<P> Even if multiple MPTs are returned, parsimony analysis still basically produces a point - estimate, lacking confidence intervals of any sort . This has often been levelled as a criticism, since there is certainly error in estimating the most - parsimonious tree, and the method does not inherently include any means of establishing how sensitive its conclusions are to this error . Several methods have been used to assess support . </P> <P> Jackknifing and bootstrapping, well - known statistical resampling procedures, have been employed with parsimony analysis . The jackknife, which involves resampling without replacement ("leave - one - out") can be employed on characters or taxa; interpretation may become complicated in the latter case, because the variable of interest is the tree, and comparison of trees with different taxa is not straightforward . The bootstrap, resampling with replacement (sample x items randomly out of a sample of size x, but items can be picked multiple times), is only used on characters, because adding duplicate taxa does not change the result of a parsimony analysis . The bootstrap is much more commonly employed in phylogenetics (as elsewhere); both methods involve an arbitrary but large number of repeated iterations involving perturbation of the original data followed by analysis . The resulting MPTs from each analysis are pooled, and the results are usually presented on a 50% Majority Rule Consensus tree, with individual branches (or nodes) labelled with the percentage of bootstrap MPTs in which they appear . This "bootstrap percentage" (which is not a P - value, as is sometimes claimed) is used as a measure of support . Technically, it is supposed to be a measure of repeatability, the probability that that branch (node, clade) would be recovered if the taxa were sampled again . Experimental tests with viral phylogenies suggest that the bootstrap percentage is not a good estimator of repeatability for phylogenetics, but it is a reasonable estimator of accuracy . In fact, it has been shown that the bootstrap percentage, as an estimator of accuracy, is biased, and that this bias results on average in an underestimate of confidence (such that as little as 70% support might really indicate up to 95% confidence). However, the direction of bias cannot be ascertained in individual cases, so assuming that high values bootstrap support indicate even higher confidence is unwarranted . </P> <P> Another means of assessing support is Bremer support, or the decay index which is a parameter of a given data set, rather than an estimate based on pseudoreplicated subsamples, as are the bootstrap and jackknife procedures described above . Bremer support (also known as branch support) is simply the difference in number of steps between the score of the MPT (s), and the score of the most parsimonious tree that does not contain a particular clade (node, branch). It can be thought of as the number of steps you have to add to lose that clade; implicitly, it is meant to suggest how great the error in the estimate of the score of the MPT must be for the clade to no longer be supported by the analysis, although this is not necessarily what it does . Branch support values are often fairly low for modestly - sized data sets (one or two steps being typical), but they often appear to be proportional to bootstrap percentages . As data matrices become larger, branch support values often continue to increase as bootstrap values plateau at 100% . Thus, for large data matrices, branch support values may provide a more informative means to compare support for strongly - supported branches . However, interpretation of decay values is not straightforward, and they seem to be preferred by authors with philosophical objections to the bootstrap (although many morphological systematists, especially paleontologists, report both). Double - decay analysis is a decay counterpart to reduced consensus that evaluates the decay index for all possible subtree relationships (n - taxon statements) within a tree . </P> <P> Maximum parsimony is an epistemologically straightforward approach that makes few mechanistic assumptions, and is popular for this reason . However, it may not be statistically consistent under certain circumstances . Consistency, here meaning the monotonic convergence on the correct answer with the addition of more data, is a desirable property of statistical methods . As demonstrated in 1978 by Joe Felsenstein, maximum parsimony can be inconsistent under certain conditions . The category of situations in which this is known to occur is called long branch attraction, and occurs, for example, where there are long branches (a high level of substitutions) for two characters (A & C), but short branches for another two (B & D). A and B diverged from a common ancestor, as did C and D . </P>

Which statement is true of the parsimony method for reconstructing phylogeny