Wow. Andrea invited me to collaborate with him, Paul O'Higgins, and Jim Rohlf on the BG-PCA problem back in July, 2018. Andrea then graciously invited Fred a couple weeks later. Andrea drafted a manuscript by early September, a long time before GMAustria19. Through November he politely hounded me and Fred because we were not keeping up with discussion and comments. Feeling more a hinderance than a help, I withdrew so they could get on with it. It never occurred to me to quickly publish a paper of my own on the same subject........ David
P. David Polly Robert R. Shrock Professor Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (with affiliated appointments in Biology and Anthropology) Indiana University pdpo...@indiana.edu<mailto:pdpo...@indiana.edu> https://pollylab.indiana.edu On sabbatical leave 2018-19 Institute for Biospheric Studies Yale University On 15 May 2019, at 2:33 AM, andrea cardini <alcard...@gmail.com<mailto:alcard...@gmail.com>> wrote: I have to correct Fred on this: we accelerated our writing. My paper was the first to be finished, probably because it is a single-authored item by an emeritus with no other obligations, No, WE did not accelerate the writing. We started a cooperation, after my small finding, and we were supposed to work all together on this. At some stage, we heard no more from Fred and I suggested to have two companion papers, but NEVER got an answer from Fred. Months later, Fred let us know he was presenting and discussing results (without ever asking me if I was OK with this). Finally, HE decided to go on on his own, submit and announce in this list (again letting me know after he was done). This is an accurate reconstruction of the events. The other one is not and Fred was not unaware that I wasn't OK: before the preprint he just announced, he (again without ever asking) had already done an informal presubmission to a journal and the journal has my written complaint about it. I let the morphometric community judge if this is the appropriate behaviour. Certainly it is not what I teach students, but possibly it is what a famous retired emeritus and one of the leader of a scientific community can do. All the best Andrea PS On a technical side, as I never thought that CVA was the source of all evil and BG-PCA a simple solution, here too I agree that the method has some problems but I am more than confident that it can still be WISELY applied in many cases. That small N (especially when one works with small differences) and large p (numbers of variables) are not desirable in very many types of analyses is written in all introductory textbook on multivariate stats (at least those written in simple non-mathematical language for non-numerically skilled people like me). In relation to this, there's a point I raised many times for years in this list and in some of my papers: one uses the specific landmarks required for her/his specific aim (I am in debt to Paul O'Higgins for teaching me this). Semilandmarks are a great tool but should be used when really needed and bearing in mind that almost inevitably p will become big and that might create problems. There are different views on this, including that having many points makes beautiful pictures: I agree but probably most of the time that is not the aim of a biologist. However, there might be cases when even with small N semilandmarks might be a huge step forward and possibly the best example I know it's the virtual reconstruction of fossils (further analysis of those data may then be harder, because of very big p and small N). I definitely share the frustration of many taxonomists and palaeontologists who have often very precious material and very small samples and want to get the most out of them. Regardless of p/N problems, estimates of means will be then inevitably inaccurate (and sometimes even biased, as the sample could be few and maybe related individuals of a rare species). Sometimes those means could be OKish (macroevolutionary analyses with very large differences?); most of the time they will be as accurate as trying to estimate the average body height of Italian men using a sample of 10 men from the same small region of Italy. Again, not my discovery: it's all in the introductory stats textbook, but I myself too often forget about it. -- Dr. Andrea Cardini Researcher, Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Geologiche, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Via Campi, 103 - 41125 Modena - Italy tel. 0039 059 2058472 Adjunct Associate Professor, Centre for Forensic Anthropology, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley WA 6009, Australia E-mail address: alcard...@gmail.com<mailto:alcard...@gmail.com>, andrea.card...@unimore.it<mailto:andrea.card...@unimore.it> WEBPAGE: https://sites.google.com/site/alcardini/home/main FREE Yellow BOOK on Geometric Morphometrics: https://tinyurl.com/2013-Yellow-Book ESTIMATE YOUR GLOBAL FOOTPRINT: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/ SUPPORT: secondwarning.org<http://secondwarning.org> -- MORPHMET may be accessed via its webpage at http://www.morphometrics.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MORPHMET" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to morphmet+unsubscr...@morphometrics.org<mailto:morphmet+unsubscr...@morphometrics.org>. -- MORPHMET may be accessed via its webpage at http://www.morphometrics.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MORPHMET" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to morphmet+unsubscr...@morphometrics.org.
