Notes:
In conclusion, the principle consequence of correctly applying the RTE is that the common practice of inferrnig phylogenetic hypotheses from separate data sets is philosophically unacceptable unless one can clearly establish that explaining sets of observations are in fact irrelevant to one another. For this to be accomplished, one must assume that common ancestry in the form of past individual organisms and speciation events applies to one set of observations but not to other observations.
More generally, we may also conclude that to violate the RTE is to reason illogically, and as a result, unscientifically. The comparison of hypotheses inferred from different data sets is completely meaningless. And lastly, the RTE clearly establishes as unacceptable methods such as "partitioned analysis," including "supertree" methods, and "conditional combination."
