Danube Delta ursinii are moldavica

[Wolfgang Wüster]

I agree with Michael. There is nothing aggressive about the use of the word "unexpected" in the original title, it simply referred to the fact that the direction of dispersal was opposite to what the previous hypothesis had stated.

Maybe there are different nuances to the word in Croatian than in English?

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

It seems biologists have way too few things to argue about if they start nitpicking like this.

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

You've probably noticed that I never make use of "emoticons" ("smilies") either...

Yet you love SCREAMING BOLD RED CAPITALS...

[Berislav Horvatic]

I agree with Michael. There is nothing aggressive about the use of the word "unexpected" in the original title, it simply referred to the fact that the direction of dispersal was opposite to what the previous hypothesis had stated.

When Charles Darwin wrote his book "The Origin of Species", he was fully aware that his theory was going to be
not only unexpected (= surprising) to almost everybody, but really shocking indeed. Yet he refrained from
using qualifications like that himself in order to ADVERTIZE his work. He left it to the readers to decide for
themselves whether they would be surprised, or even shocked, and to what extent. He was a gentleman.
That's what we lack today. Or at least I personally miss that. A "shocking" title to advertize an interesting
and valuable contribution to science - is that really necessary? I don't think so. More precisely, I personally
dislike it. It has nothing to do with "nitpicking", it's a matter of taste.
In the "good old times" of science a corresponding (and generally acceptable, "polite") wording in a title used
to be "a NOVEL so-and-so", which has the advantage of not explicitly offending/provoking/derogating the
proponents of the "established-but-wrong so-and-so". It's offering NEW INFORMATION, not a PROVOCATION.
If you can't feel the difference, so be it. (And if you feel that I seem to belong to the 19th century, so be it.)

Maybe there are different nuances to the word in Croatian than in English?

No, there aren't. Absolut nicht. unexpected = unerwartet = neočekivan, meaning exactly the same.

What I really don't understand is why Michael tried to complicate the issue, quite unnecessarily, by
introducing "unexpectable" (unerwartlich), which has nothing to do with unexpected (unerwartet),
the latter meaning just "surprising", no more & no less than that. And that is what people usually
mean and write. The unexpectable is of no concern to anybody at all - it either doesn't happen, or
is totally unpredictable (so there's nothing to expect in the first place.) I could elaborate on that,
but only if someone invites me to do so, which I hold for very unlikely...

In any case, all this has nothing to do with the solution (or not) of the "Vipera ursinii complex", so
let's drop it altogether. And wait for the damn paper to be published at last!!!

[Berislav Horvatic]

It seems biologists have way too few things to argue about if they start nitpicking like this.

I wouldn't know, I'm not a biologist. But I do have over thirty years of active experience as
a natural scientist of some kind. I've been earning my salary on "nitpicking" all this time.

[Berislav Horvatic]

You speak reason. I accept most of your critique, but for a single point:

As a professional reviewer, you are making a huge deal out of taste?
I mean, in an anonymous review as a suggestion, who cares. But here in an open board...

I'm afraid you are not the single one who probably got it wrong here, so let me explain:

I was not a professional anonymous reviewer of the paper in question. One of the authors
gave me an early version of the manuscript and asked me to contribute my corrections,
comments, suggestions, anything that could improve the paper. I did my homework as a
help to a friend, not as a reviewer. I had a few dozens of remarks, the one concerning
the title being the least important of them all. The list of suggested improvements was
sent to the first author, who took some of them into account, and refused/ignored the
others. Among the refused ones was my suggestion about "softening" the title, if they
find it fit. I forgot about the whole thing for more than a year and have had no feedback
regarding the destiny of the manuscript.
A year has passed, and still no news, so a few days ago I googled the paper out of curiosity
and found it still unpublished, but under a changed title. I concluded what anyone else
would: that the paper had been refused in its original version and resubmitted, with the
changes asked for by the referees, or suggested by some of the coauthors themselves
and/or some other friends and foes... The only change everyone can see is that of the
title. It is an indication of what has been happening with the manuscript in the meantime,
and I took it as such. I was flattered a bit that one of my suggestions ("softening" of the
title) was accepted after all, but it had nothing to do with me, it was someone else's
doing. And it is the least important thing in the whole story. Unfortunately, it's the only
detail visible to everybody, so people reacted to what was there to comment upon...
I'm really sorry to have provoked the discussion that followed.
My only wish is for the paper to appear in public as soon as possible, so that we could
all discuss it on equal footing.

Not trying to teach Germans, but the word, if one would like to use an adjective, is "unerwartbar".

Regarding "unerwartlich", sorry, mea culpa, I really should have checked, but
it sounded so much OK that I haven't... But if I have "invented" a new German
word for "unerwartbar", I haven't been the only one to have done so:

unerwartlich, adj. adv., nicht erwartlich ( Campe), erwärtlich (Weckherlin);
weil aber solches u., so fasse sie ihre sele mit geduld Butschky kanzl. 857;
u. grosse verbesserung allg. d. bibl. anh. 53 bis 86, 2554.
veraltet. irrig als neubildung bei Campe. —
http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB?lemma=unerwartlich

Campe entwickelte für zahlreiche (ca. 11.500) Fremdwörter Verdeutschungen,
von denen etwa 300 in den allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch aufgenommen wurden.

So, if Joachim Heinrich Campe could have been so "foolish", maybe this blunder
of mine could be pardoned?

[Berislav Horvatic]

So I can consider the whole thing as gossip? Well, I hope that wasn't a good friend of yours.

You are being merciless.

Well, there is also Reuss who proposed thousands of.... I am sure you don't wonna
explain your misguided tease by the foolishness of others, won't you?

See above.

[Berislav Horvatic]

I already prepared myself for some fight about the handling thing and how you
read statistics, so I was disappointed you capitulated that fast in this thread.

The admin doesn't want it, Jeroen clearly abhors it, and I dont feel like it. Sorry.

Btw. those Danube animals are a big TODO on my list, having seen all mountain ursinii.
So I am really looking forward to the paper.

The paper on the Danube animals has already been published - see the first posting of this thread.
In the big paper to appear they are of no special concern.

[Edvard Mizsei]

What's lacking, is the Albanian populations attributed to graeca, though.

We have samples from 3 albanian populations of graeca. Ferchaud et al had samples from Stavros.

Except one individual the mt-ND4 sequences were identical with the Stavros sample, this "excepting" individual (L01-ND4) was different in only one nucleotid.

graeca_phylogram.jpg (98.54 KiB) Viewed 7088 times

[Jeroen Speybroeck]

Interesting......... !

Made me recall this ...
viewtopic.php?f=43&t=995&start=20#p7757