RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 On the importance of credibility: Bayesian and likelihood phylogenetic reconstructions of morphological traits are concordant. A comment on Puttick et al. JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 114793 DO 10.1101/114793 A1 Joseph W. Brown A1 Caroline Parins-Fukuchi A1 Gregory W. Stull A1 Oscar M. Vargas A1 Stephen A. Smith YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/30/114793.abstract AB Puttick et al. (hereafter, PEA) [1] performed a simulation study to compare accuracy among methods of inferring phylogeny from discrete morphological characters. They report that a Bayesian implementation of the Mk model [2] was most accurate (but with low resolution), while a maximum likelihood (ML) implementation of the same model was least accurate. They conclude by strongly advocating that Bayesian implementations of the Mk model should be the default method of analysis for such data. While we appreciate the authors’ attempt to investigate the accuracy of alternative methods of analysis, their conclusion is based on an inappropriate comparison of the ML point estimate, which does not consider confidence, with the Bayesian consensus, which incorporates estimation credibility into the summary tree. Using simulation, we demonstrate that ML and Bayesian estimates are concordant when confidence and credibility are comparably reflected in summary trees, a result expected from statistical theory. We therefore disagree with the conclusions of PEA and consider their prescription of any default method to be poorly founded. Instead, we recommend caution and thoughtful consideration of the model or method being applied to a morphological dataset.