leopold,
You refer to quotes you claim have been altered by the Grand Scientific Conspiracy.
The article you refer to is "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire", in
Science, Vol. 210, page 883 (1980).
Let's compare:
leopold's version said:
The absence of transitional forms be- tween established species has tradition- ally been explained as a fault of an im- perfect record, an argument first advanced by Charles Darwin. The accumulation of sediments and the entrapment and fossilization of animal bones is, at best, a capricious process: as a result, geologists are familiar with the difficulties of reconstructing past events. According to the traditional position, therefore, if sedimentation and fossilization did indeed encapsulate a complete record of prehistory, then it would reveal the postulated transitional organisms. But it isn't and it doesn't.
original article said:
The absence of transitional forms between established species has traditionally been explained as a fault of an imperfect record, an argument first advanced by Charles Darwin. The accumulation of sediments and the entrapment and fossilization of animal bones is, at best, a capricious process: as a result, geologists are familiar with the difficulties of reconstructing past events. According to the traditional position, therefore, if sedimentation and fossilization did indeed encapsulate a complete record of prehistory, then it would reveal the postulated transitional organisms. But it isn't and it doesn't.
Identical.
leopold's version said:
"Certainly the record is poor," admitted Gould, "but the jerkiness you see is not the result of gaps, it is the consequence of the jerky mode of evolutionary change." To the evident frustration of many people at the meeting, a large proportion of the contributions were characterized more by description and assertion than by the presentation of data.
original article said:
"Certainly the record is poor," admitted Gould, "but the jerkiness you see is not the result of gaps, it is the consequence of the jerky mode of evolutionary change." To the evident frustration of many people at the meeting, a large proportion of the contributions were characterized more by description and assertion than by the presentation of data.
Identical.
leopold's version said:
In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from 884 what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."
original article said:
In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."
OOH! OOH! Look! A discrepancy! Evidence of the Grand Scientific Conspiracy at work!
Let's hear what leopold has to say about this:
leopold in post #212 said:
specifically it was the ayala quote.
in my version he makes reference to 884.
on page 884 is a graphic that he probably based is quote on.
your version does not make the 884 reference.
Could it be that the Evil Scientists have taken out this important reference to "884", removing it from Ayala's quote?
Well, strangely enough, here's what I find in the layout of the original article. The Ayala quote appears on page 884. The article is layed out in 3 columns of text. The split between columns 1 and 2 occurs after the words "I am now convinced from" in the Ayala quote. And, just below those words, there's a
page number, for page (yes, you guessed it) 884.
So, could it be that this is actually leopold's cut-and-paste error, and not an excision of the "884" by the Evil Scientists after all?
In other words, if it is not already blindingly obvious, leopold cut and pasted from the article and inadvertently included the page number in the quote he copied. The page number is not part of the quote. The quote simply happens to appear on page 884 of the article.
So much for leopold's cries that the article has been doctored to remove important material or to hide quotes.
leopold: will you now admit that none of the quotes has been doctored, and that this was entirely
your mistake, so we can take this particular issue off the table?