have a larger specimen, but what we had here was "just a skull", and they added excessive whale-like features, such as showing webbed feet instead of hooves. Those whale-like features that did not exist have the effect of making the case for it being an ancestral whale more plausible and believable.If the goal is to educate, then you would not do that. You would just say there is a possibility of another potential whale ancestor but all we have is one skull thus far and so we cannot draw too many conclusions from that, and then maybe show a depiction of the skull. Adding in more is indoctrination using a propaganda technique.Frankly, I am not sure what you are asking for here. I don't think presenting far-fetched guesses based on only one skull is "honest." I think it's a clear pictorial designed to affect the reader, and that it has no place in a sober, reasoned, objective scientific analysis and presentation designed for the public.

. and back it bounces from the other side of the fence with a couple of slight modificationsYou supporters of Intelligent Design / Creation, it seems to me, take a different stance. It seems the goal is not education, but indoctrination. You want to convince people that a religion is true, and so it's not a big deal if erreneous claims are taught because, well, the goal is not to teach students how to view data with a sober assessment, think for themselves, etc,...but the goal is to get them to understand and believe in your religion. So you say, well, even if not entirely accurate, it's WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS.But the Bible is irrelevant if you are trying to educate. In fact, it's completely wrong. It sends the wrong message, and moreover it passes off falsehoods as reasonable.
So the way I see this discussion is that we view the wrong claims differently because I believe in education whereas you guys think indoctrination is an acceptable means of educating minds.Randman, people who live in glass houses should not be throwing stones.OK, all this was a little off-topic. I think I’ll just go away now.

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My Hovercraft is full of eels!

I think for all your posting, you ignored the relevant fact, which you admit to. He calls Pakicetus the first whale "for effect."Pakicetus is not really a whale, is he? But this one evo calls him a whale "for effect", you know, exaggerating and overstating the claim to help make it stronger rhetorically.I think one could say the same thing about the webbed feet aquatic descriptions, that they too are "for effect."What completely goes beyond you is that such overstatements "for effect" are no sober, reasoned, objective analysis and have no place in science education and presentation.You think it's OK for scientists to do this in advancing evolution because the goal is to get people to believe it. I think the goal is to teach people to objectively be able to assess the data in a scientific manner for themselves, and so it's not OK.It's all about whether one favors education or indoctrination.

I don't see people advocating ID making overstated evidentiary claims. That's the difference.The goal for science should not be to get people to believe evolution or ID, but to teach them how to think in a manner in which they can judge for themselves if one theory is right or another. Unfortunately, evolutionists do not teach that way in respect to evolution, but teach the theory via methods of indoctrination, often teaching evidentiary claims that are overstated and incorrect, but which have the result of making their case more convincing.

No doubt having a complete skeleton is better. I expect you would have a hard time deciding the size of the legs with just a skull. However, it is my understanding that paleontologists gain a lot of information from skulls. For example, the jaws and teeth tell them what kind of food the animal ate. In the case of pakicetus, the teeth are what show a fish diet. Note that I am not a paleontologist, so I only have informal information on this. A full skeleton might not indicate whether there were webbed feet either. It would give some idea as to whether the legs were better adapted to swimming or to running, but that's not much to go on with regard to whale ancestry. It is my understanding that the skull is the main reason that pakicetus is believed to be a whale ancestor. Again, please note that I am not a paleontologist.I would assume that if your aim was to educate, you would be discussing the skull, maybe passing a model of the skull around to the students for them to examine. You would be discussing the various features, and why they suggest that pakicetus is a whale ancestor. I doubt that the picture would be of any importance in the class work.I also suspect that learning pakicetus is a whale ancestor would be only secondary, and the main part of the class would be to teach the students how to examine skull features, how to examine teeth and jaw to determine the animal's diet, etc. Again, I'm guessing here, for I have never taken any class in paleontology.I really doubt that any indoctrination would be used. Propaganda and indoctrination are not very useful in an education program. I'm not convinced that this is far-fetched. If you have dentition that shows a fish diet, you have other skull features that have previously only been found in whales and whale ancestors, then I think you have a pretty strong case that pakicetus is a whale ancestor or a near relative of a whale ancestor.Guessing the body appearance is a bit iffy, but from what is known about early whales, from what is known about other mammals with fish diets, you have enough to go on to make plausible guesses. You will expect some degree of revision will be needed when more complete evidence is available.

I'm no expert here, and I certainly don't know whether pakicetus is a whale. But it is important to understand that whether a particular animal is a whale is not necessary cut a dried. It will be determined by the classification scheme. But since pakicetus was a new find, it would not have exactly fitted into the existing classification.Maybe it was called a whale "for effect". Maybe the desired effect was to influence colleagues as to how the existing classification schemes should be modified to accomodate pakicetus. That would be a very different issue. It is a matter of fact as to whether pakicetus had webbed feet, although we might not have the evidence to settle on such facts. Whether pakicetus was a whale might not have been a matter of fact at all, but rather a matter of negotiation as to how to best adjust prior classification schemes. As has been explained to you in the past, this has nothing to do with advancing evolution. Evolution is already well established without pakicetus. The science here is the attempt to construct the history of life on the planet. Sure, it adds a little extra support for evolution, just as that orange falling from a tree in your backyard adds a little support for gravitation. It would be a problem for gravitation if that orange fell upwards instead of downwards, and it would be a problem for evolution if pakicetus did not fit into the evolutionary tree. But that's the main relevance to evolution.

I completely agree with that. I certainly hope that isn't true. For me it was not indoctrination. I'm pretty sure it is not indoctrination in the university classes. I can't comment on the high school classes. Regrettably, the quality of high school education in the sciences is often not as good as it should be.