User:Peter M. Brown/Conceptual elitism

Conceptual elitism?
It is clear that a number of paleontologists who write for lay readers hope to persuade them to use the term "dinosaur" in a sense that includes birds. So far, they have not succeeded. As Petter B&oslash;ckman as pointed out, "people understanding the term 'dinosaur' as including birds is probably in the per mil range or less among English speakers." These paleontologists may yet succeed; it was not an easy task to convince the 17th century public to call the Earth a "planet" or to persuade the public of the 18th and 19th centuries to stop calling whales "fish". Despite some holdouts, though, these shifts in lay conceptions were largely achieved.

There can be no objection to encouraging the public to accept vocabulary and conceptualizations that have become common among specialists. Is this really the story for "dinosaur", though?. Petter has claimed (his point #3, above) that "the use of phylogenetic nomenclature in general is ubiquitous in dinosaur palaeontology"; while I normally defer to his expertise, my own (admittedly limited) poking around in the literature suggests another pattern. While dinosaur paleontologists generally pay lip service to phylogenetic nomenclature, their actual use of the term "dinosaur" seems to have more in common with the public's conception. When they remember, they will write "non-avian" before "dinosaur" in making generalizations not intended to include birds, but often they do not remember or, if they remember, do not care. Their publications are intended to communicate, and this can be achieved by using terms in a sense generally shared by authors, editors, reviewers, and readers. Though a few purists may find the usage objectionable, "dinosaur" in the paraphyletic sense is such a term.

I have cited Butler et al. (2011), "Sea level, dinosaur diversity and sampling biases". The article is not concerned with birds, but its five authors have not made a mistake in choosing their title, since they know that the the title will not mislead their likely readers or the many other specialists who see the title in the "References" sections of later articles. It is simple to find other examples. Ray Stanford and coauthors recently published an article entitled "The first hatchling dinosaur reported from the eastern United States", a title that does not strike readers as absurd only because they do not expect "dinosaur" to include birds. Grigorescu (2005) says of material from the Haţeg basin that it "does not belong to birds, but to theropods", with no suggestion that it could be both. Chiappe and Witmer have a book out entitled Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of the Dinosaurs, a title that deliberately evokes the image of birds and dinosaurs as separate groups, one flying above the other.

Further multiplication of examples would be easy, but these will do. As a perfunctory nod to the cladists, paleontologists often toss in the term "non-avian" here and there as a redundant ornament in their publications, but they freely use "dinosaur" without that qualification in their titles and in other places in their articles, understanding that reviewers and readers will naturally understand that they are not talking about birds.

What then of the paleontologists who attempt to persuade the public to include birds in the scope of the term "dinosaur", the "PhyloCode posse" in Petter B&oslash;ckman's phrase? If I am correct in the foregoing, this endeavor is a dishonest abuse of the esteem in which the public holds scientists. They are saying, "We scientists see things this way, and we're experts, so you should see things the same way," when in fact scientists generally do not see things in the way described. A scientist who writes for a lay readership should be attempting to bring popular understanding into line with that of the scientific community; where the understandings are already aligned, the responsible course is to leave matters alone, even if the writer disagrees.

Why should scientists who are scrupulously honest in their technical work practice this sort of deception in their popular writings? And why are they not roundly criticized by other professionals who are not guilty of this sort of hypocrisy? I can only speculate.

Perhaps the members of the PhyloCode posse are driven by an evangelistic passion to disseminate their point of view and do not give sufficient thought to the fact that they are trading, illegitimately, on their prestige as scientists. Though they may disapprove of the way other paleontologists regularly use language, they acquiesce since these others are also members of the elite, but this tolerance does not extend to the masses. Members of the posse may even have a selective blindness to the unapproved way that their colleagues use terms, seeing all paleontologists as fellow cladists. These colleagues may hesitate to challenge the posse's popularizations partly because they do not want to get involved in the highly charged debate around the PhyloCode and partly because there is no obvious forum in which they can present objections. Perhaps someone deeply familiar with the course of dinosaur studies in the past twenty years could write an expos&eacute; for The New Yorker&thinsp;? It hasn't happened yet.

It is doubtless impossible wholly to prevent Wikipedia from being used as a tool for the promotion of the cladist agenda. Ego White Tray is to be commended for making an attempt to at least reduce the influence of the PhyloCode posse. Even if he (or she?) is totally unsuccessful, there will be other efforts, some of which may fare better.

Peter Brown (talk) 22:27, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Sorry, but there is no cabal. Calling other editors "evangelistic," "trading on prestige," "elite," "agenda" driven, etc. etc. etc. is insulting - and while you haven't named anyone explicitly - it's clear who you mean, and so I consider this to border on a personal attack. I am growing very tired of interacting with you when it seems you are incapable of assuming good faith. 2) When you provide current, reliable sources that say explicitly "birds are not dinosaurs," then perhaps you will have offset the multiple current reliable sources that say "birds are dinosaurs." At that point, we can consider WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE.  de Bivort 23:03, 26 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Personal attack? I am critical of a subset of dinosaur paleontologists; is this not clear? Specifically, some among the paleontologists who write for the public about dinosaurs, not including (as far as I know) any Wikipedia editors. Your user page indicates that you are an entomologist. If you have publications concerning dinosaurs, I am certainly unaware of them. Peter Brown (talk) 23:20, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I was perhaps too defensive. I disagree that there is a movement of the type you are describing. I have seen cladistic systematics from the inside, in my own (arachnological) research, even going to the Willi Hennig meeting a couple times, and I can say that there is no explicit goal to push an agenda. People believe these things and favor this nomenclature out of a sincere belief that it is the best way to characterize the world scientifically. I see no evidence of agendas other than public education. But all this personal experience is, in principle, immaterial. There are abundant, reliable, secondary (and remember that's the preferred form of reference WP:WPNOTRS) sources saying that birds are dinosaurs. Therefore, this perspective must be included in the article. It can be offset by the perspective that "birds evolved from dinosaurs, but are not dinosaurs" only to the extent that sources to that effect can be identified (WP:DUE). de Bivort 23:36, 26 December 2012 (UTC)


 * There are a number of paleontologists and authors among the above who have opposed the proposed revised opening that contains errors (or who write dinosaur articles for WP). Now that you are aware of that, let's not talk of "agendas" again... those types of comments truly can be seen as personal attacks, which I am quite certain you did not intend.  Firsfron of Ronchester  23:38, 26 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Firsfron, this is not a matter of "errors", merely of wording. No-one her has ever proposed to to somehow "hide" the phylogenetic nomenklature, nor to casting doubt on the phylogeny as we now know it. The phyolgeny can be expressed adequately both ways. Claiming that Peter Brown argues for a "revised opening that contains errors" is a strawman argument.


 * As for the "explicit goal to push an agenda" of the PhyloCode community, I would like to just leave this little article here. If you do not find it support the point that there is an agenda, then I can post a number of articles by de Queiroz that states the agenda quite openly if you like. Petter Bøckman (talk) 00:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)


 * No, it is a matter of errors, pure and simple. The above proposal was to include error-ridden sentences such as "Some bird-like dinosaurs survived the extinction event that occurred 65 million years ago". This type of proposal doesn't meet Wikipedia's sourcing requirements. During this discussion, it has become more and more clear that you three editors, though highly intelligent, tenacious individuals acting in good faith, don't really know a lot about the article's subject. Mistaking ornithopods for ornithischians, mistaking a manus for a pes, citing children's coloring books and a single press releases (which is not peer reviewed) as "evidence" supporting your POV, claiming the infallibility of online dictionaries, etc., all indicate an unfamiliarity with the subject. The editors who have worked on dinosaur articles on Wikipedia for the past 5-8 years, reading and citing peer-reviewed sources, have universally (yes, universally!) opposed the changes that you three propose, and have given you specific reasons why they oppose those changes: the proposed changes are wrong, as shown in the literature.
 * I have invited the three of you to join the project and begin working on articles. That invitation remains open. There are a thousand short articles which could easily be expanded, using reliable, peer-reviewed sources. The amount of energy being spent here could be better used to help articles with real factual inaccuracies, and working with peer-reviewed sources would expose you to literature in the field of paleontology.
 * Above there are several claims of "pushing agendas" and other bad-faith assertions. You have accused me of making a straw man argument ("Claiming that Peter Brown argues for a "revised opening that contains errors" is a strawman argument."), but you three do indeed support revising the article with content that is not correct. That's not a straw man.
 * BTW, over the years, occasionally editors complain about birds being dinosaurs, or cladistics. The answer has always been the same. Firsfron of Ronchester  03:40, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The into text suggestion was by Ego White Tray, not Peter Brown, and the errors were quickly pointed out for correction, so cut out the strawman already, will you? As for joining the project, the type of argumentation demonstrated in this thread is the reason I usually stay stay well away from anything dino-related. Petter Bøckman (talk) 09:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I confess to getting a bit angry here. I pride myself in being careful in my terminology. When I write "manus" I mean manus; it is the manus of Limusaurus inextricabilis  that is the focus of the Xu et al. article. When I write "ornithischian", I mean ornithischian, a group that includes non-ornithopod dinosaurs like Triceratops. Please assume that I mean what I say. Also, drop your patronizing tone; you have no evidence that we are unfamiliar with peer-reviewed sources.Peter Brown (talk) 14:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Peter, I'm sorry I've upset you. I'm a big fan of the nice work you've done on Tetrapod since August. The last thing I want to do is offend an editor actually interested in (and willing to) improving this article. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester  19:35, 28 December 2012 (UTC)