How might you distinguish a hard polytomy form a soft polytomy in practice?
A soft polytomy is the result of insufficient data. The solution is then to get more data if adding data makes the polytomy go away it was a soft polytomy. If adding data doesn’t make the polytomy go away, you can’t be sure what kind it is because there is always the hope that it is a soft polytomy and if you can add more data it’ll go away. However, some cases have been found where the investigators have estimated the amount of data needed and discovered that they would need more data than exists in the entire genome! In such a case the polytomy is considered hard.
