Dados ausentes significam lacunas na Árvore da Vida de Darwin

quinta-feira, janeiro 17, 2013

Excerpts/Excertos:



"Of 6,193 papers we surveyed in more than 100 peer-reviewed journals, only 17% present accessible trees and alignments (used to infer relatedness). Contacting lead authors to procure data sets was only 19% successful. DNA sequences were deposited in GenBank for almost all these studies, but it is the actual character alignments that are pivotal for reproducing phylogenetic analyses. We estimate that more than 64% of existing alignments or trees are permanently lost. (Emphasis added.)



This problem will increasingly hinder phylogenetic inference as the use of whole-genome data sets becomes common. Journals need to reinforce a policy of online data deposition, either as supplementary material or in repositories such as TreeBASE (http://treebase.org) or Dryad (http://datadryad.org) -- including for data sets based on previously published sequences. Ecologists, evolutionary biologists and others will then have access to rigorous phylogenetics for testing their hypotheses.

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NOTA CAUSTICANTE DESTE BLOGGER:

Quase 4.000 (quatro mil) artigos onde as pesquisas não podiam ser corroboradas no contexto de justificação teórica, e Drew reconhece que o problema é sério: mais de 64% dos dados filogenéticos estão perdidos.

At least that is what some scientists in the phylogenetic community argue, because only about four percent of all published phylogenies are stored in places such as TreeBASE or Dryad. Their message is quite simple: it is time to bring together more databases with estimations on how species are possibly related to each other.

Several journals in the evolutionary biology field recently adopted policies that encourage or require contributors to make their data publicly available online. Yet, this only leads to the storage of a very small percentage of ten-thousands of phylogenies that have been constructed in the past few decades.

Quer dizer então que a hipótese de ancestral comum/descendência com modificação precisa ser cientificamente considerada cum grano salis??? Meio copo cheio, meio copo vazio??? Vide artigo Small portion of phylogenetic data is stored publicly - ‘The glass is still pretty empty’ do Open Tree of Life:

Sometimes you wonder whether the glass is half full or half empty. But when it is only filled for four percent -- the other 96 percent is just air -- there is only one conclusion: it is time for more.

Queria ver a cara de alguns mandarins da Nomenklatura científica e da Galera dos meninos e meninas de Darwin... A Árvore da Vida é uma ilusão... projeção de mentes mesmerizadas pelo materialismo filosófico que não se rendem às evidências encontradas na natureza...

O bom é que a ciência é a busca pela verdade das evidências. Os cietistas devem segui-las aonde elas forem dar.