RE: [MORPHMET] thanks for support

[Dominique Adriaens]

Hi Andrea,

I can only applaud your courage to make such a breach on scientific ethics 
clear to the scientific community, it should be done more. In a time where 
scientific integrity is put higher and higher on the agenda (where it belongs), 
I find it striking that such practices as you unfortunately experienced still 
exist.

Looking forward to your (and your co-authors) paper!

Best
Dominique

Prof. Dr. Dominique Adriaens
Chair Educational Board Biology
tel: +32 9 264.52.19, fax: +32 9 264.53.44
E-mail: dominique.adria...@ugent.be
 
Ghent University – Department of Biology
Evolutionary Morphology of Vertebrates & Zoology Museum
K.L. Ledeganckstraat 35, B-9000 Gent
BELGIUM
Office location: click here
 
http://www.fun-morph.ugent.be/
http://www.zoologymuseum.ugent.be/



-Original Message-
From: andrea cardini  
Sent: donderdag 16 mei 2019 12:43
Cc: MORPHMET 
Subject: [MORPHMET] thanks for support

Dear morphometricians,
I would like to thank all those who openly and privately expressed their 
support on the issue of the BG-PCA papers, which I, regretfully, had to make 
public.

I have to stress that I am no better than anyone else and certainly worse than 
very many. I make many mistakes (including on ethics). I can only do my best to 
acknowledge my errors and apologize.


Unless I see another inaccurate report of what went (clearly) wrong, I am not 
going to pursue the issue further. Otherwise, I'll have to take more serious 
and formal steps.
To be fully clear, as I live in the country where every wrong-doing is 
justified with claims about misunderstandings, there was no misunderstanding 
whatsoever but just a lack of the most basic respect towards coauthors. Story 
over, I hope.


More apologies to Jim and Paul for my delays with our BG-PCA paper. They know 
the reasons, and I hope we may have soon a draft ready for submission. I 
anticipate that, although I may be first author, Jim will be the corresponding 
one: the long discussions and interactions with Jim and Paul, and especially 
Jim's extensive simulations (an order of magnitude better than mine) made us 
understand the problem much better and in fact, in the course of this, Jim 
found some other interesting issues (not strictly related to BG-PCA), that I 
hope he will publish in another paper of his.

Sincerely

Andrea


On 16/05/2019 00:37, Una Vidarsdottir wrote:
> Thank you Andrea for clarifying this. You are one of the most honest 
> and modest people I know, and I am glad that your side of this story 
> is now in the open. You have my support, as always.
> Una
> 
> On Wed, 15 May 2019, 06:33 andrea cardini,  <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 spec

[MORPHMET] thanks for support

[andrea cardini]

Dear morphometricians,
I would like to thank all those who openly and privately expressed their 
support on the issue of the BG-PCA papers, which I, regretfully, had to 
make public.


I have to stress that I am no better than anyone else and certainly 
worse than very many. I make many mistakes (including on ethics). I can 
only do my best to acknowledge my errors and apologize.



Unless I see another inaccurate report of what went (clearly) wrong, I 
am not going to pursue the issue further. Otherwise, I'll have to take 
more serious and formal steps.
To be fully clear, as I live in the country where every wrong-doing is 
justified with claims about misunderstandings, there was no 
misunderstanding whatsoever but just a lack of the most basic respect 
towards coauthors. Story over, I hope.



More apologies to Jim and Paul for my delays with our BG-PCA paper. They 
know the reasons, and I hope we may have soon a draft ready for 
submission. I anticipate that, although I may be first author, Jim will 
be the corresponding one: the long discussions and interactions with Jim 
and Paul, and especially Jim's extensive simulations (an order of 
magnitude better than mine) made us understand the problem much better 
and in fact, in the course of this, Jim found some other interesting 
issues (not strictly related to BG-PCA), that I hope he will publish in 
another paper of his.


Sincerely

Andrea


On 16/05/2019 00:37, Una Vidarsdottir wrote:
Thank you Andrea for clarifying this. You are one of the most honest and 
modest people I know, and I am glad that your side of this story is now 
in the open. You have my support, as always.

Una

On Wed, 15 May 2019, 06:33 andrea cardini, > 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