Registration of names (fwd)

[robert fogel]

Dr. Anderson has asked me to forward the letter below.  Please address all
replys to him (wra at umich.edu).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 11:49:35 -0400
From: "William R. Anderson" <wra at umich.edu>

Dear friends and colleagues:
Bill Buck and I have drafted a short argument against registration of
names, one of the important issues to be decided next summer at the
Congress in St. Louis. That statement will be posted on the Alternative
IAPT website next week, and we hope to get it published in hard copy in the
coming months. Because of the recent ferment among members of the IAPT, it
seems desirable to bring this statement to the attention of plant
taxonomists now, and to get it disseminated as widely as possible as soon
as possible. Please take a few minutes to read it, and send it on to others
who might be interested. If you have comments on this issue, please send
them to Vicki Funk for posting on the Alternative IAPT website:

email:  *funkv at nmnh.si.edu* or *hollowell.tom at nmnh.si.edu*
fax: 202-786-2563
address: Dept. of Botany MRC 166, Smithsonian Inst., Washington D.C. 20560 =
USA
website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~ckelloff/vfunk

If you would like to send copies of your comments to me or Bill
(bbuck at nybg.org), we would be interested in seeing them.

Some of you will get this message more than once; I apologize for the
repetition.
Bill Anderson

**************************************************************
REGISTRATION OF NAMES
William R. Anderson (University of Michigan Herbarium) and William R. Buck
(New York Botanical Garden)

=09At the Fifteenth International Botanical Congress, those present
and voting tentatively endorsed a requirement for the registration of new
names of plants and fungi, beginning 1 January 2000, contingent on the
approval of the Sixteenth International Botanical Congress in St. Louis in
August 1999. Registration has already been added to the International Code
of Botanical Nomenclature, as paragraphs 32.1, 32.2, and 45.2. Those
paragraphs will have to be removed, of course, if the St. Louis Congress
defeats registration.
=09As now envisaged, registration would be a mandatory part of valid
publication. A name would not be validly published unless and until it were
registered, and the date of publication would be the date of registration,
not the date of effective publication, as is presently the case.
=09For most groups of plants and fungi, there is already an excellent
system in place for recording and reporting new names. It is decentralized
(Kew, Harvard, Missouri, etc.) and voluntary, but it works remarkably well.
Many authors who publish names in regional works that might be missed by
the indexers send reprints to the appropriate centers, for the obvious
reason that it is very much in an author's own interest for his or her new
names to be recorded promptly so that they will come to the attention of
others working on that group. So far as we know, the institutions that
perform this service have not complained of the burden or asked for relief,
nor has there been any clamor from botanists worldwide for a change in this
well-tested mechanism. This raises two obvious questions: If we now have a
system that works, why should we change it? And if we do change it, will
the new system be better than the old, or will it bring unexpected
disadvantages?
=09The problem with registration lies in the fact that it would be
mandatory, and in the potential consequences of that fact. While
registration has been presented and generally perceived as a neutral
mechanism devised for purely innocent purposes, it is important for all
taxonomists to understand what a significant, even radical, departure this
would be from the Code of Nomenclature that has served us so well for so
long. The present Code is a truly neutral set of rules. It states exactly
what one must do to validly publish a new name, and if one meets all those
requirements, then one's new name is validly published on the day of
effective publication. Note that no one can or must approve or disapprove
or otherwise intervene. It does not matter what may be the author's
nationality, or bias, or peculiarity. If he or she abides by the Code, the
name is published on that date, and there is nothing anyone can do about
it. Compare that to what would be the situation under registration. It
would no longer be sufficient to meet all the present requirements. It
would not even be sufficient to submit one's new name for registration.
Valid publication, and the date of publication, would now depend on the
name's acceptance and approval by functionaries at registration centers,
and ultimately at the IAPT Secretariat. If we permit registration to become
mandatory, we will be creating the potential for abuse by bureaucrats and
autocrats who will have the final say as to whether and when our names have
been validly published.
=09Let us consider a hypothetical case. Suppose we should discover an
old, neglected name in an unused genus for a species that has long been
known by a later name in another genus. The Code now permits one to avoid
taking up such an older name by proposing the older name for rejection or
the later name for conservation. Some taxonomists feel very strongly that
one should pursue one of those possibilities, while others feel that the
consequences of changing many names are not sufficiently serious to justify
rejection or conservation. Under the present Code, we would have the right
to take up the older name and publish the new combination in the correct
genus. No one could prevent that, no matter how strongly they might
disapprove. If registration were mandatory, it would be a simple matter to
prevent "troublemakers" from doing something that met with the disapproval
of the IAPT Secretariat; all that would be required would be to refuse to
register the new name.
=09Is it excessive or irrational to fear that someone, now or in the
future, might take unfair advantage of the opportunities that would be
presented by mandatory registration? Consider that David Hawksworth has
been proclaiming to all who would listen that priority is pass=E9 in plant
nomenclature. Consider further that some years ago, when he was trying to
persuade botanists to accept Names in Current Use, Werner Greuter decreed
that he would no longer permit names like the one described above to be
published in TAXON, and tried to get other editors to do the same.
Consider, finally, that Greuter and Hawksworth currently have a
stranglehold on the IAPT. Would those two ideologues abuse their power if
we were foolish enough to give them a marvelous stick like mandatory
registration with which to beat us? We think the answer to that is evident
from the record of their actions, utterances, and publications over the
last decade.
=09We hope that those who are unhappy about the present state of the
IAPT will soon wrest control of our Association from a leadership intent on
pursuing a personal agenda, and pass it to others who are more likely to be
responsive to those they are supposed to serve. Does that mean we should
then breathe a sigh of relief and go ahead with mandatory registration of
names? We think not. The same potential for abuse will still be there, and
sooner or later someone will be tempted to use registration as a way of
preventing some publication of which he or she disapproves. We must
continue to rely on the Code, and only the Code, as the final arbiter of
valid publication. That way, anyone and everyone in the world can publish
whatever new names for plants and fungi seem reasonable and appropriate to
them, without fear of interference by autocratic nomenclaturists.
=09We already have a system of registration that is optional,
voluntary, and benign, yet effective. That system of data-gathering is
quite separate from valid publication and its date, which depend only on
the objective criteria now in the Code. It would be a great mistake to
abandon a system that works so fairly and well and substitute one that
gives even more power to the Secretariat of the IAPT. We urge all
taxonomists to attend the nomenclature sessions in St. Louis and vote
against registration of names.


**********
William R. Anderson
University of Michigan Herbarium
North University Building
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1057
wra at umich.edu  Tel.: 734-764-2432   Fax: 734-647-5719