Fallacies of false attribution: the defense of BPA by Brooks, Dowling, van Veller, and Hoberg

Brooks parsimony analysis (BPA) received some criticism from Siddall and Perkins (2003) in the context of Dowling’s (2002) admittedly flawed (Dowling, 2003) examination of BPA’s utility. In addition to conflating BPA with its derivative (secondary or SBPA), which was not evaluated either by Dowling (2002) or by Siddall and Perkins (2003), Brooks et al. (2004, p. 43) level the quite serious charge that Siddall and Perkins (2003) ‘‘reinvented’’ aspects of coevolutionary methodology ‘‘without attribution’’. Herein I revisit some false accusations made by Brooks et al. (2004) none of which had the benefit of page numbers.