phylogenetic methods as they now exist can only rigorously detect sister-group relationships, not direct ancestry-(Matzke, Meyers hopeless monster pt. 2)….”the typical question is which tree is the best one, not whether there is a tree in the first place” (philosopher of biology Elliot Sober),…”cladistics can run into difficulties in its’ application because not all character states are necessarily holologous…certain resemblances are convergent….we cannot always detect the convergences immediately, and their presence may contradict other similarities….thus we are obliged to ASSUME that, for each character, similar states are homologous…(Lecointre and Le Guyader, The Tree of Life, 16)…..Arthropod phylogeny is sometimes presented as an almost hopeless puzzle wherein all possible competing hypotheses have support..(Edgecombe)….”cladograms depict sister groups-taxa that are thought to be each other’s closest relative-but do NOT show ancestors and descendants…..in other words, the very goal of systematics-the determination of ancestor-descendant relationships, is on the cladistics method not just unattained but unattainable.” (Brysse “From Weird Wonders to Stem Lineages, ” 36) And as I stated, it assumes that which it sets out to prove.