Celebrando Darwin sob sua ótica do valor da falsidade na ciência 2/4

sexta-feira, fevereiro 11, 2011

Vale a pena celebrar o Dia de Darwin sob a ótica do próprio Darwin:

“Falsos fatos são altamente prejudiciais para o progresso da ciência, pois frequentemente  eles duram muito tempo; mas as falsas opiniões, se apoiadas por alguma evidência, causam pouco dano, pois todo mundo toma um prazer salutar em provar a sua falsidade; e quando isso feito, um caminho para o erro é fechado e a estrada para a verdade, frequentemente, é aberta ao mesmo tempo.”

“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.” Darwin in Descent of Man (1871, p. 385)
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FATO FALSO 2:
Gene tree discordance, phylogenetic  inference and the multispecies coalescent
James H. Degnan 1,2 and Noah A. Rosenberg 1,3,4
1 Department of Human Genetics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
2 Current address: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
3 Center for Computational Medicine and Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
4 Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

Abstract

The field of phylogenetics is entering a new era in which trees of historical relationships between species are increasingly inferred from multilocus and genomic dataA major challenge for incorporating such large amounts of data into inference of species trees is that conflicting genealogical histories often exist in different genes throughout the genome. Recent advances in genealogical modeling suggest that resolving close species relationships is not quite as simple as applying more data to the problem. Here we discuss the complexities of genealogical discordance and review the issues that new methods for multilocus species tree inference will need to address to account successfully for naturally occurring genomic variability in evolutionary histories. 
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