Subject: Falsity of Pipe Model under Zeide's Approach After carefully reading Boris' paper on the pipe model theory, I came away with the question of whether Boris ever read the original papers by Shinozaki. The concept of the "pipe" was an anology not a fact or lack of understanding of wood anatomy on the author's part. The other aspect the Boris seemed to misunderstand is the Shinozaki was proposing a functional relationship between conducting tissue (sapwood) and foliage NOT stem form. That is why they coined the term "disused" pipes. Much of the cross-sectional area below crown base is composed of "disused" pipes and there is NO constant relationship between foliage and stem diameter below crown base. In concluding their paper, Boris states: "'Pluralism' of falsity and truth most not be tolerated. It is an insult to the elementary principles of science that makes the entire enterprise ridiculous. Yet, for thirty years we have closed our eyes to these obvious discrepancies with reality. ... Does our attitude betray our lack of vision or indifference to the truth?" There are many ways to falsify an hypothesis one of which is to start with some false assumpitons. In Boris' paper they start with an assumption that foliage is allometrically related to total tree height (eq. 2 page 5). Prior to this point, the authors had rejected the idea that foliage could be related to sapwood across age, stand density, etc. and now they want us to believe that foliage is proportional to total tree height! I think anyone that has spent 10 minutes in a spacing trial can appreciate the falsity of this assumption. Now I ask the question: "Who's missing their clothes?" If the basis upon which you build your arguement is false, what do you end up with in the end? I agree with the Authors that the pipe model theory has been misunderstood and misapplied, but I don't think what they present here is a valid test of the theory. The pipe model theory is proposed as a functional relationship between foliage and conducting tissue, yet there is no foliage data available in any of the datasets used in this paper. Before I can even begin to accept this work, I would like the authors' to provide some empirical justification for equation 2. They do point out an interesting historical quirk of forest science: Much of the basis of the pipe model theory was a topic of debate amongst European foresters around the turn of the century, then "rediscovered" by the Japanese and then main streamed into western literature. Basically the same thing has happened with self-thinnning. One aspect missing from our field is an historic prespective of development of ideas and the profession as a whole. Without a firm historical understanding we are mearly technicans. In conclusion, I thank Boris for openning up the opportunity for debate and allowing his paper to be reviewed prior to journal print. I look forward to your net-reply. John A. Kershaw, Jr.
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