No its not semantics ... its huge. And I'll show you and everyone on this thread why its huge. You presented a graph to show the FTIR of Spider Silk. Now, that graph, shows two lines ... BOTH very similar.Lets take a look at those two lines on the same graph. The trend on both lines are "very close", using your words as my own. Actually both lines are pretty close up to the third phase, the phase after the big surge upwards... then, there is still the same trend, but only a difference in absorbance intensity, and even though the graph shows a big gap between the two at the end visually, its very minimal in reference to the absorption numbers, we're talking about a difference of .03 -.04.
Now, you always like to give links to stuff. But its hard not to notice that you failed to give a link to your graph. I would think that would be VERY vital, considering that it is one of the foundations of your argument. Look at all the links you provided.. But amazingly.. Forgot the most important one... That's a coincidence i guess. So, I'll do you a favor and reveal where it is from: Nature Communications (link at bottom). And the name of the article is: Carbon Nanotubes on a Spider Silk Scaffold.
Nanotubes? WTH? You see, thats why you made sure to inform everyone, "its the red line". The red line is the "neat" SS, or spider silk. The blue line is: f-CNT-SS. Everyone can read the article to undersand what that is, but to break it down, its man-altered spider silk. They are "300% tougher then neat silk fiber, versatile and multi-functional and exhibit polar, shapeable, conducting, flexible, strain and humidity sensitive properties. Good stuff.
So now, we have a graph, with two lines which are "really close", again using your words as mine, compared to themselves ... yet one is natural .. while the other was man altered. So when we speak of "really close" ... yes, Mick, you need to put that into context. Because really close can mean we are dealing with a natural spider silk, or really close can mean we are dealing with a technologically advanced spider silk. You also have to explain how you "scaled" the FTIR graph, in light of this revelation, which has the absorption rates AND the wavenumber - to - the graph showed on the computer monitor which only had wavenumbers (fuzzy as hell, but I think you scaled that right Mick), but NO absorption rates. Again, this is very important, because just a insanely small difference of absorption rates or a mistake in scaling the absorption rates can literally turn this substance from a natural spider silk to a man-altered
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130910/ncomms3435/full/ncomms3435.html