[Phys-L] check your work : wizards versus lizards

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

Alas on 08/29/2012 04:04 PM, I wrote:
> I call such products "lizard friendly"
> since they seem to be aimed at users who lack a cerebral cortex.

It's still true that lizards, compared to wizards, exhibit much less in 
the way of sophisticated critical reasoning.

However, my obiter dicta about brain structure were wrong.  I am a big
believer in "check your work".  Usually I check everything before posting 
to phys-l, so it bugged me when I realized that I hadn't actually checked 
the point about brain structure.  When I belatedly did some checking, I 
found that my information was out-of-date by several decades, and unfair 
to lizards.  The details are off-topic but interesting.  Quoting Ulinski 
(1990):

  It is only in reptiles and mammals that the telencephalic roof develops
  into extensive and multilayered cortices.

  Although amphibians (Northcutt and Kicliter 1980) and lungfishes (Northcutt 
  1986) have laminated cortices, they show little migration of neurons away 
  from the ependyma.  Birds have a small cerebral cortex, ostensibly resulting 
  from a secondary reduction of the reptilian pattern (Benowitz 1980).

  http://www.its.caltech.edu/~bi250c/papers/ulinski_90.pdf

I am not the only person to have been exposed to wrong information about this.
As recently as two years ago, Arthur De Vany quoted somebody (perhaps Andy
Groves) as saying

  This surprising paper overturns the long held and cherished belief that the 
  pallium, the highest level of the mammalian brain, is unique to mammals. 

  http://www.arthurdevany.com/articles/20101221

It used to be thought that "pallium" and "cerebral cortex" were more-or-less
synonymous terms, but apparently not even that is true anymore.  Sigh.  There's 
a lot more that could be said about this, but I'll stop here.

====

Bottom line:  I'm still going to use the term "lizard friendly" as the near-
opposite of "wizard friendly".

I will however redouble my commitment to the "check your work" principle.