Crinoid phylogeny: response to a challenge

We respond to a paper entitled "When morphology meets molecular data in crinoid phylogeny: a challenge" by giving an account of our understanding of the relations between morphology-based classification and molecular phylogeny. We then comment on ten passages from the challenge paper, briefly explaining why we consider each to be incoherent or wrong. Finally we comment critically on the unorthodox treatment of heterochrony revealed in that paper, and in other papers by the same authors. Our discussion includes observations on the role of heterodox thinking, and the importance of not giving standard terms cryptic, unorthodox meanings.