Abstract
Havstad and Smith (2019) argue that Lakatos’ “methodology of scientific research programs” (MSRP) is a promising philosophical framework for explaining the perceived empirical success of the hypothesis that birds are maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs, and the perceived empirical failures or stagnation of alternatives to that hypothesis. These conclusions are rejected: Havstad and Smith’s account of the alternative “research programs” inadequately characterizes criticism of the hypothesis that birds are maniraptoran theropods and they neither offer sufficient modifications to MSRP to correct its known difficulties in deriving logically or empirically satisfactory criteria for the assessment and preferential selection of “research programs” from historiographical data, nor proposals to mitigate its tendency to promote confirmation bias and dogmatism. Independent flight loss, an important problem in systematic ornithology with implications for the origin of birds, provides a supplementary demonstration of how the application of MSRP in the present context would tend systematically to mislead investigations of the evolutionary history of birds by promoting an uncritical perspective. Given these difficulties, MSRP is an unacceptable philosophical framework for evaluating alternative hypotheses for the origin of birds.
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Notes
A substantial modification is the “neoflightless” hypothesis that some maniraptorans evolved flight independently or that they are themselves secondarily flightless birds, while remaining nested within Theropoda along with all other birds (e.g., see Paul 2002; Maryańska et al. 2002; Sorkin 2014, 2021; Hutson and Hutson 2015; Agnolín et al. 2019; Dececchi et al. 2020a).
In addition to the works of Popper see: Watkins (1984), Miller (1994, 2006), García (2006), Jarvie et al. (2006), Agassi and Meidan (2008), Gattei (2009), Parusniková and Cohen (2009), Shearmur and Stokes (2016), and Parusniková and Merritt (2021). Note that Feyerabend, whatever his protestations to the contrary, in some ways epitomizes this tradition: a Popperian malgré lui who radicalized critical rationalism (see Farrell 2000, 2003). For the relevant understanding of “skepticism,” see Agassi and Meidan (2008, chs. 2–3) and Miller (1994, ch. 6, 2006, ch. 7); it is to be contrasted with Lakatos’ (1978a, p. 11) caricature of “justificationist skepticism.”
It also implies that critics of BADM deny that birds and dinosaurs are closely related, but this is false. Thus Feduccia (2012, p. 23): “In a sense…the controversy over avian origins has been overstated. Protagonists on all sides of the debate concur that birds are nested within Archosauria, closely allied with dinosaurs.”
The authors write (p. 847, Fig. 2): “this postulate does not protect the core of the BAND research programme so much as insulate it and other postulates from testing.” If they meant that this auxiliary hypothesis is ad hoc in the pejorative sense, recall that the Lakatosian criterion for whether an auxiliary hypothesis is legitimate or (pejoratively) ad hoc (insofar as a criterion can be extracted from the excess of senses—ad hoc1, 2, 3—that Lakatos insists on recognizing) is whether it occurs in the context of a “progressive” or “degenerating research program” (Lakatos 1978a, p. 95; more euphemistically, whether the auxiliary hypothesis is posited in the “spirit of the [positive] heuristic,” see p. 179). The authors nowhere modify or reject this criterion and one problem with it can be seen by considering the “imaginary case of planetary misbehavior” (relative to Newtonian mechanics and Newton’s law of gravitation) (Lakatos 1978a, pp. 16–17). At each stage in the thought experiment, recondite observations are accommodated by ad hoc positing of auxiliary hypotheses that do not increase the empirical content or the testability of Newtonian theory (still less do they proceed from the “spirit of the heuristic”) but are instead introduced only to neutralize discordant observation statements (they therefore should constitute “degenerating problemshifts”). Lakatos considers this rationally defensible because he needs the thought experiment to work as an argument against “dogmatic falsificationism” and thus for MSRP; when “stubborn defenders of [a] defeated programme” (Lakatos 1978a, p. 72) use the same reasoning, however, their arguments should be “reject[ed] as unscientific.” One cannot have it both ways. Either MSRP fails to provide consistently logical criteria for whether an auxiliary hypothesis is (pejoratively) ad hoc, or such criteria depend for their validity on the coherence of the distinction between “progressive” and “degenerating” research programs. A critic of MSRP will not concede the latter premise and requires an independent criterion.
This presumably moots the statement (Lakatos 1978a, p. 112, n. 2) that “a research programme [is] degenerating even if it anticipates novel facts but does so in a patched-up development rather than by a coherent, pre-planned positive heuristic.” It certainly further complicates the assessment of whether an auxiliary hypothesis is (pejoratively) ad hoc.
For the common stem-ancestry hypothesis, this character conflict results from homoplasy induced by flight loss and secondary acquisition of terrestrial morphotypes by primitive “theropod-mimicking” birds like the pennaraptoran maniraptorans (but the prediction that some putative “theropods” were actually birds at all stages of flight and flight loss was not part of the initial formulation of the common stem-ancestry hypothesis); for the polyphyly hypothesis, this character conflict results from independent (but closely related) archosaurian lineages simultaneously approaching or acquiring the avian morphotype through the Mesozoic (but the polyphyly hypothesis was advanced principally to explain character conflict among undisputed Mesozoic “birds” and only secondarily extended to explain the impasse between alternative hypotheses for the origin of “birds”).
Obviously, this is only the briefest statement of the issues, but it suffices to make the point that neat (nearly orthogenic) diagrams in the literature (e.g., Makovicky and Zanno 2011, Fig. 1.1) disguise uncertainties in homology assessment and obscure conflicting character state distributions whose explanation is troublous. Contrast the “bird-dinosaur transition” with the origin of crown tetrapods as documented through stem-tetrapod grades (Clack 2012; Kemp 2016): despite some complexities (e.g., see Niedźwiedzki et al. 2010; Swartz 2012; Stewart et al. 2022), this is a less problematical example of the stepwise “gradual assembly” of a morphotype.
Cf. Feyerabend (1981, p. 208; internal quotations are from Lakatos 1978a, ch. 2): “According to Lakatos, methodologies are tested, i.e., either defended or attacked, by reference to historical data. The historical data which Lakatos uses are ‘“appraisals” of the scientific elite’…or ‘basic value judgments’…which are value judgments about specific achievements of science…For Lakatos, such value judgments (which constitute what he calls a ‘common scientific wisdom’) are a suitable basis for methodological discussions because they are accepted by the great majority of scientists…” (cf. Kuhn 1970, p. 233). Feyerabend’s (1981, ch. 10) criticisms of Lakatos cannot be dismissed simply because some consider his work outré; there has been new appreciation for Feyerabend’s contributions (e.g., see Munévar 1991; Preston et al. 2000; Farrell 2003; Brown and Kidd 2016; Niaz 2020) and his work has been appealed to (by Caldwell 2020) in the dispute on the origin of snakes (Serpentes).
Cf. Panchen (1992, p. 314): “Is [Lakatos’ account of “research programs”] normative or descriptive, or a mixture of both? In other words, does it consist of a general prescription, with exemplars, for scientists to follow, or of a simple historical (or sociological/psychological) characterisation of the work of successful scientists, or a combination of the two?” Lakatos meant MSRP to be normative, but early critics questioned whether the historiographical data to which Lakatos appealed can supply logically and empirically defensible normative criteria (that satisfy standards of rationality that working scientists would accept) for the assessment of and preferential selection between alternative “research programs.” The problem remains unsolved.
Assume it is false that MSRP, through its preoccupation with “progress,” promotes dogmatism and confirmation bias. One could instead argue that “The standards which Lakatos has chosen neither issue abstract orders…nor do they support general judgments concerning the rationality, or irrationality, of a certain course of action…” (Feyerabend 1981, pp. 217–218; cf. Musgrave 1976, § 3; Motterlini 2002b). The decision about how to proceed under the aegis of MSRP would thus reduce to socio-psychological factors: “…assume that the institutions which publicize the work and the results of the individual scientist…adopt a conservative attitude towards the standards; they refuse to support degenerating research programmes, they withdraw money…they ridicule their defenders, they do not publish their results” (Feyerabend 1981, p. 218). MSRP provides no methodological safeguards to prohibit or even discourage this behavior (Lakatos preferred it, see his 1978a, p. 117; cf. Berkson 1976, pp. 52–53; Motterlini 2002b, p. 36). MSRP encounters a dilemma: dogmatism and confirmation bias are promoted either because its preoccupation with constant “progress” encourages them, or because MSRP is methodologically powerless to prevent them. Either way, the categorization of “BAND” as a “degenerating” or “static” research program is de facto an injunction for its dogmatical suppression: nothing in Havstad and Smith’s characterization of “static research programs” suggests a way practically to avoid this outcome.
There were some exceptions (e.g., Bock 1963).
Systematic ornithology has long labored in complacent overconfidence about the resilience of contemporary methods of phylogenetic analysis to systemic error, particularly where topologies are well resolved and backed by high branch support indices and long lists of synapomorphies (so Livezey and Zusi 2007, p. 23: “This analysis revealed the relationships among the palaeognathous birds to be exceptionally resolved, well supported, virtually unambiguous, empirically rich, markedly traditional, and supported by an unprecedented sample of outgroups.”). The application of MSRP in this case would thus only have strengthened the belief that “well corroborated” phylogenies (shielded by many “protective belts”) are confirmed and therefore reliable phylogenies whose truth can be assumed for other analyses and used as the basis for subsequent biological inferences (see Phillips et al. 2010, p. 100). Minimally it would have provided justification for the topological enforcement of “ratite” monophyly in earlier molecular analyses, by which they were misled and a timelier independent demonstration of the non-monophyly of “Ratitae” prevented (Phillips et al. 2010).
Small genome size has been inferred for saurischians and it has been claimed that this explains the constricted genome of birds (Organ et al. 2007). However, genome constriction is correlated with flight in bats and birds (Organ and Shedlock 2009; Wright et al. 2014; Ji and DeWoody 2017), with similar underlying selective pressure for genes linked to bone remodeling (Machada et al. 2016). If saurischians evolved small genome sizes long before the origin of flight, but genome constriction in birds is correlated with powered flight, metabolic alterations to sustain it, and bone-remodeling (Wright et al. 2014; Ji and DeWoody 2017), then it is equally consistent with the evidence to infer that genome constriction evolved independently in the two groups in different selective contexts. Unless one assumes that birds are dinosaurs (as Organ et al. 2007 do; the same assumption vitiates the conclusions reached by Romanov et al. 2014), all that can be inferred is that small genome size in saurischians (if true) might explain small genome size in birds (contrary to the inflated epistemic claims of Organ et al. 2007 and Smith et al. 2015; their interpretation would be further undermined if the traditional Saurischia is diphyletic, see reviews in Baron 2020 and Norman et al. 2022).
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Pourtless IV, J.A. Skepticism, the critical standpoint, and the origin of birds: a partial critique of Havstad and Smith (2019). Biol Philos 37, 57 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-022-09887-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-022-09887-6