[Taxacom] panbiogeography critique

[John Grehan]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mivie at montana.edu [mailto:mivie at montana.edu]
It only took a few years for
> McClintock's work to go from surprising to central.  She hardly spent
a
> lifetime in the wilderness, nor was she a self-promoter.  Didn't need
to
> be, she was smart.

The point about McClintock and Wegener is that they are examples of
people who got it right, but were initially 'ridiculed' or written off
by the majority. 

McClintock my have gained relatively fast acceptance, but Wegener did
not. If speed of acceptance is a reflection of 'smarts' then that makes
Wegener pretty stupid. The point about Croizat is that he got things
right about geology that his opponents did not. The panbiogeographic
method continues to produce new insights into the historical
relationship between biological distribution and tectonics that have not
been anticipated in center of origin/dispersal/vicariance approaches
used by most biogeographers.

John Grehan