I made a specific statement of fact.
John Briggs
Stephen Oppenheimer wrote:
> I wouldn't disagree. I was just giving you some details of process;
> but how does this relate to your specific suggestion of a corrupt process
> in Cambridge? Presumably your response means you stand by that.
>
> John Briggs wrote:
>
>> There is nothing magical about peer review - it is no guarantee of
>> anything. The defects of the refereeing system are well known - there
>> is a substantial literature on the subject - it is just that no-one
>> can devise a better system (it's a bit like democracy and capitalism
>> in that respect). Interestingly, the way to improve the quality of
>> articles in your journal is to reject more - but the criteria for
>> rejection don't really matter! (Selective education works in exactly
>> the same way.) It has also been demonstrated many times that it is
>> possible to get anything published somewhere.
>>
>> John Briggs
>>
>> Stephen Oppenheimer wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting you should bring that up. Hopefully it is a query, not
>>> an accusation. I was just on the phone with one of the editors of
>>> another volume of the McDonald Institute monograph series. The
>>> institute has a very strict system of double refereeing. Firstly,
>>> all referees are external - and do not include the editors! Each
>>> article in a volume is reviewed by experts in the relevant field
>>> and then after acceptance/rejection and/or modification the whole
>>> volume is reviewed by an external 'Reader'. The verdicts of each
>>> external reviewer and of the reader are final. If you are still
>>> sceptical about the process, maybe
>>> you should contact the current director Prof Graeme Barker.
>>>
>>> John Briggs wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, but you did cite Forster, P., Polzin,T. and Röhl, A. (2006),
>>>> as the 'only one peer-reviewed article arguing, with
>>>> qualifications, for an earlier arrival of Germanic to England' -
>>>> but it is published in a volume co-edited by the principal author,
>>>> and published by his own institute!
>>>>
>>>> John Briggs
>>>>
>>>> Stephen Oppenheimer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What puzzles me about this indignant secondary thread on "P
>>>>> Forster & A Thot," (should be Toth), is its relevance. I am
>>>>> familiar with that paper and the storm of linguistic protest it
>>>>> engendered, but it's not the
>>>>> one I cited and is not relevant to the issue of early English. The
>>>>> Forster
>>>>> paper I cited was:
>>>>> Forster, P., Polzin,T. and Röhl, A. (2006),‘Evolution of English
>>>>> basic vocabulary within the network of Germanic languages’, in
>>>>> Peter Forster and Colin Renfrew (eds), Phylogenetic Methods and
>>>>> the Prehistory of Languages, McDonald Institute Monograph Series
>>>>> (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research), pp.
>>>>> 131–7.). Is this thread a confusion or just "critique by repute"?
>>>>> I recall
>>>>> that Darwin's bulldog Huxley had some choice words to say on Sam
>>>>> Wilberforce's unconventional use of ridicule in scientific
>>>>> discourse. Incidentally, Keith Briggs at least makes his own
>>>>> critique (of Forster &
>>>>> Toth) here rather than reporting other people's.
>>>>>
>>>>> If the real problem is that the above paper is not as available as
>>>>> the Forster & Toth PNAS one, I can easily remedy that by sending a
>>>>> pdf of Forster, P., Polzin,T. and Röhl, A. (2006) to anyone who is
>>>>> interested -
>>>>> which may be unlikely. Then it would be possible to do the more
>>>>> appropriate thing and critique that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Stephen Oppenheimer
>>>>>
>>>>> Keith Briggs wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Stephen Oppenheimer wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The recently published estimates of time-depth in I-E come not
>>>>>>> from linguists, but primarily from mathematicians. The raw data
>>>>>>> were respectively obtained with permission from Don Ringe's and
>>>>>>> Isidore Dyen's I-E cognate sets, but neither of these linguists
>>>>>>> had their names as co-authors on the papers (Gray, Russell and
>>>>>>> Atkinson, Quentin (2003), ‘Language-tree divergence times
>>>>>>> support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin’, Nature,
>>>>>>> 426: 435–9. and Atkinson, Q., Nicholls, G.,Welch, D. and Gray,
>>>>>>> R. (2005), ‘From words to dates:Water into wine, mathemagic or
>>>>>>> phylogenetic inference?’, Transactions of the Philological
>>>>>>> Society, 103(2): 193–219.).
>>>>>>> I happen to find their methods and results rather convincing;
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As a mathematician with experience in the area of phylogenetic
>>>>>> tree reconstruction, I happen to find their methods and results
>>>>>> completely unconvincing. The tree reconstruction methods even
>>>>>> in the more quantifiable area of DNA analysis are full of
>>>>>> uncertainties as to what the correct model should be, and all
>>>>>> practical methods are heuristic.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Having said that, I very much support research in this area and
>>>>>> would like to see better methods developed. But we have a long
>>>>>> way to go yet.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here are some specific objections to P Forster & A Thot, Toward a
>>>>>> phylogenetic chronology of ancient Gaulish, Celtic, and
>>>>>> Indo-European. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 100:9079-9084 (2003),
>>>>>> available at
>>>>>> http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=166441&rendertype=abstract.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 0. What is the definition of "cognate" being used? It seems to
>>>>>> be done by visual similarity of the written forms of words -
>>>>>> obviously a bad procedure.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. The Latin and Greek "god" words should not be equated
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2. Most of the Gaulish forms occur once (or very few times) only,
>>>>>> and mostly on pottery graffiti, where the interpretation is
>>>>>> unclear. The method gives too much weight to this sparse and
>>>>>> noisy data. 3. There is an arbitrariness in the translations. For
>>>>>> example, under ALLOS one could have put Latin alias, and
>>>>>> then we would suddenly have a match. The concepts
>>>>>> "second"="following" and "other" overlap.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 4. Why should primus and protos be counted as a match, but not
>>>>>> cyntaf? Although the latter Welsh word has a different root, it
>>>>>> shares a common superlative ending (the clue being the -m- in
>>>>>> Latin and the -f in Welsh). The method hides the really
>>>>>> interesting information, just because it is not obvious at
>>>>>> first. Similarly filia:hija is a hidden relationship, not a
>>>>>> mismatch. 5. Welsh "mae e wedi gwneud" is a modern colloquial
>>>>>> periphrasis
>>>>>> for "he has done", of not much interest for understanding
>>>>>> historical relationships (it means literally something like
>>>>>> "there is he after doing"). Welsh also has simple past forms
>>>>>> (aorist and imperfect) which it would have been better to use
>>>>>> here. 6. In the case of "has made", the translations don't match
>>>>>> exactly: fecit can mean he/she/it made, but the Welsh form only
>>>>>> "he made". 7. There are many case of borrowing, such as Welsh ffwrn
>>>>>> from
>>>>>> Latin. These will obscure the true relationship.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Keith
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> John Briggs
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> John Briggs
John Briggs
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