Richard Klim
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Päckert 2015
Päckert 2015. Vom Sinn und Unsinn einer reduktionistischen Biologie. On the sense and nonsense of a reductionist approach in biology. Vogelwarte 53(1): 51–58. [in German]
Päckert 2015. Vom Sinn und Unsinn einer reduktionistischen Biologie. On the sense and nonsense of a reductionist approach in biology. Vogelwarte 53(1): 51–58. [in German]
A recent German anti-Darwinist book publication cheekily challenges what its author, M. Beleites, denounces a today’s reductionist biological approach – which in his sense cross-the-board includes all kind of academic teaching and research in the field of biology and above all genetic analyses. The author quotes an ornithological article by Otto Kleinschmidt from 1921 as a core argument against the theory of descent. That classical example of a species quartet of four Eurasian tit species of genus Poecile once failed at establishing a reliable phylogenetic hypothesis using two morphological traits: crown colour and beak shape. This essay points to basic errors in reasoning and crucial mistakes of interpretation of the original Kleinschmidt article in the light of current state of knowledge and multidisciplinary analyses on tits (Paridae). Main pitfalls of the anti-Darwinist perspective are i) insufficient number and a lack of phylogenetic information of traits analysed, ii) a priori exclusion of possible topologies, iii) incomplete taxon sampling for pairwise comparisons, iv) fatal ignorance of relevant literature and distorting citation of Kleinschmidt’s original study.