3ta Sleeps with the fishes

Early Wagner trees and “the cladistic redux”

“…As Hennig did, Wagner parsimony can recognize secondary absences as synapomorphies (cf. Farris, 2012), and such cases expose homologies as symplesiomorphies. It also explains why WEW took the precaution of not quoting Hennig.…”

“…4 4 For examples and further discussion of this point, see Farris (In press). Note, however, that it is Wagner trees that group by shared derived states.…”

Fudged “phenetics”

“…Parsimony can certainly be used with a preceding character analysis (as in Kluge and Farris, 1969; cf. Farris, in press; p. 7), and indeed that was a step in Wägele’s (2004, p. 108) procedure:…”

“…This also introduces their standard tract on assumptions. 3tans (advocates of 3ta) always complain about parsimony’s alleged assumptions yet never reveal what those assumptions are supposed to be (see Farris, 2011, p. 219; Farris, in press, p. 10). At the same time they carefully avoid mentioning that 3ta assumes irreversibility and can never recognize reversals, regardless of the data.…”

Pattern taxonomy

“…Yet the publication of such material had been increasing, a good deal of it dating from 2011 or 2012. Feeling that the literature should not simply be abandoned to inundation by nonsense, I therefore devoted some recent papers (Farris, 2011, 2012a,b,c,d,e,f,g) to exposing those deceptions. That has now prompted a further reaction from Ebach and Williams (2012; hereinafter EW), who begin:…”