publishing and amateurs

[Susan B. Farmer]

>TAXACOMERS:
>
>With regards to the publication by "amateurs" of dubious new species (my
>posting of 18 Feb 1999 and later ones by E. Robbrecht, G. Witten, J.
>LaFerriere, J. Soule, F. Moretzjohn and others), I second the suggestion
>that a key to the ten "most closely related" species as a requirement
>(not recommendation) of publicaton would likely put a considerable
>damper on those publications.
>

I have a couple of questions about the 10 "most closely related species"

By whose criteria?  Yours or mine?  By what criteria?  Morphology?
Molecular?  Which gene?

On the one hand, this is a good idea, but there are so many problems here
that I think that nothing new would ever get described again.

Susan, grad student
sfarmer at goldsword.com